Phase 1: Get Primed!
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On socialism – The Principles of Communism, Frederick Engels: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
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On imperialism – Killing Hope, William Blum: https://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX15023-WilliamBlum-KillingHope.pdf
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On propaganda – The CIA and the Media, Carl Bernstein: https://web.archive.org/web/20240310200210/https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977
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On anti-communism – The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins: https://archive.org/details/the-jakarta-method-audiobook-vincent-bevins
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On atrocity reporting — Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences, AB Abrams: https://ia800700.us.archive.org/32/items/abrams-atrocity-fabrications/Abrams_AtrocityFab.pdf
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On fascism & capitalism – Blackshirts & Reds, Michael Parenti: https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
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On the National Endowment for Democracy — “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups”, David Ignatius: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/
Phase 2: Learn The Truth About Socialist Projects!
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The USSR – “Storming the Gates: How the Russian Revolution Changed the World“, Brian Becker & Gloria La Riva
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China – “China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future”, Ken Hammond & Sheila Xiao
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The DPRK – “Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution”, Suzy Kim
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Cuba – “Fighting for Cuba! Fighting for Socialism!”, Miguel Díaz-Canel
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Marinaleda, Spain – “The Village Against the World”, Dan Hancock
Phase 3: Get Into Theory! Part 1 - The Essentials
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On the Basics - The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
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On Dialectics & Historical Materialism - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm
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On Economics - Wage Labor & Capital, Karl Marx: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
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On Imperialism - Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Vladimir Lenin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
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On State Capitalism - The Tax in Kind, Vladimir Lenin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm
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On Authority - On Authority, Friedrich Engels: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
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On Revolution - What is to Be Done? Vladimir Lenin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/
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On the State - The State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm
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On The Dictatorship of the Proletariat - The Foundations of Leninism, Joseph Stalin: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch04.htm
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On Oppressed Nations - The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Vladimir Lenin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm
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On Fascism - Neither Fascism nor Liberalism: Sovietism!, Gramsci: https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1924/10/fascism-liberalism.htm
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On Trotskyism - Trotskyism and its Helpers, Josip Tito: https://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1939/x01/x01.htm
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On Liberalism - Combat Liberalism, Mao Zedong: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm
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On Dissent - On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao Zedong: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm
Phase 3: Get Into Theory! Part 2 - Expand on the Classics (more modern work)
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“Elite Capture”, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
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Black Skin White Masks, Frantz Fanon: https://files.libcom.org/files/%5BFrantz_Fanon%5D_Black_Skin,_White_Masks_(Pluto_Clas(BookZZ.org).pdf
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The Black Panther Party Newspaper Collections: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm
Necessary Facts to Know:
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There are 874,000 deaths per year from capitalism in the USA: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-many-us-deaths-are-caused-poverty-lack-education-and-other-social-factors
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Socialism has been proven better: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf
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On average, 54% of people who experienced communism miss it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xYajq9ivSIqnKdXu94JQzfNShV4ryRh-V6LrvVhInr4/
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The European countries who did not engaged in massive amounts of fascism or fascism apologia
- Poland’s role in the Holocaust: https://archive.ph/sgbnF
The CIA fosters anti-communist “communism” designed to stop the spread of communism: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01065A000200080046-8.pdf
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The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot did not consider themselves communists: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html
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The Black Book of Communism is the source for the claim that “100 million people died from communism” – it is a work of Holocaust Denial Fiction denounced by its own authors: https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/
Selected Quotations on Often-Discussed Concepts:
On what Marxism Is
“I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which it is built up, and from that which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class – the proletariat – cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class – the bourgeoisie – without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.” - Engels, The Communist Manifesto (preface), 1888
On the Role of the State & Centralization
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” - Engels & Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
“While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society.” - Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871
“…The proletariat will find itself forced to…concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade.” - Engels, Principles of Communism (Section 18), 1847
“All...measures…will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.” - Engels, Principles of Communism (Section 18), 1847
“It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterparts of older, and even defunct, forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness…The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small states…The antagonism of the Commune against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization.” - Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871
“…since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.” - Engels, Letter to August Bebel in Zwickau, 1875
On the Transition Into Socialism
“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” - Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (Pt. 4), 1875
“Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.” - Marx, Letter to W. Bracke in Brunswick, 1875
“The working class…have no ready-made utopias…They know that in order to work out their own emancipation…they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.” - Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871
“…defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society.” - Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (Pt. 1), 1875
“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” - Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (Pt. 1), 1875
“It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once.” Engels, Principles of Communism (Section 18), 1847
“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has
been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will
lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a
revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions
of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.” - Engels & Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
“What does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does…Let us enumerate these elements: (1)patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming; (2)small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain); (3)private capitalism; (4)state capitalism; (5)socialism.” - Lenin, The Tax in Kind, 1921
“Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).” - Lenin, The Tax in Kind, 1921
“It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against state capitalism and socialism. The petty bourgeoisie oppose every kind of state interference, accounting and control, whether it be state-capitalist or state-socialist. This is an unquestionable fact of reality whose misunderstanding lies at the root of many economic mistakes.” - Lenin, The Tax in Kind, 1921
“Isn’t it paradoxical that private capital should be helping socialism? Not at all. It is, indeed, an irrefutable economic fact…that there is a possibility of assisting socialism by means of private capitalism (not to speak of state capitalism).” - Lenin, The Tax in Kind, 1921
“From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage.” - Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871
On Flexibility of Application
“The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing.” - Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto (preface), 1872
On the Evolution of Communist Theory
“However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever.” - Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto (preface), 1872