I was surprised that my dad sent me one of his speech about socialism. I don’t know why but he’s getting popular on the mainstream or at least on youtube shorts. Never read his books and I’m kinda skeptical about him.
I was surprised that my dad sent me one of his speech about socialism. I don’t know why but he’s getting popular on the mainstream or at least on youtube shorts. Never read his books and I’m kinda skeptical about him.
He’s pretty good when it comes to spreading the message. I used to watch his monthly “economic updates” and he was well-informed, entertaining and a decent analyst. I think he can be very convincing to the average non-communist Westerner. He’s been pushing the idea of creating worker co-ops a lot, and his organization is pretty good at offering help to unionize as far as I can tell.
He gets criticism from communists because:
One of his main talking points is that AES (Soviet Union, China, etc) are not really socialism/communism and are instead state capitalist. According to him, it wasn’t for lack of trying, but because their economic, political and diplomatic issues were so extreme after their revolutions, that they had to stop the transition to stabilize, but never restarted again. As far as I can tell, he still supports their existence, and maybe I can see his reasoning, but it’s a vast oversimplification and very close to revisionism (if not there already). His support for China has grown a lot in more recent years, as he sees that the their economic model is similar to the one he espouses.
Similar to above, his books receive criticism that they misrepresent with multiple errors how AES economic systems worked/work. His own proposals, when written in detail and a more academic way, seem to rile people up about his perceived misunderstandings.
His constant push for an anarchosyndicalist economic model might harm the perception of future Marxists towards ML.
I haven’t listened to him much in recent years, but I honestly find some of this criticism to be a bit harsh. I think at least to some degree it is a part of his strategy (as he occasionally brings up the point indirectly), in that he won’t be listened to by the average American/West European if he starts outright praising the Communist Manifesto, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc etc.
His important contribution is how many people he’s converted to leftists over the years. Whether they end up being anarchists, anarchosyndicalist, social democrats, democratic socialists, or whatever else is immaterial, as they usually trickle into Marxism-Leninism over time (at least judging from my experience lurking in online communities connected to him for a while, sometime ago). I consider him one of the currently best stepping stones towards Marxism.
Who is the good readable or to be listened for a let’s say expert? I’d like to hear your recommendations
Top of my head, (apart from those already mentioned):
Michael Parenti (search books and youtube lectures including Blackshirts and Reds, Sword and the Dollar, Assasination of Julius Caesar)
Hakim: https://youtube.com/@YaBoiHakim/videos
Domenico Losurdo books (including Class Struggles, Liberalism a counter history, Hegel and Freedom of the Moderns)
Redsails crew (Frome, Malone and Day) redsails.org and look up their twitter handles (Eg: https://redsails.org/why-marxism/ , https://redsails.org/concessions/ , https://redsails.org/tankies/ , https://redsails.org/capital-v1-summary/)
bidetmarxman on twitter
Luna Oi (youtube)
Vijay Prashad (various youtube videos and books)
Kyle Ferrana: Why the world needs China (also has twitter handle) - if you could only pick one thing on this list and new to socialism/marxism then read this book (the first part of the book actually includes a condensed world history of socialism including trials and tribulations, it is an excellent intro for the uninitiated, and gives you a good initial toolkit on geopolitics)
(Use xcancel for twitter if needed)
I also concur that Richard Wolff is an excellent intro for those new to marxism. I would, however, then start reading up on dialectical materialism and Domenico Losurdo’s works.
Ben Norton. He gets it right where both Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson have certain glaring weak points. The reason for this is pretty obvious: he has way more direct first hand experience of global south socialism (first in Latin America and now in China) than they do.
(And also because Hudson is a bit of a Trotskyist…)
Edit: And of course there’s Radhika Desai, i’m glad another response mentioned her, i almost forgot. You also have Vijay Prashad who is very good at communicating to “normies” but he doesn’t go as much in depth as i would personally like.
But just because i think some are better than others doesn’t mean there isn’t something of value to be gained from listening to all of them. Wolff is a very good communicator when it comes to the basics, and Hudson has some very unique economic insights at times.