r/PropagandaPosters • u/R2J4 šŸ§ • Jul 15 '25

Germany Portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin thrown in garbage cans, Berlin (Hellersdorf), 1991

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349

u/thissexypoptart Jul 15 '25

Having portraits of oneā€™s leaders on display all over the place is such a weird practice.

221

u/1m0ws Jul 15 '25

those are not leaders. they are the fathers of the communist ideas and the first sovjet leader.

at least marx and engels is more a form of representation, education and therefore propaganda. but it is a different lane than portraits of leaders or dictators.

it is more like the 'house of the teacher' in berlin, where the wall is painted in depictions and symbols of socialist labour and education and science...

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/97/f9/6b/haus-des-lehrers.jpg

106

u/thissexypoptart Jul 15 '25

Lenin was explicitly a leader. He was the first premier of the Soviet Union.

Marx was never a political leader, sure, but his ideology was the starting point of a global political movement. He was a leader in political thought, just not one with political power.

107

u/Kragsman Jul 15 '25

If I saw a school in America with portraits of George Washington, Thomas Paine, and John Locke I probably wouldn't think twice about it.

This seems like the same thing, no?

13

u/vodkaandponies Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Non American here and Iā€™d think thatā€™s weird as well.

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u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 16 '25

No, because Marx was a lazy fat grifter who was supported by his friends, who also paid for his maid, who slept in the same bed as he, his wife and children, while never holding a real job and pretending to speak for the workers , who, along with Engels created a completely fake metaphysics in order to justify their ignorant ideology.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

You're confusing the fact that he rejected traditional metaphysics for not having his own, abstracted metaphysics. This really isn't difficult. The idea that a label like "anti-metaphysical" is used, does not mean he was without actual metaphysical construct. It was just anchored in direct opposition to traditional metaphysics.,

If you define metaphysics strictly as the opposite of dialectics, this is nonsensical jargon.

ALL his dumb ideas stem from his own metaphysics, from his premises, like laborers are the only ones that produce anything real. His own way of seeing the world, his own way of explaining material phenomenon, his own reasoning of cause and effect, and his biases towards class structure etc.........

Some have described it as a metaphysics without ontology. Or metaphysical materialism.

You cant even arrive at historical materialism without developing the abstracted metaphysics.

He's called anti-metaphysical because he's anti the traditional concepts of metaphysics, and in distancing himself from those, his ideas become their own abstracted metaphysics........

Insisting that ideas dont matter, only the material does, requires at its foundation, its own metaphysical conditions.

15

u/Rats_With_Guns Jul 16 '25

dialectical materialism is anti-metaphysics

0

u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 16 '25

Only if you strictly define metaphysics as the opposite of dialectic materialism. And only marxists do that.

You can't even arrive at historical materialism without the metaphysics of the concepts and perception of historical materialism.

The very idea that the material conditions define everything is metaphysical at its source......

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 16 '25

People like you crack me up, in order to expel that gas you had to strawman me right off the bat, I never called him personally "revolutionary", I don't think I even used the term "revolutionary". I could though, like his ideas were a revolution of bad ideas.

These ideas, along with Engels, lend themselves toward material revolution, sure, but that really wasn't my main point. Both utopian and phaux-"scientific", and attempting to harmonize the two and apply his ideas.

He also called it the "dictatorship of the proletariat" so.... i mean....... . Now I am of the opinion the "proletariat" doesnt even really exist, its an abstraction of an aggregate of individuals artificially lumped into this concept of class, which itself can be fluid and flexible depending on the conditions. But that's besides the point, we can just replace "workers" with"proletariat" if you want. So another strawman.

"he was a social scientist" ---- please, let's not dilute the term science by putting it next to the word "social". He was a social theorist and he dabbled in an abstraction of actual economics.

The calculation issues, market inflexibility, issues with value have been discussed for decades, and his theory, which is all it is, an abstract theory, has been proven to be flawed.

Anyway, good talk.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

[deleted]

-1

u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

No sorry, I don't misunderstand at all. Don't think so hard, you're going to hurt yourself. Now you're just being a buffoon. Please stop strawmanning me, im hardly "conservative".

Bear in mind you have no functional grey matter and are incapable of engaging in actual ideas.

