/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16638413]

I want to get into leftist and communism stuff. How do I go about it? Straight into Marx?

[Anonymous No.16638429]

>>16638413
Start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.16638439]

>>16638413
Yikes!

[Anonymous No.16638443]

>>16638413
You start with Chomsky obviously.

[Anonymous No.16638476]

leftist theory is incredibly fucking boring to read, genuinely. The easiest thing to read is the Communist Manifesto. watch some youtube videos by unironic marxists/jucheists or whatever your flavor is

[Anonymous No.16638487]

>>16638476
>Zizek is boring to read
Are you serious?

[Anonymous No.16638537]

>>16638413
I mean have you tried bringing up nietzsche or any western philosopher for that matter around your local marxist lgbtqia cattle? In no time you will see their beady stupid cowlike eyes light up in panic. Soon enough they will start with the usual subhuman bleating: "wasnt he sexist? Arent you being dangerously eurocentric? Why read books by dead white men when you could have been streaming the latest diverse and inclusive workplace comedies at netflix hulu and disneygo? What are you a russian bot trump supporter? Didnt you know reading books is ableist towards people who are too retarded to read? Have you been taking your SSRIs and HRT? it is very important that you take the medication dr goldstein prescribed otherwise we will have to report you to corporate for mandatory sensitivity training".

[Anonymous No.16638579]

>>16638413
You could read the Frankfurt school and modern critical theory for more contemporary thought, but you probably want to read through history of thought as well to understand the debates and innovations. Basic understanding of Marx oeuvre (including transitions) are probably helpful for understanding later authors. Also you should know Hegel, Kant, republican and liberal authors (Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, etc).
If you have read the later iterations of Frankfurt school thought you should read criticisms of them as well, Amy Allen, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau etc.

[Anonymous No.16638609]

>>16638413
I would burn every last simgle page of the western cannon if it meant getting rid of racism, sexism and transphobia. I dont think thisisradical at all but merely the bare minimum required of anyone who wants to be on the left.

[Anonymous No.16638614]

>>16638413
Lukacs, Marx, and Adorno are the only people on there you should read

[Anonymous No.16638621]

>>16638413
you start by microwaving your balls and getting stage IV canser

[Anonymous No.16638625]

>>16638614
Forgot Debord

[Anonymous No.16638626]

>>16638413
>i want to give myself a lobotomy
good luck anon

[Anonymous No.16638629]

>>16638413
By this point why would working class white heteros stick with the left besides stockholm syndrome? Its pretty clear these people want us broke dead our children raped and they think its all pretty funny.

[Anonymous No.16638638]

>>16638614
All white heterosexual european males.

[Anonymous No.16638650]

>>16638413
>sadie plant

[Anonymous No.16638661]

>>16638413
Out of 32 books only 2 are by women and one by a person of color(freire who is latinx)

[Anonymous No.16638690]

>>16638413
Depending what direction you go, Marx is pretty much fundamental, there are multiple charts/reading guides out there like this one. I think you should start with Socialism Utopian & Scientific to see what made Marx different then other socialist thinkers before and during his lifetime.

[Anonymous No.16638694]

>>16638690
If you start with Lenin you'll end up as a useless twitter tankie

[Anonymous No.16638724]

>>16638694
That Lenin work is only a short pamphlet, and just about the 3 different components of marxism. It's only a 10 minute read.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
Like I said there are multiple charts, depending on what interests you. I think /leftypol/ would also be a good place to ask but they might just say read the sticky.

