Read Theory, Darn it!

Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.

— V. I. Lenin

In the dying capitalist hellscape we occupy, it can often seem hopeless. However, a better world is possible. We can move on from the destitution, genocide, and privation of today's society and move onto one where we consciously decide to take a scientific approach to production. We can direct society in such a fashion that satisfying the needs of the people is the goal of production, and not satisfying the bottomless avarice of a handful of billionaires. What we need is socialism. What we need is Marxism-Leninism.

Who is this guide aimed at?

Anyone wanting to begin their journey into the world of leftist theory and organizing.

How long will this guide take to follow?

Aimed at about 60 hours of active reading time. This can be stretched out over a year, or condensed into a few months of hard study, depending on your availability.

Credits

Late Stage Capitalism @lemmy.world

Read Theory, Darn it! An Introductory Reading List for Marxism-Leninism

6 1

You're viewing a single thread.

157 comments

Just wrote this somewhere else. Maybe this is where it belongs: Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I'd advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts or critical theory are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good'ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I'm sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)
Also "how to conduct yourself as a leftist" sound strict af and kinda deterministic.
Plus there is no need to give stalin's voice that kind of space.
- I appreciate your input! From what I've curated, I picked a good mix of modern works like Blackshirts and Reds and foundational works, because they are relevant and necessary even today in my opinion. Since it's an intro reading list, it's difficult to include every good work, if you want, you can comment a suggestion of what to remove and what to take its place.
  As for the "how to conduct yourself" bit, it's just good general advice like suggesting to keep reading theory, getting organized, be persistent, etc. All generally useful skills even for non-leftists, but again, feel free to leave feedback in the comments of how you would change it and I'll consider it.
  As for the comment on Stalin, nowhere are his works listed, can you elaborate on what you mean?
  
  nowhere are his works listed
  A pity, at least the Foundations of Leninism should be included, at the very least the 6th chapter because this topic is where real problem lies for all liberals and succdems, and it leds them to assume proimperialist positions.
  I mean i understand normies fear the name of Stalin, but it is really very critical point and a crucial addition to Lenin's "Imperialism..."
  
  I believe I covered the National Question sufficiently by including The Wretched of the Earth, though I am open to tweaking the list. The reason why I did not include Foundations of Leninism, on top of the general fear of Stalin, is because I believe it to be redundant and have successfully covered all of what Stalin covers in it in other, more in-depth works. Additionally, I am light on room in the list character limit, so I would have to swap it out or trim the intro/conclusion. Even further, I would rather include Marxism and the National Question over Foundations of Leninism, if my goal is to answer the question of the importance of National Liberation.
  Do you have a suggestion for what could be swapped out?
  
  Your list isn't even that long, and both are short too, especially that you included works like Wretched or Lavender which are 300+ pages.
  
  Yes. Again, I believe that Wretched answers the National Question already, and in more depth than either Marxism and the National Question or Foundations of Leninism. I specifically included Lavender and Red to showcase that liberatory struggles for marginalized groups are more effective when allied with other liberatory struggles.
  Again, I am fighting the character limit, and trying to make a list that doesn't scare away liberals. Including a work by Stalin absolutely is make or break for many liberals, period, meaning no theory ends up getting read. If you can make the case that Wretched alone cannot solve the National Question, or that it is good for me to trim some areas of the text body meant to guide and encourage the reader along, I am more than happy to consider it.
  I agree that it is important to stress National Liberation as a means to prevent pro-Imperialist stances from forming, which is why I am seriously considering what you're saying, but you haven't explained why Wretched is insufficient. I understand that the works I have listed are longer, which is part of why I believe my list to be more comprehensive, even if it is merely an introductory list.
  
  I am fighting the character limit,
  You can get a few characters by changing comlib.encryptionin.space to c.encryptionin.space
  
  Oh, thank you! I'll make the edits in a bit.
  Edit: just did it, thanks so much!
  
  /mode/1up can be removed from the archive.org links too
  
  Thank you!
  
  further shortening for comlib:
  Elementary Principles of Philosophy: https://c.encryptionin.space/e/gpepop
  Blackshirts and Reds: https://c.encryptionin.space/e/mpbar
  
  Seems like ?playlistPosition=1 on Wretched of the earth and pedagogy of the oppressed audiobooks can be removed too.
  Also &pp=[..] from Left-wing communism audio
  
  Thanks again!
  
  I won't even disagree, except the point we can't dance around Stalin for long. Probably not for more than few seconds it take any lib to ask question about him.
  
  That's a fair point, though I will point out that Blackshirts does a good job of that already, and is the second item in the list. It's not like I need to have Losurdo as required reading IMO when the emphasis of applying correct analysis, supporting revolutionary movements, anti-Imperialism, and getting organized should lead people to correct conclusions even without reading Stalin's work, which is mostly summarization of other work.
  I'll consider what you've said, thank you. I appreciate the constructive criticism.
  
  Also thank you for understanding, i'm very fond of "Foundations" which have been very important step for my education, especially for the concept of critical support in antiimperialism so i advise it every time.
  
  That's understandable! If I could simply "beam" theory into people's heads it would be on the list, but reading is a voluntary action and thus anything that poses a significant risk to that voluntary action stands potentially counter to my purpose here.
  Again, thanks for your input!
  
