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Pat Sloan has a book called "Soviet Democracy" which talks about how unions and managers functioned in the 30's in the USSR, should offer a good model to help imagine what that could look like going further.

Paperback/Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1092297391/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_tYMUCbD9FD8BD

Free scanned PDF of the original text: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.261348

It's important to remember that large parts of the USSR were absolutely ravaged by the Second World War, and the economy was in shambles, a consequence of the war which the United States avoided. This certainly contributed to food shortages, which were likely compounded by the USSR's relative isolation on the global stage compared to NATO, which entered the Cold War with the economic backing of the United States. If you were, in fact, referring to the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, it is extremely likely that it was caused by poor crop yields, a slow recognition of the potential for famine, and landowner "scorched earth" retaliations to collectivization. I usually recommend listening to this on that subject.

Here is an informative article that touches on Cuban wages.

Cubans make around twenty dollars a month. I believe salary depends on profession, correct me if I'm wrong. Skilled professions earn slightly more. It sounds low, but Cubans only have several dollars in bills, because housing, healthcare, food, electricity, water, education, etc, are public services and virtually "free".

Number one in this list helps explain also why it is misleading to quote Cuban salaries in dollars. Cost of living is much, much lower.

In full communism (mostly a fully automated industry/menial labor with abundance of resources) you would just get what you want and need within reason. The specifics of how communist society can be set up is up to those at the time. You would just go to the "store" and grab the laptop you like. You would be limited to the vast array of options that you and society has decided to create for everyone. In not full communism, you'd be paid based of the quality and quantity of labor you do. So then you'd just buy one of the many kinds we as a society decided to create. There might be a bunch of options, or just a few if they're just the most optimally created laptop. Who knows. In full communism, I imagine that at the store, you grab what you want within reason (if we need an upper limit, so be it, but I doubt it). When you get things, we would keep track of what you buy, just like checking out at the grocery store, and feed that information directly into the resources database in order to keep track of supply and demand to see where to allocate labor/resources in society (so that its not like we have to vote/decide on everything to where we want to allocate labor/resources). https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth. Along with a mostly decentralized mix of democracy and republic aspects to a lateral, rather than hierarchal administration/government, an economy could be set up as described in the later half of that link I put above.

Communism isnt about making sure everyone has the same laptop, it's about making sure everyone has what they need and want, within reason, if they contribute what they can to society.

hi there

the communist manifesto was originally written to be short, quick, to the point, and most importantly, understandable and digestible to the 19th century proletariat for which it was written for. it doesn't really serve that purpose today, since it's written in language and dialect from over a hundred and fifty years ago, which can be a little confusing for your modern day worker.

there is however a book out now, available for free online to download (or you can buy a physical copy if you want to support the author), that i basically view as the modern day communist manifesto. it's called "Capitalism Must Die!" by Stephanie McMillan.

marxism is a critique of capitalism. nowhere in marxism does marx describe how communism will be reached, how communism will function, how it will look, etc -- marx just asserts that its the stage after capitalism. but again, its important to make that distinction -- marxism is not an ideology that defines how communism will function, it is an ideology that functions as a critique of capitalism.

that is exactly what the book Capitalism Must Die! does. it explains the critique of capitalism. but it does it in a way that's much easier to understand, using more modern language, and it has quite a few pictures and diagrams to help your understanding. it's a fantastic introduction to marxism and communism.

if you choose to read the online version rather than buying a physical copy (understandable of course) do note that you can skip the entire foreword from the publisher, as in physical print it has since been moved to the back of the book since it's a little wordier and complex than the actual book itself.

Before World Wars there existed strong Capitalist [U.S.A, Britain, France] and Feudal Monarchic powers [Germany, Japan, Austria - Hungary]. However, after World Wars, only U.S.A remained "Strong enough" to design the new world order.

The Marshall plan was devised by American Business Leader and Historian. Which this objective in mind -

"We must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

As Communism would spread, more and more nations would prevent U.S from "investing" in those nations hence exploiting the resources and cheap labor. This would have eventually chocked Capitalism and without an ability to "Grow", it would have collapsed.

Hence it is in the interest of Capitalist nations to destroy Socialist movements so Capitalism can survive.

You can read How the world works by Noam Chomsky for more details.

Prehistoric human societies were not like those of other mammals, or even other primates. Relatively recent anthropological work has shown that early humans lived in egalitarian communities (this study in particular dealt with sexual equality, but has information about more general social equality as well).

Even if there is some "immutable human nature" based on whatever our "natural state" is (a proposition I don't see as all that probable), it seems to me that it would be egalitarian and cooperative, not hierarchical and competitive.

well, the US ambassador in Brazil is the same that was in Paraguay when happened a coup there. https://theintercept.com/2016/05/11/brazils-democracy-to-suffer-grievous-blow-today-as-unelectable-corrupt-neoliberal-is-installed/

> LibriVox

Unfortunately not, librivox doesn't allow works not re-copyrighted in the US. They only have 1 book by Lenin on there rn.

The solution is probably finding the correct introductory texts. 'Wage Labour and Capital' should be a good read as it's aimed at the layman, so it explains all the terms used.

