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 at 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.)
It must be remembered that civilians doing tourism were killed (albeit in a state that is more or less open air prison where Indian soldiers are pretty much given free license to perpetuate ongoing crimes against humanity). And that fact will dial up the Hindutva fervor to 11.
For you and everyone else lurking with similar query: learn theory and be dialectical in your approach.
Still visual media? Learn colour theory, compostition, light etc Then tie that in with theory of media you are analysing and the history of where the art is from and what it what trying to depict, including which classes produced it and which classes' perception it is reflecting.
Same for music, literature, films etc. In doing so you will develop your own tastes and also be better educated in analysis. If you learn enough chances you will produce your own as part of that learning process.
Read broadly. You will likely need to read a bit a about philosophy including marxist critiques on Nietzsche especially when it comes to the arts.
As your knowledge grows it will be easier to learn new stuff building on previous things; learning the interconnectedness not just within the arts but with also outside of the arts (history, geopolitics, philosophy, hard sciences etc) will make it so much easier to learn and enjoy.
Also because this is ML forum:
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2022-01-20-To-save-the-arts-we-must-kill-the-artist.html
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2021-03-06-Who-is-the-author-and-how-do-i-kill-him.html
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2023-02-03-Artisanal-Intelligence.html
Addendum, a potential starting point - A Marxist Theory of Art by Red Pen:
You are right but as a westerner I am being increasingly disillusioned by other westerners; our class on the world stage slows down our progression. My frustration is probably projection on my part as a labor aristocrat with conflicting priorities. I suspect despite a lack of coherent theory a lot of comrades here on these forums are probably doing significantly more than I am IRL. (Heck I wanted to do a deep dive article into nations/genders as effective classes but it has been ages and I still have not found the time to do it.)
Thanks for your patience and diligence. These vibes-based-luddite posts/comments were initially surprising to see on an ML thread but now it just feels pathetic, there's only so many ways one can explain this stuff; it's clear that artisans are having reactionary takes as they fear proletarianization.
(I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand; it's such a basic aspect of marxism and capital that the more I see this stuff on lemmygrad the more I feel like I am outgrowing lemmygrad from an ML perpective. Honestly your posts are like 90% why I am still hanging around.)
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.
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.
Thanks for sharing this.
The schadenfreude here is just euphoric.
The competition for Honorary Aryan is intense.