Looking for a short intro to communism/socialism that normal people can understand

[scarletghoul]

Is there anything like this? Something an ordinary working class person can just read and understand, that explains what capitalism is and how we can free ourselves from it? If not I'll try writing one, but it would be awesome if y'all could link me to some. I started a leftwing populist group on FB and want something to link to to educate the members.

[Drace]

Link to the FB group?

[The Idler]

JeROnVUADj0
You're unlikely to get more populist, entertaining or understandable than Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (2009).

[bcbm]

http://www.prole.info/pdfs/wcpw.pdf

[scarletghoul]

I've already seen the prole.info one. Looking for something a bit less arty tbh. Thanks though.

[Spawn of Stalin]

You could always take key points for the Manifesto, the Principles of Communism, and maybe the State and Revolution and write up your own piece based on that. Let me know how you get on, I'd like to have a read of what comes out of it.

[Chambered Word]

Tell them socialism is about killing your boss.

They'll be all ears.

[RedRise]

I tell people "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" and people look at me like 'is that what communism's really about?! I never knew that!'
I've had quite a few people suddenly proclaim that they were joining the revolution after hearing that. I even found a new comrade at a bus stop.:cool:

[ComradeMan]

I tell people "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" and people look at me like 'is that what communism's really about?! I never knew that!'
I've had quite a few people suddenly proclaim that they were joining the revolution after hearing that. I even found a new comrade at a bus stop.:cool:


I would start with The Communist Manifesto- start at the beginning if you like and then move out slowly to other avenues. You could also try reading some early anarchist works too, Proudhon- the famous "property is theft" and Bakunin for example. Das Kapital is obviously the most important from a communist view point especially but the trouble is that it is not all that simple and it will take you at least a year if you're anything like me!!! Ha ha!!!!:) (We had to read Marx for political history..... many long hours in the library.....)

I would be wary of reading all the commentaries on other people's works, especially at the beginning because they inevitably reflect certain view points and interpretations that could colour your opinion inadvertently with someone else's opinion- if you see what I mean.

Just a note to the comment someone else made above about it being easy to read for ordinary working class people. Please, why are we making this subtle connection to being badly educated and being working class. I find this very worrying on these threads. If you don't understand the words then take a small step of personal liberation and look them up in a dictionary- find out, get informed, that is also a revolutionary act!!! This "it's not for the likes of us" mentality is very destructive.

[jake williams]

You gotta know the community you're organizing in. Different people will respond to different things, will understand different things, will click with different things, will use and understand different types of language etc. It's unlikely you'll find something already written that will be the best way to organize in your particular area with those particular people. I'd really recommend writing something yourself, and just generally talking to people.

[CELMX]

sorry, i can't really help ya on that. I don't think there are any "short" intros to communism/socialism. imo, i think it would take some time to explain.

anyways, not really short, but kinda fun...revolutionary tintin!!:lol:
http://tintinrevolution.free.fr/pages/image001.html

[Pogue]

Tintin Breaking Free

Theres a great little book called Socialim for Beginners, utterly brillant, find it on amazon.

[which doctor]

Tell them socialism is about killing your boss.

They'll be all ears.
but that'd be a lie...

[CELMX]

Tintin Breaking Free

Theres a great little book called Socialim for Beginners, utterly brillant, find it on amazon.

Marxism for Beginners by Rius is also amazing
you can get it on amazon, as well...that is, if you have enough money:(
http://www.amazon.com/Marx-Beginners-Rius/dp/0679725121
sorry, can't find online version

[CommunistWaffle]

Or the high school pinned topic in the learning section, right?

[bcbm]

I've already seen the prole.info one. Looking for something a bit less arty tbh. Thanks though.

i think the text itself isn't particularly "arty" and there is a plain text version available on the site.

[bailey_187]

http://thisiscommunism.org/pdf/FAQ.pdf

You might find the usueful?

[Drace]

There was a site called marxwasright.com or something. It had a great intro.
I cant find it...

[Black Sheep]

Am i the only one who noticed the normal people thingy?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Am i the only one who noticed the normal people thingy?

relative to most of the population we are abnormal.