[Anonymous No.16639055]

>>16638487
To be fair he's easier to read than listen to.
>ZEE *SNIFF* IDEARR OF ZEE CAPITALIST *SNIFF* SNORT* *PHLEGMS DIRECTLY INTO THE MICROPHONE* EXPLOITATION OF THE ZEE WORKING CLASS AND ZEE PRRROLATERRRIOT

[Anonymous No.16639070]

>>16638609
I understand racism and sexism but how the fuck do people actually defend trannys? I consider myself left-wing at least when it comes to economics and what have you but I look at the LGBT crowd and I sometimes think fucking hell they really do bring it on themselves sometimes

[Anonymous No.16639071]

>>16638413
I would recommend just not larping or cosplaying. Don’t bother with leftism or communism or politics in general. Just read fiction, it’s the only thing that will actually do good in your life

[Anonymous No.16639086]

>>16639071
This. People who read into politics always end up with their pronouns in the Twitter bio or have some kind of statue as their profile picture

[Anonymous No.16639143]

>>16639086
Yep, whether you think you’re a communist revolutionary or some kind of right wing “traditionalist” warrior with some fucking Roman name as your YouTube profile, you’re nothing but a larping faggot. There’s no revolution taking place right now. Those things actually happened for real in history and now you’re pretending to reenact events that literally aren’t occurring. You’re not a revolutionary, you’re just a guy with nothing going on in your life. Read Proust, not Karl “the fag” Marx

[Anonymous No.16639204]

>>16638413
This is such an awful guide I have no idea how it ever came to be the default one that gets passed around. The first four things are core to communist thought, and then everything else is either way to advanced for the beginner, about a specific and narrow question, or genuinely obscure and unimportant.

Heideggerian Marxism by Marcuse is an interesting couple of essays, but it’s not even a little bit important to anything on the left.

The Most Radical Gesture by Plant is a history of a leftist movement in france during the 50s-70s. Interesting but not exactly essential.

All the works here by Jameson and Adorno are basically only interesting for the analysis and criticism of literature and art.

The Poverty of Theory by Thompson is a critique of Althusserian Marxism, which again isn’t super important for the beginner.

Even the book by Trotsky I don’t think I’d really put in my top 30 ‘most important’ books for a new leftist to read. The Russian revolution is certainly important but Trotsky’s history of it isn’t an essential theoretical text for all leftists.

[Anonymous No.16639222]

>>16639070
Not the previous anon. I think that the extreme of either side, in any given ideology, hobby or what-have you, are pretty dumb. So I don't think the average LGBT supporter/identifier is bad. But, I get what you are saying, the mega-furry 10 000 with a fully automatic fursuit, with double diaper and erect-functioning red-rocket is a tough pill to swallow if that is what you persive a furry to be.

[Anonymous No.16639228]

>>16638413
>I want to get into something predicated on a mistake made about human equality during the enlightenment.

[Anonymous No.16639236]

>>16639086
sums it up pretty well

[Anonymous No.16639239]

>>16638537
You know an Italian Marxist-Leninist wrote the most important work of Nietzcheian scholarship in the last half century?

Also The Shortest Shadow by Zupanicic and Nietzche and Philosophy by Deleuze for two other leftist works that have positive overall takes on Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.16639270]

Even if this was just trying to get at the most basic communist canon of texts it ought to include something like Mao’s selected writings, as well as stuff by people like Fanon and marxist feminists like Clara Zetkin.

[Anonymous No.16639916]

>>16638413
Days of War, Nights of Love
Basically all you need to read, then just quit your job and smoke at much weed as you can until you get a really good idea for living outside the system. The boom, your drowning in crust punk gash

[Anonymous No.16639955]

Start with babeuf from the French revolution.

[Anonymous No.16639976]

>>16638537
go outside and stop watching sargon anon

[Anonymous No.16639993]

>>16638443
+1

[Anonymous No.16640042]

>>16638413
Broadly:
1) Engels
2) Marx
3) Lenin / KAPD / Industrial Unionism & Berkman
4) Marx
5) Mao / Autonomia & Johnson-Forest & CLR James / Graeber

The first text you should probably read is "Socialism: Utopian & Scientific" because it outlines that this is a project about working people's actual power in history, not dreaming of castles in the sky. Don't read Manifesto, it was an immediate aims document for 1848 for a bourgeois committee.

2) Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
3) Family, Private Property & The State
4) Value Price and Profit

[Anonymous No.16640055]

Why do all these charts have communist manifesto? Wasn't it a party propaganda piece?

