this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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I don't think they're really leftist in thought either, though. It's pretty rare for this kind of person to read Marx, Engels, or even Kropotkin, Luxembourg, Gonzalo, or other writers that are in the communist canon yet are highly critical of the mainline ML theory. I think out of the minority that are reading anything, they're reading post-modernist writers.
did Gonzalo ever write theory
His entire thing was mixing José Carlos Mariátegui/Peruvian Socialist with European Socialism/Marxism and Maoism. Most of his texts are usually just explaining Mariateguism (the proposal was a return to the old Incan Society, since Mariategui considered them a form of Proto-Rural Socialism, but without the emperors and religion) Maoism and Marxism. Gonzalo was really weird and the current day Shining Path is actually Pro-China and Pro-Russia, they are currently alligned with the Liberal Social Democrats, the Ethnocarcerists (Left-Wing Incan Ultranationalists, those are soldiers and officers inspired or were a part of Gen. Velasco's Peruvian Socialist goverment during the 1960s - 1970s) and Inkarri Islam (A Islamic Ultranationalist group that supports an Incan Communist Islamic state and promotes unity between Islam, Catholicism and Incan Mythology).
What the fuck is going on with them these days
Also arent there like, 2 groups that claim to be the shining paths successors? And is one of them involved with the drug trade or is that just propaganda
Shining Path is not well liked by large parts of the Peruvian left. Afaik, a lot of communists say that the Shining Path was financed or influenced by the CIA to deslegitimize the MRTA (Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) and destabilize the socdem goverment of Alan Garcia. After the Fujimori dictatorship of the 1990s crackdown hard on both the Shining Path (without Fujimori's knowledge btw) and on the MRTA (Fujimori personally posed with dead corpses of guerrilla fighters), and the Pink Tide resulting on Alan Garcia second govemrnet and Gen. Ollanta Humala goverment, they lost all their power and divided into many factions.
Nowadays they're allied with the Anti-Fujimori Coalition or the Progressive Coalition (it seems like many people in the global south calls this vague coalition of anti-neoliberal/anti-fascist political parties that include liberals, conservatives, socialists, socdems, nationalists and communists, they call it Progressivism). They barely controls any real territory anymore and I wouldn't be surprise if many of them gave up on ideological struggle and joined organized crime. I know that a bunch of them ended up joining the Ethnocarcerism movement (which is made up by a lot of soldiers and officers that they used to fight during the 1980s).
Heres how ~~bernie~~ sendero can still win
Here's an English translation of a work that discusses this: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:The_CIA%27s_Shining_Path:_Political_Warfare
Wow I feel like I know jack shit about south America now, I was missing out on a lot
A lot of the problems and chaos that Peru have been experience recently is due to the Tacnazo 1975 coup. This coup led to the chaos during the 1980s and 1990s (Velasco had previously banned all communist parties but at the same time he freed all communists from jail and gave them jobs inside his goverment, he even had them create a Socialist Party to support his goverment. Velasco renamed a bunch of things to native names, he promoted native languages and would have gone way futher with his reforms if weren't for the USA sabotaging his goverments and Gen. J. J. Torres' socialist goverment in Bolivia).
Who the fuck am I kidding communism is a book club
A book club that covers dry economic treatises and things seemingly written with the most archaic and hyperspecific jargon available, even at the time, where a chunk of the members are really into the book, and the rest of the book club doesn't read the book, they just come to drink the wine and complain about their lives.
I will never understand the people who find reading theory fun and energizing rather than just something you have to do that provides you with useful tools to analyze the world.
While I wouldn't say it has ever been "fun" it has been satisfying and gratifying to read something that mirrors my own thoughts on capitalism, just much more well thought out, it's satisfying because it turns general vibes about capitalism into more concrete ideas.
I mean, yes. I agree. This is very much true. When I understand what they're trying to say, it feels amazing to know that someone 100 years ago or more thought exactly what I think about what's wrong with society, put it into far more academic and polished language, and suggested concrete solutions and steps to fixing it, not just "we need a revolution", but "we need a revolutionary political party and here's how we can build one", which... the precise ideas are always outdated and usually very regional, but the general methodologies are solid! And knowing other commies around the world are reading the same thing? That feels even better. Knowing I don't have the social skills or community connections to build a party or the organisations and loose groups that become one, but other commies do, and they have access to these blueprints too? That gives me hope.
But all that said, a lot of theory is full of academic jargon and terminology that was archaic even at the time, and reading it can be frustrating in equal measure to that clicking feeling when you Get It. It's often a good way to get a headache, and listening to it on audio format is something I'm more likely to do when I need to fall asleep than intending to actually attentively process it. (Though Stalin's stuff does have a tendency to keep me awake. Another reason for revisionists to hate him, lol!)
Yeah, I often have to put aside specific "theory reading" time when I'm in a good mood and not feeling sick or anything, it's very exhausting stuff to get through a lot of the time, I try to view it like working out or something, it hurts now, but it makes you stronger and more well equipped to deal with problems.
Yeah. You definitely gotta be in the right place emotionally or all you're going to accomplish is a headache now and tomorrow morning.
Tbh, I really love listening to it rather than reading the text, it makes it a little easier to follow in some ways, and I think it's probably a neurodivergence thing, but doing something else with my hands and a small sliver of my focus really helps me actually process it and get through a whole section of a given text in a sitting. If I have a physical book or text on a screen, it'll take me a while or I'll keep putting it down to take a break, with audio I do actually remember exact phrasing a lot less and get a lower percentage of understanding on a first read (come on, not one of us gets the full understanding possible the first time we read a given piece of theory) but I'll get most of what's being said and I'll just power through a few hundred pages worth without even realising how much it is.
Bring 1 gallon water to a boil, add salt...