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That depends on what they are doing and how they are doing it. If their only goal is to somehow bring about communism by winning a vote in a capitalist democracy, they are obviously ridiculous. But while living under a bourgeois democracy, while the population at large still believes in that system, participation in it can be used as a tool to build class consciousness, to work toward the ultimate goal of revolution. This is essentially Lenin's position in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder.

Participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

I'll second Geopolitical Economy Report. Also, Revolutionary Left Radio is fantastic. The host, Bre is intelligent and charismatic, but more than that he's incredible at finding great guests and doing great interviews. If the episode topic even remotely interests me, the episode itself is almost always 9/10. He is also a part of two other podcasts, Guerilla History and Red Menace, which are also both great.

Blowback has had 3 seasons, all are fantastic.

Actually Existing Socialism has some good episodes, though they haven't been around for too long.

This one isn't expressly political, but The Dollop is amazing. Both the hosts are somewhere on the left, though I'm not sure exactly where. It is easily the funniest podcast I've ever listened to.

A bit more about Lyudmila Pavlichenko and how fucking badass she was.

She got 309 kills, making her one of the deadliest snipers ever, and she got them in only 2 years. That's almost one Nazi every 2 days. Once her skills were made obvious, she was given more dangerous and high-stakes missions, such as being sent to find and countersnipe Nazi snipers. This is basically a duel between 2 snipers. She engaged in 36 duels like this, and she won every time. One of these duels lasted 3 straight days. When asked how she finally beat her counterpart, she just said "He moved too much."

It took a mortar round to stop her, but even that didn't kill her, just put her in the hospital. After she recovered she wanted to go back to the frontlines but Soviet command stopped her. Instead she trained snipers until the end of the war. Her nickname was "Lady Death."

After she left combat, she was briefly sent to the USA and Canada, where she met the First Lady Elanor Roosevelt (as seen above.) While in the US she was, of course, belittled and dismissed by western journalists. They referred to her as the "Girl Sniper." They asked her things like if she wore makeup while on the front lines, and did she curl her hair, and "One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts, and besides my uniform made me look fat." The reporters said that she was "very blunt and unemotional" in her responses, which I have to imagine was a result of her trying not to murder the stupid motherfuckers.

I think she is best summed up by a line from a speech she gave in Chicago, trying to convince American men to join the war and fight the Nazis. "I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don't you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?"

The author, Carlos Martinez, also runs Friends of Socialist China. Great website/ YouTube channel.

youtube.com/@FriendsofSocialistChina

socialistchina.org/

I will second Geopolitical Economy Report (formerly Multipolarista,) especially the YouTube channel, which I think is also available as a podcast. Also First Thought and Breakthrough News, and their YouTube channel. These are great for current events, First Thought as a quick update on a lot of events, Geopolitical Economy Report and Breakthrough News for deeper analysis of specific stories.

For news related specifically to China I use the Dongsheng News Collective, YouTube channel here, as well as Friends of Socialist China.