I was once a staunch believer in communism. I read Marx and Engels like scripture. I believed in Lenin’s voice, in the urgency of Che Guevara’s dreams. I believed revolution was not only necessary, it was sacred.
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
Karl Marx
I carried that line like a banner for years.
I still remember reading Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy. I remember the weight of it. The clarity. The courage. I remember how Red Sun by Sudeep Chakravarti landed in my hands as a gift and slowly altered the way I saw my own country’s blood-stained borders. These books didn’t teach me ideology. They reminded me of lives that were erased, lives that resisted.
Back then, I didn’t want comfort. I wanted clarity.
But then I moved to the United States.
I came from a background in India where money was always present not in abundance, but in its absence. So when I arrived here, capitalism didn’t look like oppression. It looked like ease. Like clean stores and scented candles. It looked like the iPhone I bought. The sunglasses. The perfume. None of them made me happier. But for a moment, they made me feel like I belonged.
That was the trap.
“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: freedom for slave owners.” Vladimir Lenin
No one tells you how capitalism isn’t just an economy. It’s a feeling. A hunger. A whisper in your ear saying, “You’re not enough but you could be, if you just had this one thing.”
Now they’re monetizing love.
Apps like Tinder and Hinge sell the illusion of connection. Pay for premium. Maybe this time you’ll find the one. Swipe left on loneliness. Swipe right on validation.
It is not a dating culture anymore. It is a monetization of vulnerability.
Instagram listens. Facebook follows. You talk about something, and the ad shows up. Capitalism isn’t about production anymore. It’s about prediction. Emotion is now a market. You don’t just buy things. You become the product. You become the data.
“The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
Friedrich Engels
But are we free? Really?
We don’t even know how to talk to each other without a screen between us. Our parties have become silent scrolls. Our emotions curated for stories. Even grief is aesthetic now. Even intimacy has a filter.
And still, I hesitate.
Because part of me still thinks capitalism made me grow. I cannot lie about that. It gave me access. Education. Tools. Opportunities I would have never had back home. It gave me Amazon packages when I needed winter boots. It gave me warm coffee from Dunkin in a quiet corner of Norman when I was most homesick.
But now I see the hollowness.
I don’t want to shame the part of me that bought into it. That girl who thought maybe a good perfume could patch something. Maybe the phone could connect what felt too far. But I also don’t want to live there anymore.
I want to build something different. Something slower. Something real.
I want to feel again what it means to resist not just with slogans, but with softness. With withdrawal. With a quiet no.
No, I don’t need more.
No, I don’t want a premium plan.
No, I don’t want to be tracked, sold, fixed.
I just want to be.
Because Che was right.
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”
And maybe the first fall has to happen inside me.
