My uncle asked me for a primer on socialism. I was thinking maybe Socialism Made Easy or Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Anything that might be better?
For context my whole family are through and through vote blue liberals. It’s sad to say but most of them didn’t even like/vote for Bernie during the primary cycles. They aren’t really hardcore anticommunists though and have always been good on unions and labor generally, moreso the problem is really anti-Trump/pro-Dem brainworms. Maybe there’s something more modern to share that I don’t know of.
You might try the “Why women had better sex under socialism” article. It’s shows very concrete examples of how socialist economics improved the lives of women in the relatively recent past and does rely on dense theory in the explanation. I think it could be a way to say “before I ask you to read the theory, let me show you an example of the outcomes of the theory so you know that the theory works and is valuable.”
A really great article actually, was it only ever the article and not a book? However, I got to say that there still seems to be a lot of anticommunist priming in nearly every sentence. And calling women in communist state positions advocating for liberation “cultural imperialists” is a little over the top. I forgot what it’s like to be in the weird in-between zone where you recognize socialism as a successful system that has already achieved great success for worker libration but still have to do the anticommunist song and dance to be “taken seriously”, maybe even from your own perspective yourself.
Ghodsee is kinda weird like that. She’s gotten better over the years (I think) but she had a vein of anti-stalinism that kinda tinted how she wrote about the USSR imo.
She did expand the article into a full book.
Oof. It’s been a while since I’ve read it.
My suggestions for a good well rounded primer, imo:
Intro to theory:
- The Principles of Communism by Engels
- Why Socialism? by Mr. Einstein himself
- Understanding Socialism by Richard Wolff
- Understanding Marxism by Richard Wolff(personally haven’t read this yet)
- The Communist Manifesto
For historical analysis:
- Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
For understanding media biases against socialism:
- Inventing Reality by Parenti
- Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky(haven’t read yet so subject to change)
For philosophy:
- Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer(since Marx was first a philosopher, this is super helpful in understanding where he got his ideas of what socialism in the modern era can look like - I’m currently reading this)
For later if he wants more:
- The State and Revolution by VI Lenin
- Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg
I would maybe wait on state and revolution. I was listening to an audiobook and without context it sounds like an unwrapped twitter beef full of people with weird names you’ve never heard before.
Honestly I thought the same. I was listening to S4A’s audiobook of it and even with all his asides adding in context it was a lot to take in. It is still really great and I still need to finish it.
Yeah. And no “vote blue no matter who” lib is going to accept a critique of universal suffrage right off the bat.
I didn’t even know this was in State and Rev, is it near the end? Is the critique regarding ex owners and all that?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
From the first chapter
Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.
We must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as well an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German Social-Democracy, is
“the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state."
The petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from universal suffrage. They themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state” is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.
We know what he means, but a lib will look at this and immediately dismiss everything.
is a catechism to them.On a related note, I’d love a single anti-electoralism essay that I can spam my
friends with, because I cannot keep having that conversation with them.
True. I was hesitating on even adding it but I think that it and Reform or Revolution works as a “continue reading…” section so I edited it.
On socialism as a realistic, achievable system with a modern perspective I have to recommend Towards a New Socialism. Caveat being that Paul Cockshott is a TERF POS.
For an introductory text to get started just tell him to check out the Communist Manifesto, easy to understand and light on the jargon.
Honestly I’d almost recommend Principles of Communism over the Manifesto for this purpose. I found it much more digestible.
I’ve read TANS and thought it was really nice and digestible too. I’ve been in the process of working through How the World Works for a couple years now as well, it’s great for when I have the time to focus on something a little more academic. Too bad Cockshott is such a reactionary shithead.
It’s not socialism, but Listen, Liberal: Or whatever happened to the party of the People? By Thomas Frank might help get the Dem brain worms out of their head.
I don’t think anyone here needs to read Terry Eagleton, but as a first step at pulling a lib left, Why Marx Was Right is something I’ve had some success starting people off with. You’ll have more work to do afterward, since it’s weak on the post-Lenin Soviet Union, so I’d supplement it with (at the very least) Red Sails’s “Tankies”.
Utopian and scientific was mine. I think it was very effective at explaining what I didn’t fully understand and is what I always recommend. Not the manifesto. Don’t know why anyone recommends it.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angela Davis
In Defense of Looting - Vicky Osterweil
World Systems Analysis: An Introduction - Immanuel Wallerstein
Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
