Blackshirts and Reds. It covers some very important history, illustrates how capitalism decays into fascism and is destroying us and the planet (and has done so in the past), introduces some baby steps into Marx at the end of the book, and debunks many anticommunist talking points. Also it's more modern writing so the lib can actually understand it without a dictionary in the other hand, is quite funny at points, and hits them with the emotional punches they need. I cry every time I read it.
Plus 1 to this. I’m currently reading it. I think I’m still a lib but I haven’t finished yet so 🤷♂️
If Blackshirts and Reds doesn't convert you into a communist by the final chapter I don't know what will
Dang I wish my library had it on audiobook or I would listen for my drive tomorrow
There's a youtube playlist for an audiobook, produced by the same guy who made the lemmy software we're currently using right now! There's a magnet link in the description, I assume to download MP3s. I haven't used it myself.
"Bullshit Jobs". Also the Revolutions podcast. That one is especially good cause it sneaks on you. You start listening to it as a lib and before you know it you realise how it's the same struggle and the same types of people resisting change and making things good for everyone and boom...you're radicalised approximately by the time you're done with the Haitian revolution
People’s History of the United States
Theory is just likely to bore them or piss them off
This. I've been really thinking a lot about the last episode where Kushbomb talks about the ability of humans to conceptualize and organize themselves through the power of myth. Your average lib can't conceptualize the economic impact of Das Kapital but you can use PHUS to fundamentally change the myth of the United States to them and give them a narrative that can allow them to reconcile any nostalgic memories they have of America with understanding the power structures that have always been fundamentally at odds with the working people of the United States.
Its a surefire way to have someone that may have at one point considered themselves a patriot to view acts of class struggle and solidarity as a fundamentally American value.
It is not technically theory, but the two things that radicalized me the most were Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast. I found that with a foundation of history told through a materialist lens, most of the more theoretical texts simply clicked. The problem you'll face most of the time is that Americans (including liberals) simply don't know enough history, and where they lack in historical knowledge, context, and hindsight, they improvise with idealism. The only way you can get them thinking in a materialist lens is if you stuff their brains with history.
Think about it. Liberals are always obnoxiously telling people how things are supposed to work. They are the self-appointed experts on how things are supposed to work. We have to break that illusion and show them how things have and do work.
My one friend recently started thinking that I might be right with this whole communism thing, and when we discussed how she got to this point the number one thing she credited was a teacher in high school who had them read this book.
yall are choosing complex treatises that a lib wont understand. choose something modern like bullshit jobs or something.
i gave the 'Kingdom of God is Within You' to a very well educated baptist pastor my family has known for a long time and he actually read it and liked it. im just saying a lot of libs arent educated nor are they used to reading books that are nearly 100 years old
It feels like you don't know what Blackshirts and Reds is to claim it's nearly 100 years old
ah shit you right, i actually was thinking about gramsci which was a topic in the book iirc
Ha yeah Blackshirts and Reds is pretty accessible for libs, I would NEVER fucking waste Gramsci on them
Theory isn't radicalizing.
History and lived experience are.
Since you can't just hand someone a book for lived experience, I suggest Open Veins of Latin America or People's History of the United States to start.
There's only so far capital can be compromised against its own material interest in a society it owns and operates. Soc Dems and Welfare cant always delay and literally buy off the revolution. They've been made to answer for their failures plenty of times, and in some countries like the USA, Social welfare isnt even entertained as an idea.
Honestly, the main thing that radicalized me was experiencing "having a job" and all the bullshit associated with it.
And then I read Simone Weil's The need for root, and Žižek's Trouble in Paradise, and it clicked in my head.
Weil is great for switching Catholics from Trad or Moderate to Lib Theo.
Jesus the Liberator by Sobrino is also a great work.
Interestingly, I am an atheist, and yet she is one of the writers who moved me the most and I admire her completely. She has "something", and combined with the fact that she was essentially the closest thing to real saint really gives her a lot of credit in my eyes.
If anyone needs any radical Christian theory with a specific emphasis on Catholicism then I have a whole book shelf of it to recommend. Definitely second Sobrino.
Against Empire. The Shock Doctrine (to a lesser degree). Anything that describes the enormous violence which is required to uphold the status quo.
The shock doctrine 100%. Its well written, not overly pushing it's ideology, but is absolutely unflinching in talking about how free markets directly relate to violence against people.
I need someone not only shitting on the shallowness of the world and conflicts and avoidance of any actual stances or politics, but also just writing in a whole lot more LGBT characters. And then adding a lot more trans characters, and then when it seems like a lot and that maybe most of Hogwarts is trans they should round off the rest with some intersex representation, just to piss off Rowling as much as possible.
For people in the transhumanist / rationalist / utopian scientific sphere (which I have an affinity for, even if it is full of libertarians), I'd recommend The Conquest Of Bread. It's overprescribed as the anarchist answer to State & Rev, but holy shit does it hit the tastes of that group right on the head.
I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm starting to think Bret Devereaux's blog might be the gateway for D&D nerds.
I was radicalized by Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" though, so who knows really.
State and Rev vs. The Conquest of Bread dont really hit the ssame spots I dont understand whay anyone would prescibe one over the other.