Personally I make heavy use of this superb dictionary app when reading old texts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=livio.pack.lang.en_US

Theres also this encyclopaedia for Marxist terms https://www.marxists.org/glossary/index.htm

I think this might help, it's called Socialism Betrayed. Here is the link to the Amazon book, but you can likely find a free PDF.

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719

its not perfect because they can't really give away their precise locations, but this is generally where they operate

Here are some by Marx. Wage Labor and Capital and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific aren't too advanced. Unfortunately, these are the only ones I know of. Perhaps they could watch some youtube videos.

Marginalism contains a theory of distribution called marginal productivity theory, which is based on supply and demand of "factors" (land, labor, and capital) which is fundamentally different from and in complete conflict with classical and Marxian theories of distribution based on the redistribution of a social surplus among classes. See this Palgrave Dictionary of Economics entry and this collection of essays.

I might be biased but the absolute best biography about Marx is by José Paulo Netto and isn't available in English. If by any chance you can read Portuguese then it's absolutely worth it (Karl Marx, uma biografia, you might want to look for it somewhere else other than Amazon though) but if not then u/StanEngels's suggestion is also very, very good

Essential viewing. Every time I watch this film, I can't help but sympathize with the WU. That said, Todd Gitlin, a member of the new left at the time, has written a poignant analysis/criticism of the WU, focusing specifically on their treatment in mainstream media: The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left.

The totalitarian model of looking at the Soviet Union is not given serious consideration in academia any longer.

See this paper, The Question of the Perpetrator in Soviet History by Lynne Viola.

It should be a good start, if you want more details let me know.

I'm not a big fan of reading either. I want the knowledge, but the medium is so time consuming! As a result I've read a total of 1 fiction book in the last 12 years (when high school stopped forcing me).

The way I do it (not to say it will work for everyone) is to turn it into part of my daily routine. Just like I have to get myself out of bed, brush my teeth and cook my food, I have to read at least 20 pages of my book.

Sometimes I'll miss a day, but if I miss too many and it falls out of my routine then it just stops happening altogether until I force myself back into it, so I try to avoid that. Ultimately 20 pages doesn't take that long and you'll find that you get through books at a pretty good pace.

You could go even faster using a speed reading app (which works like this), but personally I find it difficult to follow the more complex ideas using these, so only use it sometimes on easier texts.

As the other poster suggested, the alternative is audiobooks. Librivox has a free library, although its collection of socialist literature is limited. Audible and other pay sites will probably have better collections if you don't mind spending the cash.

However, I will say that, like the speed reader app, I find it all but impossible to follow complex ideas in audio format. Personally I need that ability to go back and spend some time unpacking the important sentences. It works well for history though.

Farms were structured into producer cooperatives, where the farmers would engage in profit sharing and sell their surplus to the state. Besides that, I don't know much about the farm structure.

In the industry, workers were managed by managers, but these managers were accountable to the workers and to various committees that represented workers through worker councils and trade unions. Read this and this for an in depth understanding of the role workers had and how they expressed their class power at a grassroots level.

Edit: Added another source

GDH Cole's History of Socialist Thought is a masterful work, if you are in high school it might be a bit much however, and a lot of the assumed background in European history would make it difficult.

Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers has a chapter dedicated to the early socialists pre-Marx. It also would give you a good understanding of the economists that came before Marx, whom he as his starting point within his own work.

Socialism: Scientific and Utopian by Engels gives an account of how he saw his and Marx's project in relation to earlier socialists.

J.S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848) often includes a chapter on contemporary socialists, and would probably count as an excellent primary source.

The French Revolution was important for getting Socialists/Communists on the map so that would also be an important thing to research.

News and Comment Podcasts:

By Any Means Necessary with Eugene Puryear

Loud and Clear with Brian Becker

Black Agenda Radio

Voices with Vision from WPFW

Sojourner Truth Radio, especially the Friday forums

Intercepted from The Intercept is OK

Also of interest:

Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey

Economic Update with Richard Wolff

Audiobooks on Audible:

Castro's autobiography

The Verso Revolutions series, specifically Mao, Ho, Castro, Trotsky ones

Mao Zedong and China in the 20th Century World

Black Against Empire about the BPP

Documentaries and stuff on youtube:

Fidel Castro The Untold Story

Semantics the Rise and Fall of Muammar Gaddafi

ANY Michael Parenti talk, seriously

Thomas Sankara Documentary

The Shock Doctrine

Socialism: Scientific and Utopian by Engels gives an account of how he saw his and Marx's project in relation to earlier socialists.

J.S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848) often includes a chapter on contemporary socialists, and would probably count as an excellent primary source.

The French Revolution was important for getting Socialists/Communists on the map so that would also be an important thing to research.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/do-publicly-owned-planned-economies-work/

Besides external forces, an economy set up as described in this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth wouldn't fail. The poor leadership like in the Soviet Union could be avoided if we have a more lateral, polycentric economy and governing structure with checks and balances, a democratic (any mix of democracy and republic we decide) process in place, and all officials subject to immediate recall. I'd also advocate for a bill of rights of some sort, and other safeguards if the people want. We also wouldn't have to deal with trying to educate an entire peasant population and all the other bothersome things that the early USSR had to cope with.

