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Examples of Euro-Amerikans annexing jobs from colonized people.
I'm currently writing on the ways settler colonialism in the US has changed while keeping its fundamental nature. Part of this study is the idea that in much of the country settlers have moved on from annexing land to annexing jobs. I have examples from the past, that of the Annexing of Chinese immigrant jobs in California under the Knights of Labor, and of the UMW in the 1920s-1960 stealing black jobs in coal mining, both ones I learned about from Settlers, but I'd like some more modern examples, in order to further strengthen my argument. Ideally anything within the past 30 years, the more recent the better.
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Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (September 21)
We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.
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historical crimes, yet they will happily kiss the ring and thank their manager for a soul-crushing job that they hate deep down."
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on gender
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/1m77en3/help_your_fellow_comrade_pls/?share_id=-g6kCtPUWXDAIXLEE6Gzh&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=2
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Maoist Outlook - Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal - 2023
https://www.bannedthought.net/Nepal/CPN-Maoist/MaoistOutlook/2023/MaoistOutlook-V6N1.pdf
https://redd.it/1nctja8
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👀
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1n2onjj
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Bureaucrat Capitalism and the Imperial Nations
I’ve been thinking about how to apply the concept of bureaucrat capitalism to the imperial core. Lenin, Mao, Sison, Gonzalo, the CPI (Maoist), and Sakai all give us tools, and I’d like to open this up for discussion.
Lenin on finance capital’s logic:
>
Mao on how this looks when monopoly fuses with state power:
>
And on imperial/collaborator fusion:
>
Sison’s concise definition:
>
# How finance capital has developed since Lenin
Lenin wrote *Imperialism* in 1916, analyzing the rise of finance capital and the financial oligarchy. But we can trace its development further:
1. **State-monopoly capitalism (1917–45):** Lenin and Stalin noted how the state became the direct organizer of monopoly capital, especially in war economies.
2. **Postwar financialization (1945–70s):** Under U.S. hegemony, the dollar system and Bretton Woods fused finance and state power internationally.
3. **Neoliberal globalization (1980s–2008):** Deregulation blurred public/private distinctions, with defense contractors, energy monopolies, and Wall Street revolving through state bureaucracy.
4. **Crisis & bailouts (2008–):** The financial crash revealed that the state openly guarantees monopoly capital — “too big to fail” became official doctrine.
5. **Platforms & digital monopolies (2010s–):** Tech giants (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir) became extensions of state administration — running surveillance, logistics, cloud systems, even military AI.
If Lenin said the state was *“subordinated”* to finance capital, today it’s more accurate to say bureaucracy itself has fused with finance and monopoly capital, creating a bureaucrat-capitalist fraction that rules as much through administration as through markets.
# Lessons from the Indian Maoists
The **Naxalite movement** and the **CPI (Maoist)** have advanced this theory in the Indian context. After 1947, India didn’t abolish feudalism or imperialism; instead, a bureaucratic bourgeoisie grew within the state itself.
From CPI (Maoist)’s *Strategy & Tactics*:
>
They stress its dual nature:
>
Gonzalo underscored the strategic task:
>
In India, bureaucrat capital grew under the *guise of socialism* (state-led development); in the First World, it has expanded under *neoliberalism and digital monopolies*. But in both cases, the mechanism is the same: a bureaucratic bourgeoisie fuses with the state, monopolizes commanding heights, and ties itself to imperialism.
# Who is the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in the First World?
If Mao defined bureaucrat capitalists as those who monopolize the lifelines of the economy through the state, who plays that role today? We can see overlapping layers:
1. **Finance capital managers** – executives of banks, hedge funds, private equity, dependent on central banks and bailouts.
2. **Defense & security bureaucrats** – the Pentagon–arms cartel–intelligence complex living on procurement.
3. **Energy & infrastructure moguls** – oil, gas, utilities bound to subsidies, leases, and geopolitics.
4. **Digital platform monopolists** – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir as infrastructure for state surveillance and logistics.
5. **Policy & legal managers** – regulators, lobbyists, and think-tank lawyers institutionalizing monopoly rents.
6. **Academic/medical-industrial managers** – universities, pharma monopolies tied to state grants, patents, and public health budgets.
7. **Cultural reproducers** – Hollywood studios, media conglomerates, celebrity actors, athletes, and influencers who live off monopoly contracts and IP law, reproducing consent and lifestyles that naturalize the order.
These are not “classic” private capitalists but *bureaucrats of capital* — managers and profiteers of the fusion of monopoly and the state.
