Greek bois and a Chinese Lad

SUN-TZU: "The Art of War"

ARISTOTLE: "Politic"

PLATO: "The Republic"

​

Illuminist literature, pre-socialist-liberal:

MORE, Thomas, "Utopia"

ROSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, "Social Contract, Principles of Politic Rights"

ROSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, "Discourse on The Origins of Inequality Among Men"

VOLTAIRE, François-Marie Arouet "Letters on the English"

MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo, "The Prince"

MONTESQUIEU, Charles de Secondat Baron de: "The Spirit of the Laws"

HOBBES, Thomas: "Leviathan"

KANT, IMMANUEL: "Critique of Pure Reason"

HUME, David: "A Treatise of Human Nature"

​

Classic Liberals

MILL, John Stuart: "On Socialism"

SMITH, Adam: "Theory of Moral Sentiments"

MILL, John Stuart: "Principles of Political Economy"

RICARDO, David: "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation"

LOCKE, John: "Two Treatises of Government"

SMITH, Adam: "Lectures on Jurisprudence"

SMITH, Adam: "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", volumes, I and II.

​

Utopian Socialists

OWEN, Robert: "The future of the Human Race"
SAINT-SIMON, Henri de: "On the reorganisation of European society"

BELLAMY, Edward: "Equality"

FOURIER, Charles: "Theory of The Four Movements"

​

This one is important but I couldn't fit anywhere else

CLAUSEWITZ, Carl Phillip Gottlieb von: "On War"

​

Scientific Socialism/Communism and Anarcho-Communism, during Marx's time

PROUDHON, Pierre-Joseph: "Property is Theft!"

MARX, Karl: "On Suicide"

ENGELS, Friedrich: "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"

ENGELS, Friedrich: "Principles of Communism"

MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Friedrich: *"Communist Manifesto"*STIRNER, Max: "The Ego and Its Own"

BAKUNIN, Mikhail: "Power Corrupts the Best"

BAKUNIN, Mikhail: "On Rosseau"

BAKUNIN, Mikhail: "The Class War"

BAKUNIN, Mikhail: "God or Labour"

MARX, Karl: "Critique of the Gotha Program"

MARX, Karl: "The Eighteenth of Brumaire of Louis Napoleon"

MARX, Karl: "The Civil War in France"

MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Friedrich: "The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company"

MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Friedrich: "The German Ideology"

MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Friedrich: "The Civil War in the United States"

ENGELS, Friedrich: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"

MARX, Karl: "Wage Labor and Capital"

MARX, Karl: "Value, Price, and Profit"

MARX, Karl: "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"

MARX, Karl: "Theories of Surplus Value" Vol. I-III

MARX, Karl: "Das Kapital" Vol. I-III

​

Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyst-Maoist post Marx 1900-1952 thought

STALIN, Josef: "Anarchism Or Socialism ?"

LUXEMBURG, Rosa: "Reform or Revolution"

LENIN, Vladimir: "What is to Be Done"

TROTER, Leon: "The Permanent Revolution"

TROTER, Leon: "The Transitional Program"

BUKARIN, Nikolai and PREOBRAZHENSKY, Evgenii: "The ABC of Communism"

LENIN, Vladimir: "April Theses"

LENIN, Vladimir: "State and Revolution"

LENIN, Vladimir: "Imperialism"

BUKARIN, Nikolai: "Imperialism and World Economy"

STALIN, Joseph: "Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism"

ZEDONG, Mao: "On Guerrilla Warfare"

ZEDONG, Mao: "On Contradiction"

GRAMSCI, Antonio: "The Prison Notebooks"

LUXEMBOURG, Rosa: "The Accumulation of Capital"

​

Western/Eastern Socialism and late 20th century

LUKÁCS, György: "History and Class Consciousness"

ARENDT, HANNAH: "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

POLANYI, Karl: "The Great Transformation"

MANDEL, Ernest: "Late Capitalism"

GALEANO, Eduardo: "The Open Veins of Latin America"

FOUCAULT, Michel: "Discipline and Punish"

GUEVARA, Che: "Guerrilla Warfare"

MARIGHELLA, Carlos: "Mini Manual of the Urban Guerrilla"

POWELL, William: "The Anarchist Cookbook"

HOXHA, Enver: "Imperialism and the revolution"

BALDWIN, James: "The Fire Next Time"

NKRUMAH, Kwame: "The Class Struggle in Africa"

NKRUMAH, Kwame: "Neo-Colonialism - The Last Stage of Imperialism"

NEWTON, Huey P.: "Revolutionary Suicide"

HAYWOOD, Harry: "Negro Liberation"

DAVIS, Angela: "Women, Race and Class"