The camps physically exist, they are not black sites or anything (it'd be hard to hide so big facilities anyway). This photo is taken at the opening of one such camp: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xinjiang_re-education_camps&oldid=898552998

The camps are the deterrent, the rest of the "native" population is simply harassed and controlled by other means: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/10/01/an-internment-camp-for-10-million-uyghurs

https://archive.org/details/FundamentalsOfPoliticalEconomy

An easy to read Maoist textbook. It handles major concepts from capital well and simply.

On the other hand, really Vol 1. is a treasure of world literature, I thought it was a beautifully constructed book. It really is worth it. The other two volumes are mainly patched together from unfinished manuscripts.

THE marxist theory on capitalist crisis is the law of the tendency of the profit rate to fall. There are other theories developed by marxists (underconsumption and profit squeeze), but Marx'es theory is the FRoP.

Marx also points out that even though there are variables that are opposing to this falling tendency they are unable to prevent the RoP from falling. (e.g. suppressing wages, productivity increase etc)

"it is disproven by capitalists posting ever increasing record profits". Care to present a chart like that? I have seen the world rate of profit several times in presentations the last 5 years and after 1960's the rate of profit has never recovered fully. Only partially through the creation of bubbles and never at the point it reached during the 60's. Not even close actually.

Investment is THE key variable for the functionality of the capitalist system. Now there is a debate between post-keynsians and marxists regarding what is the most important variable that defines investment (rate of profit or demand), but then it all comes down to a difference in two schools of thought.

There is an excellent paper by Stavros Mavroudeas discussing the different outlooks on the last capitalist crisis. It includes a neat categorisation that may help you: https://www.academia.edu/13905478/The_Greek_crisis_Causes_and_Alternative_Strategies

Robert Weil's "Is the Torch Passing?" was turned into a book and published in India. Difficult to find elsewhere, but available:

http://www.indulekha.com/is-the-torch-passing-resistance-and-revolution-in-china-and-india-non-fiction-robert-weil

http://www.bookdepository.com/Is-Torch-Passing-Resistance-Revolution-China-India-Robert-Weil/9789380677408

Take away the private possessions of the bourgeoisie, and along with it, their class.

liquidating their class is real easy if you see it that way. What is a factory owner without a factory? What is a capitalist without capital? What is a landlord without land?

You can see it with people during the latest economic crisis, when suddenly people who had fortunes no longer had those fortunes, and had to get jobs like everyone else to survive, to pay rent, to buy food. That is what liquidation of the bourgeoisie looks like in a very simple sense.

Should they attempt to reclaim what was once their property, it will be resisted by organized working class. Under socialism, under a socialist state, the law will assist the with protection of these property rights, by keeping the property public. Think about how mafia tries to extort or spread its tentacles into enterprises today - that is what bourgeoisie will be seen as under socialism.

Examples of organized worker resistance in recent times would be during the 2001 Argentinian economic recession, when factory workers seized the factories from the owners. The owners would use their tools - the judicial system, police, and even hired goons - to take their factories back. Organized workers successfully won their factories dozens of times over this period. Read about these struggles and victories in Sin patrón : stories from Argentina's worker-run factories : the Lavaca collective

I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History-ebook/dp/B004J4WNJE to get perspective on American history with conspiracy theories and other unique American cultural traits.

Dunno if Naomi Klein would consider herself a Marxist or even a communist but her recent works are specifically antagonistic toward capitalism and its impact on the environment (This Changes Everything) and foreign policy (The Shock Doctrine). She's definitely worth reading.

> How can a citizen be educated enough to voice concerns if they're not allowed to learn of other ideologies? On the flip side, how can a citizen truly appreciate communism without learning of capitalism and its inherent exploitative nature first?

The aim of capitalist ideology is never to show how exploitative capitalism is.

>Revisionism is always one of the greatest threats facing any society. But a supposedly democratic system should not be a afraid of an educated citizenry.

But it should be afraid of a mis-educated citizenry. The idea that Cuba should be allowing propaganda channels like Radio Free Europe or that the government should be printing out copies of Capitalism and Freedom reminds me of a liberal who, in all seriousness, voiced to me their opinion that the United States should have four parties - a liberal party, a communist party, a fascist party, and an conservative party.

It doesn't make any sense to permit capitalists to proliferate their propaganda simply to satisfy liberal ideas of "balance" and "freedom of speech", and you should especially be aware that the conflict between ideologies isn't just people deciding to purchase different world-views in the "marketplace of ideas" as if they were idle consumers comparing sofas in a furniture store. Ideological conflict is, and always has been the expression of the material conflict between classes with antagonistic economic interests. So the decision you have to make is this one: should we give voice to the capitalist class, in particular, the capitalist class whose radios and newspapers, whose television channels and candidates, will inevitably be bankrolled by American imperialism, simply because we want to appeal to bourgeois liberal democratic ideals?

for a more conservative/libertarian view of economics

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (not an economics book, but commonly referred to by libertarians and conservatives)

Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

For a more liberal view of economics,

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Yea, the full quote:

> "[T]he inequality of fortune . . . introduces among men a degree of authority and subordination which could not possibly exist before. It thereby introduces some degree of that civil government which is indispensably necessary for its own preservation . . . [and] to maintain and secure that authority and subordination. The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to support that order of things which can alone secure them in the possession of their own advantages. Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs . . . [T]he maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority. Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." [Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 5]

https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth

This is one way, there can still be some societal wide planning in this decentralized, more local and lateral form of government/economy. This will all be decided by those at the time though, I think it would look similar to this.

