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My New Year's Resolution for 2025 is to read more theory, thoughts on my reading list?
(lemmygrad.ml)
note: the section labeled other things I want to read is just things I find interesting and want to learn about, not necessarily an endorsement of the ideologies or authors on there (and also not necessarily not an endorsement)
That is a good New Year's Resolution to have, as it's always better to know more theory. Personally I always recommend to anyone that is planing to do a deep dive in Marxist theory to start with the philosophy on which the theory itself is based, that means reading books on Dialectical Materialism as the first step.
You already have a couple of them in your list, so my recommendation is to prioritize them over their application in the more advanced books. On that note the only book I would add to your list is M. Cornforth's "Materialism and the Dialectical Method" which is arguably the book to describe Diamat in the most understandable way for modern readers.
Other than that, I would say after finishing that list it'd be time to tackle the two most important works of Marx and Engels in Engels' "Anti-Dühring" and Marx's "Capital".
Good reading, Comrade.
gonna keep it real with you comrade, I can't do capital
too long for my ADHD zoomer brain
Even tough I'm neither a zoomer or have ADHD I can relate with not being able to read Marx's "Capital", years ago I also jumped straight into it after only having read the manifesto and as consequence could not make past the 2º chapter.
But that is the "Capital"'s contradiction. It's such a complete and elaborated description of capitalist economy that you theoretically wouldn't need any other complementary text to understand capitalism, but as a consequence of that the book is extremely dense, complex and long, so much that if you never read a Marxist book prior you will be encountering new terms and logics in almost every paragraph, making it a very hard and slow read while also likely leading to misunderstandings.
The solution to that is to do exactly what your doing now, which is reading other simpler and shorter Marxists books and increasing your understanding of Marxism in general, before tackling the behemoth that is Marx's "Capital". So just remember that you can't do capital yet, but after finishing your list, if you give it another try maybe you will find out that you actually can do it.
I have ADHD as well, so I know your struggle. You should check out The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism: Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism Part 1. It is a free book. You can buy the E-Book for $0 on their site
From the Preface:
This book covers the following:
I found this book to be incredibly useful for laying the foundation of my understanding of Marxism-Leninism. It synthesizes all the theoretical work spread across many of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin into a single volume. It contains a glossary of terms as well, which is very useful as a study tool. I think it should be required reading for all comrades. I should probably give it another read.
Oh yeah, this is the one that Luna Oi and Noncompete translated. I heard about this but I never actually read it (or even watched either of their youtube channels lol) but it does make sense that a text made for literal teenagers would be easily digestible, especially because yknow... I'm a literal teenager :)
on the list!
I definitely get that. I was somehow able to get through it because it was what I was focused on at the time, and it still took me a while.
It really is worth reading. To make it easier, I suggest a reading group, or a reading companion podcast, or the audio version.