# Relationship of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to the proletariat
The bureaucratic bourgeoisie does not simply exploit other capitalists; its power rests on its relationship to the working class itself:
1. **Economic exploitation** – It extracts rents and profits from privatized “public goods”
Books to educate myself on history of USSR,Stalin and more!
Hey comrades,i'm so much into anything socialism,communism and USSR history as of late but im also so confused when it comes to picking up good sources on them because everyone says they are written by the western propaganda, so i wanted to know YOUR suggestions on some books that provide factual statements and history pieces instead of lies!
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why has class consciousness declined in Trinidad and Tobago?
Trinidad and Tobago is much more highly industrialized than most other caribbean countries and depends much less on tourism than most others, and this is pretty much unchanged since the 1970s when the labor movement was at its peak. I can understand why historically they had a stronger labor movement than most other caribbean countries. But since then the left has declined a lot (according to the ECATT, trade union membership has more than halved since the 1960s) and a lot of the industrial proletariat is either apathetic towards politics or is invested in pseudo chauvinist movements like the Tobago independence movement and/or the two major liberal social democratic parties, the UNC and the PNM.
My family and I have lived in the caribbean for many years (I've never visited Trinidad but my parents have), mostly in Curacao, which has a service oriented economy and benefits heavily from tourism, and this seems to contribute to a sort of apathy towards the labor movement and reliance on European and Amerikan money. For example, most of the younger generations view learning English and also potentially Dutch in addition to their native language Papiamento as essentially a requirement in order to get a high-paying job. Curacao also had a much stronger labor movement in the past, the high point being the Trinta di Mei uprising and strikes in 1969. I can believe their reliance on tourism from the imperial core instead of domestic industry directly contributed to depressed class consciousness.
But similar developments haven't happened in Trinidad and Tobago. According to Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity, heavy industry including petroleum, chemical, metallurgy, and machinery still account for over 90% of their exports. Moreover, about 50% of the population is urban. I can't find good numbers for how much tourism contributes to the GDP but based on the number of tourists and total tourism revenue in the caribbean in 2011 (from wikipedia), I estimate the tourism industry accounts for around 1 billion US dollars of their GDP, or about 4%, significantly less than Curacao or other places like Bahamas. So given the continued significance of industry, why has the labor movement declined anyway? Why are their people so interested in liberal and nationalist politics? Is it just the repercussions of the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialist Grenada? Anyone familiar with their history or the current politics have any opinions?
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are in this series. Finn gets reduced to just shouting "REY!" the whole time, and Rey ends up with the only white guy that she could have been paired with. I think if this trilogy was just straight up an "I can fix him" romance between these two from the start, it would have been, if not better, at least a much more fun experience (though it certainly would have gotten way more hate than it already did). As it stands, I'm just wishing I could watch the first two movies again when the writer had some idea of what an "empire" is. Also, they retconned the Latino character into being a drug dealer. Wonderful. Anyway, good guys win and Palpatine dies or whatever.
This whole experience really made me want to watch ANH and TESB again. It's amazing how big of a franchise was built off two good movies and seven awful ones. I at least got to learn that "Marxist" praise of the prequels is just socialists campaigning for the democrats from the left. The sequels taught me that someone's description of them here as "movies written by board rooms" could not be more accurate.
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facts painfully contrast against each other since these two are constantly sharing scenes. The romantic subplot, besides being creepy in the first place due to Anakin meeting Padme when he was nine, has like, two decent scenes, and Anakin acts like a creep a lot of the time. The plot with the clones is dumb, and is yet another way to obscure class, since the clones are all mindlessly obedient and just show up and, Oops! Guess the Jedi have to use them since the Republic somehow didn't already have an army. We get introduced to the Separatists, but learn jack shit about them. The argument of the film is that the Republic's militarization to suppress rebellion was what led to its fascism, though this is all just presented as Palpatine's personal conspiracy. It also has the nonsensical plot point that the senate would never approve the clone army, so Palpatine has to have the senate approve his emergency powers to let him approve the clone army. As expected, the liberal explanation for fascism has to mechanically assume that it inexplicably already exists.
