Best products from r/communism101

Ok now we're cooking. This book is about that basically.

https://archive.org/details/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion

Also relevant:

https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Legal-Innovation-Western-World/dp/0521881749
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500596

You can find those free online somewhere.

I could have just linked that at the beginning but I think it's important to think more seriously about these questions. I was referring to the American constitution and if you think about how you operationalize such a concept (which really means to define it coherently) you can think about how one would measure such a thing in the United States. Does the United States have freedom of speech? What's the relationship between the letter of the law and concrete reality? How important is the law and what does freedom of speech, if it is related to the law, relate to the withering away of the state? What is the genealogy of 'rights,' what is their material basis, and what is the limit of the concept? You can point out that every freedom in the American constitution was in the Soviet constitution and their legal system was objectively better by bourgeois liberal standards at the time period in question. But that's sort of lazy, we know socialism is superior and that liberals don't actually arrive at their ideology through reason. So who really cares what they think in their dishonestly framed questions about a theory they knows nothing about?

I recommend just jumping into the first volume of Das Kapital. It isn't that bad. In fact, it's quite an enjoyable read (for the most part). The first part of it (roughly 200 pages) is fairly difficult and technical, but after that it becomes much more manageable. In fact you could probably even skip the first part and then go back to it later. In any case, you're going to want to re-read that first part multiple times as time goes on and you see more material. You could even read 2) and 3) in /u/jakehmw's post alongside it, and with those I'd also recommend David Harvey's companion. My own approach was to jump right in to Capital, following Harvey's companion and online lectures, and further consulting the other two books (which I didn't finish until after I finished Capital). I have found this approach very rewarding and not that strenuous. It opened up a lot of different directions that I could choose from depending on my interests.

It took me a summer to get through the first volume and those supplementary books. You just need to make sure to not go down too many rabbit-holes as you read it. Just get it done and you'll get a better idea of where you want to go next, and you'll be better equipped when you go there.

Edit: I recommend this copy of the first volume of Capital and here are Harvey's lectures. You can organize a reading schedule in terms of those lectures: one lecture (and the corresponding reading material) per week, for example.

Good luck and have fun!

Hello. I have been living in China for a couple of years now, and I would definitely say it is socialist. Very often though, people educated in radical politics in the developed capitalist countries have an idea in their head like "Socialism means everything is a perfect Utopia." Sometimes they even imagine a world where you just push buttons on a device like a Star Trek replicator and whatever you want is instantly created. If that is what you imagine socialism to be, then no, China isn't socialist, nor has socialism ever existed except in people's imaginations.

But if you were to compare Lenin's NEP to China today, then I would say China is much, much more socialist than Russia was in the 1920s. Very few people ever dispute Russia at this time was a revolutionary socialist country worth supporting, but in fact, it was even less socialist than China is today.

Academically speaking, if you would like to read something deconstructing the "China is capitalist" narrative, I'd recommend the book China's Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization by Roselyn Hsueh. There is some other literature I could also recommend, but this is one of the better books. Basically, what those in the West think of as a transition to capitalism in China never really happened. What happened was the form of the economic control was changed.

I often tell people, all you have to do to realize the Communist Party is in charge of the economy here is to look at all the buildings. There was even an article recently about it in a Western news source (can't recall the name of it, I apologize), talking about how China is building more skyscrapers than any country in the world. They even basically hint in the article that it isn't the market doing this. All this construction is happening at the direction of the government, and it is definitely not market driven activity. The government is expecting large amounts of people to move from the countryside into the cities, and they want to be able to handle this large movement of people. It actually costs them money, and in some places, these buildings are sitting empty, because the anticipated movement of people didn't happen (they are super cheap apartments though).

So in short, if your idea of "socialism" necessarily includes utopia, then no, China isn't socialist (no country ever has been either). If your idea of socialism is that that a communist/socialist party is in charge of running the economy, then yes, China is socialist. More socialist than Lenin's NEP ever was.

I can give you the definition that scholar Ira Gollobin gives in his book Dialectical Materialism: It's Laws, Categories, and Practice which I found pretty helpful as, not so much a hard-and-fast rule, but as a useful heuristic. He claims that dialectics are the basic and general truths about the universe. They can be applied to two general categories: 1) The objective (the universe, nature, objects outside the mind) and 2) The subjective (the experiencing person, the objects and faculties of the mind).

