Interested in getting into Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin. I wanna know more about them and socialism and communism and the whole deal against fascists and communism. I don't even know enough about WW2.
I want a huge list of recommendations and where to begin. It's gonna be years of studying probably, but I'm willing to learn.
Other urls found in this thread:
marxists.org
mega.co.nz
twitter.com
You can't discuss Marxism on here anymore
Rules are normal again, it doesn't even tell you not to talk about Ayn Rand anymore. Idk if you're joking or not desu
What is your motive?
Historical, philosophical, political?
Otherwise marxists.org will cover all your needs. They even have a section devoted to introducing the Marxist paradigm to newcomers.
All of the above really. I like to know how things tick and I'm interested in history and philosophy as well.
I'll check that site out. It has recommended reading I assume? That's always my problem with things -- being overwhelmed with options.
read carlyle instead
Your time could be more profitably spent reading Paul Mattick instead, OP:
And should user wish to read a concise left-wing critique of the conservative intellectual tradition, there's always pic related.
Don't forget to read Proudhon and Kropotkin too. Don't just read the authoritarian socialists.
The Gulag Archipelago seems to be the perfect place to start.
Seconding Kropotkin. Pic related is a good starting point.
>The Gulag Archipelago
>Trotsky
Read "The Revolution Betrayed," OP. But don't be seduced by dogmatic Trotskyists either.
Solzhenitsyn is pretty clear that there was no betrayal of the revolution.
I know that. I disagree with Solzhenitsyn.
Read The Bolsheviks Come to Power by Alexander Rabinowitch.
Why has communism been the big 20th/21st century meme?
Because Communism is fun.
OP can you elaborate. How deep do you want to get? You ask for Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin and socialism and communism. But are you aware that the foundation for this is marxism? That you will need to get into economics and first very thoroughly study marx, if you really mean "years of studying"?
If you want a more historical and summarizing overview over the theoretical aspect and are more interested in the specific development and ideas of Russia/the sowiet union and the 3 figures, then you shouldn't have much of a problem and i don't see why you would need years for this
Trotsky and Stalin are memes, just read Lenin
And I agree with him.
I'll probably just read a fuckload of Solzhenitsyn.
Don't laugh, don't cry, just understand.
Read Trotsky or be blinkered, I don't give a care.
The Russian Enigma is better
mega.co.nz
>The book details Ciliga’s time spent in Soviet Prisons and ‘isolators’ following his arrest for belonging to the Trotskyist Opposition, and provides a wealth of important documentary information concerning the miserable conditions in which the working class were reduced to living in, the extent of the ‘criminalisation’ of large swathes of the population, and the various forms in which resistance appeared.
>What is equally important however, is the intellectual development Ciliga underwent during his time in Russia. He entered The USSR as an ardent Bolshevik, yet he was forced by the pressure of the reality of the situation to recognise that something, somewhere, had gone very wrong. This led him to the Trotskyist Opposition. His time amongst Trotskyist prisoners, however, convinced Ciliga that “Their outlook was not very different to that of the Stalinist Bureaucracy; they were slightly more polite and human, that was all” – indeed Stalin’s Five Year Plans of forced collectivisation and industrialisation were taken directly from the Program of the Opposition. In essence all the Trotskyists wished for was a change of personel at the top of the Soviet State – they thought they could do Stalinism better than Stalin.
>This realisation of the poverty of the ‘loyal opposition’ led Ciliga to ultimately question even the basis of Bolshevism itself – the thought and practice of Lenin – “The holy of holies.” He realised that Leninism has no conception of working class self-activity, and is in fact a parasite on the back of the workers, using them to gain its own ends. The equation of Communism with nationalisation demonstrates the lack of any real difference between Stalinism, Trotskyism or Leninism – they are all predicated on the idea of State ownership of the means of production not the self-activity of the working class itself. Ciliga recognised the paucity of this vision and that he had to reject Lenin if he wished to remain a revolutionary. To his eternal credit and despite the anguish it caused him, he took this step.
I like Solzhenitsyn because it's as much of history as it is of him being a magnificent stylist and having a gorgeous personal philosophy. It's a massive mixture of everything you'd like from a comprehensive work on a subject, going from history to theory to philosophy to the simple people who lived through it.
Rabinowitch's book is one of the landmark texts in the study of early Soviet history, still consulted by historians today. Do not turn your nose up at it.
I don't have a particular interest in communist history.
I'm reading Solzhenitsyn because I love Russian literature, he might have lived outside of USSR and never written about it.