Introduction to Marxism. Best Books to Read to Start Learning About Marxism and Scientific Socialism

and what is up people [ __ ] I spoke too soon on my last video talking about how um they were that the videos were uploading a lot easier um I put one up it [ __ ] Doom [ __ ] uploaded in like 20 minutes not even then I [ __ ] it up so I went back and had to edit it [ __ ] two days well not two days [ __ ] but over 12 hours it took over 12 hours for that [ __ ] to [ __ ] to upload something that was like 20 minutes long so um because I want to start making more videos I want to talk about something um this channel you know it's I I run it because I want to be able to educate people yeah there's like parts of it where I want it to be entertaining but mostly it's you know education stories whatever um and today I want to talk about uh Marxism and I know that I have like a [ __ ] you know uh [ __ ] from Rosen Luxembourg the [ __ ] Communist Party of Germany the German Communist Party KPD or whatever a KPD flag behind me um and one of the reasons that I like the KPD is because they were a one of the you know first like revolutionary Marxist parties not like the first you know and they weren't like successful you know they tried to take power uh they tried to have a revolution it didn't work you know they killed Rosa uh they killed leick and it didn't happen but it was a their ideology was just Marxism and you know I am I don't identify as a communist um I am a socialist I'm like look at myself as like a non- sectarian socialist uh but I'm definitely not like a Social Democrat definitely not a sock Dam I'm not like I'm not the type of people that call themselves a Democrat socialist or whatever that like are just like yeah no we can only do this through The Ballot Box blah blah blah they kind of just are hella into vote you know like think that like voting is the only way to get anywhere they love the Democrats or not all of them do I don't want to generalize but I do believe in I'm not against Revolution I'm not against the idea of Revolution you know what I mean a lot of people think that it's impossible uh but it's not you know we've seen Empires rise and fall all throughout history some of the strongest ones you know I'm sure the people thought that a lot of these states would last forever and they did it and just because it's not possible right now does it mean that you know we we see that America is on the decline we see that a lot of these western states are on the decline and we need to be organized we need to be able to you know actually know what we're talking about and and know the history and know how people actually struggle to make a better world we need to look at the [ __ ] that's happened in the past like the revolutions the anti-colonial movements all that [ __ ] and the idea the reason for that is not to be adventurist and go and [ __ ] like get a bunch of guns and like try to do some crazy [ __ ] no it's to build a mass movement where you have mass support you have mass support of the population and when most of the population supports you and they don't support the government anymore the government gets weaker you know that's when that's when [ __ ] starts to change and it's not always like a revolutionary change but anyways I'm getting way the [ __ ] off track with this and I'm probably not going to be able to edit that out because whenever I try to edit my videos it takes so [ __ ] long to upload that [ __ ] so basically what I was saying was I was basically a Libertarian socialist for a very long time I still kind of am but I started reading marks and it really really really opened my eyes like I could see why people were telling me to read him because the the breakdown of capitalism like the way that he describes capitalism and he like in capital he describes every single aspect of capitalism every single aspect of you know trade every single aspect of like how Commodities work every single you know how like every single thing about money every single thing about the financial system and he breaks it down piece by piece and he tells you why it's going to be a problem he he shows you the contradictions in it and shows you why it's going to lead to the type of world that we see today where everyone's being dispossessed the working class is being dispossessed the people of the [ __ ] third world and GL Global self are being dispossessed political power all the money is going towards a very small group of people that use that money to influence politics and basically everything that he said was going to happen happened the only thing is is he thought that there would be a you know a revolution right now and Marx's idea of Revolution was that for socialism to work it had to be a global system and so yes there were revolutions and a lot of countries you know ones that were led by Marxist parties but a lot of them either weren't able to really fulfill what they were trying to do because of things like you know imperialist aggression uh blockades sanctions and just mistakes made from the leadership mistakes made from the revolutionaries and [ __ ] a lot of [ __ ] you know Marxist talk about like these leaders you know like Mau kind of have a problem with this where there it's hard for them to say anything that Ma has done wrong uh and that's not all malis you know but like the whole personality cult thing is real um that being said maoism is probably one of my favorite sub genres if you will of Marxism so anyways I'm talking for a bit but let's get into it these are some books that if you want to understand Marxism these are the ones that you should read first one Marx Engles read read the Marx Engles reader by Robert Tucker uh Robert Tucker he he puts out some good [ __ ] he actually did one of these on