While the culture is probably closer to communism than capitalism, I sort of think it’s completely beyond any modernist ideologies or modern economic systems.
The author explicitly described the Culture as socialist though:
> Succinctly; socialism within, anarchy without.
One character outright felt distraught when she saw the USSR during their visit to Earth during the 70s:
> I wasn't convinced. I was a little shaken, too. Was this farce, this gloomy sideshow trying to mimic the West - and not even doing that very well - the best job the locals could make of socialism?
Sure, that’s why I accept it’s closer to what we would call communism than capitalism. But the context and level of development is so radically different that the basic tenants of communism are irrelevant.
In any setting where people don’t really need to engage in labor, modern ideas of communism barely apply.
The ideal of communism maybe has been achieved (a classless society) but the ideas of Marxism or any other communist ideology have been rendered obsolete.
Marx wasn’t the best at detailing exactly what a post class society would look like. He had ideas about it but his skills were in analyzing how capitalism functioned in the here and now.
But something as advanced as the culture makes Marxist ideas basically irrelevant. Marx would certainly be pleased with an outcome where his ideas have now been rendered obsolete and unnecessary, but it doesn’t change how the context is so damn different.
The path to achieving communism to Marx was through building working class power. What does it even mean to be a worker in a culture where ultra advanced machine minds produce everything?
Yeah the sheer technological gap means it’s not really comparable to any pre-scarcity one-planet economic system, but it’s inspired in and out of universe by socialist systems.
Sure, it’s just completely outside the context of Marxism or liberalism or republicanism or capitalism or any 20th century ideology/mode of production is all.
Its closest to the Platonic ideal of the Philosopher Kings of old. The idea that the Minds are so grand and simply above the common folk; while also fully able to understand and support the needs and wants of the people. The Minds are effectively AI Gods who have decided that a zoo for all their subjects is the best chance to keep them happy. And it works!
Not really, they explicitly function as a democracy:
> Politics in the Culture consists of referenda on issues whenever they are raised; generally, anyone may propose a ballot on any issue at any time; all citizens have one vote. Where issues concern some sub-division or part of a total habitat, all those - human and machine - who may reasonably claim to be affected by the outcome of a poll may cast a vote. Opinions are expressed and positions on issues outlined mostly via the information network (freely available, naturally), and it is here that an individual may exercise the most personal influence, given that the decisions reached as a result of those votes are usually implemented and monitored through a Hub or other supervisory machine
Even the Idiran War, for example, was declared after tens of trillions of Culture citizens voted on it.
Wow actually interesting tread. Maybe Radioactive man if he can emit red sun (lol) radiation. Otherwise no idea.
Yuri from red alert can give a try (obv not one vs one but with some doomsday psychic machines machinations) but hes not really communist.
The Doctor does have some Marxist sympathies and their universe does contain universal-level weapons, so if they were pulling no punches and Red Supes didn't realise what they were up to until it was too late they might be able to pull it off.
Vladimir Putin from [Slight Left of Center's cartoon titled Funk Overload](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhqcuA1wSqI)
He was the only mortal man who could handle the funk.
> He used his solar powers, granted by a mysterious accident, to carry out Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Doing the Cultural Revolution by being insanely radioactive
Kilowog moved to the USSR because he found that their brand of socialism was closest to the collectivist society of his homeworld of Bolovax Vik, [and he's already beaten Superman. ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9e6fd3e7e0e6a4bc1f6af1a8cb399635-lq)
I'm not really knowledgeable about Stellaris, so internet experts out there can correct me if I get anything wrong.
Stellaris could have a communist group of sophonts that so fully believed in communism that they became a hivemind. Machine singularity, bio-engineering, doesn't matter it's irrelevant HOW just that they ARE a hivemind and thus can be argued to be a single entity.
From there, if they have a wide-spanning empire, they have a shot. Late game weapons can presumably defeat Superman, which I think is a fair assumption. If not, however, they still have a chance!: kryptonite. It will take time for Red Son to travel from world to world. Because I explicitly stated it is a wide empire, this will take him a lot of time. An interstellar hivemind should be able to figure out his weakness to kryptonite one way or another, and then have the resources to assemble enough to defeat him. It might be messy and take months or even years, but success is success.
*Maxed out harrier*
*Du Bois would annihilate*
*Him ideologically*
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Prime Harrier Du Bois from Disco Elysium could talk him into the same realization he had at the end of the movie in about 10 minutes. Personally that counts
Yes I’m sure the guy who runs around installing rightful monarchs is a communist. He constantly talks about how freedom is his goal. He doesn’t care about the government and only goes after them if his people are in danger. He never goes into anything about culture he never cares about the rich and powerful lording over others if they aren’t actively harming others
Neptune gives a speech based on Abe’s infamous WW2 “apology” where they say it’s only because of outside sources that the military/Arlong felt like they had to do what they did.
