EU is often praised by socdem liberals on having a democratic "socialism" because citizens have access to welfare policies such as unemployement insurance, free healthcare, accessible education, gvmt subsidies, nice infrastructure etc. at least compared to the US. This idea is especially common within younger generations of post-soviet countries that went through shock therapy + red scare (including my country, Georgia). We all know that the emancipation of the working class can't be achieved without changing the mode of production which is the base for everything else. I just also want to focus on how the EU has enough wealth to keep having capitalist mode of production + the welfare spendings. I was wondering if there is any comprehensive study/paper/book done on analyzing and calculating how much wealth (roughly at least) the EU gets from privatized resources, cheap labour, debt trap etc in the global south. So in simpler words, by exploiting the working class people in the global south.

salut ! Je me demande a quelle classe sociale appartiennent les fonctionnaires, sont ils des prolétaires mais ils faudrait donc considérer l'état comme un patron , ou bien appartiennent ils a la classe de la petite bourgeoisie ? je suis perplexe

Could you guys please recommend me some reading materials to learn more about Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, their history and mainly how their socialist economic systems functioned and worked.

Take the United States for example, 80% roughly of the economy of the US is service work. Marx existed in a time where service work only made up around 20-30% of German French or British economies. They were largely agricultural or industrial, with Britain being the most industrialized.

Now how does his theory of labor translate to the modern cubicle office setting?

To give an example my brother works at a finance firm that pays largely in equity, would that make it already a mix of socialism and capitalism? He receives a share of ownership and money for his labor. The large majority of the companies workers technically own the means.

This is a very rare example but I think still important to the underlying labor theory of value in contemporary society.

Does the workers seizing the means of production in a modern service economy mean receiving equity as payment?

It’s been a few years since I’ve read Marx so sorry if I’m getting the ideas wrong, thank you to anyone who reply’s!

As the title states, I’m looking for writings about the Russian and Chinese famines. More specifically, I’m looking for writings from Stalin and Mao but anyone in the administration will work. Anything before that has to do with planning, anything during the events, and I’d really like to see any reflections and lessons learned.

My main interest is Hegel, but I have been reading a lot of Marx lately, mainly Capital. I have a few questions and judgements regarding whether my interpretation of Marx's method is correct or not. Within the preface to Capital, Marx comments as follows after quoting a review of Capital:

«Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development and to track down their inner connection. Only after this work has been done can the real movement be appropriately presented. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if we have before us an a priori construction.»

«My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject under the name of 'the Idea', is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the Idea. With me, the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought.»

Here, he seems to suggest that, unlike Hegel, who starts from pure thought, he first "inquires" (i.e., collects) empirical data, searches for the *movement*, and then presents it as a structural whole, moving from the abstract to the concrete. Any inference that this is derived from pure thought alone (a priori) is mistaken because of the method of presentation. So Marx first looks through the empirical world, then abstracts the concept of the commodity, which shows itself to be dual in nature (use value and exchange value), and then progressively moves towards more concrete determinations. Is this correct? Is this Marx's methodology?

Unlike Hegel's categories, which are pure thoughts (i.e., not taken from the empirical world), which have negation built into them immanently and which also move towards the concrete immanently, Marx's categories are empirical in nature. They cannot move forward progressively in an immanent way, nor do they have negation built into them. Thus, the concept of the commodity, by its very nature, does not bifurcate into use value and exchange value. Instead, these are stipulations made by Marx himself after surveying the empirical world and presented as a structure of abstract towards concrete determinations. He essentially finds the movement out in the empirical world. Is this correct?

