I figure this is a common ask but I haven’t seen a post anywhere in the recent past, so…What is the VERY first book on theory that I need to read?
I haven’t read any theory yet, besides a short excerpt from the Communist Manifesto a long time ago. I have read some Parenti and Blackshirts & Reds is definitely on my list. I’m also interested in history books, biographies, autobiographies, anything socialist/marxist really.
I am also very interested in recommendations from non-white folks, as well as any literature about non-white socialist movements/people/history/theory etc.
I like to recommend Wage, Labor, and Capital by Marx (my physical copy also contains Value, Price, and Profit). It’s short, written to be understood by 19th century working class Germans, and is sort of like Capital volume 0.1.
Otherwise, State and Revolution or What is to be Done? by Lenin are bangers, and I like to recommend them to ML-curious people (usually people who have just taken the first steps away from just being a radlib faux-anarchist). Lenin was a great writer, engaging and passionate, but his works build on a large background of Marx and Engels (and others, of course), and you might not get all of the references.
EDIT: In case you didn’t know yet, basically everything written by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and a lot of others are available for free on Marxists.org
State and Revolution just sort of abruptly ends with a “brb gonna go do the Russian revolution” it slaps
I like that half of it is Lenin dunking on his haters
Awesome thank you. Wage, Labor & Capital definitely sounds like a good starting off point, I can definitely do 25 pages. I’ve gotten pretty bad at reading over the years so it’s intimidating figuring out where to start and not jump into something that’s super super dense. I have heard Lenin is a good read too so maybe that’s where I’ll get my feet wet.
got nothing but here’s some wholesome interactions between lenin and stalin after lenin had returned from a vacation (everyone told him to take a fuckin break because he worked too hard)
Aw that is precious, the admiration is obvious
Wayne’s Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ For Beginners
Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth
Newton’s Revolutionary Socialism
Davis’s Women, Race, and Class
Bevin’s Jakarta Method
I really enjoy A People’s Guide to Capitalism for someone who’s new to Marxist economic theory, very easy read that takes concepts from Capital and makes them much more digestible for modern audiences.
Lmao so read Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, then read Caliban and The Witch by Silvia Federici.
ah yes, starting off with 2000+ pages of super dense theory as my first dive into it sounds awesome, thanks lol
Exactly! How better to make you feel part of the gang than making you as confused as half of us.
Edit: but like jokes aside, caliban and the witch is a good read imo. It helps articulate the need for intersectionality within our understanding of working class struggle by highlighting how women’s oppression can be erased even within just bare economic theory like Marx’s primative accumulation. In caliban the author articulates how women’s Labour was exploited long before men’s and in much more violent forms and without understanding of this we are doomed to repeat it. Like chapter one and it’s like Phwoooaaarrr. Fr fr.
Edit 2: my initial comment was a joke like getting you to read marx and then immediately read why he fucked up on women’s labour if ya get me
haha, well as long as we’re all in it together I’m for it! Thanks for the explanation about the other read though, that sounds right up my alley tbh. One day I’ll grow the attention span to read through and annotate Kapital. When that day comes I know I will have transformed myself as a person
I use it for voice training by reading it out loud 🥰
I will never have the attention span to be an academic
I don’t know whether it was the sheer amount of college itself or the mass amount of internet access and drinking that completely ruined my motivation to read dense texts, but it happened. Maybe the combination of them all because after college I called it quits HARD. Being an academic is overrated, praxis is the move (when ya got the spoonz)
Mine is a fat bag of adhd and trauma 😎
Fr praxis makes the world change 💪
I feel it, friend, there’s a heap of mental factors here too. We do the best we can with the cards we’ve been dealt! Honestly reading it out loud is probably really effective though
CatW is critical reading, can’t recommend it enough.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/pamphlets/1933/whycomindex.htm
October by China mieville
Howard zinn’s peoples history
Ten days that shook the world by John Reed
Molotov Remembers by himself and transcribed by Felix Chuev
Felix Dzerzhinsky: a biography
Dialectical and historical materialism by Stalin
Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism by Otto Wille Kuusinen
Foundations of Leninism by Stalin
Marxism and the national question by Stalin
Inside north Korea by Anna Louise Strong
The origin of family, private property, and the State by Engels
On inter-party struggle by Liu Shaoqi
This Monstrous War By Wilfred G. Burchett
Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard By Douglas Tottle
The Lesson of Germany By Gerhart Eisler, Albert Norden, Albert Schreiner
The Origins of Christianity By Archibald Robertson
Science and Religion By Marcel Cachin
Soviet Democracy and Bourgeois Democracy By M.B. Mitin
