Dessalines Marxism Study Plan

Here’s an ordered list of Marxist books and essays that can serve as a reading list / study plan.

This isn’t a comprehensive list: these are the ones I wish I could go back in time to give to middle-school me.

It alternates between theory, history, and psychology.

• Engels - Principles of Communism Audiobook A glossary of terms to get us all on the same page.
• Lenin - The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism. The best short essay introduction to Marxism.
• Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, audiobook Simply the best primer on scientific socialism written by one of its founders. Starts from its historical foundations, to its theoretical underpinnings.
• The Communist Manifesto. Much less informative, and not as mature a work as Socialism, Utopian and scientific, but should still be read. Captures the energy and urgency of the communist movement.
• (Optional) Paul D’Amatto - the meaning of Marxism. Youtube audiobook. A modern introduction to Marxism, only read if you have been having trouble understanding concepts.
• (Optional) Chris Harman - How Marxism Works. Audiobook Another shorter modern introduction to Marxism: read this if you’ve been having any trouble.
• Lenin - State and Revolution. Audiobook. The most important political work of the 20th century. Through a clarifying and critical analysis of Marx and Engels’s thoughts on the state, Lenin explains the class nature of the state, and argues convincingly for the creation of proletarian states: the vehicle which can bring about socialism. This strategy and analysis would be adopted and sucessfully carried out in dozens of countries following this blueprint. Focuses on the most important question for all socialists: What is to be done?
• Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds. Youtube audiobook. Brandolini’s law: It takes 10x the amount of energy required to refute bullshit, than it does to produce it… IE, it’s far easier to learn theory, than it is to undo a lifetime of anti-communist propaganda. This book explains why that cradle-to-grave anti-communist indoctrination process exists (from school to workplace to media), and why the mere existence of communist countries is so threatening to the wealthy. It gives an overview of the soviet experiment: what it achieved for humanity, the history of its anti-fascist struggle, and its struggle for human equality, and how its overthrow, and how the US entrenchment of neoliberal globalization and neo-colonialism has wrought destruction in the global south.
• Stephen Gowans - Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? audiobook A great essay to accompany the previous book, about the tremendous success of the soviet planned economy, and the real reasons for the USSR’s downfall.
• Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme An invaluable essay from Marx dissecting a weak socialist party program, where Marx also outlines the transition from capitalism to communism, as well as a description of how a labor-time based economy can function.
• Rosa Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution . Audiobook. Why electoralism will not save us, and revolution is the only way forward.
• Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them., audiobook A great essay to go with the previous book.
• Kwame Nkrumah - The Mechanisms of Neo-colonialism. Essay describing how neocolonialism and US “aid” impoverishes Africa.
• Ward Wilson - The bomb didn’t beat Japan, Stalin did. Audiobook. Essay on the mythology around the US use of atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• (Optional) Zinn - A people’s history of the US. A good beginner US history book, looks at US history from the lens of its most oppressed populations. The chapters on the US constitution and civil wars are excellent.
• Fidel Castro - My Life (Audiobook on torrents). This book will get you into the mindset of what it means to be a socialist: to rebel, to teach, to be a good comrade, and to fight for the betterment of humanity. Castro was an active part of many of the most important events of the 20th century; but not only is his wisdom on these events invaluable, his life was truly extraordinary. You will learn hundreds of lessons from communist grandpa reading this book.
• Michael Parenti - Inventing Reality. Youtube audiobook. A great expose of US / western media, examining the tactics employed by a small number of capitalist media companies to indoctrinate the population, backed up by comprehensive historical examples.
• Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth. A great look at the psychology of settler-colonialism, and the path to liberation.
• J. Sakai - Settlers: the Mythology of the White Proletariat, audiobook. The most important US history book. Analyzes the US’s settler-colonialist foundations, its history of genocide, exploitation, social bribery, and the spoils that went to those who willingly absorbed into whiteness and the murican dream (even if they had to kill indians to get some cheap land to do so.) Excellent and unique analysis of FDR’s new deal as the bribery and absorption of the labor movement into the murican dream.
• Marx - Wage Labour and Capital A great primer to read before diving into Capital.
