What are some essential Marxist/Leftist books? Yes, I've already read the Communist Manifesto

That's the only book. To understand post-modern neo-marxists, read Understanding Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks. You can get a good education on objective (good) philosophers like Ayn Rand and the subjective (bad) post-modern philosophers like Immanuel Kant.

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“Marxism: Philosophy and Economics” by Thomas Sowell

nice b8 m8

>I said go to bed
Fuck off, tripfag.

You should read this.

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>blag boog of gommunism
kek

shit-tier historiography.
>Includes military deaths in WWII to pad out the numbers.

>Includes the Killing Fields in Cambodia by the US-backed Khmer Rouge as well as military deaths in the deposing of Pol Pot.

>Harvard retracted publication for its "remedial math errors"

Literally the only legitimate reason to read this book is to DESTROY leftists who aren't prepared or equipped to nitpick atrocity statistics from a wide range of political and historical situations in the 20th Century

very good at this I've got a few things and then to the gym now but I'll send to get ahold you of my life faggot

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>Literally the only legitimate reason to read this book is to DESTROY leftists who aren't prepared or equipped to nitpick atrocity statistics

And for that purpose it works well. The objections to this book is rather hilarious when it’s not from a purely scholarly perspective.

>Well ACTUALLY, the estimated numbers of innocent victims of mass culling under communist regimes is more like 70 million people, not 100 million! Touché brother, gommunism is the best, criticism refuted.

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You do realize only tankies defend the shitshow that was the soviet union yes? Communism is a wide ideology.

Marx - Value, Price, & Profit / Eighteenth Brumaire / Civil War in France / Capital
Lenin - State and Revolution
F. Perlman - The Reproduction of Daily Life
G. Dauve - Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement
C.L.R. James, G.L. Boggs, & C. Castoriadis - Facing Reality
G. Eley - Forging Democracy
Communist Research Cluster readers

if you're a commie then ussr is YOUR history. if you deny it then you're a fake commie.

Yes, no commie denies it, that is what I'm saying. It was a failure, it had some good elements, some bad and some horrible, nobody is going to deny all those dead people.

>As seen on Tucker Carlson Tonight

let me touch you

yes my good bro commies killed 7 trillion people and now we're the ghosts of those people

>he hasn't read the congresses
You're not even fit to be sent to Siberia with no mail.

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> the shitshow that was the soviet union
> the shitshow that was the people’s republic of China and tibet
> the shitshow that was Cambodia
> the shitshow that was bulgaria, romania and yugoslavia under tito

Oh I know. It was not ‘real gommunism’, right?

Your cognitive dissonance is kind of cute.

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I would read Lenin, Luxembourg, Kropotnik for various perspectives. Then just follow whichever one you liked the most, with authors that dissect and analyze them. Any start is a good one, there's a whole world of differences between communist thinkers, and the various strands of the ideology.

> Not in denial of the culling of millions of people
>Still follow the totalitarian ideology that carried it out

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Communism is not inherently authoritarian, it's not like like other authoritarian states with different basic ideologies committed mass murder right?

How is communism totalitarian when it wants to abolish the state?

>it's not like like other authoritarian states with different basic ideologies committed mass murder right?

Yeah, fascists suck too. Doesn’t excuse commie white-washing. It’s so easy for edgy western european teens to larp as revolutionaries and treat the commie bloodtrail as an abstractum. Meanwhile commie oppression and murder for some of us is part of our family history. Some of those millions of people are not just numbers to me, fgt.

>dude we are gonna live in a stateless utopia, we just need a transition period where we abolish the civic realm and the dictatorship of the vanguard elect colonialize every aspect of human life.

Inb4
>muh anarchism
Your tiny commune had a life span of a couple of months, and you killed all ‘problematic elements’ too.

>muh my revolution is not gonna be bloody like all those bad ones, it’s gonna be all lovey-dovey, with rainbows!

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>yugo under tito
was that really a shitshow?

It's not abstract, in my country everyone was impacted by those murders, it's not a race of who hates more authoritarian regimes.

