Fair warning, this post may be a bit long-winded and scatterbrained.
I am an 18 year old Cuban-American boy living in the United States, in Florida. The world feels so… decayed now.
Over the course of the last two years I was politically awoken, and in the I’ve gone from ‘centrist’ gusano, to libbed up, to socdem, to demsoc, to ML. In the last few months in particular I have become radicalized as I witness the vile sickness Capitalism has wrought unfold before me. I cannot stand it any longer.
I come from a family of reactionary gusanos—a mix of former Cuban bourgeois farm owners and petty bourgeois Cuban diaspora. Eventually, my family fell from their petty bourgeois status, my uneducated father who is just barely to the left of MAGA becoming a blue collar worker, and my mother becoming a labor aristocrat working at a college. I have witnessed them be shredded to bits by the capitalist machine. My father’s body ground to a pulp and my mother’s eyes buried in their sockets, sleepless nights and restless weekends. And yet I still see them pay lip service to atrocities of bombing cities and mowing down protesters that Capital so enjoys.
I have witnessed Capital organize wars and butcher millions for the interests of a few powerful men. I have witnessed capitalists be exposed for the organized rape and murder of thousands of women and children—meat to the capitalists all the same—and the supposedly just liberal democracy be impotent to stop them.
I have walked around stores here in Florida, by my very home, as ash rained from the sky and smoke blotted out the sun. The Everglades is burning again. Charred leaves fall in my hand as thick black smog causes me to cough—the poison in the air pervades my lungs. The failures of Capitalism literally rain down around me and fill my chest as I breathe, and no one around me but a select few seem to care.
I am a year out from finishing my college degree in Electrical Engineering, I am lucky enough to have gotten a full ride scholarship. Many of my peers weren’t. Many of my peers do not care. Many of my peers gather around Lockheed Martin recruiters at career fairs. Many of my peers and of the generation to follow me shamble like mindless zombies, only interested in the next cheap and easy dopamine hit. How can one who doesn’t understand the true nature of capitalism do anything but despair when looking at the state of the world from within the Imperial Core? We stand upon a mountain of skulls. Not one person seems to care enough to look down. We have become dependent on our first world addictions of cheap food, entertainment, and comfort, and I do not absolve myself of such a sin.
The mass surveillance crushes me with existential dread, and it is fruitless to attempt to escape it. I have replaced many things with more private alternatives, but the further down the line I move the more I realize everything I do is traceable back to me. Even if I was able to eliminate it the less of a footprint I leave, and the harder it becomes to communicate with others. I plan to have a family in the future. I feel as though I am being watched right now. What will Capital do to them when there comes time for a new Red Scare? Is there any hope for me to have a family here? How can I escape this place? With what money? Will they have sealed off these borders when I am well off enough to move away? Will the dollar be worth anything or will I be rotting in a jail cell? I do not care if I die in what is to come. If I died for the cause, it was worth it. I cannot say with the same certainty that I would be okay with my future children or wife being forced into this violence, though my rational mind understands they already are.
I would love to organize, to meet comrades in real life and speak of the cause with them. I already have in some respects. Me and a friend crept to the left and ended up radicalizing each other, together! My sister is theoryless and a bit of a screenager, but is sympathetic to MLs. I have radicalized my partner of four years and introduced her to some basic theory. I am working on opening other people’s eyes as best I can, but I can only do so much when my parents have my constant GPS location from my car. How am I supposed to help organize unions late into the night when my sleep deprived mother will refuse to go to bed because I haven’t come home yet? When my parents may very well kick me out if they found out I was a communist?
I look back on these choices I make and even more I feel some creeping inkling of guilt. Those in the Global South do not have a luxury of such a choice. Regardless, I want to leave. I somehow want to escape the West. God, I wish I could just pick up and flee to China.
I understand I have had quite the comfortable and ignorant life up to now, and I find it hard to shake the effects of that reality. Those effects seem to have softened me. To make me afraid. To make me self-pity. So I ask to you, my comrades: how do you cope with thoughts and struggles like these? Thank you for any input you may have.
