Scratch a liberal...

I'm glad you liked the checkpoint questions! I'd love any feedback you can give. Thanks for checking it out! 🫡

This is the list you should use, the old list is getting entirely overhauled as an advanced list. The old list is still up for now, and has archived versions, but it isn't really being maintained like the new, more basic list is.

🫡

Honestly not sure why they think tossing a handful of books with no other elaboration is a meaningful substitute for actually engaging with the points made. An accurate appraisal of the very real shortcomings of existing socialism begins with brushing away bourgeois myth-making, and requires placing each socialist state in their historical context. What came before, where it existed within, and how conditions changed since the establishment of socialism. By their comment, you'd think they supported the Tsar.

Why should we read red scare mythology, rather than genuine historical texts? For example, the soviet famine in the 1930s was largely due to adverse weather conditions, coupled with the bourgeois farmers called "kulaks" killing their livestock and burning their crops to resist the Red Army collectivizing agriculture. However, to paint those who died as "victims of communism" when the communists were the ones that finally ended famine in a region where famine was historically common and regular is hardly genuine.

The term "Holodomor," the right-wing theory describing a man-made and intentional famine, was created by Ukrainian nationalists in the 80s. It was named as such to draw direct connection to the Holocaust, and as such is a form of Holocaust trivialization. Archival evidence proves that there was no such intentional famine, but it is used politically to demonize socialism in the real world, wielded like a club.

An enormous number of prison deaths occured during World War II, when famine was widespread due to the Nazis storming Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket. On the whole, soviet prisons and the justice system itself were more progressive than their peers, Mary Stevenson Callcott documented it quite well in Russian Justice.

The soviet union, despite having a progressive legal system, was in a state of constant turmoil caused by pressures both external and internal. They couldn't simply delete all previously existing ruling-class people and ideology, class struggle continues under socialism. Further, pressure from the imperialist west, invasion both in threat and in action, and intentional sabateurs meant that the prisons certainly weren't empty. The soviet union never had a single year of normal, stable growth, free from intense opposition on the outside and counter-revolutionary forces on the inside.

The soviets indeed built up strong instruments of state power for the purposes of defending the gains of socialism and oppressing capitalists, landlords, kulaks, Tsarists, fascists, sabateurs, and all manner of counter-revolutionaries. This was unavoidable for any socialist state, especially one invaded by 14 capitalist countries at its outset, and one that started as a semi-feudal backwater.

With the advent of socialism, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.

Looking at actual rigorous research, rather than red scare mythology, we can see that Marxism-Leninism has been enormously uplifting for the working classes. Socialism has never been free of flaws, excess, or problems, but nevertheless has been progressive and brought with it a new course for development far more humane than capitalism and imperialism.

Worked for me just now, but try the original Monthly Review article and see if that works! I use the web browser, if that makes any difference.

I'll keep it limited to the most important subjects, and will be limited by character limit, of course. As an example, here's my notes on what the advanced guide may look like, that I jotted down today (obviously unformatted, many sections entirely unfinished and blank, and without links):

Advanced Course pre-pre-pre-Alpha build

Philosophy

Anti-Dühring
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
Dialectics of Nature
Class Struggle
Anarchism or Socialism?

Political Economy

Value, Price, and Profit
Capital: Volume 1 & David Harvey's Guide
Marx's Inferno
Capital: Volume 2 & David Harvey's Guide
Capital: Volume 3 & David Harvey's Guide
Marx on Capital as a Real God
The Transformation Problem

Colonialism

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Settlers
Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism
The Wretched of the Earth
Pedagogy for the Oppressed

AES

"Tankies"
Yellow Parenti
Blackshirts and Reds
This Soviet World
Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend
China Has Billionaires
Socialism in Power

Cultural Hegemony

Gramsci
Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing"
Inventing Reality
Western Marxism
Who Paid the Pipers?
Liberalism: A Counter-History

Art

AI

Education

Warfare

On Protracted War
On Guerilla War
Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla

Juche

Party Organization

Intersectionality

Within the various sub-groups will be ordered "mini-lists," so if someone finishes this list and wants to learn more about feminism, gender, and sexuality, because that's what interests them and affects their life the most, they can jump straight there. If someone is a big dialectical materialism enjoyer, they can jump to the Philosophy section.

Part of why this will take so long is because it's also aspirational on my part, I have to learn a lot myself before I can populate this list. Might take a long while to get there, so I want my "basic list" to be established first.

I mean modular in the sense that it will not be strictly ordered. You won't have to read the philosophy section before the economic, because the bases are established here. After this list, one should decide what is most immediately useful, and pursue that knowledge. This is something I learned from reading Krupskaya, interest and utility is what determines if someone will continue their studies or not. That's why I use this strict order for the basics, but keep it brief, and the advanced section can be pursued in any order they choose, with a section on cultural hegemony covering Masses, Elites, and Rebels as well as other personal favorite works in that domain.

Does that make sense?

My current plan is to have an "advanced" course that is meant to take place after this, and have it be modular, rather than ordered. This would fall into that.

The DNC and GOP are both aligned on supporting genocidal imperialism, though. Both shoot people dead in the streets, Hillary even bragged about how many people the DNC deported. The DNC was committing genocide in Palestine, which the GOP has continued. You're falling for their better PR.

I agree, it's the one work I'd love to include, but I'd need to cut about an hour out. Any ideas?

Every accusation is a confession, etc. etc. lol

Last I heard, OP is an anarchist, and is explicitly stating their opposition to the genocidal settler-colonial empire.

The problem is that the EU is an alliance of imperialist countries, not the fact that it is an alliance in the abstract.

Try my new basic course on Marxism-Leninism! It's a much stripped-back version of my original study guide, targeting around 20 hours of reading time. If you read 15-30 minutes a day, you'll be done in 2-3 months!

And one of these will be running the country in 2028. Forming a coalition to fight them is a great long term goal, bit it takes time and momentum.

We have been building momentum for a long, long time. Part of why progress is slow is because people believe voting to be the primary means by which we can engage with politics in a bourgeois controlled system. The fact that one of those two parties will win does not mean we need to accept the DNC as a valid representative of the working classes, as they fix nothing and maintain imperialism.

As of September 2025, 54% have a positive view of capitalism compared to 39% with a positive view of socialism. Those numbers are converging, but we have at least a decade or two before they cross. We just don’t have the numbers to pull it off.

Believe it or not, numbers are also improving with respect to how communism is percieved:

The problem with your thinking is that it assumes socialism is a matter of waiting for more people to support it. Plenty of popular policies like abortion, marijuana legalization, and opposing war in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are still supported by both parties. They do not represent our interests, so we need to organize against it.

Unions. We need to build unions. When a majority of people see unions working for them against the capitalists, then they will be ready to accept something new.

This is historically false. Every successful revolution has been led by parties, not unions. Unions help themselves, not the working class as a whole, so while we should support and engage with unions, it remains necessary to organize in a broad, revolutionary working class party.

Not sure! Just found it while searching for the quoted text.