https://hexbear.net/post/396462
had a similar problem, check out these comments here
Take notes! If you're reading in a digital format it can be really nice to copy and paste paragraphs that stick out as important into any app of your choice. Otherwise, highlighting text on a physical book goes a long way.
As for intro stuff, I recommend Wage Labor and Capital, Value Price and Profit, and Towards a New Socialism (just the first couple chapters if you're not interested in cybernetics). Those are all very focused on economy but also pretty simple to read and will cover a lot of ideas in Marxist economics now and then.
Everyone loves to recommend Blackshirts and Reds too, very good way to learn about lies you've likely been told about the 20th century.
Give Engels' Principles Of Communism a go.
Parenti's Blackshirts And Reds is an engaging and straight forward read, although I suppose that's not really theory.
And yes, I also have a hard time with a lot of this stuff as I have no background in philosophy or really any academia at all. I think we have a great resource right here on hexbear, there are plenty of well read folks here who I'm sure would be happy to help out and answer any questions you might have on specific things you're struggling with.
has anyone ever struggled with the same thing as me? anybody has some tips?
The first few steps take time and effort. Don't go in trying to bulldoze through 100 pages in a day, go through the arguments slowly, take hours on a single page if you need to, build the arguments in your head until they make sense before moving on. I've been going back and forth between sections 1 and 2 of Capital for months now, and I'm always noticing ideas I missed on previous readings that made the further sections harder to understand.
The point of reading those books is to learn, and you probably didn't study all of math in a single week in school.
Take notes and take as long as you need.
Edit: btw, IIRC, Marx intended Capital to be the book for workers to read in order to organize effectively, so maybe you can very slowly dip your toes into that one. Going all in on the first go will just get you exhausted, and reading in a group is the preferred method, ideally your coworkers.
The communist manifesto remains fairly accessible. It's written for everyone to understand it.