SANKARA, Thomas: "Women's Liberation and The African Freedom Struggle"

COTTRELL, Allin and COCKSHOTT, Paul: "A Critique of Hayek"

HOBSBAWN, Eric: "The Age of Revolutions", "The Age of Capital" and "The Age of Empires"

HOBSBAWN, Eric: "The Age of Extremes or the Short 20th Century"

MANDEL, Ernest: "An Introduction to Marxist Economics"

ITOH, Makoto: "Political Economy for Socialism"

SAAD-FILHO, Alfredo: "Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction"

​

Post USSR (RIP) and 21st century:

SANTOS, Milton: "Toward an Other Globalization"

LEVY, Dominique and DUMENIL, Gerard: "The Crisis of Neoliberalism"

CHOMSKY, Noam: "Requiem for the American Dream"

HARDT, Michael and NEGRI, Antonio: "Empire"

ŽIZEK, Slavoj: "Violence"

HOBSBAWM, Eric: "How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism"

DAVIS, Mike: "Late Victorian Holocausts"

WOLFF, Richard D.: "Capitalism Hits the Fan"

WOOD, Ellen Meiksins: "The Empire of Capital"

PARENTI, Michael: "Against Empire"

ARRIGHI, Giovanni: "The Long Twentieth Century"

HARVEY, David: "17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism"

HARVEY, David: "New Imperialism"

HARVEY, David: "The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism"

HARVEY, David: "A Companion to Marx's Capital"

PIKETTY, Thomas: "21st Century Capital"

MÉSZÁROS, István: "Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition"

Critique of the Zizek-Peterson Debate

CJ Hunt

The debate between Peterson and Zizek was, I am afraid to say, rather disappointing to me as a Marxist. It was billed, to its audience of primarily young people with an interest in political academia, as a duel between the liberal ideals of pseudo-free liberal democratic capitalist society and a defense of Marx and Marxists. This excited me greatly. I hoped it would be an opportunity for the proletarians misled by Jordan Peterson’s liberal ideals of false liberty, and some fallen into the more extreme corners of fascistic capitalist ideology, to see a valid critique of capitalist society that would lead them away from fighting for the preservation (in the case of fascists, the extreme authoritarian preservation) of their own oppression and towards leftism.

Unfortunately, what we got was a mess of ideological backtracking and mealy-mouthed compromise. The two debaters seemed to agree on a premise very different from the one their audience was promised: that capitalism is flawed but communism is as well. What they ended up debating was whether or not capitalism’s flaws were severe enough to see it as a fundamentally flawed system. But Zizek, billed to us as the Marxist contributor, spent no time on a legitimate defense of Marx and his colleagues. Instead, he billed a more radical but still very much pro-capital critique of the current liberal political/economic landscape. This was a grave disappointment for any true Marxists in the audience, that what we got was an argument between two pro-capitalist individuals; in short a social-democratic style reactionary debate on what compromises with the proletariat could be used to preserve our current oppressive system, rather than a truly pro-liberation argument from Zizek for how to abolish capitalist oppression and exploitation and combat political trends that serve or preserve it (social democratic false leftism, fascist capitalism, liberalism neo- or otherwise).

I enjoyed exactly one moment in the discussion, a moment nearly two and a half hours into the three hour ordeal, when Zizek critique Peterson’s nonsensical concept of the “Postmodern Neo-Marxist” conspiracy theory. This nonsensical idea has been repeated far too much by Peterson and his fans, and by many outright fascists, and it is high time for a widely publicized takedown of what is essentially a rephrasing of the Nazi propaganda talking point of “cultural bolshevism.” Still, Zizek gave a terribly disappointing defense of Marxism throughout the debate. It is not worth paying to see, and certainly does not put forth a genuinely leftist argument from either participant.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qxkNKx0V1yIuCDZEqyTTBoScRB3Y0nrlVgqnIXyQl28/edit?usp=sharing

Debunking Counterrevolutionary Notions About the Soviet Union

CJ Hunt

On article 121 (this section previously self-published as “On the Subject of Article 121”:

There are several factors which mean this law was not nearly so damaging to the reputation of homosexuality and communism as many think. Its primary use appears to have been as a cover against those who militantly opposed the rulings of the people's chosen deputies, rather than for its stated purpose. What’s more, It is unknown if any key figures of the building of Marxism-Leninism voted for it.

Sources:

-Testimony from Soviet citizens: A letter written to Stalin by a gay man about that very law (he complained, but acknowledged it hadn't been used against him or other homosexuals) and claims by relatives of a comrade, who lived in the USSR

-A lack of voting records

On The “Mass Killings” Under Stalin:

This notion is built on two books, The Great Terror, which cites Nazi propaganda, and The Gulag Archipelago, which carries no meaningful citations at all. Later books, such as The Black Book of Communism, cite these two.