So we should not strive to have a better society, just let the capital do its work and hope for the best? It doesn't seem to work. Should we just roll over and die because other tentatives of doing something didn't work? Should we continue to remain under exploitation?

>Your tiny commune had a life span of a couple of months, and you killed all ‘problematic elements’ too.
What about the zapatistas, what about various ZAD? Are those committing mass murder?

We should strive for a society that respects human dignity. Humans are faulty, fragile creatures and striving for perfection leads to problems for the most part. It’s important to keep a civic/private realm of societal relations free from politization. Big capital has its problems, but collectivization is anti-life.

>what about the indians?
Lmao

Once you read some basic Marx (manifesto, wage labour and capital, critique of gotha program) you may either read das Kapital for full understanding of classical marxism or read Lenin (State and revolution, imperialism, what is to be done) for applications of marxism to our current state of capitalism development so ML proper.

How is it anti life when it wants to share the wealth between all people? Human dignity is not respected with a hierarchical society, not a free one.

>>what about the indians?
>Lmao
Oh I see now, how is your nice and comfy bubble going?
> Muh white ppl are the only societies that matter
> Yes please master, let me lick those boots a bit more
> Please, more liberalism, this time it'll work, I-I know it will!

Also for OP, don't read the Capital, it will just turn you away completely, it's a complex text. Read it only if you're really interested and committed, after other books.

>Muh white ppl are the only societies that matter
You deduced this from the fact that I used the word indians. Manage your butthurt, language-nazi.

There’s a distinction between a pragmatic defense for liberal democratic institutions and full blown ideological liberalism (which is just as idiotic as gommunism). Learn it. Your brainlet assumptions are on you.

Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = Coat = Sum of linen = ...
Guess the book

Explain then, how are indians not relevant.

What are you defending exactly, what institutions?

A hierarchical society where everyone lives according to his dharma is vastly more respectful of human dignity than your great levelling utopia project

I think this could be equated to wanting to purify the world of germs and you die because you have no gut biome.
The hierarchies are biological and arguably must exist.

Biologically, if one's weak, one should die. That respects the hierarchy, let the strong be and nobody else.

>this level of soibrain

Yeah, whatever dude.

Why won't you respond mate, the sjw got your tongue or what?

>leftist

If one is weak one should accept that and live accordingly, not try to bring others down to make yourself feel better.

t. a weak person

How many people on here still believe these threads are sincere?

I dig this strategy for getting attention though. that is to say, I appreciate it. There's no faster way to get not-a-robot to respond to you than to post a fake inquiry into Marxism on this board. I can imagine the fat af nerds that do it too. They probably really are, genuinely debilitatingly liberal, seething all the time in dad's basement, unable to figure out why they're witty tinder tag isn't enough of a mask to get a swipe from anything weighing less than 185 lbs. They've got no real friends, because their avid video game and comic book movie consumption can't make them interesting for themselves, beyond their opinions on that media, so they come here and prick the Yea Forums nerve in the easiest way possible, on the easiest board to do it.

It's not a new tactic though, it's existed on the boards since before /pol/, but even the /pol/acks have caught on to the scam now. I'm kind of embarrassed for you, Yea Forums.

As always, sage goes in all fields, but I feel the mods should start banning people for these broad, bald "X about Marxism" threads, cuz it's just the same thing over and over again.

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t. 400 lbs monster chugging nerd
get into that gas chamber

Read Marx for interest and to be informed, especially Kapital, but become a big brained centrist in practice.

Bruh, it’s the middle of the day, am at work and giving a talk for 60+ people later. I have better things to do than spell everything out for some leftist college kid who does not understand what the minimal definition of liberal democracy is and wants to paint me a racist because I don’t think a small autonomous tribal community in rural Mexico matters in a big picture discussion of historical communist oppression. Only responding cause I’m on lunch break.

