Recommended Marxist Reading?

[Debater Slayer]

Other than the Communist Manifesto, what Marxist books would you recommend?

I looked at Das Kapital and saw that it was over a thousand pages long, which doesn't suit me at all for the time being. (I sometimes struggle to finish longer written material, let alone something that long.)

I'm not a Leninist, but Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is a part of my backlog because I'm interested to see whether Lenin had any solid ideals that he failed to implement properly due to his brutal authoritarianism and relentless tyranny. I'm convinced that even deeply flawed and terrible people could sometimes produce reasonable or useful thoughts in some areas.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Anti-Dühring (Engels)
State and Revolution (Lenin)
The Permanent Revolution (Trotsky)

 

[Debater Slayer]

Anti-Dühring (Engels)
State and Revolution (Lenin)
The Permanent Revolution (Trotsky)

Thanks a lot!

(Welcome back, by the way. Great to see you again.)

 

[Eddi]

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser

I read this at university, it's awesome

 

[Debater Slayer]

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser

I read this at university, it's awesome

Thanks!

 

[libre]

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser

I read this at university, it's awesome

I like this text, I've been meaning to give it another reading.

My favorite video on the internet is a 2 minute video about Hershey's chocolate which was inspired by an Althusser passage.

 

[libre]

Other than the Communist Manifesto, what Marxist books would you recommend?

My suggestions typically vary based on what it is someone wants to learn about Marxism.

If they are someone who wants a kind of introduction or FAQ to Communist politics and conception of History, I generally recommend The Principles of Communism by Engels. It's rather simple and seeks to provide answers to 25 basic questions about Communism, I think it's held up fairly decently.

If they want to begin study of Capital, the best introduction is "Karl Marx's Capital" by Carlo Cafiero.
It's not well known in the English speaking world, it is the only summary of Capital that Marx himself endorsed.

If one wants to learn about state theory, Lenin's 'The state and revolution' is going to be the best balance between insight and readability.
I've only ever given it a full read through once or twice but the opening paragraph will be drilled into my brain until the day I die.

 

[rocala]

I found "The Revolutionary Ideas of Marx" by Alex Callicos to be a very good introduction. "Marx's Ghost: Midnight Conversations on Changing the World" by Charles Derber, is a much more recent book and offers some interesting thoughts on a Marxist view of contemporary issues.

 

[Laika]

Other than the Communist Manifesto, what Marxist books would you recommend?

I looked at Das Kapital and saw that it was over a thousand pages long, which doesn't suit me at all for the time being. (I sometimes struggle to finish longer written material, let alone something that long.)

I'm not a Leninist, but Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is a part of my backlog because I'm interested to see whether Lenin had any solid ideals that he failed to implement properly due to his brutal authoritarianism and relentless tyranny. I'm convinced that even deeply flawed and terrible people could sometimes produce reasonable or useful thoughts in some areas.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

If you are not sure what you want to read and feel like browsing through a range of subjects, I can recommend this collection of over 1,000 books on archive.org. I met the user many years ago when I was on revleft.com and they have consistently uploaded new titles over the past decade or so.

All of the books there are either English texts published by western communist parties (mainly from the UK or the USA) or else are English translations of texts published in the USSR, China, etc. If anything, the more obscure the subject and the less well-known the author, the more interesting the books tend to be. It is also quite a lot of fun looking up the names of the authors, finding out their life stories and how they navigated their way through the history of the Soviet Union, it's collapse and the aftermath. As the publishers went bankrupt in the 1990s, the books are out of print, unlikely to be republished and have probably minimal copyright protections.

If you want something a bit more exotic, there are over 2,000 texts from Mir Publishers which was the Soviet's publishing house for the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc), mathematics, psychology, etc as well as a couple of illustrated children's books. They will contain Soviet ideological and philosophical biases, which means you get a different spin on scientific topics than you might find in the west, such as Philosophical Problems in Physics, the origins of Life, Logic, the origins of human consciousness, a philosophical discussion of the nature of the self, the history of psychology, discussions on the nature of racial differences, etc.

Not that I'm brainwashing you or anything... glory to the motherland....