where do you stand on the socialist spectrum? i’ll start: my socialist views are a fusion of market socialism, welfarism, georgism and left-libertarianism - i took the leftvalues quiz (as shown in the photo attached in this post), and i got “centrist marxism”. you DON’T have to take the quiz though.

EDIT: i just added the link

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 hour ago

    That’s awesome!

    Harman’s How Marxism Works, outside of the weird misogyny and Trotskyist parts, is legitimately a good place to start. It’s clear and concise.

    You’ve nailed the 3 core areas, those being dialectical materialism, the law of value, and class struggle. Dialectical materialism applied to history becomes historical materialism, and broadly ties to class struggle, which you correctly point out as the driving force behind the progression of historical modes of production.

    Class struggle also informs class ideology, ie the petite bourgeoisie tends to go for more individualist ideologies while the proletariat understands the importance of collectivization, because how we live and produce informs how we understand the world. Mao’s On Practice & On Contradiction is probably the single best pair of shorter essays on driving this home and developing it.

    If I may make a suggestion, skip What is to be Done? for now. That’s more of an article talking about strategy, and while useful, isn’t very important for grasping the basis of Marxism. I’d say Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism and The State and Revolution are both more immediately important, but before them I would suggest more than any other single work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (or better yet, Anti-Dühring). This right here is what will dramatically expand upon and tie together everything you’ve learned thus far.

    Capital can honestly be postponed for quite a while, I consider it critical but quite advanced. Excellent choice with Fanon though, The Wretched of the Earth is a banger.

    As for the figures I’m assuming you’re referring to, I highly recommend Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend. Stalin wasn’t a saint, and this book doesn’t make him out to be one, it tries to correctly separate the “black legend” from the man in reality and place him in his correct historical context, using only western, anti-communist sources. Sadly I don’t know of a book of a similar caliber for Mao, but I also find Mao isn’t as heavily demonized as Stalin is. The closest is Nia Frome’s short essay “Tankies.”

    Anna Louise Strong’s works, such as This Soviet World, are excellent ways to expand your knowledge of what the USSR was actually like from someone on the ground reporting on it. Also beloved by me are Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds and the “Yellow Parenti” speech.

    And thanks for the kind words on the reading guide!