# The Revenge of the Sith
Hayden Christensen is hot in this film until he starts talking. He's also learned from Natalie Portman how to stop saying everything in an affected monotone, but is still bad at acting. That's about all the good I can say for the movie. This trilogy kind of develops where it gradually gets less boring and gradually fills up the runtime with the bad plot. It's a kind of spectrum of bad film-making. This movie wasn't boring like the other two; just painful to watch. Palpatine makes his fascist takeover. It's implied that this is because the Jedi abandoned democracy by spying on the chancellor, trying to kill him without trial, and trying to coup the government so they can transition back to democracy. This would be interesting if dark magic didn't exist to justify it. Unsurprisingly, socialists are the last defenders of a stupid plot which public opinion long ago dismissed as "too much politics." Anyway, the stupid love story ends with Anakin having a personal justification to become a fascist because I guess George Lucas realized he couldn't write a sufficiently compelling political one. I guess the Jedi denying romantic love is supposed to be a critique of the government being too detached from the masses, but the whole thing's too poorly written to care. The plot develops so suddenly in this film that it makes me remember people complaining about the Disney trilogy "not having a plan" and realizing how stupid fandom is. Anyway, that's that for the prequel trilogy. Unfortunately, there's three more of these and I was starting to lose my mind when I got this far and realized that.
The Disney trilogy is just a soulless rip-off of the original trilogy. There's little to be said about it other than how it fails miserably when it tries to do anything new.
# The Force Awakens
Probably the least bad movie after RotJ, but still significantly below even that. Practically a shot-for-shot remake of ANH, except for a stupid joke at the start. Sure, there's a new Empire^(TM) that came out of nowhere. There's plucky rebels again because the new republic just gets blown up. Why the fuck not? People complained about Rey being a Mary Sue, but it's really just that they skipped the middle part of her character arc because they wanted to have the hero win a lightsaber duel in the first film, then had basically nowhere to go with her. Every other complaint was just blatant sexism. John Boyega gets done so dirty in this trilogy. A defector Storm Trooper is a cool idea that just gets completely squandered. He's reduced to the comic relief (the humor with his character notably contrasts against the style of the movies in a pretty blatant way), haha he's a janitor, and they literally have him hold a lightsaber just so they can put it in the trailer but have him not do anything with it. Also, the film clearly sets up a romance between him and Rey, which the author of the novelization wanted to explore, but it was shut down by higher ups, and it's pretty obvious that
I watched the Star Wars trilogies after hearing some Marxists praise them
I decided to watch the nine Star Wars movies recently, remembering Marxists claiming the original trilogy has a progressive story about rebels overthrowing imperialism, and others claiming the prequels are a good critique of fascism. And I was curious about the sequel trilogy due to all the fandom discourse about them. Going into it, I remember having watched the original trilogy a few times over the years, watching the prequels once or twice when I was little, and the most recent film I had seen was The Force Awakens. This was the first time I watched the last two episodes, so there's probably some recency bias there. I don't think we've had a dedicated post about these films, so I figured this might be a good chance for one, since I think there's a fair bit that can be said about them. I'll put my thoughts on each of them below, and feel free to critique anything or share your thoughts about these movies.
# A New Hope
This once is just a solid fantasy action movie. The setting is creative, and John Willliams's music is great. I assume the unique appeal that created a franchise is due to reinventing medieval fantasy by using a sci-fi aesthetic which nonetheless still leaves us with knights fighting each other with swords and a seemingly ordinary protagonist learning to use magic to fight for objective good. As is well-known, George Lucas was inspired by the Vietnam War and styled the rebels after Vietnam and the empire after the U.S. Han Solo has an arc about putting his selfish desires aside to make sacrifices for the revolution, and there's a short line about how the emperor dissolved the senate for supporting the rebels. Though, as was pointed out last Discussion Thread, the droids being slaves to everyone is a basic fact taken for granted by the setting. Luke is distinguished from his conservative father for being a "nice slaveowner" who doesn't inflict violence on the people who are his property. It's also notable that C-3PO was explicitly acted like a gay man and generally plays the role of the comic relief who is despised by the others. There's also Mos Eisley, identifiable as a "hive of scum and villainy" by the large presence of aliens. And there's the infamous ending where only the human characters receive medals. To some extent, you can argue these are telling the story of the racist setting, though Chewbacca is basically just a Scary Black Man trope, and the "Sand People" are just an indigenous stereotype. Overall, I think it's a solid artifact of how the white left conceives of revolution, though I'm not sure if that makes it a good movie.
