/lit/ - Literature

Nice try, gommie.

>>6409570
the marx-engels reader

>>6409570
This and the source materials.

>Politics don't exist in industry

Kek

>>6409570
Theses Feuerbach
Critique Gotha
Socialism: Utopian & Scientific
Wages Price and Profit
Contribution to a Critique

Read (in order):
1. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Capital by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (yes the whole thing)
3. State and Revolution by Vladmir Lenin
After this you'll have already seen plenty of references to other writers in these works to know where else to look.
If you're planning on talking about communism and don't plan on reading these three books at the bare minimum, then save yourself sometime and stick to whatever opinion you have or are given.

>>6409696
You really can't get more essential texts of communism in theory or practice than these three.

>>6409696
>>6409707
Except manifesto is fucking useless, and most communist workers and intellectuals did Anti-Dühring (ie: Socialism Utopian & Scientific) and WPP.

>>6409729

Praxis :^)

You could start with Thomas Moore's Utopia, then Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, then Socialism, Utopian and Scientific by Engels.

If you want the rigorous analysis of capitalism that is the basis for any informed communist criticism, you of course need to read Capital.

>>6409570
Ignore these assholes.

Read Debt: The first 5000 years. Its accessible, very very broad, and most importantly, it will give you the historical context of Marx before you go to the source documents.

>>6409837

Am I the only one amused with the fact that the Right has been bombarding us with witty quotes from politicians and bad economists about how __ the Left is and they're all so horrible, ad hominem-y and devoid of content that you could easily scratch "left" away and replace it with "right" without losing the meaning at all?

>>6409899
It's a product of the radical centrism aka (you guessed it) liberal democratic capitalism with a touch of welfare state. If you are interested in this check out Tariq Ali.

>>6409570
What is it you're trying to learn about, specifically?
Thomas Sowell is actually a good place to learn about economics in general.

>>6409899
How do you tell a capitalist? Well, it's someone who reads Friedman and Rothbard. And how do you tell a leftist? It's someone who understands Friedman and Rothbard.

>>6409938
Define capitalist.

>>6409940
someone who reads Friedman and Rothbard :^)

>>6409899
Leftists already have plenty of opportunities to be annoying and thin-skinned on here. I don't care if the reactionaries take their own cheep shots as well.

>>6409899
I'm pretty sure everyone has noticed it.
Most of those pics are made by neocons, neonazis and teabaggers who pass most of the time on the internet to convince people since their ideologies are considered shit or strange in the real world. Therefore they make thousands of infographics.
It's just normal behaviour on the internet. Leftists would do the same but they aren't as big as the neocons or teabaggers. And I mean leftists who call themselves leftists, not the american definition of leftist.

>>6409936
Sowell's economics, like that of most economists, is ideological, you just can't see it unless you're in that ideology. Interestingly enough, The Wealth of Nations, which contains overt arguments for various policies, is actually far less inside an ideological fishbowl than most works of economics. Whatever its flaws are, it is still an excellent work to start with if you want to embark on the study of economics. Part of this is in fact *because* it is so old, it was written when economists were still busy just trying to learn how economics worked, rather than trying to spin it. Economists of today carefully consider all possible ideological implications with every assertion they make before making, whereas Smith doesn't really because he hasn't had a lot of other people to study to know where certain things can lead; and where he does have an agenda, he makes it clear, unlike economists who want to trick the reader much like Hogan tricks Colonel Klink into thinking he's formulated his own opinion.

>>6409994
>you just can't see it if you're in that ideology

>>6409959
Right, well this won't be productive.

OP, read F.A. Hayek's Intellectuals and Socialism. It describes a four tiered dispersal of ideas in culture.
http://mises.org/sites/default/files/Intellectuals%20and%20Socialism_4.pdf

>>6409940
Technically, a capitalist is someone who accumulates wealth through an M-C-M cycle of exchange. Someone who supports capitalism is a liberal.

>>6410014
>patricians read marx
how ironic

>>6410023
Or, actually a capitalist is anyone who uses money or commodities as capital. M-C-M is just the major manifestation. But moneylenders, for instance, are also capitalists.

>>6409994
That can be true, the issue is most people don't focus on facts and logic. Fuzzy thinking is what most people engage in, although this applies to both the left and the right, and most other POVs as well.

This isn't to say that there aren't valid theories out there or that we shouldn't try to find it. Rather, what we see is dogma acting under the guise of rationality and authority.

>>6410042
I don't think popular opinion has ever comprehended Marxist theory, neither his economics analysis, nor materialist dialectic

>>6410054
How would you apply that to what I said?

Is the left-right spectrum obsolete?

>>6410062
Well Marxism is the main socialist theory.