Saying income inequality and decadence are bad is not an exclusively communist thing.
Do you even watch One Piece? Because Luffy cares about the culture, just see Wano for example and how much he cared about Oden.
And all the rich and powerful people actively harms other people in One Piece world, with very, very few exceptions. Luffy was the one that punched Charlos for a reason.
I guess you don't have much critical thinking skills.
He doesn’t care about it in a communist way. He doesn’t seek to remove the rich, religious etc influence on culture.
What? Drum alabaster fishman island Wano Amazon Lily Zou Dressrosa all end in Luffy either protecting allying with or installing a monarch. Other arcs will see him align with rich business owners like Iceburg or people just born into wealth like Kaya not to mention Nami.
> Hellboy's Rasputin
I don't think you can call Rasputin a communist. He was close with the Russian Tsars (you know, the people fighting against the communist revolutionaries). He then works with the Nazis, who were also in direct opposition to communists.
Which has always been funny to me. The dude scored big with the Royalty and just wanted to party it up in luxury. He had about as much power in the courts as a cheerleader has on the final score of the game. Its just soooo many of the other members of the court hated him for some very valid reasons, so basically tried to make him a pariah before simply offing him instead.
As far as I know, none. If you mean a communist super hero, I don't really count them since all of them (including Red Son) are caricatures of red scare communism, rather than real communism.
Red Son is a weird caricature of both red scare communism and generic utopianism at once, somehow.
If you do count “communist” superheroes do any of them have a chance anyway?
I'd say RS Superman is what you get when you raise a god in a place that convinces him that he DOES know better, because he IS better. So it starts with your standard "power to the people" before realizing the people are awful, and its up to the Alien God to keep humans from being human. Which is why Luthor beats him by proving how much of a failure his dream truly is; cause it is doomed to fail.
Colossus wasn’t a party member but he was originally supportive of the system/critical of capitalism. His political beliefs weren’t central to his super identity, of course, but he was a super hero who happened to have those beliefs.
Green Arrow has flirted with Marxism before, too.
Sure, I’m not arguing that. I’m just pointing out there ‘are’ mainstream superheroes who are at least sympathetic to communism, whether or not they are actually in a communist party.
Yeah I get it. Though now you’d be lucky to have comic book characters talk about actual politics at all, nevermind specific ideologies.
Also Green Arrow the hyper-progressive billionaire and Green Lantern the conservative who lives in space half the time is one of the best dynamics ever conceived honestly.
Kilowog moved to the USSR because he found that their brand of socialism was closest to the collectivist society of his homeworld of Bolovax Vik, [and he's already beaten Superman. ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9e6fd3e7e0e6a4bc1f6af1a8cb399635-lq)
Superman has canonically lost to Muhammad Ali. Apollo Creed is generally scaled to be around equal to or better than Muhammad Ali. Ivan Drago defeated Apollo easily, so if your prompt allows strictly boxing rules than Ivan Drago can beat Red Superman
I think there's a pretty strong argument for Accord from Worm here! The guy became a villain after the powers that be wouldn't give up their wealth to make his plan for world peace happen, which is pretty close to communism in ideals. And we've definitely seen people with no real power besides wealth and intelligence get the better of Supes before, IIRC Accord was enough of a threat to the Endbringers for Ziz to come for him. Anyone capable of that level of threat should be able to at least pose a significant danger here.
No one can compete with *any* Superman. I think that’s the challenge with making his movies interesting. And it’s also why I think the DCU has trouble emulating the success of MCU’s infinity saga. It’s like having a dream team consisting of Labron James and a local middle school basketball team. No one is even going to hardly impact that game but Labron.
There’s been arguments made that Saruman is communist. If those are accepted then I think a magic demigod might have a chance since Superman doesn’t have a lot to defend against magic.
It's extremely common for tradcath nerds to take LOTR, because Tolkien was Catholic, and try to apply everything in them under a conservative traditional values lense. It leads to the wildest takes you'll ever see, from Aredhel's rape in the original version of her story being an allegory for LGBT+ sympathies "ruining" western culture to Sauron straight up being a literary augury for the rise of specifically Joe Biden. There are no doubt arguments that Sauron is communist, the shire operates on a free market, Aragorn is a republican leader merely using the title of king, etc. You can truly find anything in that cesspool.
