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!
Thank you so much for the detailed response! I don’t know a lot at all about dialectical materialism (as in I could barely describe it to a liberal), I know a little bit about class, but not a lot in regards to what a post-socialist society would look and sound like!
I’ve seen some quotes in regards to imperialism and the vanguard when it comes to Leninism but I’m still not sure how it works. And the term “stateless” in regards to “stateless, no money society” means when it comes to Marxism confuses me too
Yes so Lenin's Electoral Strategy will clue you in to how Lenin thought of a vanguard and how that would work in bring about revolution. Caliban and the Witch deals with imperialism, but if you want it made more explicit I recommend Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.
As far as "stateless" goes, in Marxist terms the state is how classes "fight" each other, so when you get rid of class (the ultimate goal of communism, where the idea of class is abolished) the state, by consequence, will "wither away." Until you get to that point, however, most Marxists advocate for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (as opposed to the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie like we have now), as that is needed to ultimately abolish class as a category. If you want a better understanding of classes outside of the Manifesto, I highly recommend Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which is (I think) his most accessible work outside the Manifesto that shows how classes work in the context of a very specific historical event (Louis Napoloen couping his way to power). It also serves as an example of dialectical materialism in action, as you get to see how Marx evaluates a real historical event using that lens. For a more theoretical explanation of Marx's materialism, I recommend reading Part 1 of his The German Ideology.
Now note that I'm talking from a very Marxist perspective here on state and statelessness. To anarchists a lot of this analysis is wrong, and I encourage you to seek out some anarchist theory as well. Kropotkin and his The Conquest of Bread is wonderful, but doesn't touch too much on the state as a historical category. Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan have a lot more to say about the state from an anarchist perspective, but I've only read a few writings by each and don't have a solid book to recommend.
The words “dictatorship of the proletariat” make me question the volcel life 🥰 but in all seriousness thank you heaps for the recommendations! I don’t know how far I align with anarchism in comparison to Marxism/Marxist Leninism but I reckon I should give it a shot in the name of ~self exploration~
It's definitely not an either/or situation in a lot of cases anyway. Anarchism and Marxism are often fantastic critiques of each other. Marxists say you need a state, and a strong one, to protect yourself from the inevitable backlash of capitalists powers coming to destroy you, while anarchists will remind you that a strong state lends itself to strong state repression, and can often end up bureaucratic and oppressive nightmares. Neither critique is wrong per say, but I definitely lean more heavily on the former than the latter. And regardless, we're both in agreement that the current state of things (and the state itself) must be smashed for a new world to be born. We'll figure out what that new world looks like together when the time comes!
I think the variance in opinion on the state among Marxists is greatly visible in Marx himself. I mean Marx makes critiques of anarchism to Bakunin, but then makes anarchist-esque critiques of statism too in lots of places. All the while also musing in a few letters whether or not the US can vote its way to socialism. He wrestled immensely with what the state was, and imo never came out with a satisfying theory of it.
To me the most satisfying answer is that fundamentally Marx is a radical democrat, and wants political organs of radical democracy as a means of freedom from domination, and that's antithetical to the state. I'm not sure Marx believed the state could whither to "simple administration" as Lenin put it. Engels put that withering quote in the anti-duhring, Marx never said it. When we look at drafts of capital and other notes, you can see Marx and Engels disagreeing with each other constantly over what the state is. We also have letters where Marx is frustrated and notes that he wants to get around to writing a capital length work on the state, but he never got around to it. It's not clear to me what at the end of his life post Paris Commune he thought. I do think he certainly thought the state machinery had to be utterly destroyed and political organizations remade with the DOTP, and the form of organization he thought socialism would be under is some sort of federated commune, but I'm not sure at the end if he would still call an intermediate organization a state anymore or whether there could be one. Remember Marx's lower stage communism, which we have very little notes on, has already abolished commodity production and the market entirely while Lenin's renaming of it socialism has changed what it meant perhaps significantly imo.