r/socialism

Im seeing a worrying trend in my countries politics , it is now apparant to me that i need to organise along with my socialist/communist bredrin to fight back against fascism in this country and world wide. But ive encountered a dilema , there are communist/socialist parties in my country but i have quams with supporting any of them due to some of their stances.

So how do you suggest i resolve my dilema?

the PAP, in spite of its name, really is the party of big business, not of the people. their belief in the market is unshakable; it must be followed through every boom and bust, and all else can come later. they preside over the workers and employers as a supposedly neutral and “enlightened” arbiter-in-white, when we all know whose advice they will always take, or at least not oppose. the labour unions straggle behind, reacting only after layoffs as if caught totally by surprise. and that’s assuming if you even have a labour union to represent you. everyone else will have to depend on what’s available in the next national budget, for what diluted balm for festering wounds they can spare us, what little meat scraped off the bones. always a headache they say, having enough money to fund all the good things; and so comes the call to tahan a little, as we good citizens have always done. work-fare, no welfare. suck thumb.

coincidentally however, the paychecks for ministers and senior bureaucrats are never quite such a headache. indeed, neither are the surpluses skimmed off and used to feed the circuit of world capital. ostensibly it’s to get more money via returns for the reserves, for the indeterminate future. well, we can see all this wealth swirling before our eyes, that’s certainly true; that’s why we feel ourselves to be “affluent” in this gleaming city. but is this wealth actually ours? the niceties here seems to be coincidental to what life is actually like for a lot of us; of working till exhaustion, of exhaustion taking its usury from what free time we manage to get, then only to see our wages disappear in the race against inflation. these nice things - parks, gardens, libraries, museums, theatres, sports hubs etc etc - always play second fiddle to what seems to be the main purpose of life. the frustration shows itself in social problems, and in the proliferation of mental illnesses. indeed, the entire education system is geared towards preparing for work rather than anything else. the pupils go in and are machined to be tools in the various sectors of the economy; all interchangeable and replaceable, but always of a certain cut. those who cannot be machined into shape are tossed aside as useless, for apparently life is calculated entirely by what value you can create for employers, and by extension, the government through taxation.

we now live to work rather than work to live, for it no longer matters what you do as long as you get the money to survive. you find a job or some sort of living that you might not enjoy but have no choice because either that’s what you locked in as a student without knowing better, or the sector you were schooled/machined for isn’t hiring. and so proceeds the game, which most of us do not question. after all, isn’t this how it has always been? this state of affairs, in fact, cannot be called anything other than implicit servitude. think about it, why is it always a race to the bottom when it comes to wages? with greater skills comes greater productivity; do we not then deserve higher wages, a higher cut of the value we produce? why instead do employers just say that the wages are now too high and that it is now unprofitable to keep going? you weren’t working less, if anything you were working more for those increments which are now at risk of disappearing altogether. after all, labour is cheaper (read: even more exploited and underpaid) elsewhere in Southeast Asia. and all this while, the higher-ups continue to draw the cream of payouts, be it in dividends or their appropriations from the profit, their “wage”. they refuse even the smallest of cuts, and so we absorb them instead. what of those from our ranks who became managers but are still otherwise subordinates, the PMETs? they are bribed with just enough to keep them comfortable, and so they side against their own interests. they too are now starting to find out however; the capitalist owes no loyalty to slaves.

I began this rant/essay by talking about the PAP; why am I now talking about private employers and private interests? well, you may recall me alluding to ministerial salaries. you may also recall the photo scandal which leaked shortly after polls closed for GE2025, after which prominent political figures otherwise implied that they are on pretty good terms with people of wealth. the truth is that there is no line separating the ruling class from the capitalist class; they are one and the same. these links leave no paper trail, for they are relational rather than transactional, and so will never face real judgement in courts of law. neutrality is a myth. old boys from the same good schools will help each other pull invisible strings as adults, for “cream” always rises together to the same places. you may also recall me mentioning labour unions; it is no coincidence that they became impotent the wealthier the economy got in the 1960s and ‘70s. the foreign investor wants his dividends paid, and to make sure it does, the factory he invested in needs to have a docile workforce. no strikes, no disputes, no disruptions; just workers who will do as they are told and quietly take what they are given. who brought these investors in? the PAP. in this clash of interests between those they were supposed to represent and those who promised to bring great wealth, they chose the latter - and have continued to do so ever since. except now, the flow of wealth has ceased to be at least somewhat favourable to us; all the cream now rises away to the top.

as Lee Kuan Yew mentioned, the boom years of double-digit growth would and eventually did taper off. we are now past that. he warned against losing hope and becoming disillusioned as that happened. for such a famous clear-eyed realist, how did he not realise that it was merely the gilded cage finishing its construction? a beautiful, shiny and clean gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. the wealth which swirls around us but is never actually for us - that is the gilded cage, built by our labour but now used to keep us entrapped. it blinds and numbs us to the reality of our servitude, and that is all what Singapore is as a state entity. all is not lost however, for much of the strength of the cage is drawn from our implicit acceptance of it. a better way of life is possible, if enough of us reject the illusions and bribes given by the cage. remember that the capitalists have no wealth except what they appropriate from us; we are the real masters. this cage has been blindly and unknowingly maintained by us up till now, and it is up to us to smash it.

we have long outgrown this cage. to build a better society, to reach a higher form of society, we must awaken and shake it to pieces. our liberation is no utopia; it is possible, far more possible than too many of us think. sooner rather than later, the time will come when we will finally know what it means to live life to the fullest. I say, down with the gilded cage. our yearning spirits may be suppressed but they will never break faith.