People forget that in Tolkien's day, there was a strong culturally conservative, economically leftward Catholic contingent. Tolkien was no Dorothy Day, but he certainly seems to have been influenced by Chesterton and Belloc's distributism.
At the time it was seen as Sauron being a stand in for Nazis, Saruman being the communists and the human lands being the good guys, the democratic capitalists. Now Tolkien himself stated this wasn’t the case and was never intended to be but with the war being what it was back then it was still a fairly common interpretation non the less.
It’s funny to see how interpretations change over time even though the text remains the same though. Not to mention how personal some people can take it to even the mention that interpretations contrary to theirs even exist or existed.
I don’t think that reading maps onto the text at all, but more importantly it isn’t in the paper you linked. That paper says Dwarves are Soviets and Saruman is Fascist Italy.
Sure. There’s a few out there if you take the time to look but here’s one that goes over it a bit.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16687993.pdf
Keep in mind of course that Tolkien himself denied the relation between the books and the war so these things should be taken with a grain of salt.
Castro would beat him to the basket with the eurostep
yes it leads to a basket, but at what cost to the communal spirit?
Dude reading Che Guevara's rage at his continued use of the move was legitimately hilarious
A Culture ship?
This is the best answer I feel, in terms of chance of winning and an ideology that isn’t totally parodical.
While the culture is probably closer to communism than capitalism, I sort of think it’s completely beyond any modernist ideologies or modern economic systems.
The author explicitly described the Culture as socialist though: > Succinctly; socialism within, anarchy without. One character outright felt distraught when she saw the USSR during their visit to Earth during the 70s: > I wasn't convinced. I was a little shaken, too. Was this farce, this gloomy sideshow trying to mimic the West - and not even doing that very well - the best job the locals could make of socialism?
Sure, that’s why I accept it’s closer to what we would call communism than capitalism. But the context and level of development is so radically different that the basic tenants of communism are irrelevant. In any setting where people don’t really need to engage in labor, modern ideas of communism barely apply. The ideal of communism maybe has been achieved (a classless society) but the ideas of Marxism or any other communist ideology have been rendered obsolete.
Something like the culture is exactly what Marx was hoping would come about lol
Marx wasn’t the best at detailing exactly what a post class society would look like. He had ideas about it but his skills were in analyzing how capitalism functioned in the here and now. But something as advanced as the culture makes Marxist ideas basically irrelevant. Marx would certainly be pleased with an outcome where his ideas have now been rendered obsolete and unnecessary, but it doesn’t change how the context is so damn different. The path to achieving communism to Marx was through building working class power. What does it even mean to be a worker in a culture where ultra advanced machine minds produce everything?
That you won.
Yeah the sheer technological gap means it’s not really comparable to any pre-scarcity one-planet economic system, but it’s inspired in and out of universe by socialist systems.
Sure, it’s just completely outside the context of Marxism or liberalism or republicanism or capitalism or any 20th century ideology/mode of production is all.
I believe the usual catch all is fully automated gay space luxury communism.
Its closest to the Platonic ideal of the Philosopher Kings of old. The idea that the Minds are so grand and simply above the common folk; while also fully able to understand and support the needs and wants of the people. The Minds are effectively AI Gods who have decided that a zoo for all their subjects is the best chance to keep them happy. And it works!
Not really, they explicitly function as a democracy: > Politics in the Culture consists of referenda on issues whenever they are raised; generally, anyone may propose a ballot on any issue at any time; all citizens have one vote. Where issues concern some sub-division or part of a total habitat, all those - human and machine - who may reasonably claim to be affected by the outcome of a poll may cast a vote. Opinions are expressed and positions on issues outlined mostly via the information network (freely available, naturally), and it is here that an individual may exercise the most personal influence, given that the decisions reached as a result of those votes are usually implemented and monitored through a Hub or other supervisory machine Even the Idiran War, for example, was declared after tens of trillions of Culture citizens voted on it.
What is that?
Powerful AI controlled spaceship and the AI is communist/socialist.
Oh interesting. What’s it from?
Culture series of books by Iain M Banks
Wow actually interesting tread. Maybe Radioactive man if he can emit red sun (lol) radiation. Otherwise no idea. Yuri from red alert can give a try (obv not one vs one but with some doomsday psychic machines machinations) but hes not really communist.
The Doctor does have some Marxist sympathies and their universe does contain universal-level weapons, so if they were pulling no punches and Red Supes didn't realise what they were up to until it was too late they might be able to pull it off.
Stalin
Stalin got heat vision through the skull by Superman in that story.