If we decide we want a place to hangout and drink alcohol, assuming we have other priorities like food, water, housing, etc in place, we could use a bar already made in capitalism, or build another one. Some people would work there as their job, or that job could be rotated among people in the area. We just gotta put a few resources towards this, then make sure we produce enough drinks and that's about it. This also doesn't have to be decided all at one central planning office, with computers/databases to track resources, it shouldn't be too tough. I imagine, in full communism, it could be set up something like in this. https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth (decentralized, still connected and some societal wide aspects though, very lateral, local structures of government/economy)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-a-game-of-musical-chairs-at-the-wall-street-casino-and-the-loser-is-you-2015-04-03

Here's an article explaining better than I could. Most traders don't make money. A correction would be the stock goes down, they lose some money, and you go bankrupt.

I like this comment. And it's fully compatible with Marxism.

For example, during the Spanish Civil War, it was the ultra-leftist leadership (some anarchists and POUM) which, in secret collaboration with Franco and Hitler, called for a "revolution" to destabilize the Spanish Republic due to its opposition to fascism. Recognizing such a policy was doomed to failure, the USSR supported the bourgeois Spanish Republic. Stalin characterized the Republic's cause as "the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive humanity." (p. 149) Spain fell to Franco's coup, due in large part to the above "revolutionary" policy opposed to that of the USSR.

In the above situation, it was correct to support a bourgeois government. Here's another quote, describing maybe less severe circumstances, to show the flexibility of Marxism recognizing the possibility, short of "a true workers uprising," to push boundaries within a bourgeois system:

>During the last few years events have compelled the anarcho-syndicalists to admit that the general strike is not the only means of revolutionary struggle of the working class. This idea has collapsed, as has also another anarchist theory—that the workers should abstain from the political struggle, from voting in elections. The actual result of this theory has been that many workers belonging to the trade unions vote for the bourgeois parties and thus strengthen the bourgeoisie. (p. 95)

The first chapter of John Smith's book is a very good overview and you don't need an understanding of Marxist economics to see the depravity of neoliberal global supply chains as shown in it. I have uploaded the first chapter here in case anyone wants to give it a go. Footnotes don't show as links because Github is cool. If you want to read the rest of it it's available on LIbrary Genesis.

Had there been separate lists for the Right and Left SRs, it is likely there would have been a small majority for the Left SRs and Bolsheviks combined. They would have simply endorsed their own programs, transferred power to the soviets, and that would have been the end of the constituent assembly. It's time had already passed, but that time had passed it by was a result of the October Revolution only a short time earlier.

Sergei Mstislavaskii wrote a report on the CA in his Five Days Which Transformed Russia that captures well the irrelevancy of the CA.

As to your central question, the elections were already well along, and it is likely that the Bolsheviks thought they had to be consistent and allow the CA to go forward because it would have directly contradicted what they had consistently advocated.

I wrote an undergraduate history paper on just this topic for a Soviet History Class many moons ago. I've posted it here on Scribd if anyone is interested.

It's just shy of 3,500 words. I don't have much time at the moment to synthesize it into a brief reddit comment, but if you ignore the "undergraduate-ness" of it, there are some interesting citations that lead to other historical sources - both Western and Marxist.

You might be interested in the documentary series Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis. He explores the rise of individualism and the fall of collectivism from post world war 2 to modern day, specifically in the United States and Britain and how individualism is used as a way to pacify the working class.

Fun fact, Grimes, aka Elon Musk's wife, made a TikTok saying how AI could bring communism, I tried to make a topic out of it, but it didn't work out very well.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/o4xvd6/what_is_grimes_talking_about_when_she_states_that/

You are very correct in saying that big data analysis and machine learning are vital in resource management and determining value under communism, the book The People's Republic of Walmart explores this concept rather well.

Just be mindful that I think you might be getting the problem communism wants to solve, because "a method of determining "cost and benefit" when making decisions of what projects to prioritize" is a way of taking power of the hands of people and putting into an AI.

Scarcity is not the problem communism wants to solve.

Cuba is the perfect example of a country who is able to provide an amazing social structure for health, education and safety without having to work these solutions.

No. The one I recommended is this one. The one you linked, I have that one too, but it is not really for beginners. It is over 600 pages and is a university school textbook, while the one I recommended it meant as an introductory book and is only 232 pages. One good thing about the big textbook tho is that the introductory book mainly covers capitalist political economy, such as Marx's Capital vol 1-3 and Lenin's theories on imperialism, but the big textbook goes into a lot of detail on socialist political economy, how economic planning and stuff actually works from the USSR's experience.