> Too important to argue on the mongolian cartoons forum
> I'm a big boy, I WORK and TALK, now shoo with your non Free non Liberal ideas.
You painted yourself as a racist, I give you examples of succesful anarchist and communist spaces, you go
> Uh-huh sweetie, that doesn't count
> Rural? More like useless

>+70 million genocide
>b-but what about those couple o thousands mexicans in da woods !
>those few indians with bombs and kalashnikovs don’t change much
>not an ideological liberal, but having a civic society is generally nice compared to the alternatives
>MUST BE A BRAINWASHED LIBERAL, FUCKING BOOTLICKER, I WANT BLOOD, THE PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME ARE LE EVIL, REEE

last reply from the loo: I have a life and stuff to do, which means I can’t spit shit on the chan all day. The fact that you take it to mean I’m somehow elevated above you says everything about you, not me, slave moralist.

Damn you're seething now. What makes you angry mate? Those damn commies and their ideology, how dare they even respond.
You have no life, you're here. Use some more random words, it'll make you seem smarter. Meanwhile you're literally shitposting. Where's the talk, I wanna know more.

OP didn’t ask about the Soviet Union. You’re the one with cognition troubles

No, Tito and Yugoslavia were based as all hell

Not as much as peak chad Sankara

The only essential works is everything by Marx and Engels. Then you can read other socialist theorists/philosophers who use their work like Lenin, Lukacs, Luxemburg, Adorno.

>muh gorillions

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This is a stretch.

the authors of the black book of communism literally admit to taking the highest estimations and they include natural disasters and anyone that died under a communist state in their numbers.
btw before communist china it was typical and normal for a natural disaster to wipe 5-25% of the population and that was the case until communists built the infrastructures to prevent that

>Based Yugoslavia giving all of their educated workforce to go work in Germany because there were no jobs in Yugoslavia
Yes! BASED!

Back to /sffg/, faggot

The narrative just doesn't work. A lot of the arguments there are extrinsic and not explicitly tied directly to practiced ideology and policy. "Global Poverty" killing -18 million EVERY YEAR" sounds damning, but it also sounds arbitrary relative to the critique.
Why not just blame all accidental deaths or suicides on Capitalism by including that statistic on the list? Isn't that a failure of it as well? I'm sure the devout Marxist would wholeheartedly agree, but it probably wont pass mustere with the average person whom you're trying to influence.
In essence, this just reaffirms Marxist theology to current believers.

I'm not the biggest fan of captialism, but I don't think this tu quoque approach of critique is effective.
It looks like a petty attempt to deflect from the historic failures and perhaps intrinsic failures of applied Marxism.

The State and Revolution by Lenin

Creep

Under socialism there was lack of many things, but never a lack of jobs. Lack of jobs is more or less endemic to capitalism.

What are the historic failures? The only truly bad revolution was the Khmer Rouge, and the Vietnamese socialists did everything in their power to stop them.

None comrade. There were no historic failures. It was perfect.
Only misunderstandings and happy accidents.

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What accidents? Russia had famines more frequently under the Tsarists than they did under the USSR. If everything that happened in the USSR can be attributed to socialism then we must apply it in both ways; they went from an agrarian peasant society to the 2nd largest superpower in the world.

You can say that it was not socialism that caused it to be so prosperous, but then you must likewise stop attributing all of the negatives to socialism. Similar to how when capitalist countries commit atrocities we blame it on totalitarianism and militarism not capitalism.

>The German Ideology, Chapter I
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01.htm
>Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm
>Comments on James Mill, Éléments D’économie Politique
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/
>Wage Labour and Capital
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
>Capital, Volume I
libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=3A7C252A6E89CC23A1EBC955B6E22FFA
>The ABC of Communism
marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/
>Marking out the Foundations
international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/46Ground.htm
>Why Russia Isn't Socialist
sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html

>tibet
why do people give a flying fuck about this? it's not like buddhists are pacifists or something, they have their own issues...

Most measures that ended up reducing famines, increasing education levels, improving infrastructure and so on were started before the revolution, but sure let's pretend nothing happened in Russia between 1850 and the revolution.

Right, so the famines had nothing to do with the socialism and neither did the measures implemented to stop famines. That was my whole point. If you're going to blame socialism for the bad bits, you have to credit socialism for the good bits. If you're going to say that socialism is responsible for the famines, you have to simultaneously say that socialism reduced the famines. Then you are left with a contradiction.