Furthermore there are (again generally speaking) Three dialectical laws... A) The Unity and Conflict of Contradictions B) The transformation of Quantity into Quality and vice verse and C) The Negation of Negation

When you apply these laws to phenomenon you wish to examine then you are engaging in dialectical study.

But dialectics is a pretty complicated issue and you won't get a nice neat short answer that is totally comprehensive (it's like asking "what is logic" or "what does it mean to say 'I'm a scientist?' ").

Here are some reading materials I would recommend which my clear some things up. I have listed them in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest...

-Dialectics for Kids

-Dance of the Dialectics: Steps in Marx's Method by Bertell Ollman

-Dialectical Materialism: It's Laws, Categories, and Practice by Ira Gollobin

The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital by E.V. Ilyenkov

Dialectical Logic by E.V. Ilyenkov

Good Luck!

The Communist Manifesto is only 40ish pages long and is written in a more or less popular language. I definitely recommend trying to read that.

This is a pretty good summary of Historical Materialism. I think an idea or two in it may be outdated, but for the most part it is pretty great.

Dialectical Materialism is the most difficult aspect of Marxist philosophy to understand, but understanding that makes everything else make a little bit more sense. This linked article seems to do pretty well explaining the basics of it. There is also an interesting book called Ubiquity which is not necessarily Marxist, but is about the relevance of Chaos and Chaos Theory in modern science, which would seem to validate Marx's Dialectical Materialism.

The one work which I went through over and over is Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Vladimir Lenin. It is short, but if you read it and look up what every term you are unfamiliar with means, it will definitely be enough to get you started.

I definitely respect your interest in learning different ideas. If you have any other questions specifically, definitely post them here.

Shining Path is not THE Communist Party of Perú. The original Communist Party was founded in 1928 by José Carlos Mariátegui under the name of "Socialist Party". Following the sino-soviet split in the late 60s, the maoist faction separated. Some members were fed up with a perceived bureacratism and inactivity in the soviet-aligned party (PCP-Unidad) and created the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) inspired by the Cuban revolution. All these guerrillas were quickly crushed by the Estate.

The chinese faction, PCP-Bandera Roja, counted among its founding members an obscure University professor named Abimael Guzmán who developed his own flavor of maoism named "Pensamiento Gonzalo" (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Pensamiento Gonzalo) and declared himself the "Fourth Sword" of communism.

Nowadays the main Communist Party of Perú is PCP-Patria Roja, another offshoot from Bandera Roja that reunited with Unidad and became a single party in 1968 (but claim continuity with the original 1928 Partido Socialista del Perú)

Thus, we have:

• PCP-Unidad (Unity)
  
• PCP-Bandera Roja (Red Flag)
  
• PCP-Patria Roja (Red Fatherland)
  
• PCP-Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
  
  There were many other fractions but I don't really have my references at hand, but these are some of the most salient ones. You should also consider the irruption of "New Left" politics after 1968 and the quite unique experience of a left-wing military dictatorship by Juan Velasco Alvarado (also this), who put forward one of the most radical Agrarian reforms in the continent. How to react to this regime was a central question and a very divisive factor among communists.
  
  I'm giving this panoramic view of Communist politics in Peru to avoid any conflation of Shining Path's criminal activities with the rest of parties, movements and leading figures.
  
  Now, if you're interested in reading more about Sendero Luminoso's history and ideology you should read the final report of the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) here. If you don't read spanish, some good English-language books on the topic are Carlos Ivan Degregori's analysis here. He was part of the Commission and was closely involved in the environment where Guzmán recruited his first followers at San Cristóbal de Huamanga University. Another author you should consult is Orin Starn, here is an article about Sendero by him.
  
  There's also this compilation with contributions by many academics. Most of the authors I have cited are anthropogists, which I consider provide the best descriptions and analysis not only because of the discipline's particular overview of social phenomena, but because the social sciences were very intimately related to left-wing politics and many of them were active in the parties mentioned.
  