# The Empire Strikes Back
This film is where things get interesting. Everything that was strong about the first film is good here, as well. I don't think there's anything worthwhile about the Han x Leia romance which is a pretty conventional sexist "stubborn girl realizes she likes the bad boy" plot, though I guess the tragic resolution makes it more interesting in retrospect. The force is more thoroughly established as a kind of fabric of the universe which is objectively good, accessible through merely believing hard enough, and is tied to the absence of negative emotions. It's a kind of simplistic idealism that is best when it's not the focus of the film. There's a cool subplot about Lando Calrissian realizing that becoming a comprador for the empire means losing his planet's independence rather than securing it. Also, C-3PO holding R2-D2 at the end as potential love interests Luke and Leia do seems to subtly confirm them as a gay couple (of course, Luke and Leia weren't siblings yet at the time). The ending is what really makes this film worthwhile. Vader being Luke's father implies a lot: Obi-Wan lied to Luke, and the lost republic was not so different from the empire if one of its heroes became the emperor's lapdog. This recontextualizes a lot of this and the previous film: the racism of the characters, the acceptance of slavery, and the ostensible wisdom of the Jedi. It's a bit hard to
Marco D'Eramo, Empire’s Stakes — Sidecar
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/empires-stakes
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Why is Vietnam a semicolonial country?
https://vidanphucvu.wordpress.com/2025/08/21/tai-sao-viet-nam-la-nuoc-nua-thuoc-dia/
https://redd.it/1my2jn6
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Did Fanon write about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?
..
https://redd.it/1mty229
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Surge to the streets, wage people's democratic revolution against the corrupt US-Marcos regime | NDF
https://philippinerevolution.nu/statements/surge-to-the-streets-wage-peoples-democratic-revolution-against-the-corrupt-us-marcos-regime/
https://redd.it/1nn552x
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The Land Struggle in New Africa and Aztlan?
I'm looking for sources about the land struggle in New Africa and Aztlan, the more recent the better, though old stuff has value as well. I'm interested in the agrarian aspect here, for the most part, so literal dirt for farming and herding, but also the struggle over things like water usage, natural spaces for amenities and foraging, fishing waters, housing land, etc. Ideal from a Marxist perspective, but non Marxist sources of good quality are also useful.
https://redd.it/1njxmfd
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Thoughts on Jubilee's "1 Capitalist vs 20 Anti-Capitalist" video?
It kind of pains me to watch something like this, so I watched another video that showed some highlights from it, but I think the comments speak for themselves on whose side the viewers went with. A lot of debates are pretty pointless because it's just two very opinionated sides holding strong to their personal beliefs rather than actually conceding to valid points. This though, this type of thing is harmful in my opinion because as much as it could've been better, it just helps reinforce the negative stereotypes people seem to have about communism/socialism. When you put 20 random people in a room with varying levels of knowledge and very little debate/speaking experience against someone who is experienced in capitalist rhetoric, it's not gonna go well.
I'd personally love to be at a point where I can discuss all the right topics well and shoot down anti-communist arguments with a practiced ease. I got into reading communist material like the Manifesto several years ago, but never really dived deeper into literature until the last couple of months. One of the last things I read was 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific', and I am partially through both 'Capital, Volume I' and 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism'. From leftist YouTube videos I also got into listening to The Deprogram when I'm either driving or at work, and now I am just sort of accumulating more knowledge as I go, though I think I already had a strong pre-existing critical foundation to go off of.
I also wanted to say that I think they deleted my comment on the video, because I can't find it now, so I wanted to share it and ask: Do I sound like an ass that is lecturing someone, or do you think it's decent?
"Jubilee "Surrounded" debates usually do nothing very beneficial for the majority side (the 20). The difficulty in talking about socialism and communism with someone that is ignorant of these things is the very fact that you have to dredge through decades of reinforced propaganda and misinformation to actually enlighten them. When a communist, no matter whether they are a fledgling one or an expert, discusses the benefits of communism against the flaws and atrocities of capitalism, the communist has to be a historian, an economist, a philosopher, and wear several other hats at a fairly well-read level, all-the-while the typical ignorant capitalist, or indoctrinated capitalist supporter, only has to regurgitate the irrational and flat-out wrong talking points they typically hear on Fox News or whatever mainstream media they watch. It's the simple and infantile thinking of "capitalism/America good; communism bad", but regardless, the communist has to patiently work to explain the context of much misinformation and elaborate on the realities in an straightforward way that isn't simply quoting Das Kapital or other relevant works.
Do not let the personalities and debate skills of the 20 shape your perspective. Jubilee just selects random people who fall on one side of the debate, but they are not professional debaters and don't have a deeper knowledge of the theory like someone such as Salvoj Zizek. I see a lot of points in the comments trying to contradict the economic/political leanings of the 20, and the comments are the perfect example of the same worn out and tired rhetoric that has been used and shot down for years and years, yet it still gets brought up because most people don't know better, and they probably will never touch any communist or socialist literature unless someone gets them on the path to understanding what they previously thought was some kind of "evil system where people starve and no one wants to work".
