From the top of my head (and not in contradiction to your post):

• CPI(M) in India is not homegenous though collectively they engage in social chauvinism (I used to dismiss the Kerala CPI but this an incorrect idealistic take. You cannot separate the advancement of kerala from their political economy. Though they could be as an organistation/collectively potentially socdem, it took MLs navigating a capitalist country to make these reforms. In other words if they were like every other bourgoisie party then why weren’t these strides replicated elsewhere? You end up having contradictions, therefore, such as hosting hamas/advancing trans rights/high HDI while still endorsing operation Sindoor.)

• the rural naxalites, not discounting their trial and tribulations and have made significant strides in a capitalist society, have an incorrect line and engage in adventurism (which then means terrorism). We should not romanticise them otherwise you get the likes of liberal feel-gooders like A. Roy

• the naxalites vs CPI is effectively what you get if you break up the sickle and hammer respectively; the rural naxalites need the urban proleteriat to have access to development and correct relation with land reform, the urban proleteriat need the peasants to avoid social chauvinism

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• the break-up of Indian subcontinent into India/Pakistan/Bangladesh is hindutva chauvinism/fascism for India and defense against that for the latter two. Nationalism for one and attempts at national liberation for the other two.

• therefore, as others have said India too should reject hindutva chauvinism

• this is not to coddle social conservatism in any religion but within India, given the above, Hindutva and Islamic fundamentalism is a complete false equivalence, and because of the western geopolitics we cannot divorce the islamophobia domestically to what is happening on the world stage. Kashmir, the subjugation of the Indian muslim population and Gaza are all on the same wavelength

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• western tech failing (israeli, french etc by India) against chinese tech (by the Pakistan) is going to change the course of global politics and global arms procurement (Russia is also seeing how far more advanced chinese tech is). Indian ceasefire echoes western losses/retreats - overpriced outdated tech against cheaper more advanced ones.

I don’t have time to write a proper post, so the above will do for now

For many of the top Indian STEM students going to a western university is what happens if you have money and fail to get into one of the more presitgious local IITs.

What a backwards society the US is; hopefully they can learn from the more advanced socialist countries.

That would be a society with such immense productive capacity and automation that it will change culture, education, and social relations so concepts like a police force may look significantly different (for example, the roles of a police force as we understand it now to be taken up by other sectors of society). Furthermore, given our growing understanding of epigenetics, microbiomes and medicine (as a discipline not just pharmaceutics), not withstanding bioengineering, the above quality of life improvements will likely change our biology as human beings as a whole.

This maybe a cop out answer but that is because we do not have the education yet of what a communist society will entail in the finer details; just a good scientific understanding how to get there. Heck, we haven’t even achieved global socialism yet. Quantitative changes will lead to changes of quality of society.

Both-sidesing this deserves the deepest eye roll. As a marxist you already should know GDP increase in a capitalist economy does not indicate who is being uplifted here. Kashmir is effectively an open air prison where Indian solidiers does wanton war crimes, while privileged Indian citizens can do their tourism.

Reciting bourgoisie laws as if the elite will abide them again receives further eye rolls. Capital rules not what they purport to everyone else.

Pakistani military has long been an extension of defacto US foreign policy but then so it the majority of Indian bourgeoisie apparatus from government to media.

the rapid radicalization and weaponization of economically disadvantaged Muslims across the country does not help the Muslim cause.

Why not subsitute the word Hindu in there? There is a clear power dynamic between the ruling capital and the majority of the 200 million muslims in India. The violence of the oppressed class has never in the history of humanity equivalent to the violence of oppressors.

Also I would like to add - in addition to previous query - you should increase what your monthly income to a “good” salary for software developer/maintenance, and not shy away from this. This will ensure retention and quality; you will be able to plan financially for the future rather than living paycheck-to-paycheck month-to-month.

