What books out their take a good objective look at either, without shilling one or being thinly-veiled capitalism shilling.
I'm going to read ye ol' manifesto, obviously, just because it is what it is, despite being hardcore anti-capitalist shilling.
haha good luck
I've asked this question several times to people from all countries, never had an answer.
Finally at least I found pic related, available in all languages (except english)
>Stalin, history of a black legend
stalin was against equal pay
well at least he has some work translated to english
just balance early thackery with late thackery
Uncle Jo with daughter Svetlana (1935)
The manifesto is not a good or objective book, or even a thorough one, it's just a short piece of propaganda that is famous for its first and last lines. If you are really interested in learning about Marxism, I'd say read these two:
Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Marx - Capital Vol 1 (if you quit out after Chapter 1 it's okay, but you'll need to read his arguments on value of commodites, and then labor as a commodity)
Remember that philosophy, especially political philosophy, is more of a conversation, and less about competing ideas or scales or spectrums or alignment charts or anything like that. People don't end up in political disagreement because they see the same thing different ways, they end up disagreeing because they start with radically different premises and thought constructs. I wouldn't recommend trying to find the truth by 'balancing' capitalists with anti-capitalists, as if to imply that the truth is a mix of the two somewhere in the middle, but read each argument as separate and see which makes more sense to you, if any.
Here is a broad range of books that gave me insight;
Origins of the Crisis in the U.S.S.R.: Essays on the Political Economy of a Disintegrating System - Hillel Ticktin
The Third Revolution?: Peasant and Worker Resistance to the Bolshevik Government - Nick Heath - Anarchist pamphlet, you can find the pdf online.
Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings - Owen Hatherley
Cambodia: 1975-1982 - Michael Vickery
Vagabond Witness: Victor Serge and the politics of hope = Paul Gordon
Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age - Edited by Doug Millard
China: A Modern History - Michael Dillon
Marx and Mises: Communism and Economic Calculation - David Ramsay Steele
National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity 1931-1956 - David Brandenberger
The Foundation Pit - Andrey Platonov
The Twelve Chairs - Evgeni I Petrov
The Queue - Vladimir Sorokin
what insights, if any?
>but read each argument as separate and see which makes more sense to you, if any.
Tends to contradict your 1st sentence.
I for one recommend the Manifesto.
An incredible prediction of the future of untamed capitalism.
Not really, the manifesto is not a piece of political philosophy, it's a party platform. If you weren't quoting me out of context, you'd notice that I was suggesting that a through examination of political philosophy should be done with each school of thought starting from the groundwork they lay, not starting from the perspective of another school of thought.
Read the manifesto if you want, you could probably finish it in an afternoon, but if you're interested in a serious or objective study of Marxism it's no more through than reading the back cover of a book to know what the subject is.