I’ve read a lot online and listened to a lot of videos/podcasts in the last 3 or so years, but I’m genuinely interested in reading solid theory (instead of hearing them quoted in YouTube videos, podcasts and articles). I am not smart enough to understand das kapital and I don’t read books that often at all (I have read the manifesto)

What should be the first three books I buy to warm myself up into understanding the theory more in depth compared to quotes, memes, YouTube videos/podcasts etc. (I was thinking maybe a Marx book, Lenin book and a Foucault book? But I have no idea!)

What would your suggestion for your first 3 books

PS I’m also new to the chapo.chat community! I haven’t been a part of a cth community since the original was banned so sorry if it’s in the wrong community!

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    State and Revolution is essential reading for any Marxist, but you probably already knew that. Lenin also conveniently cites a lot of Marx and Engels to point the read towards some of their important political works. It's relatively short but also really dense, as an incomplete series of 6 pamphlets written between the February and October revolutions. You could fill an hour just discussing the implications of almost any two consecutive paragraphs from most of the book. You'll want to discuss it with comrades you trust and take careful notes.

    Quick side note for some of the more challenging economic literature: it's better to read works like Wage Labour and Capital, and Value, Price, and Profit like scientific textbooks than like historical literature. I found myself writing equations in my notes for some of the chapters in Value, Price, and Profit, for example. The exact numbers matter less than the underlying quantitative relationships - and the power differential between the working and capitalist classes that these relationships imply - that Marx and Engels are trying to describe.