It's wild that no one reads the manifesto. It's less than 100 pages and immediately debunks 99% of criticism I've seen.
I guess I know a lot of people who are seemingly afraid to read communist literature because they think it has some sort of brainwashing effect or something. Some just say "nah, I don't need to read that, I probably agree with a lot of it but just not the specifics" without ever actually trying to read.
You can get a really good grasp on communism and basically all theory with like 300 pages of text. The Manifesto, State and Rev, and BSAR. All together like 350 pages.
BSAR? (ill probably remember whatbthis means the second i hit the "reply" button and feel like a stupid Ass,but be too lazy to delete this comment )
but i agree entirely because ive only read the manifesto & state and revolution, and even those two alone gave me a really good grasp on marxist concepts .. if i didnt have adhd and like a lotta fucked up shit going on with my head id try my hand at das kapital , but its just not the time for me to try
maybe ill get into parenti or something,. his lectures rule so im guessing his writing is just as good.. obviouslynot "theory" though
BSAR is less about communism and more about understanding anti-communism in the west. The most important concept that Parenti introduces in that book IMO is that anti-communism in western countries isn't like a political belief people have because they believe in it, it's more like a religious dogma that everyone has to adhere to in order to be taken seriously in the western political climate.
I think reading them in that order is good because the first establishes the goals, the second shows an example of conditions and form of a successful revolution, and the third shows the societal conditions of the modern working class and the continuance of centuries old tautology that's hurled against struggles for liberation.
Parenti is an important tool for understanding the tools developed after the Russian revolution and the global wars to subjugate and destroy Communist organizing. Kinda like a safety manual for effective organizing in the late 20th/21st centuries.
Also you can get a copy of Borchart's The People's Marx for free on the archive. There are also quite a few Modern Library reprints floating around (check your local/state library system for it, under Capital and Other Writings (Modern Library #202)).
There also seems to be another edition by a different editor on the MIA too
Good for a primer on Capital
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. A thread. (1/300)
because they think it has some sort of brainwashing effect or something.
Unironically yes, because of how leftist literature differs greatly from the cartoonish picture reactionary concocted of them. Trying to read Capital and got absolutely fucked by the dry-ass economic treatise genuinely dewormed my brain. I cannot get past the part about diamonds yet reading just how thought-out Marx actually is in contrast to the slander of him as the "free stuff" guy.
Meanwhile in capitalist country no famines happen, no one starves to death, and people don’t work for free
Food is still for sale, it's not capitalism's fault if people can't afford it and starve to death in front of stocked shelves
Grocery stores make record profits... time to increase prices and cut wages and employees. That's capitalism, baby
Run out of food
Funny how the USSR had one last famine in the early 1930 before a lot of their agriculture was collectivized. Then after they were collectivized they never had a famine again.
no, there was another famine between 46 and 48, but that one was because the Nazis destroyed Soviet farmland and killed 25 million citizens
See? Soviet Vuvuzela killed 25 million people by not simply letting the Nazi socialists implement free market reforms as was their goal
Meanwhile in capitalist countries countless homeless people dies from starvation every year, but it doesn't matter because it's their moral failure for failing in life.
They leave out the part where "the successful" set fire to their recently liberated harvest and farmlands out of spite
I sent all the proles to the mines so we could pave the roads with gold but then they all starved. I forgor food 💀 💀 💀
people worked hard for free to grow all the food, but because there were no markets or money the food just sat around and rotted.
they force people to work at capitalist abattoirs and packing plants, once they finish eating the rich there's no more food
“Say it wasn’t “Real Communism”
This is coming from the same people that, whenever an AES state does something good, it’s suddenly not socialism/communism. The projection
Also, whenever you point to the pile of corpses capitalism keeps churning out, they will claim that this is not "real capitalism".
This isn't even ignorance about communism it's a complete failure to understand that food is grown by people
farmers only grow food to become filthy rich billionaires otherwise they just burn their crops to the ground. and nobody else is capable of even attempting such a thing.
How is this even a cycle? Even in the reactionary worldview, when has a communist state ever collapsed and then reformed into a second communist state? "Say it wasnt real communism" should just be the last step if they thought this through at all
The number of liberal motherfuckers who think Karl Marx was a politician and not just a philosopher
