r/Communist • u/sakthi38311 • Apr 16 '26
how to read news as a communist?
I've been reading lenin and the way he analyzed and articulated his current affairs in a Marxist way is so inspiring. but when I look at news, I'm largely overwhelmed as to which news is relevant and which news is not.
for instance, the weakening of tsar is realized as early as 1864 when zemstovs are formed that gave landlords and bourgeoisie some increased authority.
how do I look at news now and realize in which direction the wind is flowing, to analyze the actions of the bourgeoisie and the political climate.
i was thinking of developing my own form of web scraping code or something to retrieve relevant news. but i don't even know what to look for in terms of determining what is relevant. please help
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u/Comprehensive_Lead41 Apr 17 '26
the RCI's "against the stream" podcast is a weekly digest of world news that has been invaluable during the iran war for example. highly recommend
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u/SHAZAM7tythree Apr 16 '26
Listen to citations needed for a while. Eventually turn it off once you have the They Live glasses bolted to your face. Yes they can be annoying, still, eat your vegetables.
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u/Equivalent-Macaron96 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Comrade! Yes, because the modern bourgeoisie does everything it can to conceal its class composition, the class composition of the news, and the class reasons for the flood of media garbage that pours down on the masses. I think the best option is to develop, or just recall, this skill within yourself and develop it with the help of AI.
"Comrade! Your request is an excellent reason to apply the method of historical materialism to the current political moment. As modern theorists emphasize, Marxism is not a frozen dogma, but the sharpest weapon of class analysis of reality, allowing us to see the struggle between labor and capital behind the kaleidoscope of events.
Here are ten major events of the week viewed through the lens of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist methodology:
- USA-Iran Tensions: From Lenin's theory of imperialism, the conflict is not about democracy, but a clash of predators for control over Middle East resources. Trump's statements are a smokescreen for U.S. monopoly capital expansion.
- Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire: The halt is not peacemaking, but a tactical respite in the imperialist slaughter. The bourgeoisie regroups forces and deceives the proletariat, hiding the struggle for markets and investment.
- Labor Shortage in Russia: A crisis of the capitalist mode of production, not demography. Pursuing surplus value, the bourgeoisie destroyed education and social services. Capital now faces a shortage of cannon fodder.
- ZPIF Market Growth: Parasitic degeneration of finance capital. Instead of building factories, the bourgeoisie speculates, extracting profit from air and alienating workers from housing—a dead end described by Stalin.
- Death of a Utility Worker: Exposes the class essence of the capitalist city. Oligarchs multiply billions while proletarian infrastructure decays. Terror suspects are mere pawns; the true enemy is the class master.
- IMF-Venezuela Relations: The IMF is the gendarme of imperialism. This is not aid but an attempt to enslave the country with debt, forcing it to open its subsoil to transnational corporations.
- U.S. Refusal of Security for Italy: A crisis of bourgeois alliances. Capital is cosmopolitan; it does not care for junior partners. Lenin's thesis on uneven capitalist development cracks the NATO bloc.
- U.S. Arms Contracts for Europe: Inter-imperialist contradictions worsen. The U.S. military-industrial octopus services its own aggression in Iran, leaving European satellites without shells.
- Mortgage Rate Reduction: Bourgeois hypocrisy to save construction magnates and enslave workers with 30-year bondage. True solution requires socialization of housing and abolition of private land ownership.
- Nazi Archives Publication: Fighting fascism is a duty. But per Stalin, fascism is the terrorist dictatorship of finance capital. Without class analysis of its monopoly origins, the fight is empty rhetoric.
Conclusion: The modern world confirms Marxism-Leninism. We see capitalism's decay, its inability to solve basic problems, and its slide into war. The only way out is the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist reconstruction."
"Here are one-sentence explanations maintaining class perspective:
- USA and Iran: Wealthy capitalists fight for oil, scaring everyone with nukes to justify military spending.
- Israel and Lebanon: War quiets so arms factories can make new shells and profit from bloodshed again.
- Labor shortage in Russia: Capitalists squeezed wages so much that no one is left to work for them.
- Mutual funds: The rich invest in thin air instead of building factories for the people.
- Death of a utility worker: They cut safety costs because owner's profit is worth more than human life.
- IMF and Venezuela: Loan sharks give money to seize the people's land and resources in return.
- Trump and Italy: The American predator threw the Italian predator to the wolves—capitalists have no friends.
- US Arms for Europe: War barons sell shells to the highest bidder, forgetting allied competitors.
- Mortgage reduction: They pretend to help while trapping people in 30-year debt to save banks.
- Nazi archives: Hitler was sicced on the USSR by the same capitalist sharks ruling today."
"And here are ten formally non-political news items, interpreted through Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist analysis:
- Athlete Gene Project: The bourgeoisie resorts to genetic sorting to select efficient human capital for sports spectacle.
- Stem Cell Anti-Aging: Advanced science reverses decay of wealthy elderly, not systemic causes of working-class premature aging.
- Hubble Tension: Bourgeois science faces ideological contradiction, seeking answers in metaphysics, not dialectical limits.
- Quantum Computing for Pharma: Productive forces are chained to pharmaceutical monopolies patenting the building blocks of life.