Lenin that is really good and basically this has basically everything that you need to know I would also read Capital but just I'm going to warn you capital is very very [ __ ] hard to read and the thing that also sucks about it is that the hardest parts to get through are the first few chapters and they're [ __ ] long so what I did was I put on D capital on YouTube on one of the things that just reads the books for you and I put it on every single night and listen to it until I fell asleep and after literally you know like a couple months of that I started to understand it then I got sent to some [ __ ] happened and basically I was locked in a facility and had to I I ended up getting a copy and uh going through it and once you do understand the concepts in it you really understand why capitalism as a system just is going to absolutely lead to Monopoly it's going to lead to environmental destruction and it's going to lead to you know the virtually virtual slavery of [ __ ] everyone on the [ __ ] planet except for obviously the people that own you but this has like the early marks you know the critique of capitalism um revolutionary programming strategy Society politics in the 19th century and the later angles elaboration and popularization um so it has stuff from angles it has basically it has a lot of full a lot of the stuff in here is in full but a lot of it is like bits and pieces taken from like capital or like you know like critique of the gotha program I think critique of the goth program is actually probably one of the things that's full in here the paper the pages are wicked then so it's actually it's not that big of a book physically but it's like [ __ ] almost a thousand pages but it's got stuff from [ __ ] anti- during you know it's got the manifesto uh it breaks down pieces from Capital you know the Civil War in France 18th premere Lis bonapart um all types of good [ __ ] and I would definitely this is a great thing to read if you want to understand marks without having to [ __ ] read like the 20 [ __ ] volumes of marks and angles it's even or there's more than that so there's a lot of them so definitely check that out marks Engel reader by Robert C tuckler the next one uh this is the portable Coral marks edited by Eugene CA kamena and it's uh published by penguin and it's basically has like a lot of his political writings a lot of his like letters a lot of the [ __ ] that he did in like newspapers and [ __ ] so if you want some of the stuff that isn't mentioned in the Marx Engles reader I would definitely check this out you know you can get it online cheap as [ __ ] um this one this is what made me really consider myself a Marxist after being you know libertarian socialist like Democratic Socialist you know I still had like the I still considered myself like basically a revolutionary socialist which obviously you know to be a revolutionary soci socialist doesn't mean that you have to be going out and like [ __ ] shooting guns and [ __ ] just means that you want change and you want revolutionary change but this book why marks was right by Terry Eagleton I [ __ ] stole it from or I bought it from now I don't even want to say where uh but a big corporate bookstore uh it was during I think it was 2020 in this book why Marx was right it is so good because it goes over all the things that Mark said everything that he said about capitalism all his critiques of capitalism and not just critiques of capitalism how he actually goes in and does the math and shows why things are going to be [ __ ] up and show why the system can't lead to anything good it also talks about some of like the quote unquote predictions that Marx made which when people say predictions a lot of them aren't really predictions it's just him looking at looking at economic Trends and looking at the way the economic trends go and he just plays that out he shows he does the math and shows how that is going to play out and when he was writing in his day we saw that things were going in his Direction on like the direction that he said things were going in but now that it's you know over a hundred years later we can actually see that the [ __ ] that he was talking about was true that he was right about all this [ __ ] and it goes in depth about why he was right it what the theories that he talked about you know the theories that turned out to be actually correct and why the system is just totally [ __ ] but it also talks about things like it goes into things about like dialectical materialism and [ __ ] like that so it's definitely something to check out another one this is a I actually got this for free this is like a really [ __ ] weird one but it's the manifesto check out the manifesto but like reading the manifesto is not going to make you understand marks like I read the manifesto when I was a kid and I was like not really that impressed with it um another one is and this is you know just stuff that not all by Marx but uh five essays on Philosophy by maong uh one of the reasons that this is good you know and when I first started getting into something like oh he was like a dictator right he was like a bad you a person he did a lot of bad things but even if you think that people that do things that like you don't agree with in extreme situations is one thing but like they're writings on things like philosophy and you know a lot of this is you know I I guess you could call it philosophy but it's really about things like it has on practice and on contradiction which is like his classic uh out of everything he's written that's like the one thing that gets read and cited the most and it breaks down uh dialectical materialism and the contradictions at play Within capitalism and not just on an economic standpoint but on a standpoint of all different social