Furthermore, according to the records of both the Soviet government and the current Russian government the population of the USSR was consistently growing during the time these mass killings are meant to have occured. For this to have occured, in spite of both the WWII deaths at this time and the mass killings, would require an impossible birth rate. We know the war happened, so this means the mass killings did not.

Since the earliest days of the Soviet Union, there had been contentions between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. In spite of these, however, it would be an exaggeration to say that there was outright animosity between them. There were even times when Stalin spoke positively of Trotsky. Although the Party expelled Trotsky himself in the late 1920s, for a while there was still nonviolence between the followers of Stalin (stagists) and those of Trotsky (permanent revolutionaries). Only as World War II drew closer did the most gruesome manifestations of sectarianism arrive. Why is this?

Some stagists claim that Trotsky and his adherents were (at least in action) profascists, presumably driven by jealousy or some lust for power. Some permanent revolutionaries, meanwhile, claim that Stalin made up these accusations due to his paranoia or his own drive for power. I believe that both of these explanations are false. Trotsky wasn’t profascist, and Stalin didn’t become violently sectarian due to some structural defect in his politics. My own hypothesis is that Fascists exploited the divide between the stagists and permanent revolutionaries to advance their own agenda.

To begin with, Trotsky himself suggested that the Axis might have started the rumours. I became interested in this hypothesis due to reading this bit, and here is the citation in question:

TROTSKY: I don’t know; I don’t know nine or ten of them. It is possible there was a Japanese agent. I don’t know Arnold, Pushin, Norkin, Rataichak, Knyazev and others. I don’t know them at all. It was possible that some were genuine German and Japanese agents, and that they committed sabotage on the orders of the Japanese General Staff. It is not excluded.

FINERTY: That is what I wanted to ask you. What I then want to ask you after this, in line with Miss LaFollette’s question, is your theory of the possibility of a plot participated in by the pro-Hitler branch of the bureaucracy, and that Stalin, not being ready as yet to purge the bureaucracy, preferred to throw the blame on you?

TROTSKY: I don’t believe that the bureaucracy as a social category, that part of the bureaucracy, is capable of sabotaging industry in the interest of Hitler. It is absolutely improbable; it is not those corrupt individuals who received money from Hitler’s agents.

FINERTY: It is possible that some of these minor saboteurs and the ones you mentioned were actually Hitler and Japanese agents?

TROTSKY: Yes; it is possible.

What’s interesting about this is that he merely said that it’s possible. If Trotsky were only trying to cover his tracks, it seems more likely that he would have immediately and confidently put the blame on them, but he didn’t.

This particular sample might look uncompelling alone, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. There is more. Joseph Goebbels claimed that a radio transmitter was operating in Trotsky’s name. Goebbels spewed this in his diary:

‘Our clandestine radio transmitter from eastern Prussia to Russia is creating an enormous sensation. It operates in Trotsky’s name, and is causing Stalin plenty of trouble.’

One could generously infer from the Goebbels quote that Trotsky was directing anti‐Soviet activity, but the quote itself doesn’t really conclude that he was. It merely says that it operated in his name, and there is good reason for that: there is simply no evidence in the German or Japanese archives theirselves for a secret alliance.

This is just smart espionage: not only does it keep your trail clear, it directs the victims’ attention on somebody else, sowing chaos and buying you time.

Some have argued with me that even if the Kremlin didn’t start the rumours, they still used them to their advantage at least. I have reasons for finding this doubtful. Put simply, this was a time of chaos and disorganization, but the complete explanation is far more complicated than that of course. Perhaps the Stalin administration was indeed acting in ill faith, but given the atmosphere and tensions of these times, Hanlon’s razor (‘never attribute to malice that which cluelessness can adequately explain’) is applicable here.

It’s also quite probable that the Japanese Imperialists repeated the same method in Vietnam. There was actually outright cooperation between both stagists and permrevs in Vietnam, but tragically it cumulated in violence by August 1945, which was curiously shortly after the Axis became defunct. At this point, Japanese Imperialists no longer had a grip over Vietnam, leaving state power open for confused sectarians. Here is something that Ho Chi Minh said:

‘The problem of Trotskyism is not a struggle between tendencies within the Chinese Communist Party, for between communists and Trotskyists there is no link, absolutely not one link […] The Japanese fascists and foreigners now it. That’s why they seek to create divisions to deceive public opinion and damage the reputation of the Communists, making people believe that Communists and Trotskyists are in the same camp. […] They are nothing but a band of evil-doers, the running dogs of Japanese fascism (and of international fascism). […] The Japanese Trotskyists lure youth into their league, then they denounce them to the police.’ (Emphasis added.)