  
  
  

I don't think there is a need to "add" ethics/morality to Marxism, as it does have its own type of "ethics", though it is somewhat alien (and hostile) to the liberal mind. I don't feel like the concept of ethics has been ignored or "completely dismissed" by Marxists, but the thing people commonly think of as "ethics", that is a set of guidelines that are somehow detached from material reality or hold true regardless of changing circumstances societies --that are based around decontextualized hyptheticals, individualism (rehashings of the the "robinson crusoe" fantasy of bourgeois economists are found in many ethical philosophers') etc-- is certainly and necessarily dismissed as "ideological rubbish" by Marx and Marxists. Marxist "ethics" are concerned with not only social/historical context but with practical matters, filling needs (in practice, as opposed to "giving rights" which is the bourgeois focus), and a "class-based" morality. One of the things that distinguishes Marxist ethics is that Marxists realize that questions of what the individual ought to do (especially in more "personal" type situations) is not the paramount issue of ethical thought so Marxism will appear to some to "dismiss" ethics if that is what they see "ethics" as being.

I'm reminded of the old canard "Marxists can't account for human nature!". What the people parroting this old platitude don't realize is that Marxism does indeed "account" for it -- by explaining how the "nature" of humans is historically and socially determined - an "ensemble of social relations" as Marx puts it. Just like with individualist ethics, Marxism in this case is viewed as "dismissing" something by people who see "human nature" as somehow an eternal/self-evident truth.

I wish I had time to write a more in-depth comment -- if you have further questions ask and I'll try to respond later or maybe someone else will. Anyway, the book you're looking for is "Marxist Ethics" by William H. Truitt. I can't find a free version, but at least it's not prohibitively priced like many works on Marxism. It does not seek to "contribute" to or "modify" Marxism, but rather to explain Marxist "ethics" and how they differ from liberal "ethics" and the ethics of mainstream/classical philosophy. The work is flawed in some ways -- the author focuses very heavily on Marx and Engels and gives pretty spotty and poor analysis of other major Marxist thinkers but it's a very good starting point and explains core concepts and puts them in place with liberal thought quite well. I can't think of another "contemporary" work that would be better though I haven't read too much else by contemporary authors on the subject.

Thinking back to when I was in a situation similar to yours, I moved onto looking at history. Various slanders, allegations and statistics were thrown at me whenever I mentioned communism or Marxism to a teacher or some such and I felt that it'd be best to be able to combat these claims, but also get an idea of the context surrounding the ones that were actually true.

I recommend Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 by J. Arch Getty as well as Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens. I also keep hearing good things about Class Struggles in the USSR by Charles
Bettelheim and Socialism Betrayed by... I forget who.

Once I began to move over towards MLM (which is pretty recently) I began to read up on articles about Socialist China. I recommend this and this regarding the Great Leap Forward. For the Cultural Revolution, which I have read far more on, Battle For China's Past by Mobo Gao is extraordinary, as are The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village by Dongping Han, Fanshen by William Hinton and the 'Voices' done by Bai Di and Wang Zheng. For a more strictly Maoist based analysis of the Cultural Revolution Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China
and its Legacy for the Future by the MLM study group is also a good read. Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic by Maurice Meisner is gives a very good, more overall account of Socialist China.

However, you should remember that not everything you read about history will be historical materialist, and that even accounts that give more a nuanced view of AES can still be very liberal and bourgeois at times, everything must be read critically.

At the start he had some good ideas, and some righteous causes, but as time went by, his policies were about as Marxist as Hayek.

Mugabe's government were always making regular pronouncements about converting Zimbabwe into a socialist society, although they didn't take concrete steps in that direction. In contrast to Mugabe's talk of socialism, his government's budgetary policies were conservative, operating within a capitalist framework and emphasising the need for foreign investment

Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education, and—despite his Marxist rhetoric and professed desire for a socialist society—adhered largely to conservative economic policies, as stated above.

At the start of his reign, there was massive expansion in education and health spending. In 1980, Zimbabwe had 177 secondary schools, but by 2000 this number had risen to 1,548. During that period, the adult literacy rate rose from 62% to 82%, one of the best records in Africa. Levels of child immunisation were raised from 25% of the population to 92%. In 1980, Zimbabwe had 177 secondary schools, but by 2000 this number had risen to 1,548. During that period, the adult literacy rate rose from 62% to 82%, one of the best records in Africa. Levels of child immunisation were raised from 25% of the population to 92%.