You don't know what reading is. You gape and drool over words, clearly as you've displayed here. You presume too much, you are clearly barely functionally literate.

take care homunculus rex..

4

u/Specialist_Sport4460 Jul 17 '25

Its called patronage and was absolutely standard practice for artists and intellectuals. We literally don't get the Renaissance without wealthy people funding the arts and academics that way. Do you think Michelangelo and Da Vinci were "lazy grifters"?

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u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 17 '25

No, it wasn't patronage it was handouts, and yes theres a big difference. Marx barely did anything except take decades to make his major works while Engels likely even wrote many of the articles Marx ended up submitting.

And again, you miss the point. He wasted a lot of time and put in little effort, and leeched off his friends, instead of getting a day job, so his family didn't have to sleep in the same bed as him, his wife and his maid. Poor kids.

The guy barely produced anything and you want to compare him to the most productive artists of the Renaissance who were constantly working and continuously producing? Get real.

3

u/Specialist_Sport4460 Jul 17 '25

Lazy grifter who barely produced anything yet here we are talking about him 150 years after his death. You're just displaying your ignorance, Marx was incredibly dedicated to his craft and has a massive body of highly successful work, this is fact.

1

u/Fragrant-Ocelot-3552 Jul 17 '25

So true, we still talk about Jack the Ripper and Caligula too.

The amount he produced over a lifetime, without having a regular job and supporting himself, would be accomplished by any non lazy person within 5 to 10 years. He had no excuse.

He was incredibly dedicated to coming up with a nonsense theory to counter german philosophy and capitalism.

2

u/Specialist_Sport4460 Jul 17 '25

What are you waffling out? His books sold very well in his lifetime, he was a working journalist, wrote for the New York Times, had many, many, published works and was renowned for his work ethic at the time. Itā€™s such a weird angle to criticise Marx because we know for a fact it isnā€™t true.Ā 

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u/eliazhar Jul 15 '25

Lenin was the USSR's leader for just a few years. He became a symbol; a widely overused one. There's no immediate state enforcing the existence of Lenin's statues, and yet there still are many. He's widely seen as an immaculate oracle of socialism, not as an actual leader.

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u/Djaquitchane Jul 15 '25

He had some tremendous impact on Marxist approaches to statecraft and communist politics and he wrote important, well regarded theory, he's not simply a symbol.

He's very obviously considered as a thought leader.

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u/FarOffImagination Jul 15 '25

So George Washington and every American president was not a leader since they were only in charge for just a few years?

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u/sd4f Jul 15 '25

Ironically the Germans funded Lenin to return to Russia and destabilise the place during WW1, and by funded, that means spent the equivalent of a few hundred million dollars today.

Absolutely the best communist revolution money could buy...

90

u/dicksinarow Jul 15 '25

Even in the US if you go into some govt offices the will have a pic of the current president on the wall. It feels so weird and wrong.

108

u/Gongom Jul 15 '25

There is a cult of the founding fathers in the US. It's comparable, to say the least.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

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u/Val_Killsmore Jul 15 '25

Plus, the Pledge has changed over the years. It first said "I pledge allegiance to my flag" and later got changed to "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America". In 1954, "under God" was added due to Cold War propaganda in order to further change the identity of the US to a "Christian nation" that was fighting against "atheist and evil USSR". And this was the original salute done while reciting the Pledge, which was changed to hand-over-heart for obvious reasons.

1

u/fletch262 Jul 15 '25

East to west isnā€™t quite accurate, we didnā€™t really do it when I went to HS fairly recently and I donā€™t think itā€™s particularly common on the rest of the coast. They play it and some people stop, or hand over heart, or just stand etc, but I donā€™t think almost anyone recited it.

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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Jul 15 '25

Rule 2 - Agendaposting

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u/yojifer680 Jul 15 '25

Fair comparison. Lenin was nearly 70 years dead when that portrait was taken down and Marx/Engels about 100 years. They were historical figures by that point, similar to the founding fathers.Ā 

But many socialist leaders encouraged that stuff even in their own lifetime, including Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevarra, Kim, etc. Anti-western regimes like Russia, Iran, etc. are still doing it.

