Revolutionary Fiction

Hey guys, I'm trying to write a novel about a fictional socialist revolution.

I have a few questions I want to mull over, and some other peoples' opinions would be good:

1) Should I use real place names, if the events are fictional, or set it in a non-Earth world (but still very much like Earth, just not with the same geography and therefore history)?

2) Do you think that using traditional leftist imagery and symbolism is a good idea or a bad idea? I am going to use the colour Red, and the word "Socialism" explicitly, but beyond that?

3) Do you think that in general fiction is actually a decent medium through which to spread Socialist thought?

If you're using a fictional setting don't use the color red or socialism. A good allegory isn't explicit, it should present an event or theme or problem, and then present a conclusion to that that seems logical. Read, or re-read Animal Farm, it does a good job of this.

I use animal farm intentionally because I think allegory is intellectually worthless. It's easy for anyone to make their ideology seem like common sense by demonstrating it in a fictional setting.

Really? Even if that fictional setting is pretty realistic? You've never understood a real-world issue better by having it told through fiction? I think I have.

This is the problem. Anyone could do this with any ideology, and the conclusion to the issue can be non-congruent to the real world while still imprinting it as common sense on the reader. A fascist could write a fantasy novel about orcs and humans, and when the humans apply fascistic policy the reader takes away that it was "cruel, but necessary" despite the fact that it's not applicable to the real world at all. All the time, you'll notice that fiction will apply a utilitarian-moralist dichotomy and the utilitarian side almost always proves out to be true, even if it doesn't make sense - in Death Note, for instance, crime goes down by 75% when Kira applies the death penalty to purse thieves, while tough on crime policy in real life has hardly ever effectively reduced crime.

I'm not saying fiction shouldn't try to portray real life - obviously this is the point. But while it might be emotionally satisfying to see something portrayed, it is intellectually worthless to the reader unless it prompts them to do some reading for themself.

If you have to ask these questions you probably are a terrible writter or a bad reader

Either way read some actual socialist fiction before embarking on your bullshit.
Read the ragged trousers philantropist, kanikousen the iron heel, anything by Maxim Gorki, there are others but I can't recall them now.

The only appropriate medium to describe Soviet Union (or Communism in general) is rock opera.

But you can try writing fiction, of course. As for first two questions - both are deeply within "it depends" territory.

I've always thought that the best way to get most people to grapple with ideas is to put familiar situations in unfamiliar settings so that people go into a story with none of their prejudices. I would go so far as making the characters not even necessarily human.

I don't even think using leftist symbols or terminology in conversation with normies is a good idea. I would highly advise against using the word socialism since right now even places less shitty than America think it means social democracy. Richard Wolff made a really good point in one of his lectures when he explained that during the transition from feudalism to capitalism the capitalists didn't have the word "capitalism." They didn't understand economics in the way that developed later. They just did what came naturally. You can't force a broad and intuitive understanding of class conflict (which is the kind of understanding you can get from storytelling). It has to develop organically. Grapes of Wrath (book not movie) is a good example for how to highlight class conflict and potentially revolution without beating people over the head. A novel is not the right place to be injecting socialist imagery if your goal is to spread socialist thought. The time to do that is when you're making stuff to appeal to people who are already on board and/or people who have a fetish for that aesthetic. Liberal use of the color red is probably fine since most people don't associate it with gommies that much these days.

Yes absolutely. Stories are the way we understand the world. History, the self, all of our memories are all stories that we tell ourselves. Obviously these are more directly rooted in material reality than a novel, but they all function the same way. People shape their models of reality based on stories they read all the time, and it's been this way probably for as long as we've had language.

Addendum to this having read the rest of the thread: DO NOT GIVE THE READER ANSWERS. GET THE READER TO ASK QUESTIONS. The important thing is to use the medium to make your audience think. Create a tension that can't be resolved by reading the book. Frame the story, characters, setting, etc. so that they raise questions but don't provide answers. Leave the answers as an exercise to the reader, but make sure to sprinkle in wrinkles based on real life that would keep liberal or fashy answers from making sense.

yfw all your radical efforts are futile and the capitalist machine will lead to the demise of humanity in the end

yfw you have no significant impact on history

Do it on mars and rip off red faction.
Actually just make it red faction fan fiction.