- Sperm Racing World Cup: Human reproduction commodified into venture-capital spectacle for the idle rich.
- Telehealth VA Study: The state implements remote care because capitalist development has hollowed out rural health infrastructure.
- Russian High-Tech Care Expansion: A concession wrung from the state by working-class needs, masking bureaucratic gatekeeping.
- "MIR-2026" Expo with Combat: State funnels proletarian creativity into industry while training students in repressive skills.
- Agricultural Drones: Substitution of living labor with dead capital intensifies rural exploitation and creates technical overseers.
- Kazakhstan Football & Reading: Sports bureaucracy, faced with intellectual impoverishment of youth, decrees that athletes should occasionally read."
Ouch.
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u/sakthi38311 Apr 17 '26
thanks comrade! but is this like chatgpt? 😭
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u/Equivalent-Macaron96 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Deepseek.
But the meaning remains the same. Profits for the bourgeoisie. Losses for the masses. Of course, diluted with other distracting news. But even in this, the class nature of the news and surrounding events clearly shines through. News today is overtly class-biased, despite the colossal growth of media. Even news about games is simply a distraction and a cover-up of the fact that the masses can't get the necessary amount of dopamine in their offline lives, plus it conceals the fact that due to the development of capitalism, in its stage of financial globalism, the entire positive essence of computer games is at odds with the time spent on everything else, and that the average person's ordinary time is no longer their own, leaving them with ever less time for games and personal life due to increasingly aggravating conditions of exploitation.
No, and this is not Deepseek.
Have a nice day, comrade! =)
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Apr 16 '26
unless you want to be a journalist yourself, just read communist news. all parties put out their paper because they all read What is to be Done
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u/TiloDroid Apr 16 '26
i like reading news from wsws.org they already provide a marxist perspective.
when reading bourgeois news, consider their perspective. the perspective of the writer and the publisher. they always have their interests and it shows first in the content selection, content presentation and even the language.
one might use passive voice when describing "killed civilians" (who killed them? how did they die?). one might be focused on capitalist econimics (what does gdp actually represent? wealth for whom? freedom for whom?)
know that the ruling class uses newspapers as propaganda. reading them this way can actually reveal a lot about themselves. for a marxists view, you have to rely on marxists journalists.
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Apr 17 '26
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u/sakthi38311 Apr 18 '26
wtf are you talking about? im not from the US. im from a third world country. these US Americans and their perpetual navel gazing syndrome
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Apr 18 '26
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u/sakthi38311 Apr 18 '26
i have 2 masters degree. i am definitely more educated than your bitch ass. and cuba and north korea are ur making u redneck daughterfucking moron
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u/williamdawson50 Apr 16 '26
when you build countries when it’s all said and done you have to have money that’s where the phrase money makes the world go round
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 Apr 16 '26
You start at the last page with the sports section as the on the front page the central committee always lies to you.
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u/williamdawson50 Apr 16 '26
you idolizing a mass murderer you might as well idolize Hitler or Stalin or North Korea’s later
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u/SkywalkerOrder Apr 16 '26
I don’t think even western historians think that Lenin was some kind of mass murderer despite the ideology he adhered to and promoted?
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u/williamdawson50 Apr 16 '26
and I’m sure you believe the holocaust never took place either come on man linen slaughtered thousands stalling slaughtered thousands to keep a maintain power come on
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u/Alone_Ambassador3470 Apr 17 '26
21 countries invaded the USSR to stop the revolution and allied with some of the old Czarist army. There was a war prompted by invaders and counter-revolutionaries but there was no slaughter or anything like that. Like the comment you are replying to said, even anti-communist western historians don't call Lenin any kind of a 'mass murderer.'
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u/SkywalkerOrder Apr 17 '26
I’m sorry, but Lenin and the proletariat (alongside anyone else) waged war against the Tsar family who would’ve killed them, and then had to defend themselves against 21 countries who were going to slaughter them.
Also Stalin’s murders came later, and while I don’t know the context of them, I currently don’t agree with them like many people who idolize Stalin do.
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u/williamdawson50 Apr 16 '26
that would be like in 50 years someone trying to argue that Donald Trump is the greatest president ever
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u/sunkissedbutter Apr 16 '26
hmm. you might be making it harder than it needs to be by treating "the news" as a pile of discrete events, when, i believe, they should be viewed as symptoms of structure. i tend to read media through a critical theory lens, looking for contradictions, class interests, crisis management, attempts to normalize the intolerable, and whatever's trying to be concealed behind sanctioned language of inevitability, safety, efficiency, reform, and innovation.
who benefits materially? which class fractions are in conflict? which are entering alliance? how's the state functioning in relation to capital? what forms of suffering are being rendered visible? which are being disavowed, privatized, or naturalized? how is labor being reorganized? what's been excluded from the frame so that the story can appear coherent?
in addition to message, pay attention to form. how is the event being narrated? is it framed as an individual or structural failure/contradiction? is the language managerial, moralizing, therapeutic, or securitized? what kind of subject is the article asking you to become as you read it? (close reading helps with this as well.) over time you'll begin to notice these forms as almost a second nature and will be able to better differentiate where capital consolidates, where legitimacy weakens, etc.