Hammer And Torch

I realise this is only 'art' in the very broadest sense so feel free to move it.  I was just messing about with some graphics today.  The hammer represents the workers and the torch is for liberty.  Feel free to use the graphics and share your thoughts thanks.

I prefer the ones at the bottom, the white lines on the torch unbalances the composition and they don't seem very printer friendly if you want to print the logo on a small scale.

I will question the torch as a symbol, it was the symbol of the british labor party and later the torys, so it dosn't seem too authentic. English distinguishes beatween liberty and freedom as positive and negative freedom respecticly so a symbol for workers and liberty sounds... alien, like some lolbertarian trying to sell us their shit under a package we like.

HomelessArtist wrote:I prefer the ones at the bottom, the white lines on the torch unbalances the composition and they don't seem very printer friendly if you want to print the logo on a small scale.

I will question the torch as a symbol, it was the symbol of the british labor party and later the torys, so it dosn't seem too authentic. English distinguishes beatween liberty and freedom as positive and negative freedom respecticly so a symbol for workers and liberty sounds... alien, like some lolbertarian trying to sell us their shit under a package we like.

It was the symbol of the Labor party during it's early days when it tried to show itself as a radical working class party. In fact, the torch was abandoned as the party moderated itself for the rose. Outside of Britain, it effectively was a symbol for liberal and socialist movements, especially for the former. And, the Tories don't really use it, not even the conservative-"liberal" modern Tories. (The old Tories despise the symbol.) Their official symbol is a tree. Yes, a tree. Though, they apparently are blindly using the torch as a secondary symbol without acknowledging the tradition it has within the political left. Same thing applies to the "Libertarian" and conservative movements in the United States, though they have the excuse of being in a nation that was founded by left-leaning revolutionaries. Not to mention, the torch has a long history of meaning liberty in Western civilization. So, it definitely is authentic. In fact, it would be even more authentic than hammers and sickles which have been only around since the Soviets adopted them in the Russian Civil War. The same for red stars.


As for liberty and freedom, you sort of are saying that liberty is just positive freedom when you mean that it is only negative freedom. Still, you're wrong in that liberty is used in both contexts of freedom. Not to mention I simply go beyond that dichotomy and suggest a sort of "republican" liberty instead. Republican liberty being defined as non-domination of any one person over another. This link should explain it.

But still, I like the symbolism.

I wasn't aware the torch was used as a socialist symbol, like who used it?
I also know about the tory tree, the stunt was 'vote blue get green'

I wasn't familiar with the concept of freedom as non-dominance, still I've seen people draw the difference beatween freedom and liberty, er, argueing about semantics is never productive.

HomelessArtist wrote:I wasn't aware the torch was used as a socialist symbol, like who used it?
I also know about the tory tree, the stunt was 'vote blue get green'

I wasn't familiar with the concept of freedom as non-dominance, still I've seen people draw the difference beatween freedom and liberty, er, argueing about semantics is never productive.

Yugoslavia used torches in its national emblem, and some minor communist/leftish movements used the torch along with social democrats and liberals. Aside from that, it isn't really an exclusively a socialist symbol as much as a symbol of liberty, hope, and enlightenment. Values that bourgeois liberalism shares with socialism to a lesser extent.

Freedom and liberty mean the same thing actually. The reason for the different words is just that English happened to take from both Germanic and Romance languages when it came to vocabulary. The English language is filled to the brim with multiple words from different roots that mean the same thing due to the complex history of England during the Middle Ages. That's the simple answer.

Yugoslavia used torches in its national emblem

How could I have forgotten about this?
Iregardless a symbol shared with other ideologies isn't that cool.

Freedom and liberty mean the same thing actually. The reason for the different words is just that English happened to take from both Germanic and Romance languages when it came to vocabulary

I'm aware that english takes vocabulary from germanic and romance languages and freedom and liberty being a germanism and a latinism but I keep saying that I've seen people draw a difference beatween freedom and liberty or doing not but prefering one over the other.

HomelessArtist wrote:

Yugoslavia used torches in its national emblem

How could I have forgotten about this?
Iregardless a symbol shared with other ideologies isn't that cool.

Freedom and liberty mean the same thing actually. The reason for the different words is just that English happened to take from both Germanic and Romance languages when it came to vocabulary

I'm aware that english takes vocabulary from germanic and romance languages and freedom and liberty being a germanism and a latinism but I keep saying that I've seen people draw a difference beatween freedom and liberty or doing not but prefering one over the other.

Then, I guess the color red is just inappropriate for a socialist movement. I mean, the color red was used by monarchies, fascist dictatorships, banana republics, empires, and liberals. And, I mean the color red itself. Does that mean that we should abandon the color red in order to look "purely" socialist? And, I guess the Nazis who use the Swatiska aren't really "pure" and "genuine" Nazis because they are using a Hindu symbol.

What about national symbols? Almost every single national flag has been used by multiple political movements across the political spectrum. Even revolutionary flags such as the French, American, and Soviet flags.

Symbols can used and disused at will by a movement as long as it isn't obviously symbolizing another specific ideology. The meaning of the torch is quite compatible with the ideology of some socialist movements, especially the more liberty-minded ones.

Really, your desperate attempts at looking more socialist than thou is just making you look like an overly dogmatic and self-repeating fool. We get it. You are a poor person who connects with the working class and is a revolutionary socialist who is unlike the other, more elitist people who subscribe to similiarish ideologies. You don't have to desperately invoke it and revel in the aestheticism of it. It's starting to make you act exactly like the asshat life-stylist pseudo-revolutionaries who you ironically despise the most by focusing on how much something follows the generic "socialist aesthetic". This is not to say that you are acting like this now, but I'm warning you before you end up doing something especially idiotic.

Not to mention that now would be a good time to change our symbols as a movement. The baggage of the Soviet era takes too much effort to overcome. We can keep some symbols, but a socialist movement in the Post-Cold-War era is going to have to be quite different from previous movements symbol-wise, especially in the United States.

And honestly, torches are cool. Especially with how they were used with the hammer in that picture.

As for those people who try to distinguish freedom and liberty, they usually are either over-thinking it or are propertarians who are trying to hand-wave any other type of liberty aside from non-interference or property rights by fidgeting with words. That or they are leftists who want to justify abandoning liberty as a leftist ideal to justify their not-so compatible ideas. Basically, it is either too much thought for something trivial or they have an agenda behind it. And, who cares if the propertarians share ONE idea with us? Should we have a problem with free-speech if propertarians approve of it? Just be lax about it. Adopting another symbol for the socialist movement is not going to change policies, though it may symbolize a change from state socialism to workers' self-managed socialism that has been going on in the leftist movement recently. And, national symbols in general should be part of it, despite the right-wing often making use of them too.

And wow, I sometimes write a little too much. I guess I just simply had a burst of energy this morning.

Socialism follows in the tradition of the Enlightenment, following the implications of its values to their radical conclusion, so I see no reason why it should divorce itself from this history. Bourgeois liberal and socialist ideas share a common origin, and thus do many of their symbols.

As far as the symbol of fire is concerned, I find it rather appealing, representing Promethean enlightenment and hope, which is what socialism would realize on a massive scale.