A social democrat friend who knows basically nothing about socialism and was a berniecrat is looking for book recommendations, what is a good book to recommend to him?

I sort of dived in the deep end when I first started (perhaps unproductively ) and I they're the type of person who would probably benefit a lot from nice prose and nothing SUPER heavy, but I also know a lot of intro books are full of BS that needs to be deprogrammed later(especially stuff that includes left-anticommunism) so I'm being cautious.

What would you recommend?

  • TheSunSetsLikeAScar [none/use name]
    ·
    8 months ago

    chapter 3 has a fair chunk of anti-communism in it, and while the book is a really good polemic I feel like it isn't a really good FAQ for new socialists

    • Cummunism [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I havent read the whole book in a little bit, but im looking at chapter 3 and it's mostly a critique of American "leftists" and them being anti-communist especially when it came to the USSR or Cuba. Chapter 4 talks about some inefficiencies in the USSR but it's far from bashing it. I only skimmed the chapters just now though, so i could have missed something.

      • TheSunSetsLikeAScar [none/use name]
        ·
        8 months ago

        operating off of memory so I had to skim, here was the first major thing I found

        from chapter 3, page 45-46

        Those of us who refuse to join the the Soviet Bashing were branded by left-anticommunists as "Soviet Apologists" and "Stalinists," even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society

        • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          8 months ago

          even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society

          Smh Parenti was a lib