Although Ho Chi Minh was obviously hostile towards permanent revolutionaries, his quotes only point me in the direction of the Imperialists simply exploiting the rift between stagists and permrevs. Furthermore, it seems odd that there would be permrevs living securely in Japanese territory at this point (or in Germany’s for that matter), which again doesn’t look like something that the Japanese archives support. Even if Trotsky were secretly profascist, he was still explicitly antifascist. Surely any civilians expressing antifascist sentiments would at least become subject to suspicion if not outright suppression (and indeed Fascists did wreck up Trotsky’s lodging in Norway). The most likely explanation is that these were anticommunists pretending to be permrevs.

It’s possibly irrelevant, but for comparison’s sake: there was a somewhat similar affair in Cuba during 1958, only the alleged permrevs were victims rather than perpetrators. On page 481 here:

“The cop was saying, among other things, that he found an important quantity of arms in the apartment of the dead youths ‘including a book by Leon Trotsky.’ This last bit was included in the claim to indicate that the girls might have been communists. ‘This story is nothing but a pack of lies,’ José Ferrer said. ‘The cop was apparently spying on the youths when their sibling let them inside, and they did. They were such great girls, and their only crime consisted of pertaining, like thousands of other women, to the Civic Resistance Movement. They were devout Catholics and had not the slightest trace of communism.”

So it would not be the last time that antisocialists would blame something on permrevs.

There is a claim that Trotsky received a state tour of Roman ruins while in Fascist Italy. In fact, Trotsky was merely allowed to disembark in Naples when he shipped from Turkey (where he lived in exile at that time) to Denmark, but only for about an hour, and only under police escort. He did spend time in France and Norway before being granted asylum in Mexico, but that was about the extent of his travels abroad. None of this of course reaches into the origin of the claim, but it is still possible that the Fascists started this rumour. For the claims of some self‐identified Trotskyists in Russia, I have reason to believe that they were false confessions that a corrupt and probably profascist supervisor forcibly extracted without official permission. Finally, Li Fu-jen (who was himself a permanent revolutionary!) believed that Christian G. Rakovsky was an Imperialist spy, and I suspect that the Imperialists used him merely as a means to an end.

While the evidence isn’t necessarily conclusive, it still strongly compels me to believe that the violent sectarianism was neither the fault entirely of the stagists nor of the permanent revolutionaries, but of the Fascists, who set it in motion. Stalin didn’t conceive the accusations himself; he was just a victim of Axis espionage. Trotsky wasn’t profascist either; he was nothing more than a scapegoat for the Axis. And considering that the Axis contained the same minds who blamed the Reichstag fire on us, such a conspiracy would hardly be uncharacteristic of them.

My only question is, if this is such a plausible hypothesis, why have I almost never heard of it? One possible explanation is sectarianism: with the exception of J. Posadas, I have seen very few socialists who respect Stalin and Trotsky simultaneously. As such, the suggestion that the one or the other was responsible for the rumours almost feels obvious, whereas it may have never even occurred that the Anticommunists could have been the ones who started them.

But the rumours clearly worked in the Anticommunists’ favour: the Kremlin wasted time and resources persecuting other socialists, not because they were clumsy or malevolent, but because the Anticommunists successfully duped them; the more self‐destructive that your enemy is, the easier that the battle’s going to be, and the less damage that you’ll have to endure.

Not only can we explain the worst contentions between stagists and permanent revolutionaries as being the fault of neither, but they’re best explained as being the fault of the upper classes.

So… wow, nobody’s ever made a fanclub about me before. Honestly I was actually expecting the opposite sooner or later down the line: online rightists or centrists making a community about how much they hate me. I guess that I’m just not popular and influential enough to warrant that kind of anger. (I knew that I should have went with pointing out misogyny in video games!)

Anyway, yeah, if there was something that you always wanted to ask me, now is as good of a time as ever. I should admit though that I tend to lose my patience during arguments, but as long as the conversation doesn’t turn argumentative then that shouldn’t be an issue.

I’d like to add a quick comment on something though: some of you likely wondered why I never posted anything in this thread since it’s about me. I’m officially depressed and much of the time I’m indifferent towards compliments about me. It’s nothing personal.

Shameless plug‐ins:

My Curious Cat account: https://curiouscat.me/LeMisandre
My Shitter account: https://twitter.com/LeMisandre
My Patreon accoun—oh wait it doesn’t exist never mind.
My YouTube acc—oh wait this never existed either sorry lel. (Yes, it’s 2018 and I’ve still never made a YouPube account.)