Hey Veeky Forums, what books do I need to read in order to have an identity as a "leftist"...

Not him, but you don't need to be educated to hate capitalism since it's pretty much endorsed to hate that which you don't understand. You'll find many on both sides who aren't educated who are convinced their economic views are correct because their worldview is confirmed when they look around them. At most they'll read books that further confirm their beliefs. What the thinker thinks the prover proves.

I bet they're doing it to exercise their power over the proles and kill potential workers so they make more money :o)

The foundational texts of most modern leftist movements are the works of Marx- read the Communist Manifesto, the German Ideology, and wWge-labor and Capital to get started. If you like international politics, Lenin's "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism" is a great follow up to these. From there, you can either get into more modern leftist works or try to crack the most difficult of Marx's works, Kapital.

Alternatively, you could break from Marx altogether and move in the direction of anarchism. Bakunin's God and the State, Kropotkin's Anarchism: it's Philosophy and Ideal, and Proudhon's What is Property are good starting points. Good luck OP!

>People being responsible for their actions, ie capitalism

>in gabitalism ure rebonsable 4 ur actions XD
P U R E I D E O L O G Y

That is what I was trying to say, why hate something one doesn't understand? Fear of the unknown I guess. Frankly, the leftist distrust of capitalism and this misunderstanding of where power comes from is all just an abstraction of the hatred of their fathers. Its not that the left are champions of the poor, its that leftists tend to be poor because they come from broken families, and this including spoiled brats with trust funds. Useful idiots, completely dysfunctional social outcasts, sexual deviants, pompous "intellectual" elites, nanny state advocates, and so on. The vast majority of people, the 99%, are honest hard working people, right wingers, that all they want out of life is to keep what they create and give it to their children.

>hates capitalism
>admits to being uneducated

Well color me surprised

Socialism is privatizing profits, and socializing losses. Any structure that follows this rule is socialist. States are socialist, corporations are socialist, etc. Capitalism is unique is that the responsibility of failure falls on the person taking the risk. The poor are poor because they are failures, people that can't possibly give the most basic effort towards life. In no way should the failures of some be paid for by the efforts of all.

Though, a more equal society is a more secure society. In the absence of socialism (the state), a greater effort will be made to make failures comfortable, so that they wouldn't lash out as much. Something like 1% of the population break into houses, better we take all the money we spend on locks and just give it to them, so they can spend their time drinking forties and sharing their stds in peace!!

I think that's taking way to big of a leap m8. Correlation doesn't equate to or imply causation. People who are poor aren't poor necessarily because they're lazy. However, there are incentives to stay out of the workforce (via welfare), but that doesn't mean anybody below the poverty line is lazy. People have kids. People get old. People are born somewhere and are never able to leave.

The idea would be to create incentives that make people want to work. Not that easy tho.

Special snowflake syndrome is irrelevant to the discussion.

OP, don't just read to feel like you can identify as a leftist, read all sorts of views and opinions. Wanting to belong to a group because the ideology is attractive even though you haven't read anything about it is a mistake, you just need to
>bee urself :)

that overweight lady seems to have passed out in the genre fiction section. oh dear

>I like the general idea of communism and hate capitalism on a visceral level but I'm uneducated!
Privet, child! Of course you hate capitalism and like the idea, or "feeling", of communism when you are uneducated! Now please see the picture and you'll be on your way. Do svidaniya, comrade, do svidaniya!

>Guys I think like... communism is like cool, man... what should I read so I can pretend to know what I'm talking about?

This is fucking pathetic and what's worse is that 90% of "communists" are like this.
You literally see no problems with picking an ideology to support and then reading up on it rather than the other way around?

Commies need to be put against the wall and shot.

Most communist lovers are liberals, no wonder they're all young dumb hippies, so many of them women too.

read The Decline of The West by Spengler, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Schumpeter, Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset and The Consumer Society by Baudrillard
From there, you'll have a whole world of both "leftist" and "right-wing" to get around with. Too much to list here. Just lurk around Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums and you'll start learning a whole lot
In the left-wing strata this user gave some good examples. Though awfully incomplete
Anything by Engels and Marx are nothing more than historical texts not to be taken as seriously valid contemporary political texts by themselves.

Remember: defining yourself a priori as a leftist or any other political tribe is the biggest misfortune you can do to yourself

>I like the general idea of communism and hate capitalism on a visceral level but I'm uneducated!

then you're pretty much a perfect leftist already

Oh of course, poverty isn't that simple. But it is due to choices of the individual, no matter what. Maybe we don't choose to have accidents and the like, but everything action and reaction has some factor that under our control. In the absence of socialism (the state), when we have complete responsibility for ourselves, poverty will be a function of personal choice.

I'm all for basic income as a sort of security. People won't commit crime if they have the very basics, and they can take out trash or sweep for meth.

The left created the idea of special snowflakes. At this point its completely dominated the discussion.

>poverty is due to the choices of the individual

>kidnap black person
>sell into slavery
>make it illegal to teach slaves to learn to read and write
>block them from voting; institute Jom Crow and Separate but Equal
>intitute policies wherein wealth begets wealth and non wealth leads to zip
>block minorities from GI benefits like GI housing
>redline districts to force blacks into ghettos and other low value property areas; set it up so many are simply renting and building no equity or actually holding land
>fund schools through property taxes, leading to shitty underfunded schools that perform more poorly than overfunded wealthy ones
>introduce cocaine and other drugs from latin america; arrest black offenders and imprison at higher rates than whites for the same offense
>destroy the nuclear family and traditional family structures (the conservative's favorite) by enforcing mandatory jail time for simply possessing something like pot, tossing fathers into jail for years where they can't work and keep their kids in line

Nah it's all just their fault totally

Sick deficit thinking

>tfw all the communists, wehraboos, reactionaries, sjws, and fascists are more or less the same type of people.

They simply want to cultivate a political aesthetic rather than have any kind of well-examined beliefs.

It's kind of hilarious to watch them bicker among themselves.

Political fashionistas.