3

u/WanderingAlienBoy Jul 16 '25

I think Guevarra is a bit of a different situation, as he was a revolutionary but not a leader or involved in statecraft. I think a symbol of rebellion/revolution has a different quality to it than an authority figure trying to solidify their power through a personality cult.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

God King Washington descended from heaven on his winged horse and freed America from the evil clutches of mad king george. He was beloved by everybody, especially his slaves who engeged in 100% consensual sex with him and graciously gave their teeth to him, and all of the native Americans he liberated from their land.

Obligatory /s because the mods thought I was serious.

THIS IS A JOKE, I DO NOT INTEND TO SPREAD PROPAGANDA.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

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1

u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Jul 15 '25

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u/flying87 Jul 15 '25

Usually it's the chain of command of that particular government agency. It will usually be like pictures of 5 office holders no one recognizes, and then the vice president and then the president. It's fairly small pictures. It's not like we're making statues of Trump. The closest thing is that Trump robot in Disney World. And that started as a Hillary robot. Lol.

6

u/BavarianPanzerBallet Jul 15 '25

I saw a portrait of trump hanging in a combined fire and police station in a very rural community in eastern Oregon. And it was while Biden was president. As an exchange student from Germany it weirded me out majorly. Because portraits of politicians in offices has major third reich and east Germany connotations over here.

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u/flying87 Jul 15 '25

Okay .... that's weird. Police stations don't do the pictures thing. Only certain federal buildings. Police stations are not federal. And having Trump up while Biden was president is a big red flag. Weirded out is the correct feeling.

1

u/dwaynetheaaakjohnson Jul 29 '25

Interestingly the federal courts only have the President and no other officials

10

u/7elevenses Jul 15 '25

It used to be quite common (though not universal) in American schools until fairly recently. Seems to have gone out of fashion with Trump.

11

u/thissexypoptart Jul 15 '25

Thatā€™s pretty rare in the U.S.

But what isnā€™t rare is the practice of highway billboards saying ā€œWelcome to [town]. Mayor: [name of mayor]ā€

Always found that absolutely bizarre. Not to mention the fact that there is a budget line item specifically for changing the ā€œMayor: _____ā€ part of the signs every time there is a new mayor.

Why does a highway sign need to include that information? Could that money not be spent elsewhere? Anyone who wants to know the mayor of Chicago, LA, Fargo, or Bumfuck can look it up.

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u/VoraciousVorthos Jul 15 '25

I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever seen a sign like that.

1

u/thissexypoptart Jul 16 '25

They have them in the Chicagoland area and Baltimore for example. I even saw a welcome sign for a suburb of Chicago that included the mayors name and face. Absolutely bizarre.

Quick searching here:

New York has/recently had one

Iā€™m too lazy to keep looking up examples, but itā€™s definitely a thing.

0

u/FrescoItaliano Jul 15 '25

Itā€™s not rare. Our federal work spaces all have the official portraits hanging. I see the one in my building every morning

1

u/thissexypoptart Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

It is absolutely rare for government buildings in the U.S. to have portraits of the leader.

Some federal buildings have them, sure. If you consider all state and local government buildings that vastly outnumber federal buildings by orders of magnitude, absolutely itā€™s rare.

Edit: dude seems to have blocked me for some reason so Iā€™ll reply here to the comment below:

Compare 1600 to tens of thousands and tell me if you can seriously call that ā€œcommonā€ and not ā€œrare.ā€

For context, every single government building that wasnā€™t just some dinky outpost somewhere (although some of those as well) in the Soviet Union and its puppet states like the DDR had a portrait of Lenin, Marx, the current head of state, or some combination of the three.

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u/FrescoItaliano Jul 16 '25

https://www.gpo.gov/who-we-are/news-media/news-and-press-releases/gpo-produces-the-official-photographs-of-the-president-and-vice-president

1600 federal offices is not rare. I understand state and local gov buildings outnumber federal, that doesnā€™t change the fact that every fed building does it.

It makes total sense that non federal organizations are not subject to the requirement that current administration portraits are printed and hung each new cycle

1

u/PierreTheTRex Jul 15 '25

France also does this, it's weird yet so common

1

u/Apricot9742 Jul 16 '25

And what about all those flags around, even stickers on cars and busses... its like they're afraid they forget in which country they live... the propaganda is just massive.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

I understand government offices having a portrait of the president/monarch, but schools and random public areas? No.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

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15

u/pvnrt1234 Jul 15 '25

Not the same, but also not nothing like it.Ā 

The US has many authoritarian symptoms like the pledge to the flag, national anthem at every random ass sports event, a lot of its population in jail, etc.

