It is the result of competing US capital factions on how to maintain and expand the failing US hegemony. Trump’s personal reasons may be argued as the incompetence in believing in US exceptionalism and even perceived beneficial bonuses such as stock insider-trading but if we are to move away from Great Man Theory we must ask why does the system allow him to do what he does?

Consider the opposite, what if Trump decided to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat (this is a thought exercise, not the presumption that Trump is a secret marxist)? The system including the reactionary masses would end it very quickly. It clearly does not do that with what’s happening with the tariffs.

Tariffs in this context are a desperate measure where the end result is a tax on the domestic population to create state revenue along with attempts as bargaining chips (well outright brinkmanship), not just with the Global South with view to isolate and subjugate China, but also as political theater for domestic audience to create a convenient narrative for their bigotry (whether they agree with the tariffs or not, the US population is broadly sinophobic because of perceived material benefits) including to sell deepening austerity measures.

We may argue that they are hastening the self-destruction of the US and therefore cannot be “rational” but that argument could be made for capitalism in itself - we know it sows the seeds of its own destruction and yet it attempts to perservere.

I care not for the uniform but the content; it is why I do not consider “Western Marxists” of various stripes, locations and ethnicities as communists.

Religions often reflect the economic systems and class struggles; actual socialist forms of the religion would have been threat to the capitalism and feudal vestiges of the Holy See as an (European) institution. Sometimes it feels like if one really believed in a benevolent god then they would become a socialist but then I realise this is an idealistic non-materialistic approach to understanding humanity.

You have to remember a lot of them are from petite-bourgoisie or relative labour aristocracy so will reflect those class interests; their defence of capital and with that the local flavor of fascism manifested here as Hindutva. They really are losers in multiple sense of the word. As Paulo Friere has written the oppressed find in their model of “manhood” in the oppressor; there is no true salvation without socialism.

In the interim, fight the fascists.

Zionism is deeply antisemitic against jewish peoples too; for Zionists the only valid Jew is the fascist one and thereby carries out one of the axioms of western imperialism - the only truly valid “minority” is the fascist one (see for example, the erasure of communist ukrainians for fascist ones, communist Indonesians for fascist ones, and same for other East Europeans, South Americans etc)

Book recommendation - Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.

The priests are the capitalists serving at the altar of capital. These economists are the leftover candlewax from a day of fervent praying.

It would have been better if liberation theology was the more de facto institutional catholicism.

Probably not because there is no real domestic marxist threat. The Nazis were so concerned about actual marxists that they adopted socialism in their name to dissuade local proleteriat from the alternative.

They may, however, do a Reichstag Fire to blame China.

^This. The bar for a better pope is really low. I did, however, enjoy some Catholics freaking out over some of the more progressive things he said.

Marxism-leninism (especially really understanding and practising dialectical materialism, amongst degenerate western liberalism it will feel like a superpower):

• Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon
• How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney
• Darker Nations; a people’s history of the third world - Vijay Prashad
• Class Struggles - Dominic Losurdo
• Elementary Principles of Philosophy - Georges Politzer
• In Defence of Materialism - Plekhanov
• Dialectical Biologist - Lewis and Lewontin

Don’t know if this helps for inspiration to begin with:

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/highest-paying-jobs-without-a-degree

Amid a sluggish economy and Trump’s punitive tariffs, the Chinese government has intensified its own efforts to counter looming disruption

GDP growth rate of China is 5.4% in 1st quarter of 2025:

• https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/15/business/china-economy-growth-q1-hnk-intl/index.html
• https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/g-s1-60564/china-gdp-tariffs-growth

Real GDP growth rates of G7 in 2024 (China’s is 4.8%):

• UK 0.9%
• Canada 1.3%
• USA 2.8%
• Japan -0.2%
• France 1.1%
• Germany -0.2%

By their own metrics they lie.

If one understands the limits of GDP (stock asset inflation or cost of living inflation in the G7 for examples that add to their GDP; think how much productive capacity China has compared to the whole of G7 but their nominal GDP is less than the G7, and yes I am comparing one socialist country under siege against the bulk of the imperial block) and/or even just taking PPP into account the lead is signficantly more.

If someone has the first quarter GDP growth rates for the G7 in 2025 it will be an even more interesting comparison.

From what I understand the export market to US makes 3-5% of China’s total GDP; it would be the icing on the cake if the CPC is able to flatten or even reverse that dip so quickly by the next quarter.

Looks like they wanted to compete with Queen Victoria as the most parasitic drug dealer in history (for those lurking: Britain did not want to trade the silver exploited from south/central america with chinese merchants / aristocrats so they decided to subjugate Indians to farm opium and forced that opium on the Chinese through the Opium Wars; bombing/seige of the Chinese costal line. They then annexed Hong Kong to pay for the cost of the Opium Wars and set up the HSBC bank to launder all that money. Truly a disgusting country.).

The schadenfreude here is just euphoric.

The competition for Honorary Aryan is intense.

Yes you are right - reminds me of when they kept asking Stalin to stay on.

War with vietnam; otherwise generally speaking he and his successors (if you wanted to take the Great Man approach to history, which is unscientific) helped accelerate global socialism.

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.

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

This is not a counter to Lenin; this builds on what Lenin said, as scientific socialism should.

You’re just pissed you weren’t born white and what they did to our ancestors you want to do on to others.