There are no significant organized politics to the left of the Democratic Party in the U.S. There is no short-term theory of change in the U.S. left that is as credible (and safe) as “vote for someone who will pass a law to address this” Trying to change either of the above is a herculean task that will probably endanger (at minimum) your job

I’m not really sure what to say at this point; you are literally making the case that for large swathes of the country that they cannot be peruaded with current material conditions and strategies.

If that is the case, as a marxist-leninst, it is up to you to analyse which classes are revolutionary in the US and target them. Your socdem attempts through bourgoisie electoral politics will not work as you have clearly demonstrated. Sanders is not proof of anything other than the limits of bourgoisie electoral politics.

The answer, if anything, will likely come from this direction:

• you will need to organise enough capital to the extent that to build an underground resistance to provide the means for pro-social instituions to sustain and defend itself against the brutality of capitalist society. This goes way past mutual aids/strike funds/worker coops and other utopian nonsense. We are prob talking 10-100s of millions of dollars at least.
• you will need to seriously analyse which classes, if any, has actual revolutionary potential. I guess it is probably going to be first nations and mexicanism (https://chateauschmatte.substack.com/p/theses-on-mexicanism-feminism-and). I don’t know because I do not have enough time to personally investigate, and I am not sure if I care enough at this stage, maybe in the future, maybe someone has already done this work obscurely - Westerners are just that sick that maybe a collapse forced from the outside through their own actions is needed. And even then the likelihood is we will fall deeper into fascism.

You have not really answered any of the questions I have posited meaningfully and it is telling and typical of Westerners - it requires deep introspection, class betrayal and scientific analysis. Beating a dead horse of socdem electoral bourgoisie politics (you don’t even have this properly in the US, just a pathetic facsimile of this) is not going to cut it.

The answer to the question why the proletetiat are the most revolutionary is because they don’t have private property. I wanted you to answer this question because the next question would have been why did Mao successfully then target peasants.

You need to do the equivalent. You need to do a deep dive in class analyses, potentially find new boundaries of revolutionary classes and target them. Yes, I want to hammer this point home for you and anyone else lurking. It may require developing new skill sets such as scientfic systemic analyses and public research. Stop going around in circles and not answering the questions (and I don’t just mean here in this thread).

And most importantly you need to start with yourself; ask the questions I have raised about your own personal situation using class analysis (no need to do it here; let’s keep it all anonymous)

I am going to leave it here unless there’s something more novel you can offer. Please seriously consider further reading. Maybe consider Torkil Lausen’s new book and Domenico Losurdo’s works especially Class Struggles, and even Walter Rodney’s work while we are at it.

Let’s take climate change as the example you highlighted. Why have you gone down the right track but they have not? Why have they not chosen to look it up in the first place? Are we going to posit that our political theory of change is that we are smarter and therefore we have outsmarted them in getting there first? If it is due to a political horizon stunted for a lifetime then how come you escaped it? What makes you so special? Is your case replicable at scale? (If you would like you can change the “you” to “one” or even me in all these questions)

I will put it another way. Why is marxism neither workerism or populism? Why are the proleteriat considered the most revolutionary class? And then why did Mao consider aiming for peasants?

These aren’t gotchas. We need to think of class perspectives and we need to think of it as more than just bourgoisie vs proleteriat.

I believe USAmericans are a significantly reactionary mass that is more than just one-third of the population. And your examples of socdem compromises aren’t reassuring.

We, as westerners, as a class on the world stage are regressive. We (as in western MLs) are rare to have these perspectives because it is not in most westerners’ material interests to have these perspectives so chances we do because of fucking serendipity and maybe some tangent class benefits. We have to understand our personal class limitations before we can hope to understand the science of dismantling them. This instrospection is hard because… it is not in our class benefit.