I am currently reading Paul Mattick's Marx and Keynes the Limits of the Mixed Economy. While Paul doesn't have a degree in economics, or a degree in anything for that matter, he does a good job conveying information while still using economic jargon. The second chapter looks at how value is perceived in a capitalist economy, and how value is perceived in a socialist, specifically the Soviet Union, economy. Amazon link to a physical copy as well

I would suggest purchasing "A Companion to Marx's Capital" by Professor David Harvey,

You can buy it from Amazon used for 14$ or see if your library has it- it helped me understand the book so much better

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1844673596/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_KIV.Bb88JDNK6

Well, he doesn't defend capitalists because in his mind they're the next best thing. Basically the whole point of the book is to praise merchants for being better economic arbiters than the gentry and their representatives in government because the former having more control over the economy results in greater productivity and thus a wealthier nation overall. Hence, The Wealth of Nations. I didn't notice any strain of care for a specific class of people, but it seems the whole project was done within the framework that the information is useful for a government wishing to increase the wealth of their nation.

Pre-Marxist economists (who were all better than modern bourgeois economists) devoloped the idea of utility, but conflated the idea of use-value and exchange value. This critique on the concept of utility is good because utility obfuscates the very important distinction between use-value and exchange value. Where Adam Smith tries magically to quantify utility into monetary units, Marx points out that the only quality that commodities actually share is that they are products of human labor, hence they have exchange value. Adam Smith approached this idea in The Wealth of Nations, but was likely constrained by the limits of non-dialectial logic.

David Harvey's are brilliant and really engaging, and his videos are good too. BUT if you want an even shorter one that covers p much anything, trying Anthony Brewer's (this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Marxs-Capital-Anthony-Brewer/dp/0521276764)

https://www.amazon.com/Nomads-Commissars-Revisited-Owen-Lattimore/dp/1258191563

You can find it on libgen. It's written from the perspective of the Soviet party line at the time so it lacks any concept of revisionism and is very critical on Choibalsan but it is still an excellent book.

I know they've spent alot of time in the past encouraging people to voteDemocrat, I don't think they ran their own presidential tickets in at least the past few cycles.

Historically when they were really big back in the 1920s-1960s, that's when feds started putting in plants. This is a great book on that topic: https://www.amazon.com/Threat-First-Magnitude-Counterintelligence-Revolutionary/dp/1910924709

Not sure how all there branches are these days but like any other group you'll find some better than others. It would be smart to attend some of their events if you can.

It also would be good to check out other groups too, I wouldn't say any perfect, we're all humans living in a white supremacist patriarchal capitalist hellscape so missteps and bad takes can happen. It's important to learn from mistakes and victories. So if there's other group in your area look into Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Freedom Road Socialist Org (FRSO), Party of Communists USA (PCUSA), Socialist Party USA, Freedom Socialists, Party of Labor - those are the few I know and probably have the largest size, though most don't actually share numbers but you can get a sense from online research the number of branches, etc.

Good luck on your search and hope you can find a political home! We need all the organized socialists that we can get here in the imperial core.

Actually, I found this book to be a great introduction: Introducing Marxism: A Graphic Guide. There is a free Kindle version (otherwise I would say try buying it from somewhere other than Amazon, cause they suuuuuuck). It's a comic book, but very accessible and an easy read.

Also, I found this textbook to be a great introduction to communist thought: Political Economy. It is a translation of a book published by the USSR in the 1950s, so there are some typos/odd phrases, but the content is good. Also worth keeping in mind that it presents the ideas as conclusions (rather than arguments, like Marx/Lenin/Mao/etc.). So it's more useful for understanding how the USSR understood communism at the time, and not so useful if you are looking to be convinced about why those conclusions are correct. Kind of like, when you read a biology textbook it explains the currently-accepted concepts, but doesn't walk you through the centuries of experiments/debates that led to those conclusions.

I think that reading primary sources is fantastic--and many of them are written in clear language (unlike a lot of philosophy, which can be somewhat inaccessible; looking at you, Hegel and Kant). But secondary resources are a good way to orient yourself as you dive into those primary texts.

Also, look at podcasts. I personally highly recommend Rev Left Radio and Red Menace. They are great. Just use discretion, and be wary of podcasters/youtubers who don't have a good base of knowledge. My general rule is to look for podcasts that discuss well-regarded Marxist works or thinkers.

Good luck!

https://www.moddb.com/mods/hearts-of-iron-4-historical-flag-mod/images/italy-preview

Don’t know about making it bigger but you might like the design of the communist Italy one, is noticeably Italian

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses has 9 courses on Marx and/or The Capital. I enjoy Raymond Geuss of Cambridge University's lecture style, though I don't agree with all his stuff.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth or https://libcom.org/files/CommonVoice3.pdf if you can't read the whole thing on Scribd.

Both Links lead to the same thing that I want you to read, "The 'Economic Calculation' controversy: unravelling of a myth" by Robin Cox. In the first half of his paper (its not really long so its not actually a book), he talks about how the criticism is based on questionable premises, and how it could be true for purely centrally planned economies. However, in the second half, he provides us with an explanation of how a polycentric economy would be able to efficiently allocate resources, and efficiently respond to supply and demand. If I'm not mistaken, I think Trotsky also argued against central planning due to its inflexibility. It's only 19 pages so its quick but very informative.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/215256501/The-Economic-Calculation-Controversy-Unravelling-of-a-Myth This is one way the economy could run (he talks about that later in the document). Any governing structure or administration of things we have can be decided however the people at the time want. Some sort of republic or democracy, mix of both maybe. Checks and balances, rights, etc. This government/administration would hopefully be more lateral and made up of local councils rather than a large central authority. There would obviously be a central component to some degree. Combine all this with technology with databases and computers for the economy and ways to communicate across the globe instantly, I don't see it being crazy hard to run.