It's sad that there is someone who probably works 45 hours a week for $13/hr, kicks up $1300/month to their landlord that contributes nothing to society, has to make car payments and pay for gas because the oil industry screwed our country out of an amazing public transport system over 100 years ago, and face so many more obvious injustices or
J. Stalin about Equality
I think it will be interesting:
>What is the cause of the fluidity of manpower?
>The cause is the wrong structure of wages, the wrong wage scales, the "Leftist" practice of wage equalisation. In a number of factories wage scales are drawn up in such a way as to practically wipe out the difference between skilled and unskilled labour, between heavy and light work. The consequence of wage equalisation is that the unskilled worker lacks the incentive to become a skilled worker and is thus deprived of the prospect of advancement; as a result he feels himself a "visitor" in the factory, working only temporarily so as to "earn a little money" and then go off to "try his luck" in some other place. The consequence of wage equalisation is that the skilled worker is obliged to go from factory to factory until he finds one where his skill is properly appreciated.
>Hence, the "general" drift from factory to factory; hence, the fluidity of manpower.
>In order to put an end to this evil we must abolish wage equalisation and discard the old wage scales. In order to put an end to this evil we must draw up wage scales that will take into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour, between heavy and light work. We cannot tolerate a situation where a rolling-mill worker in the iron and steel industry earns no more than a sweeper. We cannot tolerate a situation where a locomotive driver earns only as much as a copying clerk. Marx and Lenin said that the difference between skilled and unskilled labour would exist even under socialism, even after classes had been abolished; that only under communism would this difference disappear and that, consequently, even under socialism "wages" must be paid according to work performed and not according to needs. But the equalitarians among our economic executives and trade-union officials do not agree with this and believe that under our Soviet system this difference has already disappeared. Who is right, Marx and Lenin or the equalitarians? It must be assumed that it is Marx and Lenin who are right. But it follows from this that whoever draws up wage scales on the "principle" of wage equalisation, without taking into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour, breaks with Marxism, breaks with Leninism.
Source and full speech: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/06/23.htm
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Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (September 07)
We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.
Suggestions for things you might want to comment here (this is a work in progress and we'll change this over time):
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(housing, healthcare, education), debt systems, layoffs, and austerity budgets enforced through state policy.
2. **Political suppression** – It directly oversees the coercive arms of the state (police, surveillance, courts, prisons, military contractors) that repress proletarian struggle.
3. **Ideological control** – Through cultural reproducers, it shapes values, aspirations, and consent — selling dreams of consumption, celebrity, and chauvinism to dull proletarian consciousness.
4. **The “bribe” mechanism** – It redistributes imperial superprofits into pensions, mortgages, and consumer credit, binding sections of the labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie into loyalty with the system.
In short: the bureaucratic bourgeoisie is not above the proletariat but on top of it — shaping its economic survival, policing its resistance, and colonizing its imagination.
# Contradictions and struggle
Lenin showed how monopoly deepens contradictions even inside the ruling class. Mao and the CPI (Maoist) emphasized that bureaucrat capitalists are tied to imperialism but also seek their own monopolies, producing friction.
This poses a question: in the First World, is the bureaucratic bourgeoisie just a wing of monopoly capital, or a distinct **fraction** whose exposure and defeat is key for strategy?
# Some conclusions from my study so far
1. **It’s not just a Third World thing.** The First World has its own bureaucratic bourgeoisie, fusing finance, state, tech, and culture.
2. **It is sustained by imperial super-profits.** Bureaucrat capital isn’t just “corruption”; it redistributes plunder into 401ks, pensions, mortgages, and cultural commodities that bind the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy to imperialism.
3. **The main contradiction isn’t “the people vs. corruption.”** That framing slides into petty-bourgeois populism. The real antagonist is **imperialist bureaucrat capitalism** as a system.
4. **Grounds of struggle must be clear.** Exposing corruption or cultural decadence is useful, but only if it develops into a fight against the class dictatorship of bureaucrat capital itself — not a campaign for “clean capitalism.”
# Questions for the sub
* Does “bureaucrat capitalism” help us understand the imperial core, or is “state-monopoly capitalism” already enough?
* Who do you think makes up the **bureaucratic bourgeoisie** where you live, and how do they differ from “classic” monopoly capitalists?
* What role do **cultural reproducers** (Hollywood, athletes, influencers) play in maintaining this order, and how do we cut through their hegemony? How does this extend to the many youtube personalities that plague the communist discussion spaces? I would look at those people as some of the lowest tiers of bureaucratic capital as they are petty bourgois but profit off the maintenance of the cultural normativity of American politics.
* How does the bureaucratic bourgeoisie’s relationship to the proletariat shape the *forms of struggle* we should develop?
