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What are you reading?
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Damn bro.. So many ppl are reading several books at once apparently. I don't think my brain could manage so much information at once honestly o.O
I'm reading "Blackshirts and Reds" by Parenti. Am on page 119 rn, and I gotta say I still enjoy Parenti's simpler style of writing as opposed to Marx'. Also I was surprised how Parenti went into detail abt czechoslovakia even. Specifically abt Vaclav Havél's privatization campaign. Never thought he'd go that direction. I feel like I learned a LOT through this book and I'll keep recommending it to everyone who hasn't read it. I think anyone can profit from reading this.
After I'm done with this book, I thought I might pick up Mao's "On Practice"? I read "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" by Stalin and "How to be a Good Communist" by Liu Shaoqi, so I hope that book might additionally help me understand philosophy more.
If you haven't yet, read Lenin after this. He's much more easier to read compared to Marx.
Oh, true. I only read Lenin's "Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism" as of yet. Do you have any specific book recommendations from him?
Imperialism, highest stage of capitalism.
State and revolution.
These are his most important writings imo. They are also incredibly easy to consume.
State and Revolution is essential for understanding the state and why Anarchists and Socdems are wrong. Imperialism is a good foundation for understanding today’s globalized capitalism. I gotta read Left Wing Communism sometime. I gotta go back and read his writing on dialectics, but I’ve covered my bases with other dialectics works (on contradiction is a total banger). What Is to Be Done is kind of overrated and very specific to Russia’s conditions at the time, though it may be useful to a well read strategist. That’s all I know about Lenin’s works.
I would say that What Is To Be Done? is one of Lenin's most important works, if anything I'd say it's underrated. Like (mostly) all of his works, it talks directly about the situation in Russia at the time, but that doesn't make it any less useful. You just have to extract the universal principles from the tactical particularity he's writing about.
WITBD? focuses on the need for organizing, and not just any kind, but actual revolutionary organizing with both theory and practice, for bringing together the proletariat with all other revolutionary classes and even individual intellectuals. It speaks against just focusing on a binary interpretation of class struggle (proletariat vs bourgeoisie), and instead it tells us to focus on any struggle that is revolutionary (anti-colonial struggles, gender liberation struggles, etc.).
Here's how Losurdo describes it in Class Struggle:
I know, it’s important, it’s just boring, and more for advanced and organizing people. Without reading I already understand the distinction between tailing the masses and being a vanguard. It’s an important idea, it’s just a lot of reading for a simple conclusion dressed in time specific evidence.
Edit: by overrated I mean by larpers.