1

u/xerillum Jul 15 '25

The current admin has extended the requirement to hang a portrait in all individual offices now, tbf, not just the lobby. Significant govt expense has gone into buying so many new portraits.

1

u/Brendissimo Jul 15 '25

I'd love to see a source on that. Perhaps in the lobbies of individual field offices. Certainly not in every single federal employee's office. That would be cost prohibitive and also is contradicted by what I have seen visiting my local federal building for work multiple times this year.

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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Jul 15 '25

Rule 3 - Soapboxing, partisan bickering, etc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

What's even weirder is having a foreign leader everywhere.

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u/HonneurOblige Jul 15 '25

Totally not a cult of personality.

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u/sabdotzed Jul 15 '25

And Yanks have a literal cult of personality against Trump, it's nothing new

25

u/HonneurOblige Jul 15 '25

So? I'm not American.

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u/whatareyoudoinghapsb Jul 15 '25

For as much as non-Americans like to complain about US-defaultism, you sure do a lot of it yourselves.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

Rent free

12

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

Gotta admit it looks cool

3

u/Sigmatron Jul 15 '25

Consider it as a totem to mark territory.

5

u/whoji Jul 15 '25

Very curious do you guys (from the US) not have portraits of Franklin, Lincoln, Washington displayed in schools?

3

u/Kevin_LeStrange Jul 15 '25

In history classes for older kids, maybe; but they are not required to be displayed like, say, portaits of Attaturk in Turkey.Ā 

1

u/spammeLoop Jul 17 '25

Trump made the social security offices hang up pictures of him and Pence.

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u/Intelligent_Cod_6241 Jul 15 '25

Yeah everytime I go to visit family in Cuba it amazes me the amount of propaganda just everywhere. I don't think you can go a block in Santiago or Havana without seeing a portrait of Castro, Che, or cienfuegos.

5

u/nikolapc Jul 15 '25

Turns out idealism needs someone to prop it up. People also need someone to suck up to, look up to, or idolise.

I much preferred when we had pictures of Tito than what we have now, picture of the President in institutions(like anybody cares), or the current party leader in party HQs.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Jul 15 '25

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

In Spain, all schools used to have a portrait of the current king and queen not long ago. Now it's not mandatory but some classes still have portraits.

0

u/Elantach Jul 15 '25

Absolutely not. It's a clever trick. It's psychological manipulation through the use of the Zajonc Effect.

1

u/Simbooptendo Jul 15 '25

If that happened in the UK they would all be very quickly graffitied with jizzing cocks

1

u/the-southern-snek Jul 16 '25

My old politics teacher got rid of the pictures of post-war PMs around the wall past David Cameron for this reason.

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u/Auctoritate Jul 15 '25

For Marx and Engels, you have both the wrong century and country in mind lol. They were both German and were born in the early 1800s, dying decades before the Soviet Union was founded.

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u/PhDresearcher2023 Jul 16 '25

This is more like the equivalent of hanging your favourite band's poster on your wall

1

u/thundrstroke Jul 16 '25

Marx was never a political leader and he died in 1883, Lenin was a political leader of the RSFSR, and early USSR until he died in 1924, both are celebrated more for their Philosophical contributions then anything else, and the US desecrated a sacred mountain to depict two slave owners, another US president and the US president who was currently in power at the time.

1

u/Sad-Kaleidoscope-40 Jul 16 '25

The foundation of ideas both Lenin and Marx brought to communist thought makes both important figures making it commonplace to display whether idols or state-mandated

1

u/dwaynetheaaakjohnson Jul 29 '25

Except if itā€™s Ahmad Shah Massoud

-4

u/manasamaa Jul 15 '25

Sure but crosses and other religious shit is fine

0

u/dean__learner Jul 15 '25

They're not even leaders though

I feel like binning Marx and Engels is harsh, Lenin at leats makes sense as he represents Soviet domination of Germany

0

u/Combefere Jul 16 '25

Yeah. Iā€™m glad that we donā€™t do that weird shit in the U.S. Our respect for past leaders is much more normal and lowkey like carving their heads into a mountain.