>>6409581
david harvey is a fucking hack

he's just a keynesian who wants to return to the welfare state

>>6409837
david graeber is anti-marxist

>>6410070
What does that mean though? Does that mean that we have never seen marxism in action, that discussing Marxism is a moot point because it has never been correctly presented by anyone since Marx died, or something else?

>>6410074
FDR'ism is good for the left. Unions reached their peak membership under FDR and Truman, they started to heavily decline thereafter. Pro-labor liberals are a lot more conducive to leftist influenced than neoliberals who care about issues like gay quotas in corporations.

>>6410078
But hes pro-collectivist/communist.

>>6410082
I'm saying popular opinion has never adopted Marxist theory because popular opinion hasn't understood it. Well, maybe it was more core in the USSR for public school, but I doubt actually understanding it mattered compared to saying the right slogan.

>>6410094
OK, for reference, the theory that ideas disseminate through intermediaries means that those same intermediaries fail to perfectly translate the original theory or idea (EG telephone game).

I would also argue that we have other socialists who do not fall under Marx theory, for instance Eric Blair, who took in post Marxists into his world-view while remaining staunchly opposed to authoritarianism.

>>6410094
Don't bother, you're talking to an ignorant idealist.

>>6410068
No. Only misunderstood.

>>6410074
Please use proper caps, comrade.

>>6410087
He only itches for the collapse and violent overthrow, not a working socialism. Granted, if Europe was so leftist-socialist, why are they drifting rightwards again?

>>6410114
Classic Marxist analysis of the state is very anti-authoritarian, so being a left communist (like myself) doesn't exclude you from being a Marxist. The State and Revolution doesn't have very many nice things to say about the State.

Regardless i wouldn't consider myself a Marxist because that would be too limiting and as far as actually understanding how modern economies function on a macro level Keynes is way more important. Marxist-style analysis is dominant in a couple of areas like History and important for understanding broader conflicts in society.

>>6410094
Marxist textbooks in the Soviet Union prior to perestroika were whitewashed ideological garbage. Much of what even people like Lenin wrote was never published, even under Khrushchev.

>>6410137
>Granted, if Europe was so leftist-socialist, why are they drifting rightwards again?
Even the Labor Party is neoliberal. UK started cracking down on union power since at least the Winter of Discontent, if not earlier.

>>6410152
Thumbs up. Excluding dishonest dogma, if it's voluntary socialism is OK by me.

>>6410087
That's not what neo-liberal mean.

Nor liberal, tbh

>>6410160
Ah, but they have government healthcare, those dirty commies.

Start by learning that:

A "Liberal" is someone who believes in liberalism, the idea that the state should provide the population it's basical needs while not interfering in the exchange of money.

A "Libertarian" is someone who opposes authoritarism, not someone who believes in little state / big capital. You can be a libertarian communist (as in: anarchism, left-communism, spartachism, etc.) or a authoritarian communit (as in lenninism, maoism, stalinism).

The term for what you people call libertarian is AnCap / Classic liberal / Minarchist, and even then, those people fail to recognize that there is no difference between State Institutions and Private Corporations who fund public services (>inb4 monopoly of violence, corporations have coercive rights upon their employees).

Also, not only marxism isn't authoritarian, Marx himself went back to his notion of a transitionary state after the Commune of Paris (A great book of his for those not too keen on reading the monster that is Das Kapital is Civil War on France).

>>6410201
That's changing.

>>6409570

As an introduction, I recommend reading Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (1), The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (2), Theses on Feurbach (3), and Principles of Communism (4) before reading what the other anons are recommending

1 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...anat/index.htm
2 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...13/mar/x01.htm
1 - by Marx; https://www.marxists.org/archive/mar...ses/theses.htm
4 - by Engels; https://www.marxists.org/archive/mar...1/prin-com.htm


>>6409729
>>6409759
The problem with the Manifesto is that, according to Engels in one of the many prefaces, a mere 25 years after they wrote the pamphlet, the demands were way out of date.

>>6410278
huh, the links I copy/pasted didn't turn out right.

1 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/index.htm
2 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
3 - by Marx; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
4 - by Engels; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

>>6410278
How accurate is Upton Sinclair in his depiction of Marxist theory?

More specifically, the concept that workers should take over the factories/oilrigs/whatever that they work on.

Right here.

Everything Marx ever said boils down to a delegitimization of the bourgeois state.

>>6411514
How so? Could you give a brief coverage of the idea?

>>6411514
>>6411549
He's trolling. He's making fun of Leninists who don't read Marx or Engels, who then only understand their thought superficially.

Reminder that Left-communists and Kautskyists are politically irrelevant, and (when they're not just being de facto liberals) anarchist theory is crap.