[Anonymous No.16640096]

>>16640055
It is a simple way to tell if they were written by an active communist or not. If the chart has manifesto then its from a LARPer.

[Anonymous No.16640399]

>>16638413
Indtroduction of grundrisse is really good - you can find it online - when the alt-right talks about that marx hates western culture they are out of their mind; he learned italian just to read dante in the original language and thereafter learn all of the inferno by heart, when he in the end of the introduction to grundrisse talks about our inability to produce that kind of art you can feel his genuine sadness on the matter.

Ps. i spell like shit when I'm tired, deal with it.

[Anonymous No.16640418]

Furthermore read about the anarcho-communist revolution in spain around Catalan just before second world war - Bakunin was the first translator of Das Kapital into russian; you CAN be a marxist anarchist fyi.

[Anonymous No.16641151]

>>16640055
>>16640096
The first chapter of the manifesto is still a great piece of work that lays out the basic marxist view point, ie society is made up of economic classes and history is primarily caused by the conflict between classes. Capitalism is a system that gradually turns everything into commodities and all connections between things into monetary relationships.

It’s also just fairly poetic and easy to read, something that can’t be said for a lot of leftist writing. Phrases like ‘all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned’ stick with you.

That said, you only need to read the first part, the rest are more specific to that time and place.

[Anonymous No.16641163]

Read the essentials of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Bordiga, Gramsci, and Parenti.

[Anonymous No.16641204]

>The essentials of Stalin
…
Neither On Linguistics or Short Course are essential.

[Anonymous No.16641211]

>>16638413
get a reader for marx and one for popper and then abandon leftism.

[Anonymous No.16641257]

>>16641211
Popper is trivial. Try Main Currents of Marxism for an actual critique.

[Anonymous No.16641265]

>>16638413
You're so fucking retarded and gay. Just kill yourself already.

[Anonymous No.16641288]

>>16638413
Some shorter reads for you
>older lefties
Marx - wage labor and capital
Kropotkin - the conquest of bread
>contemporary
Capitalist realism
The Dispossessed (fiction)

[Anonymous No.16641634]

>>16638537
Half a gram is better than a damn.

[Anonymous No.16642065]

You will get nothing out of it. Marxism is a degenerated research program, or better to say a worldview. Actually existing Marxists deny all the research in social sciences, and build their identity around it. They deny economics starting from 1870, that is modern mathematized economic science -- e.g. if you open literally first chapter of Capital you'll find out that Marx does not know how to compare two different use-values, i.e. stuff you learn in first 3 lectures on microeconomics. They deny non-Marxist history, atrocities committed by communist regimes, or just their basic functioning; and of course economic history -- they will just repeat bullshit about enclosures, about "modes of production", "feudalism" and so on. Anthropology also goes down in the drain since Engels wrote something about. Philosophy? Lol, we have DIAMAT, and Materialism and Empiriocritisim coupled with the Fundamental Question of Philosophy No Actual Philosopher Cares About, posed by some political activist and non-philosopher Lenin.
So all of it is build around denying academic research, peer-review and all the standard features of modern knowledge production. How does it function then? The one little trick allows it -- the notion of ideology and "class consciousness"/"class struggle". You already have the basic insight if you are a Marxist: everything rotates around obfuscating the class antagonism EVERYWHERE -- there is "class struggle in theory", there is progressive and reactionary forces, materialists and idealists, even scientists themselves don't know about that, so you have to teach them -- like Lenin in his book explaining to Poincare how he is a gay idealist.
Depending on your iq level you can operate like Zizek who uses this meme almost post-ironically, rejecting everything from Marxism, but then pulling "class struggle" meme from his back as a final cause in everything (Laclau argued that), or you can operate like a dimwit from /leftypol/ (somehow with the same level of discourse as alt-righters) calling everything that does not fit into your particular sectarian interpretation of Marxism "ideology" and everybody who you don't like CIA shills or porkies or classcucks or whatever is the latest buzzword.

[Anonymous No.16642123]

>>16638413
Start here.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm