This is tricky, in my opinion. Like many people who align themselves with a socialistic ideology in the West (roughly, myself included), it is difficult to support a system where private property is abolished. If a level playing field in society an be established, than a meritocracy makes sense, however generational accrual of wealth and property, even very small ones, add up over long portions of times, and inequality in opportunity will arise. Further, pinning down what constitutes "just earnings" will be fraught with with difficulty; does the owner of a small business earn a higher wage because he was creative enough to come up with a desirable product to sell? What is the value of creativity and leadership?

Ho Chi Minh's strategy is to strip the land of all infrastructure, such that any invading forces will be unable to use it in an invasion. While this is obviously extreme, it makes a lot of sense from a guerrilla warfare perspective: Foreigners with little experience with the land will struggle far more than natives in navigating the jungle, using the natural resources for survival and enduring the elements.

Ho Chi Minh is playing an intelligent diplomat game here, by subtly complimenting and idolizing America's path to independence as well as it's ideology of the time. This was likely done to gain favor with America, to lean on America as an ally of "liberty" in the hopes that any conflict with France, or the now defunct axis powers would be mitigated by American involvement.

The fact that the declaration draws attention to suffering of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (though not the proletariat by name) reflects the splintered characteristic of the Vietminh. The coalescing of disparate groups, communists, capitalists, etc under a nationalistic movement for independence is interesting as it mirrors the way that America would and did exist as a country with a strong sense of patriotism while remaining fundamentally divided by class.

Nehru points out that the very interconnected state of the world through alliances, coupled with the difficult to conceptualize power that so many countries possessed, set up a context wherein it was essentially impossible for conflicts to remain small and isolated. Nearly any act of international aggression would inevitably lead to vast suffering and all-out war.

Nehru makes a very poignant statement here, critiquing the cast network of alliances and dependencies that were rife in the West (and partially in the East) that led to the World Wars. Pacts function differently from diplomacy and cooperation as they create binaries (you are either with us or against us) instead of fostering inclusivity.

I see this as a potential weakness of both Marx and Gandhi, that they both see capitalism and modern society as bound to fail, yet correctly admit that we buy into it because of the group-think and social programming that goes on around us. Still today, though, we live in fully industrialized and beyond countries that maintain capitalism. In fact, as more time passes, the firmer I think our societies' belief in this institution becomes. Capitalism has proved that it is malleable and will call itself liberal, social-democracy if it means that people will still buy iphones and be paid shit-wages for work they hate.

I wonder if Gandhi was aware of Marxism in any way, as this line could easily be understood as a paraphrasing of Marx's conception of capitalism: that capitalism will inevitably (it is deterministic) fall, and in it's place a communist revolution, followed by anarchy will reign.

The point of this short phrase is to show that the the principle of self-determination was misinterpreted and bastardized such that by only applying it to cultural freedom, it aided imperialism and subjugation by distracting from the real end: to allow a people to self govern and realize their own truth.

Here, Stalin concludes with a dual point that wrps up his argument that the proletariat of developed nations and the colonized people of dependent states/colonies must unite. One is concrete: the people of colonies and dependent states necessarily uphold the power of the states they are subservient to, by providing labor, products and capital to it's oppressor, so by igniting revolution in them, the oppressor will weaken and the proletariat of both the periphery and the empire will bolstered. The other is moral: how can one group of people claim to be revolutionary and free if it's existence and freedom is predicated on the enslavement of another people? Thus all proletariat groups must unite.

I almost annotated the few sentences after this one, but what could I add to those; he just shows a profound level of ignorance. But I think this line is telling and interesting. Presumably, Hitler was fairly well educated, he certainly wasn't illiterate, but where did he learn this information? I know that racial hierarchies were popular at the time, but does he include this line specifically to gloss over the (I thought) well known scientific discoveries of the Chinese, or any other past example of cultural complexity and richness? Is he just being a hypocrite, is he 100% ignorant, or is it something more?

It is disturbing that Hitler uses "logic" throughout the text, as, even divorcing myself from the modern moral perspective that biological differences in race are nonexistent, it seems pretty clear that using examples of one race dominating another does not prove a causal relationship between race and superiority at all. He confuses correlation with causation.

Again, the language here is meant to be read one way, maybe even intended by some in one way, a way that positions European powers as keepers and protectors of small, remote lands, but conversely, this passage can be a self-incrimination. The document acknowledges that territories of small population, remoteness and contiguity with a Mandatory are best governed by the laws of the Mandatory, but this may only be because sparsely populated, remote or contiguous territories are either too militarily weak, too far or too close to mount any kind of real resistance to their Mandatory.

Interestingly, but probably to be expected, the territories of Central Africa are controlled partially to establish guaranteed trade between the area and the UK and France. The language, contextualized by the formal, service-oriented text before it, superficially appears to ensure that Central Africa not economically collapse, but, in fact, this legal measure serves to prop up a little-modified version of imperialistic mercantilism between the European powers and the less technologically advances nations of Africa.

Having not read Heart of Darkness either in college or high school, I am unsure about how closely aligned Marlow's voice is to that Conrad's (I am unsure how fictionalized the retelling is and whether Conrad rhetorically used a character like Marlow to indict Europeans). That said, I think Marlow's admission of the partial humanity of the natives can be read as even more bitter and hateful than the total dehumanization of the past. By recognizing his own disgust at seeing himself in the natives he views as savage he positions another level of hatred and contempt upon the natives shoulders.