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/lit/ - Literature

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4726510 No.4726510[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Hey /lit/, I checked the wiki, but the political section is pretty empty.
Could you recommend some non-fiction about socialism and communism. Of course, non biased texts are prefered. I already "The Communist Manifesto" and "Lenin's What Is to Be Done?".

>> No.4726533

>>4726510
I've been reading some red stuff in the last couple of months. Here's some stuff I liked.
Marx, The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850.
Jodi Dean. The Communist Horizon.
Freidrich Engels. The Family, Private Property and the State.

>> No.4726565

>>4726533
Thank you for your quick reply. Will definitely look into Engels.

>> No.4726594

>>4726510
are you interested in the history of certain movements and events? or rather theoretical stuff?

>> No.4726613

>"The Communist Manifesto"
>Lenin

>> No.4726631
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4726631

>> No.4726636

>>4726613
What are you criticising exactly? That I only read entry-level stuff when I am asking for recommendations or do you think that I think the Manifesto was written by Lenin.
If it is the second, read the post again.
>>4726594
More theoretical stuff.
>>4726631
Thank you.

>> No.4726638

>>4726613
wut?

>> No.4726641

>>4726636
>What are you criticising exactly?

Lenin and everything by him is worthless. The Communist Manifesto is probably the saddest ting Marx wrote


Here's some stuff

Das Kapital; Marx
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; Engels
Homage to Catalonia; Orwell
Leninism or Marxism?; Luxemburg
My Disillusionment in Russia; Goldman
Why Socialism?; Einstein
The Soul of Man Under Socialism; Wilde
The Theory of the Leisure Class; Veblen

>> No.4726652

>>4726641
Even though the passive aggressiveness was unnecessary, still thank you for the recs.

>> No.4726667

>>4726652
I don't dislike you, I dislike "socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly" Lenin intensely, and The Communist Manifesto is sadly presented as some mindblowing text when it was just expressing opinions that had been long held by the left. You don't know any better, since you're obvious new to it all.

>> No.4726689
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4726689

>>4726641
>Lenin and everything by him is worthless

im sorry what? do you have any basis upon which to refute the entire body of work of the first successful communist revolutionary?

>>4726510

only person who hasnt been mentioned is Gramsci, his theories on hegemony are key to any serious modern communist viewpoint

>> No.4726692

>>4726689
>im sorry what? do you have any basis upon which to refute the entire body of work of the first successful communist revolutionary?
Yes. He lost the popular vote against another socialist party, he took power by force, and finally, how the fuck it state capitalist monopoly, communist in any meaningful sense?

>> No.4726705

>>4726641
>The Communist Manifesto is probably the saddest ting Marx wrote
why?

>>4726636
well, for Marx: 'Wage-Labor and Capital', 'Value, Price and Profit', 'The principles of communism', 'Value, Price and Profit', 'preface to critique of political economy' and if you care enough you should really read Capital.
Engels' 'socialism: utopian & scientific' and 'Anti-Dühring' are interesting as well.
Lenin: State & Revolution, Imperialism

There's Luxemburg's 'The Accumulation of Capital', there's the stuff by E.P. Thompson, Lukács, Gramsci, David Harvey has some interesting stuff too. Pannekoek, Mandel.

>> No.4726716

>>4726692
>He lost the popular vote against another socialist party
you mean the mensheviks or the SRs? the people who conveniently walked out when he announced the revolution? to quote Lenin:
>“Drive nature out of the door and she will rush back through the window.” It seems that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties have to “learn” this simple truth time and again by their own experience. They under took to be “revolutionary democrats” and found themselves in the shoes of revolutionary democrats—they are now forced to draw the conclusions which every revolutionary democrat must draw.
"Democracy is the rule of the majority. As long as the will of the majority was not clear, as long as it was possible to make it out to be unclear, at least with a grain of plausibility, the people were offered a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government disguised as “democratic.” But this delay could not last long. During the several months that have passed since February 27 the will of the majority of the workers and peasants, of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, has become clear in more than a general sense. Their will has found expression in mass organisations—the Soviet’s of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.

>he took power by force
to quote Mao, all political power is born from the barrel of a gun

>how the fuck it state capitalist monopoly, communist in any meaningful sense?
the NEP was a measure Lenin was forced to accept by a collapsing economy emerging from a civil war and completely unready for a truly communist system. in order for a workers paradise to emerge there must first be a proletariat, and when your country has been recently devastated by 2 massive wars and your political future is extremely uncertain, centralizing power and creating a command economy is not always the wisest move

>> No.4726762

>>4726716
>Answering Trotsky’s argument – ‘As Marxists we have never been idolaters of formal democracy.’ – she wrote: ‘Of course we have never been idolaters of formal democracy. Neither, have we been “idolaters” of Socialism and Marxism!’ ‘But’, she went on, ‘does it follow that we have the right... to throw overboard Socialism or Marxism when it becomes inconvenient for us?’
Rosa Luxemburg

>to quote Mao, all political power is born from the barrel of a gun
Yep, and when strikes are illegal, then it's pretty clear the workers aren't the ones with the guns.