* If imperial super-profits also bribe the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy, how do we build struggles that cut against that bribery and mobilize the proletariat, instead of drifting into reformism?
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Bureaucrat Capitalism and the Imperial Nations
I’ve been thinking about how to apply the concept of bureaucrat capitalism to the imperial core. Lenin, Mao, Sison, Gonzalo, the CPI (Maoist), and Sakai all give us tools, and I’d like to open this up for discussion.
Lenin on finance capital’s logic:
>
Mao on how this looks when monopoly fuses with state power:
>
And on imperial/collaborator fusion:
>
Sison’s concise definition:
>
# How finance capital has developed since Lenin
Lenin wrote Imperialism in 1916, analyzing the rise of finance capital and the financial oligarchy. But we can trace its development further:
1. State-monopoly capitalism (1917–45): Lenin and Stalin noted how the state became the direct organizer of monopoly capital, especially in war economies.
2. Postwar financialization (1945–70s): Under U.S. hegemony, the dollar system and Bretton Woods fused finance and state power internationally.
3. Neoliberal globalization (1980s–2008): Deregulation blurred public/private distinctions, with defense contractors, energy monopolies, and Wall Street revolving through state bureaucracy.
4. Crisis & bailouts (2008–): The financial crash revealed that the state openly guarantees monopoly capital — “too big to fail” became official doctrine.
5. Platforms & digital monopolies (2010s–): Tech giants (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir) became extensions of state administration — running surveillance, logistics, cloud systems, even military AI.
If Lenin said the state was “subordinated” to finance capital, today it’s more accurate to say bureaucracy itself has fused with finance and monopoly capital, creating a bureaucrat-capitalist fraction that rules as much through administration as through markets.
# Lessons from the Indian Maoists
The Naxalite movement and the CPI (Maoist) have advanced this theory in the Indian context. After 1947, India didn’t abolish feudalism or imperialism; instead, a bureaucratic bourgeoisie grew within the state itself.
From CPI (Maoist)’s Strategy & Tactics:
>
They stress its dual nature:
>
Gonzalo underscored the strategic task:
>
In India, bureaucrat capital grew under the guise of socialism (state-led development); in the First World, it has expanded under neoliberalism and digital monopolies. But in both cases, the mechanism is the same: a bureaucratic bourgeoisie fuses with the state, monopolizes commanding heights, and ties itself to imperialism.
# Who is the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in the First World?
If Mao defined bureaucrat capitalists as those who monopolize the lifelines of the economy through the state, who plays that role today? We can see overlapping layers:
1. Finance capital managers – executives of banks, hedge funds, private equity, dependent on central banks and bailouts.
2. Defense & security bureaucrats – the Pentagon–arms cartel–intelligence complex living on procurement.
3. Energy & infrastructure moguls – oil, gas, utilities bound to subsidies, leases, and geopolitics.
4. Digital platform monopolists – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir as infrastructure for state surveillance and logistics.
5. Policy & legal managers – regulators, lobbyists, and think-tank lawyers institutionalizing monopoly rents.
6. Academic/medical-industrial managers – universities, pharma monopolies tied to state grants, patents, and public health budgets.
7. Cultural reproducers – Hollywood studios, media conglomerates, celebrity actors, athletes, and influencers who live off monopoly contracts and IP law, reproducing consent and lifestyles that naturalize the order.
These are not “classic” private capitalists but bureaucrats of capital — managers and profiteers of the fusion of monopoly and the state.
# Relationship of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to the proletariat
The bureaucratic bourgeoisie does not simply exploit other capitalists; its power rests on its relationship to the working class itself:
1. Economic exploitation – It extracts rents and profits from privatized “public goods”
The People’s Wars in India and the Philippines Move Forward – The Red Herald
https://redherald.org/2025/08/26/the-peoples-wars-in-india-and-the-philippines-move-forward/
https://redd.it/1n10cnb
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Phantom Pheminists • Ill Will [account of male chauvinism in the Sojourner Truth Organization]
https://illwill.com/phantom-pheminists
https://redd.it/1n0912z
@r_communism
it's because Disney didn't want to do an interracial romance between a black man and a white woman. So much for diversity. Also, a narrative became popular with fans where they blamed Disney's racism on trying to appeal to China, who are imagined as the real racists, as opposed to the klansmen sending death threats to John Boyega. Like they haven't been fans of a series about slaveowners from the very beginning.
