I know every Marxist space has their reading list of essentials, and I’ve read some of those, but I started on a completely different path. The first theory book I read a Gaddafi’s Green Book because I was reading people on Quora praising his achievements. It was decent especially the second part, sort of “libertarian socialist” in a preferable way. I was definitely lacking some of the cultural context for the family and political structure, but overall not a bad book, but not the normalest intro book. The second I read of Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxembourg, on the Deprogram’s recommendation, which was valuable, but again not the most orthodox. I think the third theory book I read was Imperialism by Lenin (I got a paperback for christmas), which I seemed to lack some context for and it was very information dense, but I love his writing style and dunks on Kautsky. A good introduction for imperialism.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

  • @CannotSleep420
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    1110 months ago

    I tried diving straight into Capital without having read any theory before. I didn’t make it far.

  • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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    fedilink
    910 months ago

    The first theory book I’ve read was the ABC of communism by noone else but bukharin 💀

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    510 months ago

    I skipped the manifesto and a lot of key works and jumped straight to Stalin. Basically I was the rare Bernie bro that thought Stalin was cool(shoutout to my Babushka for dispelling capitalist propaganda from a young age) bc my grandma lmk that the Stalin killed gorillion was A.) untrue, B.) those that were killed were Fascists (same ones that made my Grandma flee her village to go to Leningrad) and C.) tho many were killed, many many more had their lives improved in many ways. This isn’t to say that she didn’t have many many complaints that led her to travel around the world before reaching the US. Basically long story short, I had this background and someone on some USLeft Bernie supporting sub (which isn’t bad in and of itself) was like “idk I don’t like Anarchism, but I could support their goals overall. They’re a way better alternative to Stalin and dictatorships.” Then I sorta responded kinda calm and it devolved to where they shit-talked Stalin a lot and I said that he sorta disproved anarchists by defeating the Nazis in WW2 which anarchists couldn’t have done. Then they mentioned other stuff about how anarchists make more sense logically. That’s how I got introduced to theory, I read Anarchism or Socialism by Stalin to win an argument but by then I think they stopped responding or something and I stopped caring bc Stalin was so interesting and simple at writing complex theory and nuance topics that I just continued reading Stalin, then Marx, took me a while to read Lenin bc I didn’t like his writing style compared to Stalin, which is kinda childish but still, I have my preferences

  • @KommandoGZD
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    510 months ago

    First real introduction was probably wikipedia tbh, because back then there wasn’t an actual political Youtube (in Germany at least) and I didn’t know about eg reddit. I definitely remember learning the distinction between private and personal property from wiki, because I immediately used it in discussions about politics in school classes lol

    • QueerCommieOP
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      610 months ago

      Nice, that reminds me of when I was shocked by google repeatedly telling me “the goal of socialism is communism” bc I was a succdem at the time. What was the first actual book or pamphlet you read?

  • commiespammer
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    410 months ago

    Well this is embarrassing, but the only theory I’ve ever read is the manifesto in Chinese.