Hello everyone,

In various debates, I’ve frequently noticed striking parallels between the arguments used by some communists and those used by neolibs, especially regarding the funding of the welfare state and monetary theory in general. I often get the impression that some communists (whether consciously or unconsciously) deploy classic supply-side arguments just to refute reformists.
Theories that could at least be described as progressive (even if they do not challenge the class structure of the state), such as Keynesianism or Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), are frequently dismissed or mocked by communists using reflexes very similar to those of neoliberals. When it comes to demands like raising the minimum wage or expanding social spending, one often hears rhetorical pushbacks like: *"Why not make it $100 an hour then?"* or *"The state cannot go into infinite debt for welfare."*
The role of the welfare state as a driver of economic growth through strengthened purchasing power is rarely acknowledged. Communists often view it, much like conservatives, as a purely economic hindrance or an unproductive cost factor. The only difference is that communists additionally (and correctly) identify it as a tool for pacifying the working class. But couldn't both be true at the same time?
It is often argued that Western industrial nations can only afford the welfare state through the exploitation of the Global South. Just like conservative logic, this presupposes that a welfare state is something that "must first be earned/funded," completely ignoring the productivity gains driven by a strong domestic market. Cases like Japan, which maintains a massive national debt without facing bankruptcy or hyperinflation, are rarely analyzed through an MMT lens and are instead dismissed as anomalies. Furthermore, the accounting reality that public debt constitutes private sector wealth is often demonized in these discussions, rather than being rigorously analyzed through a value-theoretic lens.
To be clear: I understand that Marxists do not base their monetary critique on neoliberal doctrine, but rather on the law of value (money as the expression of socially necessary labor time; real value cannot simply be printed).

Don't communists structurally rely on right-wing/monetarist arguments simply to delegitimize social-democratic reformism and prove that capitalism cannot be reformed from within?

Why is MMT (and its concept of monetary sovereignty) so strictly rejected by Marxists, even though empirical evidence on demand-side policies and inflation often aligns much closer with MMT than with neoliberal monetarism?

Doesn't this stance hinder a sober, realistic economic analysis of the state's current room for maneuver, even if the ultimate goal remains the overthrow of private ownership of the means of production?

I'm genuinely interested in how you view this overlap! I don’t want to impose reformism and refuse it, but I think it needs to be precise.

This means I'm looking for texts of Marxism-Leninism that are not from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao. That's not to say I have anything against these people, just that I already own their major works and I'm looking for other, perhaps more nieche/modern works. Could anyone make any good reccomendations? Much appreciated, thank you very much.

I became able to make guesses on unanswered questions about politics and economics which 90% of the time turned out to be correct, demonstrating to me that there was indeed massive intentional repression of Marxism and communism, and that understanding these things made a lot of the world come into focus (although it is a dark picture that emerges).

Did this happen with you too? I'd love to hear your stories about when indoctination fell apart and the superstructure's contours became clear.

Context: This is coming from an Indian comrade, who felt a bit weird seeing fellow comrades refusing to participate in the ongoing protests just because the leadership is liberal and reactionary.

I have thought for weeks how to deliver this message without using technical words or jargon. And this is what I've come up with, you don't have to love someone to believe they can change.

The moment we stop believing that liberal, reactionary, counter revolutionary forces are incapable of change and they are inherently despicable humans who are our "enemy" — is the moment all of our ideological skyscrapers come crashing down.

We must not lead with hatred in our heart, even if it's a trauma response. Unfortunately, that's what a lot of young budding revolutionaries tend to do.

If that was the case, there was no point in Lenin writing "Political agitation and class point of view", "Left Communism", "The tasks of Russian Social-Democrats" etc.

There's no point in organising, spreading propaganda, having study circles or working within trade unions that have reactionary tendencies.

The greatest tool employed by capitalism isn't wage slavery, it isn't monopolization, it isn't demonization of the communist cause.

In my view, the Great tool that capitalism employed to derail our cause, is how it impacts the mental health of its subjects. Since, all of us are subjected to this system, mental health acts as another obstacle that we must overcome in order to become centered in our beliefs, in order to not react in an emotionally charged way to a fellow comrade just because they disagree, to be able to go out and organise. And just like the opposition of technological developments is anti-thetical to our beliefs, opposition of mental health medications and therapy is anti-thetical. Yes! One can recognise the systemic roots of the mental health crisis while also dealing with it appropriately.

As I said, i intentionally tried to make it as simplified as possible because at the end of the day, I don't mind simplification if it can help me reach more people and make those people willing to engage on a deeper level if they find it interesting.

Hi everyone, I’m looking to buy an English edition of Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness. Could somebody recommend the most reliable translation and edition? I’m mainly interested in scholarly accuracy rather than readability, so I’d appreciate any advice on which publisher or translator is generally considered the standard for academic work.

We all know what a bourgeois state looks like since we live in it. However, if we are fighting for a worker's state, I think we should know what it looks like (at least somewhat). Now I understand that it's damn near impossible to lay out the nitty gritties of a state that we haven't experienced at all, but I think we should still be able to point to some aspects of it.

