Viyella [he/him]

Marx’s WLC is what helped me understand how class antagonism manifests itself in its most mundane but most applicable form, and VPP did a better job than any summary I’ve read in explaining the value of labour, labour-power and how surplus value arises. Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism is an excellent text in its own right and Lenin’s writing style makes him easy to read even when surrounded by endless tables, and the two follow-ups easily bring his analysis to familiar contemporary circumstances.

Incidentally, I found that Foundations of Leninism being slotted soon after Cheng Enfu’s Five Characteristics really strengthened the point that the post-WW2 world order was specifically created in fear of Communist revolutions. While it’s easy to dismiss Stalin’s conclusion that revolutions should no longer be expected in the most developed country, but where the global system of imperialism is weakest as a post-hoc rationalisation to explain the success of the October revolution and the failure of the German revolution, reading it so soon after learning about the qualitative changes the Global North made to minimise inter-imperialist wars really reinforced the idea that the Bourgeoisie have no choice but to respect and respond to the conclusions of DiaMat, and gave Stalin’s analysis the sense of being right too early, which Communists should always aim to be.

I thought that the changes made to the Philosophy section when the basic list was first posted were a bit of a downgrade. Elementary Principles of Philosophy basically single-handedly rewrote my opinion on what philosophy is/should be i.e. that it is a tool to help you understand the world, one that fails to do so is not a useful philosophy, and that popular philosophers in the liberal world (such as various Ancient Greek or Roman philosophers, or those like Nietzsche) are kept popular specifically because many are too outdated to be useful for anything other than self-help, or act in service of supremacist ideologies. Additionally, the book’s regular chapter summaries are exceptionally helpful in learning to apply DiaMat as a tool, which is something that Dialectical and Historical Materialism’s format wasn’t conducive to. I did briefly read your exchange with Edie about the error Elementary Principles makes so I understand why it’s omitted now, and I’ve noticed that you’ve updated the philosophy section again, so I’m hoping that it’ll be useful from the perspective of practical application.

I realise my comment’s already become massive so I’ll try to be brief with the rest. I think the Communist Manifesto is a bit lengthy and meandering, and is sandwiched by more focused works that are easier to glean key information from. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention when I read it, but I found Gramsci’s Intellectual to simply not have as much information as I was expecting and felt a bit disappointed. Given how important Cultural Hegemony is as a concept, I think I was expecting a lengthy, all-encompassing work akin to Lenin’s Imperialism. I think Masses, Elites and Rebels is an excellent text just for the way it drives home the necessity to understand that everyone has agency and generally act consciously or unconsciously in the way they think benefits them, and I regularly use his reasoning with my more liberal friends to explain the seemingly absurd ways that AI bros and CEOs act, or why wealthier people seem to cling to international pariahs like Zionism to very positive reception.

On that topic, my memory’s greatest disservice was likely to Why Socialism. I went in expecting a well-meaning but underdeveloped argument for a planned economy on the basis that anarchic production left too many people’s needs unmet, and instead found an essay that does a surprisingly good job explaining that class society is created and shaped for the explicit benefit of its ruling class, rejects the metaphysical argument of human behaviour acting totally according to an unchanging nature, and even that the value of labour-power is simply the minimum wage required to keep enough workers alive, the price of which is shifted up and down depending on how scarce or available jobs are at the time. Perhaps most surprisingly, all are asserted as true by Einstein without any argument in favour of the typical liberal obfuscation. While I imagine that he wouldn’t write on something without being thorough about it, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a consequence of the USSR’s proximity acting as an anchor on the left side of the Overton Window.

Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all.

Much like when reading This Soviet World, it does hit hard when a sentence written nearly a century ago rings true today. The paragraph after about education contrasted with some of the final chapters like Youth Set Free, where teachers go to great lengths to find children’s interests, and the more advanced students help the ones struggling as a matter of course really does highlight how our current system starts atomisation early.

Despite my praise for the essay, it probably is still worth heavily mulling over its inclusion for the reason hello_hello mentioned. In the same way that Cowbee took a while to add Stalin to the list because it risks making it radioactive for people who don’t already view the USSR positively, including Einstein does the same from the opposite end where it risks putting off people who very reasonably have no patience for humouring a zionist, even if including the most famous scientist helps with mainstream credibility.