Literally Trotsky’s godson, but yeah Hudson is great regardless.

While I agree with the sentiments about Northern Africa and the Sahel countries as most likely, India is my “dark horse” choice. Yes, BJP and fascism is a big problem. But I think along other metrics, it appears that the conditions seem to be matching up. Recently there were those farmer protests that seemed to have a heavy communist influence that were like the largest protests in human history (I recall something like 200 million people participated in the protest). There’s quite a ways to go but I would not be surprised to see India go communist in this century.

Just read The Dispossessed instead. It describes an anarcho-communist society but is achingly beautiful literature because LeGuin is an incredible writer.

No. It wouldn’t apply to, for example, African Americans; whose ancestors were brought to this country by force and can hardly be said to have benefitted from the original stealing of the land.

Settlement involves the forcible appropriation of land (and the ethnic cleansing that involves), then removing all the indigenousness of that land and making it “your own”. What this creates is a settler class that enjoys in perpetuity the fruits of that appropriation.

White people in the US are settlers. Because it was white Europeans who stole the land and committed genocide. This settlement created an entire social strata that benefitted from this appropriation. And the benefits accrue to successive generations of white people. I saw a stat somewhere that said ~25% of all wealth in the US today can be traced to the Homestead Act, which excluded black and indigenous people.

Look, I’m a settler. I’m also middle class / labor aristocrat. This is simply a material fact. But none of that means I cannot devote my life to breaking the system that allows settler colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism to persist. The history of communism is littered with class traitors and others who recognized the privileges they had and sought their destruction.

More or less someone who takes land away from an indigenous population and treats it as their own, OR the descendants of those who did so long as there is a material benefit received by the settler’s descendants.

But of course this definition leaves gray areas; even situation is different as the material situation is different.

I think this is a reasonable take. And while I’m not going to pretend like this situation doesn’t present a problem for the Iran-Hezbollah supply line, I think that a fractured Syria probably means those supply lines can still be maintained. The Zionist entity will probably try and control as much of the Syria/Lebanon border as possible, but I think that will only serve to align more domestic Syrian forces against them.

I think determining who is a settler is like our Marxist definitions of class - it’s not meant to categorize every single person into a category, its only meant to describe a group that doesn’t have firm boundaries. White people in the US are settlers. The fact that who is “white” has a very fuzzy and fluid definition doesn’t take away from being able to identify a group (white people) and classify them as settlers.

By any definition, I’m white. I’m a settler. That doesn’t mean I should just take myself out of the game and stop organizing. But that does mean I should be aware of my own privilege and be careful to check my own assumptions and thought. And when my non-white comrades call me out on something, I am 100% going to really take what they say to heart.

Recent world events have shown how correct Stalin was in deciding what to do when you face an existential threat. The purges were unfortunate but I also believe without them I’m sure exponentially more Soviet citizens would have died.

It was written by Trotsky so I don’t think the book itself was ever peer reviewed, and I don’t think Trotsky set out to write an academic book. That said, I do believe that it’s a source respected by historians. There’s also Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book on the Revolution. She’s an actual bourgeois historian but was a leading light among the “reform school”, i.e. Sovietologists that debunked the “totalitarian school” that tried to equate the USSR with Nazi Germany.

I’ll be honest, Trotsky’s massive tome (I think it’s over 900 pages) on the Revolution is actually pretty decent and is surprisingly free (for the most part) of his typical brain worms.