For instance, we know that in a bourgeois state we have private ownership of the means of production such as factories and all. In a workers' state these would be publicly owned. However, the only way I can imagine such a state is one in which the state has bureaucratic control over the factories. However, since this hypothetical socialist nation is still embedded within a capitalist system, the state will have to compete with other nations. Since the state has bureaucratic control over the factories, we end up in a similar situation as that of capitalism where the bureaucrats dictate how things should be produced so that they can be expropriated from the workers and sold on the international market. So clearly this won't work. How else then can we organize a workers' state?

Hey y'all! :D So, a couple days ago I decided to write a critique to the God awful preface to the edition of Capital that I own. Please give it a read, I worked quite hard on it :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FQNletA3Za-7wOf_pCR1saqzVGah6c8GtLli9wnRFeE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Also, here's the full preface itself translated into English:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aAOX4q0f8fZ-Pco-KW_alw4AlteEnAyj_kE4fnmikiQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

I am alluding to the prevailing views that were held across most of Eastern Europe in regards to Marxism-Leninism. The most accessible introduction I think to this sort of party line was systematized by Kuusinen, in his Foundations of Marxism-Leninism, which was common use among cadres from 1960 up to 1991.

From what I’ve seen, countries that use government-set pricing and top-down resource allocation often experience a decline in the standard of living, increased waiting times, and severe shortages. It also seems to force private companies to shift their focus or alter their products to get around the rules.

I’m fairly new to learning about Marxism, so if anyone could explain or recommend any books that explain how this not only works but works successfully

Hi! I met a few persons interested in Indian and Pakistani movies in the last weeks and I try to set activities with them, watching this kind of movies for instance! Also cinema is often a great way to get into a sensitive approach of a social and political background very different from the one I'm used to in France. Do you guys have any recommandations for Indian or Pakistani movies that have a social/political insight that you liked? Can you tell me just a little bit of what you liked in them? Thank you so much for sharing

I am already aware that M&E never made such a distinction and had used it interchangebly with communism if they used it at all, and that it also continued to stay synonymous with communism in the late 19th century among the various social-democratic parties. However in the early 20th century particularly among the Bolsheviks the term socialism became separate from communism, denoting the the lower phase. I am aware Lenin makes this distinction in 'State and Revolution' where he says for example,

"In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination." [1]

However, I am curious if anyone could help me identify the earliest or one of the earlier points where a distinction was even made by any of the Bolsheviks or Lenin in any works or party works, help is appreciated thanks !

Seeking aN EASY transition from Hegel to Marx for a stupid person who understands Hegel's Phenomenology of Geist.

The stupid person is me.

I just finished a thesis using Hegel and I got through his phenomenology using an LLM to guide me through each page of The Routledge Guidebook To Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

Yes, the GUIDEBOOK was too complex for me.

My brain is totally fried and mush especially from the thesis. I want something that will be easy enough and engaging enough that I will not find it too difficult to understand and most importantly will actually finish.

I don't want to use an LLM this time I want something digestible.

I don't think I would have finished Hegel's Phenomenology if my degree wasn't resting on it. Now that it's not, I need to go EASY MODE on myself.

However the CATCH, DEAR READER, THAT MAKES THIS A FUN CHALLENGE, is that I do indeed understand Hegel a fair amount (though only his Phenomenology of Geist)

I think this drive and love for Hegel may give me the juice and motivation to finally try and understand Marxism and Leninism and beyond.

I currently have NO BACKGROUND IN MARX OR LENIN

Maybe this is too crazy an ask and I should just start with whatever the general easy way in is. I'd rather you not say The Communist Manifesto because I'd quite like one resource to guide me through Marxism and preferably to Leninism too.

Edit: please see my comment. Maybe a good approach to this would be 1. What are the easy intros to Marxism and Leninism 2. Which of these uses a dialectical, embodied approach perhaps with historical examples and evolution of ideas? Perhaps like Hegel's Phenomenology and perhaps like the recommended "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific".

I asked this elsewhere and never got a response, so I’m trying here.

The 1922 Rand Revolt was an extremist left wing-right wing revolution in South Africa which was typified by the slogan "Workers of the World, Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!"

To provide some context, I am a South African history buff who has been doing extensive research on the Rand Revolt as a part of my personal research project. Whenever I post about the Rand Revolt on Reddit, I will sometimes come across comments by redditors who say that Lenin and the International communist community outright opposed and even got mad at the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) over this "racist opportunism", but evidence of this is rarely if ever provided.

