The classic one is probably good for a well rounded revolutionary, but it’s kind of long for a beginner, and there’s also newer theory that’s not included, but is necessary for understanding todays material conditions. It feels weird sending baby leftists a long list of old dense texts. I’ve been sending people Principles of Communism, five essays on Philosophy, Blackshirts and the Reds, and the Red Deal. Is this a good idea? I feel like it’s important to inform modern MLs of socialist history, and also I should probably add some works on imperialism. Any thoughts?
I agree that study guides should be updated and that for a basic study guide that one is a bit long and could be overwhelming. I always like sending people Blackshirts and Reds early on. Everyone recommends Principles of Communism, and for me it was the second work I’ve read (after the Manifesto) but I don’t know how important it really is. It does answer some important questions but for me at least it wasn’t that much of an impactful or formative work at the start. Maybe I’m just misremembering but I would like to hear if anyone had similar experiences. I still do like Lenin’s Karl Marx and The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism as foundational works but I read those a bit later on so I don’t know how they are for someone just coming into Marxism. The Five Essays I do like but I’m not familiar with the Red Deal so I can’t comment on it. Also something like State and Revolution and What is to be done? are also very important IMO, but the latter needs a bit more context before jumping straight into it I think.
I think socialist history is in good part already covered through Marxist theory in general. Imperialism is definitely important but I don’t know which works I would recommend apart from Lenin’s. I don’t know what the best book about modern day imperialism is. I know there is work by Michael Hudson, Zak Cope, Samir Amin, Emmanuel Arghiri, etc. but I don’t know which I would recommend.
More and more I think Losurdo should be included fairly early on. His writings on a lot of topics are very clarifying, even for more advanced Marxists, and I think should be studied more widely. Maybe a good start would even be some articles like this one? Again, I guess it depends on where the person is coming from.
Principles of communism is just a good work for beginners to know “what is communism?” “What is capitalism?” “What is the proletariat?” And so on. I recently finished “what is to be done” and I think it is very important to avoid bowing to spontaneity, but there’s also a lot of very context specific things that are often dogmatically copypasted. I’ll have to read those works of lenin. Five essays on philosophy is a compilation by foreign languages press of ‘on practice,’ ‘on contradiction’ and some other important works of Mao. The red deal is a US specific work about decolonization.