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 🙆♀️
I’m currently reading “Counterrevolution and Revolt”, and there are a few interesting points regarding your list.
The modern working class is not composed mainly out of factory workers and other producers of material goods. The vocabulary needs to be adapted to be approachable, and the concepts relatable. Otherwise you either get an intellectual “elite” using specialised terms to quickly exchange ideas, or a circlejerk where everyone is repeating stuff like “seize the means of production”. In either case the message wasn’t received by the group it should have.
Another important point is that the Russian texts don’t have much relevance to modern workers. We’re not starving, oppressed, and fighting for survival. Capitalism has had decades to learn how to keep the working population docile. It might be a better idea to use texts that deal with modern forms of capitalism because they’re more likely to successfully introduce these topics to non- academic beginners.
If I remember correctly, he also had a similar point about Marx and how the economy and capitalism in the 70s (when the book was written) were completely different to what Marx was writing about. My take is that if you give someone a difficult book, written about a difficult topic like economy, and on top of that it’s written about a system that’s not the one you’re living in, they’re most likely not going to finish it.
That’s from the perspective of spreading the idea of a revolution to common people. If the goal was to create a list for academics to begin their revolutionary education, I’d add a note about some TLDR of German idealism for the more adventurous.