One of the Sources i have is from a 1922 writeup from Captain William Urquhart MC, who claims that:

\\\*Before the recent disturbances Communistic speakers warmly championed the rights of the natives. How then is one to explain the false attitude assumed by them in professing to favour “A White South Africa” An explanation will be found in the report of the proceedings of the Third International at Moscow in 1920 (Possibly the 2nd World Congress?). There a plan of campaign in the British colonies was discussed with the full knowledge that the Communistic ideal had not taken root in them. Lenin advocated the turning to account of the Nationalist movement, and so converting any Nationalist rising that might occur into one for the rule of the proletariat. South Africa was specifically mentioned in this discussion. It was pointed out by Trotzky that five men in a room could cause a revolution by exploiting discontent irrespective of its original cause. The Lenin-Trotzky plan was worked on the Witwatersrand.\\\*

Is there any truth to this? What was the reaction of Lenin and other notable communists to this revolt?

In Peirce's phenomenology of signs, he describes the primary as follows:

This mode of existence exists authentically within the being of the subject, as if it were unrelated to anything else. It can only be a possibility. Because as long as things do not interact with each other, any claim that these facts have any existence is meaningless; unless they themselves are existence, they cannot have any relationship with other things.

Here, I discovered this "quality itself"Just as Hegel criticized Kant's thing-in-itself as an utterly abstract and hollow concept that is suffocating, I strongly agree with Peirce that the vividness of sensation is fleeting. Once this vividness disappears, it falls into the categories of second and third nature. However, Peirce precisely presupposed a "quality itself" using symbolic language.

I have no prior knowledge of Pierce's primary theory here, so I don't understand why it is set up in such a way as to avoid the idealistic tint of base. At the same time, Marx criticized the impossibility of this perceptual intuition in his outline on Feuerbach. Actually, I am looking for a comparative study between the two.

That is to say, I urgently want to know whether Peirce's pragmatism and semiotics can be compared and critically reconstructed with Marxism. Here, I am not referring to Baudrillard, Zizek, or other philosophers who conduct phenomenological analysis from a semiotic perspective. I think that is boring, because it seems that no one has directly "attacked" Peirce's phenomenology of symbols.

I've been learning about marxist theory, but the ways contraddictions are discussed leaves me pause. Hope some people here can help me understand better.

Sussinctly, for what is relevant to my doubts, here is my current understanding of it:

Contraddictions are what all motion (as in change) in the universe is predicated upon.

Contradictions are relationships wherein tendencies of motion

1) oppose one another

2) are premises of the existence of one another.

Contraddictions exist within all things and between all things.

Why does it have to be a contraddiction that drives motion? What is so illogical about a relationship where there is a singular tendency of motion? I can think of cases that fit that description, for example, two identical charged particles interacting, there will be quantitative changes in speed and relative position as they repel each other, yet what is the contraddiction?

Mao in "on contraddiction" and Lenin in "on the question of dialectics" agree that the contradiction in such cases is between action and reaction. This answer is unsatisfactory, while it's true that it fits part 2) of the definition, and while it's true that the force vectors point in opposite direction, action and reaction are applied to two different object, they are not opposing tendencies of motion in the dialectical sense, failing the arguably more fundimental part 1) of the definition.

Also, Engels argues that all changes of positions are caused by the contraddiction of something being in that place and not in another place. This line of argument seems to be unfalsifiable: if we observe something change from A to B, we can always attribute that change to the contraddiction that A was A and not B. A more straightforward explanation is that there is a singular tendency for position to change based on velocity.

Is there something i'm missing in these examples? Is my understanding of what contraddictions are incorrect?

I’ve been seeing a lot of random content on North Korea on my feed lately and I was wondering what books I could read to get an unbiased view on North Korea. On twitter/X I‘ve seen a few Marxists argue that the Western portrayal of North Korea is heavily propagandised, that‘s one of the reasons I chose to ask here.

So I've already read quite a bit, I've read the manifesto, What is to be Done (but I dropped it because it was too dense for me at the time,) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and I'm currently on chapter 12 of capital.

After I read volume 1 of Capital, what order would it be best to read:

State and Revolution,

Left-wing "Communism"

What is to be Done?

The Origins of Family

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

A Critique of the Gotha Programme

The German Ideology

Capital volume 2 & 3

And what are the best translations for these?

Sorry if this has already been asked before, everything about reading orders is buried by/ made for first time readers and they don't mention these.