relations on practice is about you know like there's Theory and then there's practice uh that's like it's very short um it's to the point and like it's made for ma wrote in a way that he wanted peasants and people that like weren't like didn't really have much formal education in a way for them to understand so it's perfect for people that like don't know [ __ ] about you know economics or philosophy or sociology or politics or any of that [ __ ] it's got on the correct hand it's got on the correct handling of contradictions among the people which is great it's got speech at the Chinese Communist party's National Conference on propaganda work and where do correct ideas come from so definitely check that out this I get it off Foreign Language press uh it's like a really it's a little ass book it's like wicked cool it's wicked small and I I [ __ ] with that um let me see what we got next here okay anti- during by freeder angles so when you go online to get this on if you try to get it on Amazon or some [ __ ] A lot of times there was a shorter version of this and it's basically like a it's only like maybe like 200 pages long at the most and it's not the full book it's just parts of it it's just like basically like the footnotes and you really don't get as much out of it so this I got on I ordered it from well read books that's w l l r e d books uh you can go to their website get it the one that that you want to get is the one that is like 400 something pages and basically Lenin called this a textbook of Scientific Socialism and that's exactly what it is I had heard about this book but I really didn't I wasn't you know seeking it out at first or anything like that was just like oh something bi angles I'm sure I'll read it eventually but this book breaks down every aspect of basically Marx's thought and it does it in such a good way and it's it's done it was a polemic against during and his basically non-scientific socialism his like type of utopian socialism which is really just like social democracy like liberal social democracy type of [ __ ] but it's broken into multiple Parts uh it's got like a good it's got a good little introduction and [ __ ] um and basically the parts that it's broken up into it is philosophy where they talk about the philosophical concept he kind of goes back and forth with what during was talking about and like debunking his idea of philosophy and if you're like reading this for politics and economics and [ __ ] that's something that like you want to get through it doesn't go into it as much it's more of like a philosophical work so I read through it but I wasn't that you know I wasn't that crazy about it the next part though is political economy and the political economy section it literally [ __ ] lit on fire while I was reading it I dropped it and it [ __ ] landed on my crotch my [ __ ] pubes caught in Fire and if you've ever smelled burning hair um everyone in the AA meeting just [ __ ] like was looking at me and they were [ __ ] like they didn't like me anyways because I [ __ ] would go into the AA meeting and be like talk about like [ __ ] Concepts like [ __ ] joint dictatorship of the proletar of oppressed Nations and like joke around say [ __ ] like oh unlimited genocide on the first world and basically they uh they they they kicked me out when I when I started talking about joint dictatorship of the proletary of depressed nations of press Nations and third worldism and [ __ ] like that but um but yeah I should not have just gone off on that rant like that it was not worth the time or the [ __ ] energy and the [ __ ] reward that I'm going to get for that is like nothing so I just completely [ __ ] myself it's like burning my dick all over again uh the next part is socialism um and basically that part A lot of it is from the work socialism utopian and scientific and that was a something that Engles put out that was you know obviously about Scientific Socialism and it just it's basically the last part of the book where they talk about political economy they talk about things like dialectical materialism [ __ ] like you know Concepts like that are hard to understand that are explained well like the negation of the the negation of the negation and [ __ ] like that and it is just a amazing breakdown it's not super hard to read either it's not like reading Capital which is like actually can be arduous at times it's written in a way that's really easy to understand so it has all the parts of like classical Marxist philosophy which is the type of Marxism that I'm Into You know I read about leninism uh maoism and [ __ ] like that but the kind that I feel like I would be closest to my tendency is just that type of Marxism you know where they have the the amazing analysis of History world events umul politics and above all of economics and how economics plays into politics and just how it works and looking at things dialectically when you can look at things from a when you can use dialectical materialism in your life when you see [ __ ] on the news when you see [ __ ] happening like in your community uh when you see like the bosses uh not want to pay their workers because when you see like things like labor struggles going on when you see all this [ __ ] when you see Wars going on you can look at it from that framework and understand why it's happening so much more and it's like such a gift I I really wish that I didn't wait so long to to read about Marxism um and I'm not the type of person that's uncritical about [ __ ] you know what I mean I'm very critical about [ __ ] but you know like I said I'm not even a communist I'm I'm a socialist but I communist or my comrad [ __ ] anarchists are my comrades [ __ ] MLS Mau they're all my comrades you know and I feel like we could take all those all those