However, later on, a new leadership elite were formed, who often expressed their newfound status through purchasing large houses and expensive cars, sending their children to private schools, and obtaining farms and businesses. To contain their excesses, in 1984 Mugabe drew up a "leadership code" which prohibited any senior figures from obtaining more than one salary or owning over 50-acres of agricultural land. There were exceptions, with Mugabe giving permission to a General to expand his business empire, resulting in him becoming one of the Zimbabwe's wealthiest people. Growing corruption among the socio-economic elite generated resentment among the wider population, much of which was living in poverty.

In other words, he literally formed new bourgeoisie.

Not only that, but his ZANU-PF party formed their own businesses, often using public funds as venture capital. Yeah, that's right, they stole money from the poor to make themselves rich. Remind you of anyone ??

Add that to his homophobia, and there's a pretty clear case against him being anything remotely leftist, never mind a Marxist.

It's a tragedy too, considering how well he started.

I'd definitely recommend Aviva Chomsky's A History of the Cuban Revolution for a good, brief introduction to and analysis of the history of the revolution. It's a quick, easy read and very good.

I recently read Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance 1959-1971 by Lillian Guerra, and I would very highly recommend it. It's not a communist take on things, but still incredibly interesting and great analysis of the first decade after the revolution.

I actually just spent the summer in Cuba, so I can give you some first hand experience with talking to people about immigration.

First, the people who fled Cuba in the 60s were largely upper class whites who were truly enemies of the revolution. These were the original "gusanos", or worms. Most Cubans living on the island don't seem to have much sympathy with them.

But after that it gets a bit more complicated. Beginning in the 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union/socialist bloc (and thus of Cuba's most important partner -- they lost something like 80% of their exports essentially overnight) and the advent of the so called "Special Period", things got really, really fucking hard in Cuba. There was nothing to eat, no money, no oil, no hope. As is well known in the US, lots of Cubans did everything they could to get to Miami, especially on rafts. It is hard for me, even as a communist and a supporter (to an extent) of the Cuban government, to blame them at all for their decision. Hearing people's stories about their struggle in the 90s is... harrowing. Check out the documentary Balseros for a take on the rafters.

Nowadays, things are much better than in the 90s, largely thanks to Chavez/Venezuela. But plenty of Cubans still want to go to the US. It's hard when you're living in a relatively poor country next door to Empire to not dream of living inside it.

Of course, there have also been people over the years who have fled Cuba for "political" reasons, including many artists and intellectuals. I sympathize with them to some extent -- the political, artistic, cultural, etc repression, while understandable and perhaps necessary to some extent (though that's debatable), must have been (and to a lesser extent still is) very difficult to live under.

I think that the biggest thing I learned in Cuba was to just try to be more nuanced in my understanding of the situation. I still fully support the revolution, and think that overall the revolutionary government has done an admirable job that we have much to learn from. But they messed up in a big way on a lot of things, and it certainly isn't a cakewalk to live in Cuba right now. More than anything else I think Cuba needs a resurgence of the Left worldwide -- that's the only way for the country to recover enough economically to make some necessary political changes without sacrificing socialism.

I guess certain anthropologists want to 'give back' to the communities they study, and obviously that'll take place in a charity kind of way on a capitalist basis. That isn't very specific to anthropology though, and you can find tons of critiques of NGOs on the internet.

A more interesting critique of anthropology is how it arose from the colonial encounter in order to better rule colonial subjects, justify their inferiority, and so on. A decent Marxist book on this is J. Fabian's Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, but it has been acknowledged by liberal mainstream anthropologists for a long time.

The US military uses something called "Human Terrain Systems" in which they basically employ anthropologists to help them with imperialism. There's a fairly recent book on this titled Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in the Service of the Militarized State. From what I know it's written from a left-liberal perspective, but it obviously can be really easily linked to a scientific Marxist analysis of imperialism.

Anyway, there's much more to anthropology than it being a weapon of imperialism. Marx & Engels were extremely keen on anthropology and its discoveries' connection to their politics. They wrote loads about it, most famously in Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which is actually based on Marx's Ethnological Notebooks. Anthropology continued to play a pretty important role in Marxism, including Lenin encouraging ethnographic studies in order to better administer the USSR.