  Okay sorry regarding stalin i mixed that up. It's in the other reading list in the comments here.
  On "conduct yourself" dunno, maybe this boils down to writing style. But the ML sort of theoretical style plus the horrors of undemocratic socialist history do make it important to stress the emphatic (as in: since critical theory and french subjectivity theory we debunked "individual freedom", but still need to keep it as a goal) part of personal freedom & choice. That wording above doesn't show that kind of self reflection imo.
  Gramsci! The concepts of hegemony and "senso commune" (sry dont know english translation) are essential to analyse current events. Also this protects lefties from babbling about classes in a way that alienates them from everyone just observing whats going on.
  (Senso commune and gramscis notion of intellectuals also offers a neat way through the whole "get educated since otherwise you fundamentally don't understand your own life"- rhethoric dilemma/arrogance issue)
  You need secondary literature for gramsci though. He left 3000 pages of unstructured notes from fascist prison. You don't wanna go through that. Unfortunetly I have no idea of english publications. Barfuss & Jehle Einführung is nice, in case you speak german.
  
  Appreciate the clarification regarding Stalin.
  First, offering advice on how to conduct yourself as a Leftist isn't some spooky command. In the list I made, I literally say "to take with you as practical advice." This practical advice includes joining a leftist organization (the bare minimum to be a leftist in practice and not just in theory), read more theory, fight white supremacy and queerphobia, be more industrious, learn self-defense, and be persistent. None of these get in the way of "personal freedom" in my opinion. My goal is to create Communists that want to change society and work to do so, not just intellectuals that want to endlessly critique society, and my list reflects that. If you have problems with individual bits of advice in that list, feel free to let me know.
  Secondly, regarding your claims of Marxist-Leninist theory and "horrifyingly undemocratic" AES states, I do recommend you read the essay Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the "Worker's Paradise?" It's important to contextualize AES states, their successes and failures, properly. For further reading, Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is a good historical account of the Soviet Democratic System, warts and all.
  As for Gramsci, I am not at all opposed to including his writings, but my list is focuses on getting the most out of the least. I would need to remove a work and find a concise secondary work, in English. I can include his writings in my "DLC Pack" further reading list I am making. The target audience for my list is English-speaking, I made it in the context of the aftermath of the US election and am targeting disenfranchised liberals who may benefit from theory.
  I appreciate your feedback however, and will add Gramsci as a suggestion for my DLC list.
  
  Thanks. I read the tayangyu essay, and kinda liked it, but it didn't really answer my questions..
  Isn't the author leaving the framework of dialectical thinking when they dismiss the relevance of ideas almost entirely in favor of material economical factors?
  As in: Couldn't have the development of productive forces happened with more participation?
  Wouldn't than the emergence of a democratic or collective subject have been faaaar more likely, even though and because people would have been confronted with the limits of economic development, as agents, not just as objects of that one and only party's decisions?
  
  Good question! The answer is that there were democratic structures in place in the Soviet Union. That's the purpose of adding Soviet Democracy as a historical reference to be taken alongside the essay. These structures were not all powerful or fully democratic, I am not pretending the USSR was perfect. I am instead, however, contextualizing the earlier part of the essay, the line
  Sometimes people respond to this by pointing to the democratic benefits Marxist-Leninist countries have provided. However, we would be fooling ourselves to pretend any Marxist-Leninist country created anything coming close to a “workers’ paradise.” That’s not to say there were not huge gains for workers, don’t get me wrong, but criticism of the inadequacies of workers’ democracy in these countries should be taken seriously and responded to honestly.
  When contextualized, Soviet Democracy was both a massive stride yet held back and incomplete by the real Material Conditions and level of development of the Productive Forces, leading to real setbacks and real weaknesses in said democratic structures.
  
  I think it was not only those material conditions but also a deterministic ideology or maybe just power hungry leaders. (Good cue for taking the democracy part very serious from the beginning, because non or semi-democratic structures attract and create dictator-subjects, and projecting yourself outside that dialectic is as naive as it is arrogant)
  Shooting thousands (or hundreds of thousands, as my hasty wikipedia research suggests) of the opposition, both left and right, is no matter of slow industrialization.
  Admittedly I'n not fit in soviet history, but the combo of "oh they had democratic infrastructure" and secret deportation, incarceration and murder of even leftist opposition doesn't sit right. And honestly, calling that "not perfect" feels like violation of emancipatory writing of history and way of living.
  
  You're free to make your case for it being because of "power hungry leaders," though you'd have to grapple with the very real fact that Stalin tried to resign on 4 separate occasions and have his position eliminated. I'm not saying you're wrong, it very well could have been a thirst for power, but you've done nothing to support your thesis, nor to prove that the Soviet model was non-democratic or semi-democratic. Moreover, you don't define what "semi-democratic" means, nor what "democratic" is, and where that threshold lies.
  To borrow your own words, using hasty Wikipedia research rather than attempting to better understand Soviet history before making authoritative claims is "as naive as it is ignorant." You would do well to read the history books I listed before trying to make an argument on structures and events you don't fully understand. I mean no offense by this.
  The idea that the USSR was just a group that killed all opposition betrays that the USSR, as far as states are concerned, acted more leniantly towards violent opposition groups than other comtemporary states, as a quick example of how a simple manner of framing betrays the very real context of a situation.

157 comments