# The Last Jedi
Regardless of opinion, people made a big thing about how this film was trying to "subvert expectations," but the banal reality is that it just ripped off TESB and RotJ. The humor is even dumber and more meta (the film literally starts with a yo mama joke that kicks off the actual plot). The scene with Leia flying through space is actually hilarious. Luke's cynicism feels unconvincing considering we have literally no idea why Kylo fell to the dark side other than "Snoke." The film makes a joke out of all its villains which makes them even harder to take seriously. It might have worked as setting up Kylo's return to the light from the first movie, except we don't know why he fell to the dark side in the first place, so who cares? The relationship between Rey and Kylo feels random for any possible reason other than fated love, which hardly feels justified given that this is supposed to be a story about a revolution. Anyway, the subplot is infamously bad and basically just a dumping ground for all the POC characters. The most incredibly tone-deaf part is Finn and Rose feeling proud of saving abused animals after having left the child slaves behind. How far removed from the masses do you have to be as an artist to be so blatant about this kind of pet-loving misanthropy? The subplot with Poe and Holdo attempts feminist commentary which expectedly amounts to equating women to the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to men. Poe disobeys orders to take advantage of an opportunity to take down a high-priority target at a high cost of life. This is portrayed as him being a "hotshot flyboy" who irrationally tries to resolve everything with violence rather than a reasonable risk-assessment in the field. Holdo is an admiral inexplicably wearing a dress "to emphasize her femininity" (Rian Johnson's words), and Poe is implied to be misogynistic and judging her for her appearance as a woman (though the nonsensical outfit makes this feel silly). Poe asks what her plan is, and she spends the whole film refusing to answer and browbeating him with her authority (and by extension, her other subordinates). Poe mutinies, gets stopped, and this is depicted as a charming but silly display of masculine recklessness (apparently a romance was originally planned between the two). It turns out Holdo had a plan the whole time, and the lesson is that the masses should shut up and obey their superiors who know what's best for them. This ties into another stupid scene where Finn tries to sacrifice himself to stop the Empire 2.0 from busting into the rebel base, but Rose stops him, inexplicably telling him that they should not be "fighting what we hate. But saving what we love." Then she gives him a really uncomfortable kiss. This is basically the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too message of the film where you get to win war without any sacrifices because things inexplicably work out so long as you obey authority, also fuck the masses. I had a lot to say about this subplot in particular, and I think it's because the bourgeois ideology is so blatant that I was really hit with how shamelessly corporate this trilogy is. Watching this film really makes you appreciate that George Lucas lived through the Vietnam War.
# The Rise of Skywalker
"Somehow, Palpatine returned." idk, fuck this movie, I was so checked out by the time I got to it. Since Rian Johnson already ripped off RotJ in the second film, J.J. Abrams is left to just rip off RotJ again. I don't really remember most of the plot since I was skipping through it, but the parts I do remember were ass. Any decent action movie stuff is not remotely enjoyable considering how far along we
judge this film since it's basically made by the ending, whereas the romance and training subplots are pretty bad. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that implying all these things about the setting was the best that George Lucas was capable of.
# The Return of the Jedi
This is where the bad Star Wars films start, and they only get worse from here. The beginning of the movie with Jabba the Hutt is tedious, pretty pointless to the overall story, and basically just an excuse to put Carrie Fisher in a bikini. The Ewoks are what REALLY make this film bad. They're straight out of Christopher Columbus's letters: primitive cannibals who treat an arriving foreigner like a god, combined with cuteness to make the stereotype even more insulting and marketable. They also kill the pacing of the movie; I had to skip through most of the scenes with them. Bringing back the Death Star is also when George Lucas starts the trend of Star Wars movies ripping off George Lucas. The only neat part of the film is when the Ewoks defeat the Storm Troopers using guerilla warfare, setting traps and using their weapons against them, though their uprising is basically just a spontaneous development divorced from any politics that basically amounts to "white people told them to." The ending with the three different simultaneous plots is when the film starts to be engaging, though it still sucks as a story. The Jedi are rehabilitated as "correct from a certain point of view," and the relationship between the old republic and the empire is basically papered over by conservatively appealing to the family as an institution that restores justice. This film was an unsurprising disappointment given the low complexity of politics made possible within the fantasy setting, and nowhere does that become clearer than the prequels.
What's really annoying about the prequels is how the internet suddenly decided they're good movies. This seems to be partly fueled by nostalgia, but mainly because they function purely as a bludgeon against Disney and "wokeness," as a passionate white man vs. the evil megacorporation (like the prequels weren't just as much of a shameless excuse to sell toys).
