Regarding a Few Concerns
The response to GOODS has been overwhelmingly positive. People seem pleasantly surprised by an update of radical leftist visual iconography for the 21st Century, and the fusion of Western counter-culture with Eastern state socialism. But there have also been some worries, objections, and accusations, each of which are addressed here:
1. “Your logo looks kinda like a swastika”
Nazis had good graphic design and used bold symbols. Does this mean good graphic design and bold symbols are nazi and should forever belong only to nazis?
Nazis wore shoes. Does this mean shoes are nazi?
Nazis standardised the typeface DIN, Deutsch Industrial Normal, for all functional signage in nazi Germany in the 1930s. A strong argument can be made for it being an objectively very well designed typeface. Guess which media company has used this typeface for more than 1 of their programs?
These are superficial and entirely meaningless similarities in appearances, and should not be taken seriously.
The GOODS logo is a modern, minimalistic, and bold interpretation of the HAMMER & SICKLE, the international symbol of working class solidarity and anti-fascism, which is older than the nazi theft of the swastika.
2. “Some of your outfits look like the HongKong rioters”
The kind of all-black fashion in question, commonly known as “Deconstruction”, “Health Goth”, or “Techwear”, etc., began in the 1990s, long before the HK riots.
Pioneered by designers like Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens, Acronym, etc., it is a combination of sportswear, Gothic, and military functionality.
Yes, the HK rioters wore this style, but they have no claim to it, and must not be allowed to claim it. All-black and functional clothing is a global trend during this period of traumatic world-historic transitions: it is popular in not only Asia and Europe but Africa as well.
GOODS “Communist” hoodie / South African dancer / African techwear
And of course, all-black clothing was not only worn by the hired thugs of feudal land lords known as Samurai and Ninja, but also worn by Shaolin monks and other practitioners of Chinese martial arts.
Futuristic fashion does not belong to reactionaries.
Our stance on dystopian nihilism is that it is a valid and necessary form of expression during the world historic process of liberal capitalist collapse. GOODS encompasses the darkness and despair in the imperial core, AT THE SAME TIME AS we stand for socialist development, healing, and radical optimism felt in the Global South.
Reality is dialectical. We fear no aspect and embrace all.
3. “Commodifying Marxism is against everything Marxism stands for”
We categorically reject this kind of dogmatic purism and shallow understanding of living Marxism in practice.
“Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse”.
– Karl Marx, “The German Ideology”
When people decry the "aestheticisation of socialism", they are criticising those who *reduce* radical politics to only a set of signifiers, to style without substance, to vacuous trends devoid of meaning. This does NOT mean that the aestheticisation of Marxism or Anarchism is itself in any way bad or to be avoided -- if it is complimentary or part of radical theory and praxis.
Aesthetics is merely a vehicle for ideology.
Under bourgeois rule, under the dictatorship of the owners of industry, aesthetics implicitly carry liberalism, the set of illusions which justify and sustain capitalism. Brands communicate liberalism and its exclusive focus on individualism, individual identity, individual action, individual struggle: "Just Do It" and infinite variations of "Be Yourself", "Express Yourself", "Be Unique/Original/etc. etc".
But Aesthetics can also carry revolutionary ideology based on rational, radical world views and its attendant class consciousness.
"Fascism renders politics aesthetic, communism responds by politicising art."
-- Walter Benjamin
Dialectical materialism illuminates the true inner workings of history, the actual material/social forces which shape human endeavour, and reveals the hidden class antagonism/struggle in all legacies of artistic creation. For example, most Blues music are on a superficial level about love and loss, but on a deeper level, embody the lived experience of the underclass, and chronicles the human spirit under conditions of enslavement and oppression.
The realm of aesthetics, of style, of the senses and of passion can be a tool to educate and to propagate, a very powerful tool that has been almost totally neglected by the left for too long, and must not continue to be surrendered to the bourgeoisie.
The language of branding, marketing, public relations, propaganda, is simply the major way of global commerce, of how we communicate with each other today. A language is only a tool for the delivery of messages. Socialists, communists, anarchists, should not and must not relinquish the tools of mass communication to the bourgeoisie, to be used for only for the delivering of bourgeois messages.
Regardless of what silly obfuscation Marshall McLuhan was selling in the 60s, we at GOODS know without any doubts that at the end of the day, the medium is only the medium, and the message is the message.
“It is time to raise old flags. It is time to un-dust them and once again gather under them.”
– Eduardo Galeano
Just like slaves used the machetes, the tools for slave labour of the system of slavery, to kill the slavers, we can raise old flags of revolution with the new tools of mass communication and commodity exchange.
“… in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.”- Vladimir Lenin, Can We Go Forward If We Fear To Advance Towards Socialism?
Even further, in the communistic society to come, of course markets and commerce will exist, as we continue to trade services and products. And as long as we humans continue to do things and make things for each other, especially in a globally connected network, we will need some form of mass communication. Unleashed from the tyranny of private ownership/profit, branding and advertising can become its true essence, the intersection of correspondence and expression, of function and form, of meaning and appearance, executed with creativity liberated from idiotic boards of investors.
After 100 years of Western capitalist domination of modernity, many have come to falsely and tragically regard innovative design as "Bourgeois culture". Here is a small reminder that it was we communists who pioneered the avant guard, and made art, films, music, and fashion design entirely outside and decades ahead of societal norms. This in the 1920s Varvara Stepanova’s Soviet Avant Garde fashion design was a far more extreme break from the status quo than anything from Com DesGarcon or Rick Owens in our era.
What utilitarian function did the intensely hued geometric shapes Varvara Stepanova put on her clothing perform? None what so ever. It was aesthetics, ideology, and expression.
Times change, material conditions change, and culture changes. The functionality important to constructivist in the 1920s might be even less rigidly adhered to today, had the USSR won the cold war, and the global work week consists of 10 hours.
We should all be cautious of fakes and opportunists, of fascists in disguise, and of police and federal agent infiltrators. Thanks for every concern. But allow us to assure you that we are for real, we are sincere, and we are devoted to the left revolutionary cause.
I (GOODS Designer) personally gave up salaried work as an art director in corporate advertising and entertainment to risk everything by starting this company to spread communist, anarchist, emancipatory ideology. (And to those who accuse us of doing this for profit — do you honestly think selling communist merchandise is easy money? Lmfao). Our work on every product is always accompanied by Marxist, anti-fascist texts, and the GOODS MANIFESTO explains in depth the meaning and goals of our larger project, which is only beginning.
We are always open to hearing your thoughts, feelings, and criticisms.
Love and solidarity.
GOODS