He just passed in June but Domenico Losurdo was a juggernaut. His critique of totalitarianism is excellent. Check out his books Liberalism: A Counter-History, War and Revolution, and this Google translated copy of Stalin: A History and Critique of a Black Legend.

Stephen Gowans is a journalist and a blogger who wrote these two blog posts that helped me on my journey from anarchist to ML. Here and here. His books on Syria and the DPRK are both great though the history major Trot in my study group said the Syria book is a bit simplistic. Still, it gives a cogent materialist analysis and a great condemnation of US imperialism.

Jay Tharappel’s Oriental Despot blog is something to look out for. His piece Anti-Stalinism is Left-Wing Racism is a good read.

I had only a brief flirtation with MLM but I think Chinese MLM Minqi Li’s book on how China’s growth will bring capitalism to its knees is very interesting and worth a look.

A great intro to Communism is Philip Sharnoff's Principles of Scientific Socialism: A Primer on Marxism-Leninism. It presents all the main ideas of Marxism in a straight-forward and easily accesible manner.

I also recommend Political Economy: A Marxist Textbook by John Eaton for a more focused look at Marxist economics.

Both books are great for beginners. And I have the same problem with online material, so these books really helped me out.

The Marx-Engels reader is a great book. "On Capital" is a good start. You might try to find reading assignments from university courses (sometimes they're online) and that ought to give you some direction. I do recommend reading essays completely.

There’s the Marx-Engels reader, I can find it on amazon but I’m sure there’s a better means to purchase it without supporting bezos:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Edition/dp/039309040X

gonna plug the “marx-engels reader”

best thing is each work included has an introduction by the editor that explains why he chose to include that work and why it’s important.

I have a copy of the Marx-Engels reader and I find it pretty comprehensive.

Purges began in 1919 after the revolution to get rid of people in the party who were drinks fakes or anything in between.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-Great-Purges-Reconsidered-Post-Soviet/dp/0521335701

Very food revisionist history of the purges here, adds some context to the Great Purges by exploring how they began under Lenin

The answer to your question does seem easier than it is. Because there are several traditions or schools of thought on how to define fascism. I myself worked through some primers on this the last couple of months.

A good start in my opinion are the 14 points by Umberto Eco:http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

The US-academic Jason Stanley recently published his book on a purely ideological definition, but basically expands on Eco's points:https://www.amazon.com/How-Fascism-Works-Politics-Them-ebook/dp/B0796DNSVZ

From what I learned through mostly the work of german marxists is the following:
Fascism is more than just a military dictatorship, because it is based on a mass movement and mass support. Fascism is always anti-communist and it's prime goal is to crush the worker movement. Domestically fascism crushes any opposition and favours big business (but in order to come to power panders to the bourgeoisie and the workers with pseudo-anticapitalis rethoric). In regards to foreign policy fascism strives to build or expand the empire and to conquer other nations in order to subjegate other people and to exploit ressources to feed it's own capitalist war machine.

In absence of fascism, capitalism works pretty well as long as bourgeois parlamentarism can solve the issues in favor of big business. That's why fascism is the last resort for capitalists in times of crisis when the worker movement poses a threat...when a simple return to the good old days does not seem realistic anymore.

Petty bourgeois might join the working masses if they see a chance of success, of victory on this side of the struggle. But if e.g. social democracy fails the petty bourgeois or the workers movement is weakened (or both) then the "middle classes" join the more active, the more "vital" seeming fascists.

Therefore, US-goverments including Trump now certainly in part deploy fascist politics like US Border Control, mass surveilance, mass incarceration, segregation, racism, etc. etc. But according to what I learned so far, the US is not yet a fascist state simply because there are still remnants of democracy. The US is by all accounts an oligarcy. But fascist, I say it's not.

i bought the penguin versions of volume 1, 2, and 3 on amazon. volume 1 is the ben fowkes translation and 2 and 3 we're translated by david fernbach. it looks like that review is for an old version of the book. this version on amazon should be the ben fowkes translation of volume 1. that review is a couple years old too and i think that most online retailers carry the ben fowkes version now.