We see a lot of account requests from people who are just yet dipping their toes in marxism and communism. We can’t abandon new comrades to the flow of the current they are floating in, pulling them in all directions without a reason or goal in sight. They need a comprehensive, actual study plan.

I purposely limited myself to 6 books (honorable mentions would have been State and Revolution and the Manifesto) as this is like a crash course to get you to an adequate level. If you read say a chapter every night (and for principles of communism just do it in one go it’s super short), you should finish everything in around a month.

This thread should also double as an ask your questions thread. But I feel there’s also a whole thing around asking questions; people want to know about the war in Ukraine, about US imperialism, about what’s happening in China or the DPRK… but while this is important, it’s parallel to your marxist studies. You must, alongside current events, learn about the fundamentals as well. Sometimes it seems less important because there’s major stuff happening and “theory” is seen as some dead wood, something you can pick up but was written a century ago and so has little relevance to our world today, but it’s the opposite. If you truly want to understand what’s happening today, you have to understand not only what happened in the past that led to today, but also the theory that was written down in the past and is still applicable.

So anyway, feel free to ask for clarification on stuff you don’t understand, not focusing solely on current events as I often see around the grad 🙆‍♀️

  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    lists include too many books and act more like repositories than actual reading lists or syllabus.

    This is so true and I’m guilty of doing it myself. Someone will ask for a suggestion and boom, here’s every book written on the topic.

    Great list. I don’t remember reading this work by Harman but I’ll give it a go. The rest, I can agree, are a great place to start and to build a solid foundation. As you say, we (should) never stop learning, so if someone gets the basics down with this list, they can choose a direction for further study and follow it.