>the NEP was a measure Lenin was forced to accept by a collapsing economy emerging from a civil war and completely unready for a truly communist system. in order for a workers paradise to emerge there must first be a proletariat, and when your country has been recently devastated by 2 massive wars and your political future is extremely uncertain, centralizing power and creating a command economy is not always the wisest move
Lenin used the phrase "state capitalist monopoly" long before the NEP. In fact, the NEP was merely a breaking of the monopoly.

>> No.4726776

>>4726705
oh, and Michio Morishima's Marx' economics and 'Karl Marx's Economics: Critical Assessments' are interesting economic works as well.

>> No.4726848

>>4726762
>Answering Trotsky’s argument – ‘As Marxists we have never been idolaters of formal democracy.’ – she wrote: ‘Of course we have never been idolaters of formal democracy. Neither, have we been “idolaters” of Socialism and Marxism!’ ‘But’, she went on, ‘does it follow that we have the right... to throw overboard Socialism or Marxism when it becomes inconvenient for us?’
throwing overboard Marxism when it is convenient defies the fundamental principles of Marxism. Pragmatism with socialist objectives is fine, but Marxism with Pragmatic methods is contradictory. furthermore i will concede that the dictatorial government form of Lenin's communism is probably its greatest flaw, but to think that democracy will further the revolution and the communist cause simply because it is in socialist spirit, and not deliver the conservative mediocrity it so often does, is silly.

>Yep, and when strikes are illegal, then it's pretty clear the workers aren't the ones with the guns.
this was borne of Lenin's dislike of trade unions, and also from the lack of a proletariat in Russia. theoretically the soviets represent the workers and thus for the workers to strike would be for them to make conflict with themselves, no doubt at the urgings of counter-revolutionaries and trade-unionist stooges concerned only with short term goals.

>"state capitalist monopoly"
only in the context of industrializing Russia under a centralized proletarian dictatorship.

>> No.4726958

>>4726848
>throwing overboard Marxism when it is convenient defies the fundamental principles of Marxism. Pragmatism with socialist objectives is fine, but Marxism with Pragmatic methods is contradictory. furthermore i will concede that the dictatorial government form of Lenin's communism is probably its greatest flaw, but to think that democracy will further the revolution and the communist cause simply because it is in socialist spirit, and not deliver the conservative mediocrity it so often does, is silly.
That Lenin's government wasn't remotely socialist was its greatest flaw. It was serfdom.

>only in the context of industrializing Russia under a centralized proletarian dictatorship.
No, that was his definition of socialism. He said socialism is state capitalist monopoly for the sake of the workers, which makes about as much sense as capitalist monopoly for the sake of the workers.

>> No.4726973

> In order to convince the reader that this is not the first time I have given this “high” appreciation of state capitalism and that I gave it before the Bolsheviks seized power I take the liberty of quoting the following passage from my pamphlet The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It , written in September 1917.

>“. . . Try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

>“. . . For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly.

>“. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs ” (pages 27 and 28)

>> No.4726997

>>4726973
State capitalist monopoly is supposed to be the stage that incites the revolution, that the stage that comes after it.

>> No.4726999

>>4726997
>not the stage that comes after it

>> No.4727015

I know hating on lenin is cool and everything because then you don't even have to bother arguing the "100 million" accusation but come on

In practice he was chill as fuck, legalized abortion, removed sodomy laws, etc

I know things like Cheka were bad but hey come on we're all human and you can only hold power for so long before wanting to pop some fools

>> No.4727025

>>4727015
He wasn't "chill as fuck", he was an absolute shithead, he destroyed democracy, he murdered people who criticized him, he created policy that led to rampant starvation due to no incentivizing. Legalizing sodomy and abortion doesn't fucking excuse that. His constant association with socialism is the biggest thing killing it.

>> No.4727026

>Please note that this was written when Kerensky was in power, that we are discussing not the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the socialist state, but the “revolutionary-democratic” state. Is it not clear that the higher we stand on this political ladder, the more completely we incorporate the socialist state and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviets, the less ought we to fear “state capitalism"? Is it not clear that from the material, economic and productive point of view, we are not yet on “the threshold” of socialism? Is it not clear that we cannot pass through the door of socialism without crossing “the threshold” we have not yet reached?

but hey screw that, let's venture into vague, untested economic reforms while ppl starve everywhere

>> No.4727036

>>4727026
Wasn't the Menshevik line that Russia hadn't even entered proper capitalism, and so that had to be done before state capitalist monopoly?

>> No.4727058

>workers gain subjectivity
>no guize you're not ready for it yet, we have to through the apex of injustice before you are!