In terms of theory, I don’t consider myself well read. Theory is often really tough for me to read. Even with very easy-to-read writers like Michael Parenti, it’s dense with mindblowing info. And things like the book Will to Change by Bell Hooks hits me in really raw feelings so I stopped at the first chapter. I need the easiest authors and their easiest-to-read works, or else I’m just not reading.
-Micahel Parenti: What’s a Slum? Urban Poverty and Marginality in America
-“I Have a Dream, a Blurred Vision” by Michael Parenti"
-Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
No idea how I got through “Friendly Feudalism.” I read these all about 3.5 years ago before I lost the bandwidth to go further.
Edit: I tend to watch things more so I guess you can add video links after everything else too.
I’m not sure if you’d consider it theory, but The Principles of Communism is a great document to send to someone who knows nothing about communism: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
same with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
in the spirit of the thread, ill dump the rest of my theory here:
Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions by lenin
Theses on Feuerbach (simpler as in shorter, but not as “clearheaded” as the next one:)
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (goes from Hegel to Feuerbach to Marx)
engels’ letters around and about dialectics
similarly, the prefaces to antiduhring contain one of my favourite paragraphs on dialectics as someone who is scientifically-inclined.
im a little surprised in the beginning of that document by the words “in all civilized countries of the world”… yeesh
He meant “development”. It was 1847 after all.
Yea, it’s not great. I believe he had in mind a certain objective measure of societal development, in terms of the advancement of the productive forces. An aroma of racial science persists; but I don’t think he was exactly saying that certain peoples are biologically under-evolved.