>500 years of slavery only been a country since 1776

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please read about the russian civil war, and the aftermath. Lenin is not a saint, and he is directly responsible for what happens in russia for the next 70ish years.
>b-buh that was not real socialism
I know everyone seems to misinterpret what Marx meant.

The bad bits about socialism is shit like gulag and a corrupt secretive party controlling everything

Nice assertions. Tell me what was so wrong with the USSR that (1) arose from socialism and (2) was not inevitable even under a non-socialist system.

Russia was having famines long before the Revolution.

Start with this one, should cure you brain cancer.

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Okay so we can say capitalism is bad because of the Italian Fascists and the Nazis

The book to read if you want a GDP per capita of 600,000 but a poverty rate of 95%

Maybe not start, but he should definitely read it at some point to experience first-hand the level of mental retardation of vulgar economists.
"On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its 'great intellects'."

Your argument with that other user is pointless, but you accidentally posted something that is almost correct, just with the words out of order. Here's the fixed version:
>Okay so we can say Italian Fascists and the Nazis are (were--existed and ruled) because capitalism is bad

Imperial Russia never suffered a famine the likes of which became almost routine after the revolution, also Imperial Russia did not ever have as many political prisoners, and executions as post revolution Russia, not even close. Even at the height of pre revolution craziness, with attempts on Nicholass the 2nds family and himself, where the imperial prisons overflowing with political prisoners. I think in the years of his reign there were only a few dozen political prisoners or those exiled for being political enemies (including your beloved Lenin). It was Imperial Russian law that dictated the those in exile had to be supported by the state as being exiled they where not allowed to work, so this means that your beloved Lenin, while in exile, writing his various texts, was being paid to do so by the Imperial Russian state.
Those historical famines were not brought on by removing entire villages of farmers into camps to allow the soviets to create collective farms for one. Ever hear of the Kulaks? Started with Lenin.
The soviets measured their system within the confines of the historical precedence of their system, meaning, crops yields where not compared to yields of pre revolution, manufacturing yields where not compared to pre revolution, deaths, etc..
They based everything on %, without ever showing where the % came from in real data, much like the progressives do today. So with that in mind, you are correct, because of the lack of real data supplied by the soviets there is no telling if the consequences of the revolution where a product of communism, or if it was going to happen anyway, but seeing how the conditions eventually lead to the collapse of the system in less than 100yrs, I am in a much better position to base that on a failed ideology, than you are to claim otherwise.

Shut the fuck up butterfly. You have even admitted you have not read Marx.
You say the USSR was state capitalism yet you still defend them.
That's obviously disingenuous. When you post those numbers you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot. See pic related.

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This and anything else by Sowell

>all of these post-2016 trump worshipping ledditors posting their conservative schlop

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You wont understand Marx, you have to read others interpetations of him, if ever anyone could understand what he intended then we will finally get our utopia.

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Nationatist capitalism and globalist capitalism are not the same, conflating them is disingenuous and wrong.

>slavery only happened in america

>socialist theorist/philosopher
>lenin
shiggy

Capitalism always devolves into globalism due to the search of more markets to make more profit.

>nationalist capitalism
>existing literally ever

That's the problem. You're only able to see nuance when you look at capitalist systems. When you look at socialist countries anything bad they do must be attributed to socialism. You have no ability to see nuance when dealing with the other side. Like this user () citing dekulakization as one of the faults of socialism, but I would bet my bottom dollar that he would never cite the executions of the monarchs and the re-appropriation of noble land in the French Revolution as a fault of capitalism. Of course violent things have to happen when you're doing a revolution; it's almost tautological! Capitalism also did violent things in the French Revolution, and guess what? They were justified and necessary to throw off feudal oppression.

The only other criticisms left in are (1) famines were more intense and routine under socialism and (2) political prisoners and executions were more frequent and (3) the USSR fell

(1) is untrue. Everything I've read says famines were more common under the Tsarists. Of course the USSR was involved in a brutal war against Germany which increased famines but if you account for that then the Tsarists take the first on the famines.
(2) is obviously bad, but to assign this to socialism is akin to attributing the same phenomenon in Nazi Germany to capitalism
(3) I don't know why that happened, but I'll venture to say it's not as simple as "socialism bad"

Fact is, the USSR under socialism turned from a poverty-stricken agrarian society into a world superpower.