• Silvia Federici - Caliban and the Witch [audiobook] An in-depth account of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and the new world, and how the capitalist class strategized how to control not only production, but social reproduction. The bodies of women themselves became commodities, in order to control population rates, quell social revolts, and take advantage of free domestic labor in the home, via a campaign of terror: the witch-hunt.
• Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Audiobook An excellent overview on the colonial subjugation of Africa by Europe.
• Lenin - “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder . Audiobook. An invaluable work on tactics and theory.
• Witchcraft - Class struggle and women’s liberation in the middle ages. An extremely interesting essay on the connections betweeen witchcraft, devil worship, women’s oppression, and class struggle in the middle ages in France.
• William Blum - Killing Hope. A history of US imperialism since WW2.
• George Jackson - Blood in my eye.
• Robert Cialdini - The Psychology of persuasion Not explicitly Marxist, but a great breakdown of the main psychological tactics used by exploiters to manipulate us.
• Stalin - Anarchism or socialism? A great essay on the historical failings of Anarchism.
• The Long Game and Its Contradictions. A great essay introduction to Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - An indigenous people’s history of the US.. A detailed and heart-wrenching history of the genocide, conquest, and settler colonialism perpetrated against native peoples in the US, and the theory and perfection of the US’s settler colonialist strategies.
• Lenin - Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism A look at imperialism, the modern stage of capitalism, and the primary contradiction. Reads like it was written yesterday.
• Marx - Capital. Best read in short snippets, as its a hefty work, but invaluable to understanding the inner-working of capitalism. Best to follow along with youtube lectures.
• Huey P. Newton - Revolutionary Suicide Audiobook. An autobiography from one of the greatest US socialists. Hundreds of lessons.
• Joshua Bloom - Black Against Empire An accompanying book about the history of the Black Panthers and their suppression by the US police state.
• Stalin - The foundations of Leninism. An invaluable text on what Marxism-Leninism adds to the Marxist tradition.
• Zak Cope - Divided world divided class. A look at the imperialist division of the world, and modern class politics of the imperial-core labor aristocracy.
• Cockshott and Cottrell - Towards a New Socialism (pdf) epub audiobook Many books talk about what communists are against: this book is about what we’re for: it outlines how we can use modern technology to go beyond money, and implement a planned economy based on human labor time.
• CLR James - The Black Jacobins Audiobook. A story of the only successful slave revolt in world history, that occurred in Haiti in the late 1700s.
• Liu Shaoqi - How to be a good communist Audiobook An excellent essay on its title: how to be a good comrade, be a righteous fighter for the party and humanity, while avoiding the extremes of “left” and “right” deviationism.
• John Smith - Imperialism in the 21st century. An update to Lenin’s imperialism, this is an advanced level book that shows how imperialism functions in the era of neoliberal globalization and transnational corporations.
• The quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong “the little red book”. A greatest hits of Mao’s wisdom on many subjects.
• Eduardo Galeano - Open Veins of Latin America A history of imperialist exploitation of latin America by Europe.
• Daniel Immerwahr - How to hide an empire: A history of the greater United States . Audiobook. Excellent expose of the US’s empire outside its continental borders, including the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, which had at times a larger population than the US itself.
• Malcolm Harris - Palo Alto [audiobook] - A history of US capitalism, using California, Palo Alto, and Stanford University as a microcosm. Goes from the eviction of California’s indigenous inhabitants, to the gold rush, to the rise of weapon and tech entrepreneurs, to Silicon Valley. Also has a comprehensive history agricultural unionism, and anti-racist organizing in California, alongside their struggles with the state’s robber barons.
• Assata Shakur - autobiography . An enthralling story told by one of the most persecuted black revolutionaries in the US.
• Domenico Losurdo - Liberalism - A Counter-History . Audiobook. An in-depth look at the history of liberalism and its founders, focusing on the English, American, Dutch, and French revolutions, and their support for colonialism, slavery, and genocide of those they considered not belonging to the “community of the free.” Rather than focusing on the individualism supposed to be the defining characteristic of liberalism, Losurdo focuses on the master/slave or owner/servile dialectic as its core tenet.
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Loaded - A Disarming History of the Second Amendment audible. A companion book to “a people’s history of the US”, focusing on firearms ownership in the US. It deconstructs the two “noble myths” of the US 2nd-amendment: its bases of a “well-regulated militia”, as well as “the citizens right to bear arms”, as both serving (and continuing) the primary US goals of genocide and appropriation of native lands.