1. you’re just providing more evidence that you can’t make the case for large swathes of USAmericans because they perceive to benefit more from capitalist society than a perceived socialist cause
2. is there much of significant “mutual aid” in the US that was not just charity dressed up outside of maybe the Black Panther Party?
3. and even then, Lenin:

I recall a conversation with one fairly thorough-going “economist” with whom I was not previously acquainted. We were talking about the pamphlet Who Will Carry Out the Political Revolution? and we quickly came to an agreement that its basic shortcoming was that it ignored the question of organization. We thus imagined that we were in complete solidarity — but… the conversation continued on its course and it turned out that we were talking about different things. My fellow conversationalist accused the author of ignoring strike funds, mutual aid societies and so forth, while I had in mind the organization of revolutionaries that was necessary for “carrying out” the political revolution. And, as soon as this disagreement made itself known — well, I can’t remember that I once agreed with this “economist” about any principled issue at all!

https://redsails.org/witbd-rs-abridged/#34-on-mutual-aid-and-red-tape

And how successful have you been? Why is it that there have been USAmerican marxists who are smarter, more charasmatic and more daring than we are but have failed on the whole in the West in the sense of establishing a DOTP or even a reasonable nudge in that direction that wasn’t due to the Global South? Why have the CPC abandoned as a main strategy exporting revolution ie what lessons did they learn from Soviet mistakes? What scientific theory of change do you propose that supercedes all of the above?

The way you reach people is to offer material benefits within the short term. If you can’t make that case and understand why then you will resort to idealism.

It is do with their class perspectives on the world stage.

Nearly everyone believes in brainwashing but somehow they are exempt from it. “Brainwashing” (as we understand it in the West) is a CIA invention.

It may be worthwhile also looking up the science of how advertising actually works, for example. It is really difficult to convince someone against their perceived material benefits.

It is important as marxists that we understand this and focus our energy where it is worth it.

What are the strategic consequences of decisively rejecting the tripartite social theory advanced by Orwell, and adopting Marx’s all-encompassing one instead? The basic call to action looks something like this:

1. Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”

2. Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.

3. Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.

4. If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.

From Masses, Elites and Rebels on redsails.org

Are you able to calculate, if possible, how much each user on lemmygrad would have to contribute, on average? The more privileged may be able to contribute more to meet that average.

If it is any consolation, they are not brainwashed. They too could look up the truth (even just to understand the perspective of their “enemy”), like you did, but they intelligently (wilfull ignorance is a filtering skill albeit the malevolence) choose to look up bigoted narratives as they do their as part of a machine that is captial where the perceive to materially benefit from it.

Till the day, if ever, the narrative of socialist solidarity offers them a greater material benefit than the current perspective they will dig their heels harder.

A lot of us come from (extended or otherwise) families infected with the rot of imperialism and colonialism; it is from this furnace our iron is cast.

Addendum - Finkelstein and crocodile tears (start from around 30 sec):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5zgXeCynQ

…Fanon, how he observed that colonialism dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer. Torturerers and butchers and slavers traumatize and twist themselves into inhuman things…

^This. Fanon’s decolonial science cuts deep. If the generations after are brought in the same material conditons they will too will be in the same mold as their murderous ancestors.

Feels like another Bangladesh moment; western puppetries’ strings being slowly cut off.

I wonder how long it will take before we have another Luigi where ICE gets iced (I have no shame).

This has been on my reading list for what feels like ages to the point that I am tempted to feed it to an LLM to get chapter summaries (ie DIY Blinkist)

Or the Kotel

Not for lack of trying.

They have always been at war - hot or cold. If it becomes nuclear because of the stakes involved for the surrounding countries due to fallout risk (depending on potential target sites) there may be attempts intervention from them (ie China, through diplomatic channels, not further war).

Right now it will be a further license for war crimes and minority persecution (especially India not withstanding that Pakistan’s military is pretty much an extension of US foreign policy). Any further significant austerity measurements by the central Indian government to feed its own military-indsutry-complex for this will likely lead to further instablity and domestic population protest/strikes. In Pakistan, it will galvanise the return of Imran Khan (good thing) if the current Pakistani government is not careful.

(It difficult to ascertain concretely what Pakistan would have gained from doing this and given Western modus operandi I would not be surprised if this a false flag but that is conjecture at this point. We need to await further evidence to know either way.)