Class Consciousness doesn’t happen merely because things get bad, there needs to be a Revolutionary Party using Revolutionary Theory there to guide the masses towards it. You’re best bet is to join an ML Party (like the PSL) so you can learn how to slowly awake Class Consciousness in the masses. The Material Conditions determines the Conscious, that includes things like perceived benefit, for example the super profits that the US has from the super exploitation of the Global South, which makes it much harder to reach people as they have systemic incentives to not see the root of the problem, in addition to life long indoctrination to keep them from treating Capitalism as anything but a static, eternal, law of nature itself. As the spoils of imperialism dries up for the US (and it is) the masses will feel less benefit and more burden, which makes it easier, however they still need help getting the rest of the way because of the life long indoctrination. That is our duty, as Communists, especially as Marxist Leninist’s as the most Scientific root of Socialism as a Science, we must guide the people towards Class Consciousness and when they are ready, towards Revolution. We can not decide for the people, they must decide themselves, as long as they still have faith in voting in the US, in the Reformist path, they must be shown it’s problems, it’s in-feasibility, so that they decide on their own that Revolution is the only way, and you can’t just tell them so (at least not the most backward elements of the working class), they must be shown, they need to experience it for themselves to finally believe it and become willing to pursue a different path. Also this is not something that can be done by a single person alone, but only through collective effort, “many hands makes light work” (might be misremembering the exact quote) that is why organizing is so important, it also gives hands on experience which is apparently vital for a proper understanding of Theory (it must be married with Practice to test, refine, and make actually useful), and ones Comrades in an organization can also support you by helping you better understand theory and by having your back.
honestly i separate reality from my personal comfort bc reality is not comforting at all. there are wars and economic turmoil everywhere but you can still get comfort from concrete things like your hobbies and friends. i think that most non-americans do this easily. its mostly an american thing to think everything is gonna be alright (sorry no offense). like people of color in america who genuinely thought racism was over because obama was in office while bombings were still happening in africa and middle east. not everything is gonna be okay at all times but that doesnt mean you have to be depressed.
I understand that, but I don’t need confirmation that everything is going to be okay. On the contrary, I believe it is likely that things will only get worse for me from here on out, but that it will bring us a chance to do what must be done, and so it is worth it. I fully acknowledge that I may die or be imprisoned in the future due to being an ML, but what I really made this post about was, I think, the feeling of my own impotence at the moment in my life. I think it is probably best to take what pleasure I can from concrete things, though.
Lenin, January 1917: “We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution,”
November 7th, 1917:
Thank you very much for this video, comrade. It helped me quite a lot in getting a hold upon my own revolutionary optimism.
Glad it was of any help! 🫂
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Pick key areas (like the Caribbean in your case) that really grab your interest & focus on fleshing out your understanding of them until you start to covet other linked areas of history. Keep organized reference material. GPS cannot track your ereader’s activity & you can go all over the world through it.
Being informed is stressful but to be historically versed is really stabilizing. A schizophrenic friend called it reaffixing their symbolic order (I wonder where they took this from). I’d blindly assume that Cold War stuff would make it worse but the years go by & no more episodes have been visible to us. +1 point to books. Psychologists in chat please don’t get mad at me, just saying.
Hi, I work hard to maintain optimism while also staying grounded. Part of that is knowing my inner dialogue about situations feeds those feelings.
Sometimes that with looks like feeling my feelings for a limited time while also working through:
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Why do I feel like this?
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Are these feelings rational for the given circumstances?
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Am I engaging in *Mind reading *Fortune telling *Assumption And If so, do I have enough practical experience with this situation to engage in these thought processes?
If yes, the practical solution is to proceed with caution without tipping my hand, and without an emotionally reactive behavior that can be used to twist the narrative to my disadvantage.
That means recognizing when I’m overstimulated, hungry, tired, and have other emotions that are unaddressed, and addressing these issues. That means shadow wor for me, and it’s painful and messy.
Breath work, meditation, or just sitting or lying quietly, to help regulate my parasympathetic nervous system.
Drink room temperature water or warmed lemon-ginger water to promote good digestion and maintain hydration.
I eat as well as possible on my budget, tailoring my diet to changing needs. I will skimp on other things to make this happen. The food budget contacts and expands, so sometimes the diet is crap but I still do the best I can.
I avoid sugary beverages and eat sugary foods sparingly. They are poison. I do use raw honey or maple syrup occasionally as a treat or for other reasons.
If fresh fruit isn’t available on my budget, I drink juice with water to help dilute the extra sugar, preferably with a fiber food to slow sugar absorption. I avoid ultra processed foods, they are poison.
Sunlight is important and regular exercise. I’m missing my walks and my body feels it.
I journal again, vaguely, for reasons. I also do morning and evening gratitude meditations.
Pet a furbaby. Five minutes lowers blood pressure, respirations rather a lot.
Hobbies help, if you can, according to time, ability, budget. Daydreaming is free.
These things require a regular investment of time and effort. They may seem silly, tedious, and the results are largely not instantaneous, except sunshine, exercise, and petting a furry friend. Stick with it, it’s an investment, and the most important one you can ever make. I say this from dealing with the consequences of decades of not doing these practices regularly.
I wish you all the best comrade.
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