I’ve also admitted to not being a Marxist.
There are aspects of the USSR worthy of some praise. Plenty to criticize as well.

>Leftist
>Not a Marxist
Either confirmed teen or burger that doesn't realise how hard liberal individualism has rotten their brain.

As a liberal this goes against my preconceived talking points, and hence I conclude that your historical analysis is false.

based retard

>There are aspects of the USSR worthy of some praise
Please enlighten us

other than winning world war 2, turning an agricultural country into an industrial one in few years, inventing a lot of new technology, etc. holding up for almost a century against the strongest country on the world that controls everything on the globe is alone pretty worthy of praise.

Not to mention beating the US to space, developing nuclear missiles all while dealing with the destruction both world wars inflicted on the country.

An entire thread filled with tripfagging commies and genocide apologist. I thought for a second I was on /pol/.

>developing nuclear missiles
don't forget to mention that they only did so through espionage and stealing research from the US, and their testing sites lead to deformities to many innocent civilians.

the meme literally calls out american specifically dumbass. That's the criticism.

>Includes the death tolls of war

People wage war no matter what fucking ideology the use to exchange currency. You can just attribute that death toll to humanity in general.

And in a war between capitalists and communists, attributing all of the death toll to capitalists only is disingenuous. Commies are just dishonest fucks.

OPeration paper clip. The US stole scientists from Germany to build their nukes.

Chernobyl was also the fault of socialism? Lmao.

Titoslavia was an absolute turd of a state, kys.

communism is a Saturn cult

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why are there so many communist millionaires? especially ones that live in the same city as bums?
>jesus was the first communist
okay, then why haven't they donated all their belongings? to the poor, or at least given them something better than TENTS to live in?
communists talk it up, but they don't do squat to help people. They just want taxpayers to give them money to "fix the problem", but they never fix it because then the wellspring would dry up.

>The US stole scientists from Germany to build their nukes.
Whataboutism and also not accurate.
Einstein traveled to the US when Hitler came to power and just decided to not return because he had Jewish heritage. Julius Oppenheimer who was the main contributor to the atomic and he was born in New York. But regardless you were praising the Soviet Union for developing nukes, but the point is they didn't do that at all, they stole the research. Going "B-b-b-b-but the US didn't do it EITHER" is just deflecting from your initial point being wrong. No one brought up the US but you.

>Chernobyl was also the fault of socialism? Lmao.
No you retard, the testing sites of the nukes. Look up what all the testing did to populations in Kazakhstan. But I'm sure you'll use the usual deflections of nothing the soviet union did doesn't reflect communism but everything the US does reflects capitalism.

Capitalism is inherently globalist you fucking redditor

Ovid's Metamorphoses (Rolfe Humphries trans.)

The Four Ages

The Golden Age was first, a time that cherished
Of its own will, justice and right; no law,
No punishment, was called for; fearfulness
Was quite unknown, and the bronze tablets held
No legal threatening; no suppliant throng
Studied a judge’s face; there were no judges,
There did not need to be. Trees had not yet
Been cut and hollowed, to visit other shores.
Men were content at home, and had no towns
With moats and walls around them; and no trumpets
Blared out alarums; things like swords and helmets
Had not been heard of. No one needed soldiers.
People were unaggressive, and unanxious;
The years went by in peace. And Earth, untroubled,
Unharried by hoe or plowshare, brought forth all
That men had need for, and those men were happy
Gathering berries from the mountainsides,
Cherries, or blackcaps, and the edible acorns.
Spring was forever, with a west wind blowing
Softly across the flowers no man had planted,
And Earth, unplowed, brought forth rich grain; the field,
Unfallowed, whitened with wheat, and there were rivers
Of milk, and rivers of honey, and golden nectar
Dripped from the dark-green oak-trees.