My uncle asked me for a primer on socialism. I was thinking maybe Socialism Made Easy or Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Anything that might be better?

For context my whole family are through and through vote blue liberals. It's sad to say but most of them didn't even like/vote for Bernie during the primary cycles. They aren't really hardcore anticommunists though and have always been good on unions and labor generally, moreso the problem is really anti-Trump/pro-Dem brainworms. Maybe there's something more modern to share that I don't know of.

  • roux [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    10 days ago

    My suggestions for a good well rounded primer, imo:

    Intro to theory:

    • The Principles of Communism by Engels
    • Why Socialism? by Mr. Einstein himself
    • Understanding Socialism by Richard Wolff
    • Understanding Marxism by Richard Wolff(personally haven't read this yet)
    • The Communist Manifesto

    For historical analysis:

    • Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti
    • A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

    For understanding media biases against socialism:

    • Inventing Reality by Parenti
    • Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky(haven't read yet so subject to change)

    For philosophy:

    • Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer(since Marx was first a philosopher, this is super helpful in understanding where he got his ideas of what socialism in the modern era can look like - I'm currently reading this)

    For later if he wants more:

    • The State and Revolution by VI Lenin
    • Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg
    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      10 days ago

      I would maybe wait on state and revolution. I was listening to an audiobook and without context it sounds like an unwrapped twitter beef full of people with weird names you've never heard before.

      • CaliforniaSpectre [he/him]
        ·
        10 days ago

        Honestly I thought the same. I was listening to S4A's audiobook of it and even with all his asides adding in context it was a lot to take in. It is still really great and I still need to finish it.

      • Wertheimer [any]
        ·
        10 days ago

        Yeah. And no "vote blue no matter who" lib is going to accept a critique of universal suffrage right off the bat.

        • CaliforniaSpectre [he/him]
          ·
          10 days ago

          I didn't even know this was in State and Rev, is it near the end? Is the critique regarding ex owners and all that?

          • Wertheimer [any]
            ·
            10 days ago

            https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm

            From the first chapter

            Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.

            We must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as well an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German Social-Democracy, is

            “the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state."

            The petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from universal suffrage. They themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state” is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.

            We know what he means, but a lib will look at this and immediately dismiss everything. vote is a catechism to them.

            On a related note, I'd love a single anti-electoralism essay that I can spam my maybe-later-kiddo friends with, because I cannot keep having that conversation with them.

      • roux [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        10 days ago

        True. I was hesitating on even adding it but I think that it and Reform or Revolution works as a "continue reading..." section so I edited it.