There's a fundamental split here between more orthodox marxists and those who recognize a "labor aristocracy."

I would recommend this podcast episode, listen and try and fit an "accountant" into the structures of capital that Lenin talks about in "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism"

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yZWRtZW5hY2UubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M&ep=14&episode=ZTg5ZDEwYjRkNDBjNDYxNzk0NzMzMDYzYjE3NGFkODQ

>This is a serious educational subreddit. Come here with an open and inquisitive mind, and exercise humility.

What is pretentious is to abuse the terms of political-economy carelessly, but it is humiliated to delete the post. If you ignore his tangent on "class," I think Bertell Ollman's article "Why does the Emporer need the Yakuza" can serve you as a great introduction to sincere analysis and concepts in Marxism. It was republished as the last chapter of his "Dance of the Dialectic."

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacec5kqie7gsvfwtxbi4xqqa7rhrxydbzffm2as32kufqujp3x26rby

I recommend after that to read Mao's five influential essays and the 1844 manuscripts.

>You need to know that Nadezhda Sergeevna [Allilueva] had constant, very powerful, completely unbearable headaches. She often held her head in her hands and cried out: "My head! My head!" She often went to Germany, supposedly to her older brother who was working there. But really it was to consult German professors. And the evening before November 7 [1932], and on the day of the parade too, she also held her head in her hands – the pains were tormenting her again. The parades used to last 4 hours: from 8 to 12. Nadezhda Sergeevna and we stood in front of the entrance to the Mausoleum. Then she went off early, holding her head in her hands, and after the parade we went off to the dacha. That was how this terrible incident happened.

>The coffin with the body stood in the GUM building. There, about in the center, on the side of Red Square there is a niche, and in it a staircase to the second floor. There is a door, and behind it a room in which the coffin was set. Stalin literally sobbed. Vasilii hung on his neck the whole time and pleaded with him: "Papa, don't cry, don't cry!" Stalin bent down over the coffin and sobbed. (Artem Sergeev)

So according to Stalin's adopted son Artem Sergeev (raised in Stalin's household), Nadya (Stalin's second wife) was prone to unbearable migraines. The migraine started the day before the October Revolution anniversary parade and the volume(?) at the parade increased its severity. Maybe she thought the migraine had passed and it was safe to attend, but by the next morning Nadya shot herself. It was unrelated to anything Stalin did. Stalin did not remarry.

Don't listen to the other guy, the person to recommend a plate too full didn't try eating it all.

Read a reading of Capital if you actually care ahead of yourself about the political-economic critique. This is Otani's text: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzaced6le2h62mtyur45nevcqhn4ytlpn4iwoy3cyexzdh7dyatzi5dgo

For philosophy it's best that you start with Cornforth's 1953 text on idealism: https://redstarpublishers.org/cornforth1953.pdf And then read Mao's five influential essays: www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/mao/index.html

Start with learning marxist philosophy first, the political-economic critique cannot be understood without it. This community is a great resource if you're willing to ask questions or use the search function.

I believe the best source on this topic is an updated online version of a pamphlet originally called 'The Origins of Racism' but is now Racism & Capitalism

It's all you need for the theoretical side of this topic, but the updated online version is also useful for how it relates to recent events. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

EDIT: if any disagree with my above claim that it is the best source on the topic, please link me to better!

I recommend audiobook versions! https://librivox.org/ is one resource.

I find with difficult theory texts it's easy to get bogged down worrying about how you don't understand one part of one hard sentence or something. If it's being read aloud, it just keeps going, and I often realize the section makes more sense as the text goes on, or even that it wasn't important to understand that particular little bit.

What you read in the past is irrelevant, we're telling you what's true now.

>What are you pointing the blame at?

They are making a distinction between structural violence and violence as spectacle. Read this short book which is available online for free

https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Sideways-Reflections-Ideas-Small/dp/0312427182#:~:text=Violence%2C%20%C5%BDi%C5%BEek%20states%2C%20takes%20three,the%20others%2C%20raising%20complicated%20questions.

>Are you saying that hunger was going to happen regardless?

This is the same issue, you need to be able to distinguish between structural violence and violence as a disruption of equilibrium. This is the essence of developmental economics among other things and there is simply no way to discuss these issues without understanding it.

>Grover Furr

Just to expand on this a bit, Furr's work largely focuses on collecting what we know given the material on the Moscow Trials that has found its way out of the former Soviet archives over many decades, but he also debunks anti-communist myths. Long story short: Stalin/Beria were framed by Khrushchev and Serov (his head of KGB), there's zero evidence the Moscow Trials were a frame-up, and the Soviets were dissolved by those using the narrative that the opposite was factual, which has had an inestimable impact on historical materialism and the history of the world, particularly for the past 70 years. Those who like spy thrillers may enjoy reading him, beginning with The Murder of Sergei Kirov (2013) which is the event around which history was re-written in the 1950s.