ideas and you know put it into a really good revolutionary socialist ideology which is would just be like united front and be able to make some [ __ ] happen in the future this next one is a [ __ ] brick it's uh a companion Marxist Capital by David Harvey and this is a long ass [ __ ] book holy [ __ ] so I mean but it's good because capital is even people that aren't on the left people that aren't even like academics and [ __ ] like that people that understand economics and it's so [ __ ] up because they always say we don't understand economics capital is just a Masterwork of economics and they teach it in [ __ ] like Harvard econ economics classes because it's the most thorough breakdown of capitalism as a system and it's not about advocating for communism or anything like that it's just that it tells you how the economy works it tells you how capitalism works on such a a a thorough level and like I said it gives you that lens to help understand the world better so this talks about things like [ __ ] primitive accumulation uh the of surplus value uh the tendency towards Monopoly and [ __ ] like that and it's it's definitely a good read if you actually really want to try to understand this [ __ ] then I would definitely pick this up but if you really don't feel like you're going to be able to go through that and that you don't have like the time or whatever another amazing book this is kind of like this reminds me a lot of anti- during just because of the way it's written it's called the limits to Capital by David Harvey and so it is thinner and it basically goes over the things that are brought up in capital and a lot of the things that you know differences that have come up in the world in the economy that have happened since Marx died and it kind of helps you understand those things through the framework of that was laid out in C capital and it talks about all the ideas in capital but it doesn't just talk about the ideas in capital it talks about ideas all across Marx's work and it's a really good way to it like like I said it's like anti- during it's a good way to start understanding these economic Concepts because one of the things that they like I said they always say we don't understand economics but one of the things that is so why capital is held up so much by by people you know economists like like actual economists like ones that are actually not just trying to like people actually want to understand economics why it's so appreciated and why it's so appreciated among radicals and anti- capitalists is because it shows you why capitalism doesn't work not just from a moral level it doesn't like moralize or anything like that it doesn't put like a moral framework on it a moral judgment it just shows you these are all the contradictions this is the way that capitalism is going to mature and this is what's going to happen this is all the [ __ ] everything that not just everything that's wrong with it you know it's just the way that it works and by laying that out you're going to see the serious deficiencies in the system and why it's just not a good system it was at one point it was definitely a step up from feudalism in a lot of the systems that we have in the past but I feel like we've moved past it you know capitalism was Progressive for a while it was good for a while but once it gets to a certain point it starts attacking democracy it starts monopolizing everything it starts taking over the media it starts influencing all the laws with [ __ ] lobbying and [ __ ] like that people [ __ ] start buying their own private [ __ ] militias they use the banking system to [ __ ] punish other countries that are actually trying to break out of the imperialist chain you know out of like the the economic trap from the World Bank and the IMF when they try to break out from that slavery you know hopefully that will be that will be us sometime soon but limits to Capital David Harvey uh if you can't do a companion to Marxist capital I would highly suggest this and you might notice that I didn't actually bring out Capital because it is like I said it's a very hard book to read I would definitely suggest it but if this video is about people that want to get into Marxism that want to get into understanding it from like a starting off point not an advanced point so that's why I said like the books that break it down the books that explain that the books that explain Marxism and the ones that have that have stuff from capital and have other Marx's other writings broken down in a way that you can still understand the concept without going too far into it so this one this is an introduction to all three volumes of Marx's capital and I mean I picked this one out I I'm going to end up doing another one of these videos but it's really kind of too short to actually explain all three volumes of the of capital it does give you the basic explanations it does give you it's basically like the footnotes to it and there are books about Capital that are shorter than this one I probably have some within [ __ ] reaching distance but if you want to get a basic understanding of the ideas then I could suggest this um I don't even want to pronounce the [ __ ] this dude's name Michael Henrich okay I guess it wasn't that bad but once you actually get what capital is saying this sounds so dumb you know because I don't like hold people up I don't like holding people up as like heroes or like [ __ ] deifying people or any [ __ ] like that like Cult of Personality [ __ ] [ __ ] all that but once you understand what it's trying to say it was like a life-changing moment for me because it made me realize that capitalism doesn't just need to end because it's killing the planet and you know giving people terrible lives and having all these Wars all the time