I mean, it's not something with a few clear steps you can just follow, it's hard. And I don't really do it a lot.

Generally having serious discussions with other people who actually know their shit preferably in the context of a leftist organization is really good. Beyond that, you have to be well informed about the issue you are studying because you can't study something without having all the relevant information, and you have to pay attention to how that thing connects to the rest of society. The most important thing is finding the primary contradiction in something, or the most important element of the issue. What is the conflict that creates the issue and what are the forces at play? Where do these forces come from? Which one is more powerful?

Also, it is useful to not just read the really old classics, but also more recent stuff to get a better picture about the developments people have made, as well as see people employing marxist tools to analyze a problem. So you find an issue that interests you that a marxist theorist has already produced an analysis for, and you read that and you see how they approached it and how they used the methods. For instance, let's say fascism, where it comes from, how it manifests, what the classes involved are etc. On that subject you can read say Gramsci or Poulantzas (they're both super hard to read though, especially Poulantzas). Now Gramsci was writing as the phenomenon first emerged, which means a lot of what he said is obsolete but that way you can 1) see what communists thought about it as it first started appearing and how they tried using the tools they had to approach a new phenomenon they didn't understand well yet, 2) think about where his predictions and analysis maybe went wrong and why, but also get important insights because a lot of it is spot on and not obsolete at all. Poulantzas wrote Fascism and Dictatorship in 1974 so it was much better informed. Poulantzas is very good at delineating categories and making you understand the common elements as well as differences between things. So you read that and get a much better understanding and class analysis of the phenomenon, and he also cites the classics of marxism a lot so you can see what theoretical tool he is using at each moment. So, after you do that, you try to see how it applies to a modern wave of fascism, or think about how the conditions for fascism might arise. You think what KIND of fascism it is that you are seeing, IF what you are seeing is really fascism and not something else (is it fascism or is it more akin to an exceptional state?), and if it is, where does it come from? You also think about what is different from the old phenomenon described in the books and the newer phenomenon you are seeing, and you consider why that might be based on the different material conditions. You talk with other leftists about it and you read articles that modern leftists maybe wrote about it. And that way, you develop a good understanding of the phenomenon, what should be done about it, when it becomes a serious threat, etc.

I liked Lenin's statistical columns about people. But honestly there are a few points where Marxist principles of understanding shine through. I non ironically suggest watching the Kapital anime, but more important read the statistics (or the one I found, but not the one I meant here ) and then look at a point in history you like. E.g. South African history.

There you can see how economic forces shape society, shape policy and how stuff intersects. The gold mines of Gauteng (think Johannesburg / Pretroi) and the demand for labour it produced. Look at how the government introduced legislation that was benefiting which class / racialized group. Then you see that there were also conflicts within the capitalist classes, but there was more class solidarity. You can see how the state and military and police was used to further economic interests. You can see how Pinkerton equivalents used force and no liberal was to hear criticizing them materially for over a century. You can see how some of the brightest people of the last millennium who were academically thought with christian humanist values were ignored in South Africa, in the UK and alike and that such idealist thought doesn't hold against the forces of history - which often stem in the dominant amount from economics or at least the material conditions to be found. Look how solidarity of the working class was important to organize and formulate protest and how a wide mix furthered with a good amount of Marxist understanding, of Black Consciousness, of militant action was able to crush the Apartheid state.

Like really, the so called imperial periphery got so many people who looked at material conditions and wrote their thoughts - while being involved in practices. They are a good way to further your understanding.

When I first began to engage with this stuff, my frame of reference was being completely determined by the lists of rules I was given to live by. As I began to read this stuff I was feeling like, how could I have been so wrong about everything? If all I ever wanted to do was help people and I still believed so many harmful things, how can I trust myself to be right in the future? If everything I know is just another cherry in the basket then I won't trust myself until my basket is full. I can't start laying out the puzzle until I had all the pieces--that at some point I would learn enough "truths" to see the picture for myself.

