One thing for me was how light hearted and funny Lenin was. I expected it to be really hard going like a lot of Marx but he had such a wit about him and I remember laughing out loud a few times by his turn of phrase. I don’t think he gets enough credit for it, he took a really serious, dry subject and made it enjoyable to read. He really was an incredible writer.
Honestly, how kind and gentle everyone sounds. Stalin and Mao are positively professorial. It’s a jarring disconnect from the propaganda that paints them as stupid and brutish.
stalin reads like a college professor teaching a class
I do like reading his early 1900s Georgian-ass lingo, “like everyone says…the Sergeant’s widow Flogged Herself!” Or “be cautious when a cobbler starts selling wheat” or something lol.
The rigor of Marxist philosophy of science and epistemology, and how the academy has actively ignored these great thinkers because they would provide a viable alternative to the status quo. Like Engles’ “The Dialectics of Nature.” And Mao’s work “On Contradiction.”
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Do you have the source for the abortion thing, that sounds like an interesting read.
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awesome, thank you
Ditto
How it completely changed the way I think. You expect some things to stick off course, but reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Parenti etc. changed the way I look at news, politics, movies, consumerism, basically everything.
I never expected the theory to have this much influence over my life.
How marxism helped me understand general politics.
Prior to reading theory, politics is a confusing mess that I couldn’t comprehend at all. I couldn’t comprehend why some corporation did X. There is so much politicsl disinformation that I felt like learning it is too much effort. (Autism doesn’t help. It sucks to struggle grasping the implied context of media, so they seem technically valid to me, even when it’s under a suspicious context.)
A large amount of political ideologies felt idealist and too abstract for me to grasp. I shrugged them off as just being choices.
After learning Marxism, I could finally understand some political systems and it’s far easier to predict actions from class interests.
Watching how people process world events is surreal having a more complete context.
The many literary references in Capital surprised me. Gotta say, Marx got good taste. I don’t get the humor most of the time since english isn’t my first language, but most of Lenin and Marx’s work isn’t as difficult as most people say it would be and you will always find something new on a re-read.
On a deeper note, as someone who used to struggle with chronic loneliness, reading about theory and the history of class struggle filled me with so much revolutionary optimism. It’s like I’m never alone anymore. I thought I’m gonna be all nihilistic afterwards but I finally found the human connection I’ve lost years ago.
Yes, anticommunist “leftism” is such a major downer, the real thing is inspiring and hopeful.
You said you struggled with chronic loneliness. I’m doing that right now. Long story short: I was given the short end of the straw when in comes to socializing growing up. Never made friends and never learned love. I was at my wits end for a long time and ready to end it. Because I was thrown into this system of selling myself for an hourly wage. Never having time to enjoy the things I missed. I ended up in a very bad place mentally. I really thought that was it. Just exist to produce enough money to exist another day to produce enough money… You know? It feels worthless.
But reading about the problems in our society and the fact that we have solutions to them, and there are people trying to fight to make those solutions happen?
That just fills me with hope.
Che was right when he said revolution is born from great feelings of love. So many generations before us are willing to sacrifice their life for a future they don’t get to see. I don’t know about you, but I feel very loved and comforted by that fact.
I’d say most of The Critique of the Gotha Program. Like baby leftist me would have been like “hell yea every group that ain’t the Revolutionary proletariat is one reactionary mass of enemies” or “yea the working class needs to liberate labor and give undiminished proceeds of labor straight to the worker! Everything for the worker first!”. Reading that critique really improved my understanding of how socialism works and how not to implement it(with idealist goals)
The benefits of authority
Got any quotes?
The marsh is a classic:
We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm
I don’t. I kept thinking last time I read Lenin to write some of them down. Whether they work as stand alone quotes I don’t know. I’ll try and put something together.
i always was kinda leftist, and i had my issues with capitalism, but with theory finally i was understanding what was the specific set of issues that bothered me