it's that it's a fundamentally fatally flawed system so maybe you could understand that out of this so out of all the books that I I've talked about um this is still a good one but it's it's not as high up there as some of the other ones uh this one is Marxism essential writings and here you got Marx Engles Bernstein Co ksky Luxenberg penov trosky bukar and lukash Ma lennin gry Stalin maruza uh Cardel guvar and cabal so I'm not co-signing all these people in here I think some of them are really shitty marxists some of them are just kind of shitty people too uh in all different ways but the vast majority of them are good and it it's put together in this book in a good way so you can start to understand some of their ideas and it's it's actually with all these books I've showed you a lot of it was just early Marxism you know the type of Marxism that academics are kind of more cool with reading because it doesn't yes it's revolutionary but it's basically just talking about it's very they call it Scientific Socialism because of how far in depth it goes into these explanations of these things but definitely check this out um this is an older book you could probably get it online still I like getting a lot of older books but it's by it's edited by David mclenon um M Lennon So it's like [ __ ] McDonald lenon I love it it's like probably this guy is probably why the USSR fell and [ __ ] got McDonald's um so this is one of the last ones I had I almost didn't want to [ __ ] bring this one out I'm definitely going to do a part two um but it's Western Marxism a lot of people have criticized Western Marxism for being too academic or and a like there's books about Western Marxism where it's just talking about Marxism the marxists that are from the West marxists that are from Europe Europe and [ __ ] like that but there's also a western Marxism that is more you know like maist consider it to be like revisionist and [ __ ] like that and and more academic and less revolutionary but still you know because like a lot of these people like are like kind of like Frankfurt School people it's got uh lukos horkheimer maruza alaz Sutra grami and you know some other people and so a lot of those people are good I mean you can get something out of all those people for sure but it's it's just it's not for everyone because when you talk about Marxism there's so many different types of of Marxism it's crazy like there's TP there's marxists that are like basically anarchists you know they just believe in like the the class struggle and like the analysis Marxism analysis but they don't believe in taking control of the state to you know carry it on into the future they think that the state should just be abolished like that you know what I mean um and then there's you know Marxist leninists and [ __ ] like that then there's just marxists that like to just kind of do like liter literary criticism you know Marxist analysis of [ __ ] I don't know the Barbie movie or whatever and kind of use that analysis because it's such a it's such a great framework to understand the world and to analyze things but this video is going kind of long and like I said my last [ __ ] video that I tried to [ __ ] upload that I did upload took over 12 [ __ ] hours and it it was just a [ __ ] it was an absolute pain in the ass and what was [ __ ] up was I put it online and then I saw how much I was saying and like and uh anyways uh anyways uh yeah and just [ __ ] like that I was just like using stupid fillers and [ __ ] like that and every other word was oh kind of like how I just of doing like now like oh like that like that and like uh like uh like so I might be doing that in this video and if I am I apologize I just can't [ __ ] edit right now because maybe I will end up [ __ ] editing this but last time I [ __ ] tried to edit a video and uploaded it it just it just took way way too [ __ ] long but if I can figure this [ __ ] out I know I talk about this on like every one of my videos if I could figure this [ __ ] out and actually get my [ __ ] to start working better I'll be putting out videos um at least once a week you know almost probably uh every other day but it's just such a hassle to [ __ ] upload this [ __ ] because you literally have to have your phone on for [ __ ] like 12 hours you got to sit there with it you can't [ __ ] do anything with it so I'll figure something out if any of you have any suggestions about how I can get these videos to upload quicker you know how to like remove like make room on my phone or actually you know maybe hook up my phone to my laptop so that I could film from this and then have it go to the left I don't know just anything if you have any suggestions about that let me know in the meantime uh I'm doing great for for like once in my life and that was just a a few books about this subject I definitely am going to have a lot more for you uh I'm thinking about doing other sub genres of Marxism and the best books to read about that and all I have to say is you know keep an open mind don't be dogmatic take what you like and leave the rest you know like I said I don't even I don't even consider myself a a communist you know I I'm just a a a socialist you know what I'm saying and I but like when I I love the ideas of Marxism I love the you know [ __ ] that like ma wrote [ __ ] that Lenin wrote [ __ ] that [ __ ] bakunin wrote kakin wrote and so I would suggest that you do that you take what you want and leave the rest and don't give a [ __ ] about like these labels and [ __ ] like that you know most of us have had [ __ ] anti- Marxist propaganda thrown at us 247 the day we were born so anyways thank you uh my channel is Shadow B so if you could like comment subscribe it would really help me out but anyways thank you very much and have a good one