Short version: https://espressostalinist.com/2011/11/15/grover-furrs-response-to-mike-elys-charges-against-beria/

But you should read Grover Furr's entire book, Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every Revelation of Stalin's (and Beria's) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Infamous Secret Speech to the 20th Party ... is Provably False

Short version: https://espressostalinist.com/2011/11/15/grover-furrs-response-to-mike-elys-charges-against-beria/

I haven't personally read it, and I believe he identifies as an Anarchist, but I hear very good things about the late Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism"

I'm not sure where to find a primary source, but the FAO says in their mandate that "there is sufficient capacity in the world to produce enough food to feed everyone adequately." I also saw this second hand source which says "the world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet."

Yes they have absolute control over those companies if they really needed to. They pushed alibaba back with the monopoly probe thing and tencent is monitored and controlled by them as well. Huawei is a big worker coop so yeah.https://www.huawei.com/en/facts/question-answer/who-owns-huawei

If you haven't read it already Reassessing the History of Soviet Workers: Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision Making by Robert W. Thurston is pretty good.

There was one available on libgen, so I've downloaded it and reuploaded it here. Hopefully that's the one you need ^^

This is a bit more advanced, https://www.amazon.com/Gramscis-Political-Thought-Consciousness-Revolutionary-ebook/dp/B08N8VTJGM/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=gramsci&qid=1634171523&sr=8-13 . Very affordable in Kindle format.

/u/marlax1g recommended this www.amazon.com/dp/1412810108/ bourgeois trash as a great introduction to the terms of political economy and the stories of liberal mythology. He also posted this /r/communism/comments/k47k8t/ textbook-style obfuscation of Capital that one might find easier than Capital.

But I recommend starting with Mao's five influential essays and the 1844 manuscripts.

Most of this information come from Khrushchev "secret speech" in which he defamed Stalin to get into Power after the XX Party congress. Willingly the Imperialist all over the world took his lies first hand and spread them even further.

I suggest you to read Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) “Crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th https://www.amazon.de/Khrushchev-Lied-Revelation-Khrushchevs-2011-01-01/dp/061544105X

There's this book about archaeology and Marxism

https://www.amazon.com/Marxs-Ghost-Archaeologists-Thomas-Patterson/dp/1859737013

But again, I think people are confused about what is being claimed. For example

>I’ve also heard that farming was less productive than Hunter gathering.

You don't need to hear anything, you could read the very sources posted in this thread which show this is inaccurate and a misunderstanding of what is being discussed. You can call those sources "Marxist" if you want, Marxism does not need to be explicity articulated in such a crude manner isolated from science except in those fields which are entirely bourgeois ideology like economics and international relations. For archaeology it is sufficient to think of Marxism as a hermeneutic which makes empirical data knowable and coherent and a counter to bourgeois ideological tendencies that impoverish archaeology as a science.

The Accessible Hegel was a good read for me.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Accessible-Hegel-Michael-Allen-Fox/dp/1591022584

i bought the penguin versions of volume 1, 2, and 3 on amazon. volume 1 is the ben fowkes translation and 2 and 3 we're translated by david fernbach. it looks like that review is for an old version of the book. this version on amazon should be the ben fowkes translation of volume 1. that review is a couple years old too and i think that most online retailers carry the ben fowkes version now.

Ironically there is a CD for sale on Amazon for $864 USD:

The Communist Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/dp/9562910954/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1u7TCbF3N0AA7

Unless it was personally signed by Karl Marx and Engels, it makes the the point of the argument.

China: Revolution and Counter-revolution is excellent, it makes the argument that it is necessary to defend China against imperialism and that China is a socialist country, albeit with major capitalist inroads.

on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984122095/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XZe7DbW3JXRBG

Also, reading some of Deng Xiaoping's and Xi Jinping's works would be a good place to start.

https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Complete-History/dp/0805076239

Is mostly biased towards the allies, but it’s sort of what you’re looking for. There are tons and tons of good YouTube videos about the subject as well, the channel “timeline” has some good documentaries on WW2, but again pretty biased towards the west.

If it's specifically an radical economics textbook you're after, try: Economics: An Introduction to Traditional and Progressive Views by Hunt and Sherman.

That one seems a bit expensive, I bought the three dollar one and it's fine. Yours is probably higher quality though.

Sorry, you can't answer the question if you don't know what any of the words mean. I recommend you read this book

https://www.amazon.com/Invention-White-Race-Oppression-Control/dp/1844677699

To learn what race is (not in the dictionary).

I was under the impression that Andropov was a Marxist-Leninist? After all, he was endorsed by an original Bolshevik. Even Gorbachev in the first two years following in the footsteps of Andropov but failed due to internal opposition in the party and lack of training in ML resulting in revisionist policies. More information from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719.

Read The Wealth of Nations, then read The Marx Engel's Reader. If you read Smith, then you'll see through the ideological memes of the right wing. They claim to be the philosophic continuation of his ideas but they've bastardized the shit out of them- get it from the horse's mouth. They cut everything out that valued the laborers and the nation.