The problem was I was still writing lists except now they didn't say "Violence is wrong", "listen to minorities", and "Vote blue no matter who" but "Obama is bad for drone strikes", "Guns are okay actually", and "idpol is bad". I would do the work to pick apart a liberal opinion and walk right into another--why? When will I finally know enough to know the difference? The rabble of disagreement and ping ponging between macro and micro issues becomes overwhelming. Where to focus? Where to try? Being the only person in my immediate life to vocalize these concepts, whenever a liberal idea would come up I would challenge it. Not aggressively, just saying things like "you know what I read an article recently that said..." in a way that's asking them to verify, not telling them it's true. Since no one thought of me as a leftist, it's amazing the amount of good faith I was met with. As the weeks wore on and my vocabulary got bigger, I started hearing things like "what are you a socialist now" and I was really confused. I still hadn't read a word of Marx, I was just being informed of better ways to accomplish our goals and was confused when the ideas were dismissed and not challenged.

As this tension came to a head I would get flustered when the conversation turned back on me, feeling so fragile in my new ideology and waiting for some liberal fact to drop on my head an destroy it. But it didn't happen. As soon as I stopped centering myself I was able to take a step towards battling my ego and say the words out loud "I don't know, teach me". "Obama is good" "I heard he's not" "that's ridiculous" "Oh okay, teach me why". This has shut down more conversation than anything else. Become baby. If I felt that anxious panic that usually precedes yelling declarative statements, I would take a deep breath and just start asking questions. Feeling ill prepared to say I "knew" something, I just started asking people what they knew. And it was very, very little. It wasn't that I had learned enough true fax to own them, they were owning themselves because no one ever digs in past the declarative to see the deeper contradictions. It's not about the things we know, but how we argue. Understanding what logic really is was very helpful--it's not the things we believe but the methods we use to believe them.

Eventually as people became more annoyed with me they started doing the whole "well if you're so smart convince me that nothing bad will ever happen under socialism" which is of course ridiculous. At first I would sputter out scattershot defenses I would see online, later I would ask "why would something need to be perfect to be worth doing?" Don't get stuck on the facts, they're just used to justify feelings. Ask people what they feel. I had to "rip the wires out" on what I thought I knew. Trying to find where I put the wrong number in the sudoku was driving me nuts so I eventually I just started over. You're probably still believing things you don't realize you do and those won't change with facts but understanding what you want.

I am no better or worse, less deserving or more deserving of anything than any other animal growing like mold on this slo mo roiling ball of liquid minerals. If I started a new save file and tried to forget anything socialized I'm returned to by basic instinct--to not feel pain. This may just pertain to me, but I don't believe in God, I don't believe in a soul or the afterlife. I didn't ask to be born, but I don't want to die and almost every single human on this planet is in the same boat (starting therapy really helped to put this in perspective--if you have access I recommend it). Even Donald Trump is just an animal drawing on his trauma to decide what to do. Human brains, human ideas, human needs, they're all nonsense. Life is an absurd accident, not built to do or be anything. All that is "true" is what exists, how we decide to feel and take action is determined by what we each value. Most people couldn't tell you their ideology because they probably don't really have one, just a list of rules to live by backed up by the Trojan biases we call "opinions".

My liberal view made the world feel as if it was too scattered and disparate to understand. I thought I was looking at a puzzle full of holes of things I didn't know, that I was unable to see the picture because I didn't have enough pieces. But it was never a puzzle, it just looked flat because I'd been standing in the same place for so long. All the important pieces were there, I just had to reorient my position to see it. The point at which I'm standing now is the very base of my ideology--I hate pain and don't want to feel it and as such would not want other to feel it either. I don't need to know a fact to know that what someone is saying or presenting isn't going to meet that goal and if I don't' have the information I need to make that determination, then I ask for more. Stop thinking of things as good and bad and think of them as things that help your goal or don't.

Capitalism and socialism became nearly meaningless terms for me for a long time and I think it was helpful. Language has a funny way of delivering ideas when we're not paying attention and most people don't use them in good faith. By taking the talk away from labels and definitions, we can actually begin to see where our paths are better aided together. When you're not sure where to start, look for the helpers. When people tell you to organize it's because when all the dialectics are past, people will still be hungry and in pain. Talking about macro helps define the micro, but the core of what we want is just better lives and "organizing" is the act of reconnection with your human community. It's not about a paternal need for "peace", it's about acting for mutual benefit in a common cause.

I still have not read Marx.