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  • huh, interesting. this seems to be somewhat of a latin american regional peculiarity.

    the country i’m originally from used to use the term patriotism quite differently back during the socialist era, teaching people to be proud of the socialist and internationalist homeland.

    later, during the crises and wars of the 90s, you kind of had two parallel uses: on the one hand, you had the more genuine and positive use by people striving to preserve our culture and identity in the face of western and western-backed assault, but on the other hand, you had the criminal and treacherous governments, who were responsible for the catastrophe in the first place, leveraging such feelings as a smokescreen for their actions. that latter “chest-thumping and flag-waving” type of “hurrah-patriotism” is still commonly utilised by the bourgeois dictatorship whenever it needs to hide some crime or other, though it has semi-recently been increasingly superseded by atlanticist factions trying to introduce a kind of “western identity,” which is quite absurd given our history and geographical location, but sadly seems to be working scarily well.

    in the western european country i currently live in, meanwhile, it mostly just gets used as a dogwhistle for neo-nazism, lmao.





  • engels’ “the principles of communism” is, imho, one of the best introductory texts, alongside the manifesto. marx’s “wage-labour and capital” and “value, price and profit” are very important for providing a theoretical understanding and are usually recommended to be read together. i’d also strongly recommend lenin’s “state and revolution” and especially “imperialism,” as well as luxemburg’s “reform or revolution.”

    mao is also great for beginners, with an absolutely fantastic writing style, very concise and effective, as well as just enjoyable to read. i’d strongly encourage reading “on practice and on contradiction” (technically two works, but almost always merged into one), as well as the essays “oppose book worship” and “combat liberalism,” with those two just helping one become a better person, imho.

    beyond theory, i’ve also heard positive things about the book “the song of ariran” by american journalist helen foster snow (pseudonym nym wales), who seems to have been generally sympathetic to the communists. it details realities of the korean independence movement and the chinese communist movement in the 1930s, based on interviews with korean communist jang ji-rak (pseudonym kim san in the book). i haven’t personally read it yet, though, so i can’t say whether it is any good truly.

    in any case, please, if you haven’t done so already, encourage your partner to take necessary precautions for her safety and practise good opsec. south korea is part of extensive intelligence-sharing agreements with the us and other western nations, and you probably know the seoul government’s history of repression better than i do. so please consider trying to minimise dependency on proprietary software; i’m sure there is a lively foss/linux community in the country able to offer advice and assistance in that regard.







  • didn’t the federal system lead to the various republics becoming increasingly economically independent from each other, competing for resources, and thus laying the seeds for future political conflict? to me, it seems like exactly the kind of system that produced people like milošević in the first place!

    also, a federal system risks exacerbating, instead of relinquishing, needless national differences, creating opportunities for people to primarily identify with their petty national groupings, rather than the internationalist project as a whole, and risking giving breathing space to reactionary movements hiding behind the shield of this or that national cultural grievance.

    from the mid-'80s onward, the soviet government was granting greater and greater degrees of cultural and, more importantly, economic independence to its various republics, imitating some aspects of the yugoslav system. this policy ultimately led to nothing but further decomposition of social unity, which went on contributing to the country’s collapse.