Bowdoin College is subjecting me (a founding leader of Bowdoin Socialists, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-Zionist student coalition) to a growing set of charges — including some tied to conduct while I was on medical leave — after I replied "RIP to bro 😿" to a campus email advertising a vigil for Charlie Kirk in September 2025. A fellow student reported the comment as a "direct threat to [their] life."

On February 12, 2026, Bowdoin Socialists published a compilation: "Bowdoin College's Jeffrey Epstein Connections," drawing on the January 2026 DOJ file release, the FCA's 2023 Decision Notice, and the Upper Tribunal's 2025 ruling in Staley v. FCA. One day later, Bowdoin's Director of Student Activities sent a written directive ordering Bowdoin Socialists to cease all online and offline activity on the grounds that we hadn't formally registered. However, student media are "editorially independent of the College and its administration" and the College "has no control over or input on the content of such publications and programming." When I questioned this on February 17, the Director simply replied that he was "passing this along to the Office of the Dean of Students for follow up."

On March 12, 2026, FIRE sent its first public letter to Bowdoin, calling the social media ban on Bowdoin Socialists a violation of our speech rights (at a private college).

On May 15, 2026, FIRE sent a second public letter condemning the ongoing investigations against me personally and demanding all charges be dropped. FIRE assigned a deadline of May 26 to respond.

Despite the ongoing pressure, Bowdoin Socialists is continuing to build out its speaker series for the coming academic year. We have announced two inaugural speakers and are currently in talks with a third:

Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University and one of the world's foremost scholars on colonialism and political violence. His books include Citizen and Subject, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Neither Settler nor Native, and, most recently, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Professor Mamdani is also the father of Zohran Mamdani '14, the Mayor of New York City, who founded Bowdoin's SJP chapter.

Anthony Fantano is widely recognized as the most influential music critic of his generation. In 2007, he joined WNPR and launched The Needle Drop as a music review blog before moving to YouTube in 2009. The channel has since accumulated approximately 1.2 billion views. The New York Times has called him "the only music critic who matters (if you're under 25)."

Hasan Piker is a leftist political commentator and one of the most-watched livestreamers in the United States. Bowdoin Socialists is currently in talks with Piker about an in-person event at the college.

I am very curious as to why the founder of CJP has started demeaning Gen-Z revolution in Nepal and as to why he thinks that competing in a rigged playfield is any better than being just another run towards insanity, that is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? He now has the support of nearly many progressive people and he can use it up to set cadres and branch out, else this all would stay as for what it now is, a big facade, but if he is masquerading something else, that is for the better good, then I am with him! Why are we so scared about revolutions, isn't this the land of Netaji Subhas, or are we so incompetent to just go the Gandhi way again and again, while knowing that the fierce force against us breaks rules every time and they aren't scared of this tiddie-bittie social media outrage that doesn't translate to anything substantial on ground? People in here are so deeply attached to maintaining status quo that, and this is a prediction, that if this all doesn't soon translate on ground, it will lose steam and the ruling party would just take every chance to hammer down it, and they would be successful since they have the religion card well-placed. So yeah, please don't joke around this time and if you are to contest elections and all where the same political faces would come inside, destroy you and go, then just stop it right now. Don't give us false hope, please!!!

I’m nervous about how hard the US is trying to overthrow the Cuban government

Lenin once said that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. I do indeed oppose imperialism. But the question is, if Lenin were living in ancient Persia or the ancient Roman Empire, would he write a book titled "Imperialism is the Highest Stage of Slavery"?

（After all, a powerful slave-owning empire needed to constantly expand its territory to capture more slaves to keep their economy）

Furthermore, if Lenin had lived in China 2000 years ago, he might have said: Imperialism is the highest stage of centralized institutions

I am currently pondering a question: namely, imperialism is not caused by capitalism. Imperialism has existed since ancient times. It merely manifested itself through capital in the capitalist era.

During the slave society period (such as ancient Rome), imperialism operated in the form of slavery, but imperialism is not, as Lenin claimed, created by capitalism. It has existed since the dawn of human civilization.

（ Some people said Lenin never say imperialism was created by Capitalism, while acknowledging that colonial policies long predated capitalism (one example he cites is that of the Roman Empire), Lenin refers to a new and unique predatory form of capitalism – imperialism – that was fundamentally different to all preceding forms of colonialism, so Lenin definitely believed that Imperialism created by Capitalism)

They are those who want socialism for their own race & their own race only. Those who want racial nationalism to dictate the terms of the worker; just like the national socialists of Germany in the 1900's!

Communism is predicated on the liberation of the workers of the WORLD!