Read theory, it's literally online for free. Join a reading group. You spend hours doom scrolling on Twitter to no end. All that's gotten you is deep knowledge of every twitter beef between 400 follower nazbols.
Edit: It’s not an issue with the site but online discourse about the left in general. Why are y'all upset about shoeonhead or black hammer or whatever new group of dumbasses is saying some new dumb shit. I'm talking about how every few days lots of leftists are surprised and upset that their fav twitter personality said something really stupid.
You are taking the right path, imo it is better to read Lenin first before the more complex stuff by Marx, although maybe you should read the communist manifesto or value price and profit or some other of the "popularised" stuff by Marx first.
However with Lenin I think State and Revolution or the infantile book are better starting points. Especially the infantile book is very, very relevant to terminally online twitter weirdos.
I tried State and Revolution once before, and it immediately went way over my head. I understood just enough to win a few arguments though. After I clear WITBD, I'll take another crack at state and revolution and then move on to the infantile book. Thanks for the recommendation!
Most of Lenin's texts are basically angry effortposts which are usually addressing something very specific but from which you can draw much more general conclusions and see how he applied marxism in practice. However there is also Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism which is a little bit harder but it's more general. However of course it's worth reading the shorter texts by Marx and Engels before all that. Just don't try to read Capital because you'll burn out.
Imperialism: the highest stage of cringe will be my endpoint for reading Lenin, then I'll move on to short Marx and Engels. Thanks for your advice, but I'm going to use the reading tactics that usually work for me. I might revisit this if I find my strategy not working.
Yeah alright but I'm saying that partly because there's a logical progression in that Lenin builds on Marx and Engels and occasionally even departs from them so it's worth knowing what they said first.