# The Phantom Menace
Everything about this movie is ass. The acting is bad (especially from Natalie Portman), the dialogue is awful, and the plot is trash. It is SO boring since most of the movie's plot is filler for some reason. The ending rips off the ending of RotJ, with the simultaneous ground battle, space battle, and lightsaber duel, except it all either sucks or is meaningless. Social-fascists like to uphold the prequels as a critique of fascism, but they basically just amount to liberal criticisms of Republicans. The Trade Federation seems to be a mercantile corporation that wishes to leave the Republic due to high taxes. They are able to defend this position using a mass-produced droid army that exists so George Lucas can tell a war story without worrying about silly things like class. Their escalation of the situation is attributed to Palpatine, who is their leader for some reason even though he's literally just a senator, but I guess literal dark magic is needed to explain why a corporation would be unsatisfied with bourgeois democracy. Palpatine then takes advantage of this to become elected as chancellor, since the old one is bought off by the Trade Federation. This is basically like Hitler having secretly caused Spartacist Uprising. As for the rest of the film, the Star Wars racism is really egregious here. Jar Jar is a black slave stereotype, and the Gungans are idiots whose entire politics is based on feeling respected. Watto is a Jewish stereotype. Apparently, for the Trade Federation aliens, they had Thai people read the lines and then had the white actors imitate their accents (and that's not even getting into the fact that the evil capitalists are Asian-coded at all at the time this was released).
# The Attack of the Clones
This film is really convoluted. Hayden Christensen's acting is really bad, but at least Ewan McGregor's is good. Unfortunately, these two
Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (August 24)
We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.
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https://redd.it/1myh3cc
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Why is everyone does everyone on Reddit support piracy but despise AI?
Maybe not "everyone" but it is true that most of the people who support stealing intellectual property are also the first to invoke IP laws against the usage of AI. I understand that the reaction against AI is a form of luddite resistance from artists who are very prominent in online circles, but game developers and publishers are equally if not more prominent online and piracy receives significantly less pushback. Why is this?
https://redd.it/1my52u1
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JROTC programs are the worst thing I've had the misfortune of being a part of.
Sorry for the long post, comrades! My first language isn't English so there may be spelling mistakes that you should be wary of while reading.
----
I'm sure most people here know what JROTC is (American "leadership" program that's sponsored by the military), and there are some posts I've seen about how terrible they are.
Now, I didn't believe any of those because I've been in a jrotc program for 2 years and it's been shockingly nice. We got taught actual leadership, basic history, and had a pretty much built in friend group. However, the whole thing turned right on its head as I started my third year.
This place sucks.
They went directly from teaching us about wars I hadn't even heard about and the U.S. military justice system to straight anti-communist propaganda. Last week we had pro-capitalist propaganda during a lesson on the Korean war and the only part our instructor wasn't biased was when he pulled up a video that an actual educator made. This week it was the cold war, next week it's the Vietnam war, and then after that there's probably going to be more "communist country bad capitalist country good" bullshit.
It sucks that they start doing this in their third year because now I have sunk cost fallacy and I'm only a year away from actually finishing the program which will make me graduation ready in the state's documents, but I'm guessing there were probably a million signs before this that I completely missed.
Now, was it stupid to assume that a program which repeatedly has to have your instructor tell you its not a way to put you in the military WASN'T going to be the worst thing at my high school? Yeah! Absolutely! I'm aware that I'm a dumbass for thinking this wouldn't veer in the other direction later on. It's too bad I only realised that now when it'll be more difficult to leave the program (both due to the amount of time spent and the schedule change policy).
Anyways, as for advice I could give people even hoping to just sympathise with JROTC programs: DO NOT. It is an absolute hellhole and I wish I never spent so much time on it. You could get the same, if not a better experience by just reading up on leadership, taking time to volunteer in your community, and organising with people who share the same ideas as you.
https://redd.it/1mu21r3
@r_communism
dismissed. In frustration, DY resigned from Executive Committee and the Political Committee in a meeting of the latter on 16 June. Subsequently, DY has been treated appallingly by other members of the Political Committee, subjected to unfounded accusations and ignored.
Bullying, threats and lies have been directed at other comrades, closing down debate and punishing members who have criticised the leadership, ignoring the principle of accountability. There have been manoeuvres and manipulation that cannot be explained through any political logic and leaves us to wonder whether the British state has had a role in sowing divisions within the organisation.
Sadly, we have now lost confidence in the current RCG leadership. It is intransigent, dogmatic, formalistic and bureaucratic.
We feel it necessary to resign from the Revolutionary Communist Group, which we spent over half a century building. We distance ourselves from any future theoretical and political developments which take place under the current leadership.
DY and AE
2 August 2025
https://redd.it/1mtv0sz
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