After a three-week hiatus, I am once again asking for your ML theory suggestions. Ideally short texts, but longer ones can be divided across several weeks if there’s enough interest. If you’re interested in reading longer works at a rapid pace, there’s at least one reading group on Hexbear.
Whether you’ve read the text or not, feel free to include a short description or reason for suggesting it.
If you want to be notified when threads for new texts are posted (by including your username in a comment on upcoming posts), you can comment here or DM me.
Previous texts:
- The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War
- How to Be a Good Communist
- The Wretched of the Earth (1, 2-3, 4, 5-)
- The Foundations of Leninism
- Decolonization is not a metaphor
- Marxism and the National Question
- China Has Billionaires
- Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism
- Wage Labour and Capital
- Value, Price and Profit
- On the shortcomings of party work […]
This is the notification list so far:
List
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I recently read Why I am no longer a Skeptic by Stephen Bond, and I think it does a good job of explaining my problems with both RationalWiki and most online “Skeptics”, and why they often take anti-communist positions even if it doesn’t address that directly. It’s not fully ML but I think it’s still a pretty good article.
Socialism: Scientific and Utopian.
If you’re interested in that i recommend more The development of the monist view of history by plekhanov. It’s a much more fleshed out socialism: scientificnand utopian.
Will do.
I’d recommend The Struggle Against Fascism by Clara Zetkin.
It was the first thing I read when I was trying to understand what Fascism was and to this day I still really like it.
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Or
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
I think many of the topics in both of these works are still relevant today.
+1 to “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder. I recently read the chapter on engaging with reactionary trade unions (after going through a PSL publication), and I was once again surprised at the density and relevance of Lenin’s writings. He even calls out the Mensheviks for supporting trade unions that are independent of the state (even a worker’s state), which I’ve seen people bring up with respect to China.
Agreed. Left-wing communism is a must read. Very relevant especially to ML and MLM parties in all places.
A bit of a curveball, but I think reading Ian Wright’s Marx on Capital as a Real God is a good essay on thinking about capital as a control system.
Failing that, I think On Practice & On Contradiction would be a good way to explore dialectical materialism for any comrades that haven’t yet read them, or better yet Elementary Principles of Philosophy.
i read part 1 of wright and it was really illuminating for me as someone who could never focus on capital for more than 5 minutes. i really hope we read it at some point. thank you comrade
No problem! It’s no substitute for Capital, but it does a great job of explaining aspects of capitalism we may not directly see.
i would recommend literally anything about kollontai paired with social reproduction theory by tithinbhattacharya
I’m going to reccomend Antonio Gramsci’s selected works. Specifically the ones under section 6, “Hegemony, relations of force, historical bloc” or section 8, “Passive revolution, caesarism and fascism” in the reader edited by David Forgacs (the marxist.org archive has links to both the table on contents and the full list of Gramsci’s works linked at the bottom of the page here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/reader/index.htm).
The entire selection (and these two sectionsin particular) are very important for understanding the modern world in marxist terms. Without hegemony and such I don’t think you can fully critically understand the historical process, same as how you can’t fully critically understand said historical process without an understanding of imperialism
On the correct handling of contradictions among the people.
define short.Please add me to the notification list :)
I’m kinda interested in Gramsci essay on Caesarism and bonapartism that other user brought up recently.
Rajani Palme Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution, despite its age, continues to stand as one of the greatest analyses of fascism to this day.
i don’t have a suggestion but if you could notify me when a thread for a new text is posted that’d be cool
Unironically, read ‘The Russian Revolution’ by Rosa Luxemburg.
Acknowledging and understanding respectful critique of your own thought and practicing dialectics is key to achieving a full understanding of socialism.
I read Lenin and try to understand the vanguard as a Luxemburgist in order to build my own understanding of the material nature of socialism.
For example, it does not offend me that Lenin rejects the mass strike, because I actually understand why he rejected it, this understanding a result of practising dialectics in my reading habit.
On the Art of the Cinema by Kim Jong Il? I’m a very artistic version of a leftist standing. I like reading art related ML (and other ML types) books.