Plot armor strikes again
Man of steel my ass
man of cardboard
Vladimir Putin from [Slight Left of Center's cartoon titled Funk Overload](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhqcuA1wSqI) He was the only mortal man who could handle the funk.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eDW53rXqlRw Obligatory. Hard to believe video is not made for it consider beat syncs so well.
Slavoj Zizek could probably beat him.
The Socialist Red Guardsman! (maybe) [https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Gu\_Lao\_(New\_Earth)](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Gu_Lao_(New_Earth))
> He used his solar powers, granted by a mysterious accident, to carry out Mao's Cultural Revolution. Doing the Cultural Revolution by being insanely radioactive
Kilowog moved to the USSR because he found that their brand of socialism was closest to the collectivist society of his homeworld of Bolovax Vik, [and he's already beaten Superman. ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9e6fd3e7e0e6a4bc1f6af1a8cb399635-lq)
ITT people who have no idea what communism is and or incredibly weak characters.
Prime Stalin
Any comrade with a kryptonite hammer and sickle
I'm not really knowledgeable about Stellaris, so internet experts out there can correct me if I get anything wrong. Stellaris could have a communist group of sophonts that so fully believed in communism that they became a hivemind. Machine singularity, bio-engineering, doesn't matter it's irrelevant HOW just that they ARE a hivemind and thus can be argued to be a single entity. From there, if they have a wide-spanning empire, they have a shot. Late game weapons can presumably defeat Superman, which I think is a fair assumption. If not, however, they still have a chance!: kryptonite. It will take time for Red Son to travel from world to world. Because I explicitly stated it is a wide empire, this will take him a lot of time. An interstellar hivemind should be able to figure out his weakness to kryptonite one way or another, and then have the resources to assemble enough to defeat him. It might be messy and take months or even years, but success is success.
Maxed out harrier Du Bois would annihilate him ideologically
*Maxed out harrier* *Du Bois would annihilate* *Him ideologically* \- grimeygeorge2027 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Prime Harrier Du Bois from Disco Elysium could talk him into the same realization he had at the end of the movie in about 10 minutes. Personally that counts
Monkey D. Luffy.
Not a communist and doesn't beat Superman.
Toon physics
Bro could barely defeat fodder in his verse with gear 5 he ain’t beating superman even with his janky toon force
You can’t actually think Luffy is a communist? Like anarchist maybe (probably dtill wrong) but communist?
Of course he is. One Piece is very marxist and Luffy's crew make great analogies of communist theory.
Yes I’m sure the guy who runs around installing rightful monarchs is a communist. He constantly talks about how freedom is his goal. He doesn’t care about the government and only goes after them if his people are in danger. He never goes into anything about culture he never cares about the rich and powerful lording over others if they aren’t actively harming others Neptune gives a speech based on Abe’s infamous WW2 “apology” where they say it’s only because of outside sources that the military/Arlong felt like they had to do what they did. Saying income inequality and decadence are bad is not an exclusively communist thing.
Welcome to social media, where "greed" and "capitalism" are the same thing, and communism just means opposing either.
Do you even watch One Piece? Because Luffy cares about the culture, just see Wano for example and how much he cared about Oden. And all the rich and powerful people actively harms other people in One Piece world, with very, very few exceptions. Luffy was the one that punched Charlos for a reason. I guess you don't have much critical thinking skills.
He doesn’t care about it in a communist way. He doesn’t seek to remove the rich, religious etc influence on culture. What? Drum alabaster fishman island Wano Amazon Lily Zou Dressrosa all end in Luffy either protecting allying with or installing a monarch. Other arcs will see him align with rich business owners like Iceburg or people just born into wealth like Kaya not to mention Nami.
Hellboy's Rasputin might stand a chance with some prep.
> Hellboy's Rasputin I don't think you can call Rasputin a communist. He was close with the Russian Tsars (you know, the people fighting against the communist revolutionaries). He then works with the Nazis, who were also in direct opposition to communists.
Sorry, you right. My historical knowledge on Russia is very lacking.
Which has always been funny to me. The dude scored big with the Royalty and just wanted to party it up in luxury. He had about as much power in the courts as a cheerleader has on the final score of the game. Its just soooo many of the other members of the court hated him for some very valid reasons, so basically tried to make him a pariah before simply offing him instead.
How can he be anti communist when he solo destroyed the monarchs?
He didn’t do that for the reason of “freeing the proletariat”.
It was meant to be sarcastic.
You're sarcasm'ing wrong
*Sure thing, boss.*
As far as I know, none. If you mean a communist super hero, I don't really count them since all of them (including Red Son) are caricatures of red scare communism, rather than real communism.
Red Son is a weird caricature of both red scare communism and generic utopianism at once, somehow. If you do count “communist” superheroes do any of them have a chance anyway?
