/lit/ - Literature

>>21986433
If you want to understand socialists, you have to get to the root of their views: Rousseau's On the Origins of Inequality and intellectual debates in France throughout the revolutionary period. A key debate in political philosophy in the era revolved around the nature of property, where did this sense of ownership over things emerge? Liberals, like Locke, whom socialists are themselves indebted to, believed that the state, in part, existed to protect private property, including the human individual's right of ownership over his own body and person. All left wing ideologies express varying levels of hostility and skepticism towards private property, from outright abolitionism (most anarchists, classic Marxists and socialists) to some kind of accomodation with it (modern Chinese Marxists, moderate socialists). Once you've dealt with Rousseau, move on to Proudhoun and Marx. The key books here is Proudhoun's What is Property? and Marx's Communist Manifesto. Capital is a very hefty tome on economics so unless your already into that I don't recommend reading it straight away, instead try the Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844. These set out Marx's early outlook and views, especially his theories of alienation and his first attempts at an economic criticism of capitalism.

Although Marx had provided a "scientific" critique of capitalism, he didn't really point out where to go from there. The German social democrats pursued a policy of parlimentary reformism, which you can read about in their Erfurt Program, a document which outlines their goals and policies. Against them was Lenin, who advocated an authoritarian party of professional revolutionaries to overthrow the government in a violent revolution which he outlines in his book State and Revolution. Against Lenin was Pyotr Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist-communist and his book Conquest of Bread which lays out his vision of a dencentralized, stateless society without any externally imposed hierarchies. This book would be an influence on the Occupy protests if your old enough to remember those. Another really important book is Lenin's Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Why do leftists harp on about harp on about imperialism? Because of this book.

All of these books are the defining works of the leftist canon which socialists of all stripes constantly come back to and revisit. There really aren't any major works that transformed and shaped leftism beyond this point, the central themes and concepts these books brought up are constantly passed down, recycled and reinterpeted. Leftists tend to be religiously dogmatic, constantly referring back to these books to settle ongoing debates on interpret the present. They haven't produced anything major since really.