Marx read Smith and takes his ideas to their logical extreme, with greater historical perspective. After you get that far, you'll be some sort of anti- coercion, anti-authoritarian left winger.

Probably not. Just read the summary of the argument in:

https://www.amazon.com/World-Systems-Analysis-Introduction-Immanuel-Wallerstein/dp/0822334429

though I haven't read the 4 volumes so it's possible I'm missing some brilliance. They're not gonna kill you if you have the time anyway. It may also be of more value to read about the Brenner-Wallerstein debate beforehand so you aren't biased by the first thing you read.

Not sure how many were Stasi but I read in this book that only 2% of the population dealt with the Stasi (spied on, interrogated, etc.).

You're looking at it in a simple way. There are many factors related to imperialism that created the mass poverty that may not have existed otherwise. Here's an example, regarding the debt of Haiti related to French colonialism and the Duvalier family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti

> The modern equivalent of $21 billion was paid from Haiti to France.

Haiti has a population of 10 million. Imagine what that $21 billion could have done for them if it wasn't instead paid to France. They could've invested in educated, infrastructure, and healthcare, and maybe the MSF would never have been needed. Instead, the world gives itself a pat on the back for MSF and continues to donate to organizations like that.

This is kind of the difference in thinking. Some people think they're doing good by donating to MSF. Yes, but you're also hurting Haiti on the other hand, then giving them a handout which is less than what you stole. I'm saying this "we" as if you're a citizen in France, and benefiting from colonial debt payments.

David Graeber was very popular a few years back and discussed this at length.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q1HZMCW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I plan on working up a monograph over the next few months about the history of the Communist Party in Texas. Another great book is https://www.amazon.com/Hammer-Hoe-Communists-Depression-Morrison/dp/0807842885 which is about the activities of the CP in Alabama during that time.

I'm a CPUSA member, thanks for showing interest in the party, comrade.

Where Zimbabwe is concerned might be a bit harder. Few in depth studies have been done into the conflict, but, this book is a relatively easy to read primer on the subject. It is hard to find though. Note that it is also pretty dated but does cover all of the basics with the groups who were fighting against the white-led Rhodesian government.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006DGUMS/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1X1974R8ZNIDJ&colid=32KPXKTREJ27Q

Most of my essay was geared at examining the causes of the Sino-Soviet split, so I used the original documents sent back and forth in which each side criticized the other. However, one good book is...https://www.amazon.com/Sino-Soviet-Split-Communist-Princeton-International/dp/0691135908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494346061&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sino+soviet+split

Sorry but every sentence you posted is wrong. This is the popular understanding of jurisprudence but neither describes the socialist conception of law nor the current bourgeois understanding of law through a postmodern lens. Please read this for a basic summary of the Marxist concrption of law:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1924/law/index.htm

I'm too lazy. If you want a deeper understanding i would recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Jurisprudence-Political-Philosophy-Justice/dp/184113452X

Which I'm sure is online somewhere.

> What I'm wondering about is how the music itself, the music theory behind the composition, relates to the organisation of society, particularly when different cultures and societies in different time periods develop very different ways of relating music to certain emotions and social events, the use of completely different scales and tonalities between different cultures, and how this can be explained with a marxist analysis?

It wont be a strict marxist analysis, but a materialist one. A Concise History of Western Music thesis is that the ways of relations between the time and the society (obviously mediated with technical means of production) explain the diferences in music, between places and ages. Paul Griffits has another books on premodern music, should take a look.

And yeah she has a book about them here: https://www.amazon.com/Living-City-Migration-Education-California/dp/0807871133?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

I haven't read it, but I have read Black Against Empire (recommended by another commenter) and can say it's really incredible and give what I'd say is a pretty fair account of the Party's full history (whereas I think Murch's book just gives the history of its formation?)

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Works-Lenin-Other-Writings/dp/0486253333

Just finished it myself, highly recommend to any commie. Development of capitalism, differences between social democracy and socialism, capitalism in its later stages to imperialism, the origins of the state, basically a basic rounded introduction into Leninist/Marxist dialectics.

Today's your lucky day. One of the best books I've read:

http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Biologist-Richard-Levins/dp/067420283X

easy to understand for a layman but hugely influential. There's also a followup book which I haven't read but is probably excellent.

http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Under-Influence-Dialectical-agriculture/dp/1583671579/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41BqJjrwY6L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR214%2C320_&refRID=0Z4QTS33J5JGVA4YV9GY

Hi! A good read on IR and Marxism is Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law by China Mieville. Here is the Amazon link for more info about the book: http://www.amazon.com/Between-Equal-Rights-International-Materialism/dp/1931859337

A Google search should turn up a PDF of the full text without too much trouble but if for some reason you can't find one, message me and I may be able to help.

A great intro to Communism is Philip Sharnoff's Principles of Scientific Socialism: A Primer on Marxism-Leninism. It presents all the main ideas of Marxism in a straight-forward and easily accesible manner.

I also recommend Political Economy: A Marxist Textbook by John Eaton for a more focused look at Marxist economics.

Both books are great for beginners. And I have the same problem with online material, so these books really helped me out.

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