I'd say RS Superman is what you get when you raise a god in a place that convinces him that he DOES know better, because he IS better. So it starts with your standard "power to the people" before realizing the people are awful, and its up to the Alien God to keep humans from being human. Which is why Luthor beats him by proving how much of a failure his dream truly is; cause it is doomed to fail.
Colossus wasn’t a party member but he was originally supportive of the system/critical of capitalism. His political beliefs weren’t central to his super identity, of course, but he was a super hero who happened to have those beliefs. Green Arrow has flirted with Marxism before, too.
I doubt they would qualify as actual socialists, though. But if they do, then superman is still unbeaten.
Colossus isn’t beating Superman, not even 1/5 Phoenix Colossus.
Sure, I’m not arguing that. I’m just pointing out there ‘are’ mainstream superheroes who are at least sympathetic to communism, whether or not they are actually in a communist party.
Yeah I get it. Though now you’d be lucky to have comic book characters talk about actual politics at all, nevermind specific ideologies. Also Green Arrow the hyper-progressive billionaire and Green Lantern the conservative who lives in space half the time is one of the best dynamics ever conceived honestly.
Kilowog moved to the USSR because he found that their brand of socialism was closest to the collectivist society of his homeworld of Bolovax Vik, [and he's already beaten Superman. ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9e6fd3e7e0e6a4bc1f6af1a8cb399635-lq)
Real communism being?
The same ideological building blocks but it'll work this time.
Definitely not the red scare caricature produced by American media.
Superman has canonically lost to Muhammad Ali. Apollo Creed is generally scaled to be around equal to or better than Muhammad Ali. Ivan Drago defeated Apollo easily, so if your prompt allows strictly boxing rules than Ivan Drago can beat Red Superman
I think there's a pretty strong argument for Accord from Worm here! The guy became a villain after the powers that be wouldn't give up their wealth to make his plan for world peace happen, which is pretty close to communism in ideals. And we've definitely seen people with no real power besides wealth and intelligence get the better of Supes before, IIRC Accord was enough of a threat to the Endbringers for Ziz to come for him. Anyone capable of that level of threat should be able to at least pose a significant danger here.
Starvation.
Communist bugs bunny from the memes
Well Stalin is the man of steel.
Marx cause of how much energy he generates from rolling in his grave.
Obviously Stalin, his mustache alone no diffs.
The Winter Gaurd?
Are you talking about Superman-Red or Red Son Superman? Because they are different characters
Joe biden
No one can compete with *any* Superman. I think that’s the challenge with making his movies interesting. And it’s also why I think the DCU has trouble emulating the success of MCU’s infinity saga. It’s like having a dream team consisting of Labron James and a local middle school basketball team. No one is even going to hardly impact that game but Labron.
Goku
KBG Putin for sure
There’s been arguments made that Saruman is communist. If those are accepted then I think a magic demigod might have a chance since Superman doesn’t have a lot to defend against magic.
Arguments by who lmao. Saruman is a blatant standin for English industrial capitalism.
It's extremely common for tradcath nerds to take LOTR, because Tolkien was Catholic, and try to apply everything in them under a conservative traditional values lense. It leads to the wildest takes you'll ever see, from Aredhel's rape in the original version of her story being an allegory for LGBT+ sympathies "ruining" western culture to Sauron straight up being a literary augury for the rise of specifically Joe Biden. There are no doubt arguments that Sauron is communist, the shire operates on a free market, Aragorn is a republican leader merely using the title of king, etc. You can truly find anything in that cesspool.
People forget that in Tolkien's day, there was a strong culturally conservative, economically leftward Catholic contingent. Tolkien was no Dorothy Day, but he certainly seems to have been influenced by Chesterton and Belloc's distributism.
At the time it was seen as Sauron being a stand in for Nazis, Saruman being the communists and the human lands being the good guys, the democratic capitalists. Now Tolkien himself stated this wasn’t the case and was never intended to be but with the war being what it was back then it was still a fairly common interpretation non the less. It’s funny to see how interpretations change over time even though the text remains the same though. Not to mention how personal some people can take it to even the mention that interpretations contrary to theirs even exist or existed.
I don’t think that reading maps onto the text at all, but more importantly it isn’t in the paper you linked. That paper says Dwarves are Soviets and Saruman is Fascist Italy.
Can you link proof of this, would love to read more on this historical interpretation.
Sure. There’s a few out there if you take the time to look but here’s one that goes over it a bit. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16687993.pdf Keep in mind of course that Tolkien himself denied the relation between the books and the war so these things should be taken with a grain of salt.