[redarmyleader]

Two things I think are good: The Communist Manifesto, and Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Lenin.

But here is the thing: Marxism is not easy, and it can't be; it is a scientific theory and method. It is just as complex as reality itself. However, because the human brain is a magnificent organ, all human possess the ability to understand it.

Will it be hard? Yes! Will people have to learn words they never knew existed? No doubt! Will their brains hurt from time to time? Yup! But can they understand it if they try? Absolutely!

[Bitter Ashes]

Tintin Breaking Free

Theres a great little book called Socialim for Beginners, utterly brillant, find it on amazon.
That Tin-Tin thing was awesome, but I think it was more intended for those already in the revolutionary left. I thought prole.info was a good website and it's printable and had pretty pictures ^^

[Bitter Ashes]

Two things I think are good: The Communist Manifesto, and Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Lenin.

But here is the thing: Marxism is not easy, and it can't be; it is a scientific theory and method. It is just as complex as reality itself. However, because the human brain is a magnificent organ, all human possess the ability to understand it.

Will it be hard? Yes! Will people have to learn words they never knew existed? No doubt! Will their brains hurt from time to time? Yup! But can they understand it if they try? Absolutely!
Good grief, NO!
I'm sorry for bieng so confrontational here, but I'd sooner expect somebody to succesfully swim through a swimming pool of treacle than for them to get past the first two paragraphs of either of those without losing intrest. They are good to read, but frankly, you just wouldnt have the intrest to trawl through it all unless you were already very motivated to do so. Saying to somebody who asks what you believe to read either one of those would do more damage than good imo.
It took me two full weeks of spending about 4 hours a day on the Revleft chatroom and forum before I stopped thinking you lot were totaly loony and as much as I wanted to understand I just couldnt wrap my head around the Communist Manifesto. What annoyed me was that I knew I wouldnt be able to understand it, yet a lot of individuals just used to point me to it contasntly. If you check the learning thread, the same people are probably still doing it. It was only my persistance in asking small questions for a full fortnight that didnt have me abandon the whole idea completly. I only kept it up that long because of personal reasons too!

[Iskra1916]

" Marx for Beginners" by Readers & Writers Collective.
Its presented in cartoon caption form but with key text, history & principles.
easy to understand & not jargon heavy.



Can be bought cheaply on Amazon:

[redarmyleader]

Good grief, NO!
I'm sorry for bieng so confrontational here, but I'd sooner expect somebody to succesfully swim through a swimming pool of treacle than for them to get past the first two paragraphs of either of those without losing intrest. They are good to read, but frankly, you just wouldnt have the intrest to trawl through it all unless you were already very motivated to do so. Saying to somebody who asks what you believe to read either one of those would do more damage than good imo.
It took me two full weeks of spending about 4 hours a day on the Revleft chatroom and forum before I stopped thinking you lot were totaly loony and as much as I wanted to understand I just couldnt wrap my head around the Communist Manifesto. What annoyed me was that I knew I wouldnt be able to understand it, yet a lot of individuals just used to point me to it contasntly. If you check the learning thread, the same people are probably still doing it. It was only my persistance in asking small questions for a full fortnight that didnt have me abandon the whole idea completly. I only kept it up that long because of personal reasons too!

You are drawing some conclusions that you should not be; you are assuming that I am smarter than I actually am (example, what are treacle?). It took me a while to get through the Communist Manifesto. And only recently, when I was preparing a study on it, did I actually read it all the way through! The truth is we are not in class. We can take the time we need to go over things. With Marxism, you get (and can only get it) more out of the text the more times you read it.

When first starting reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky (along with King, Frederick Douglass, and material of the group I am a sympathizer of) I did not read front to back: I used the index to see what was interesting to me at the time and start from there. The first time I read History of the Russian Revolution I skipped the first part. And it took me all of this summer to read the book front to back.

Being a revolutionary is not easy, and it won't always be enjoyable. It is the most challenging thing in life, but for those who cannot tolerate oppression we have no other viable option (I could be a sell-out but I refuse to) Trotsky sums it up good for me: "I felt the mechanics of power as an inescapable burden, rather than as a spiritual satisfaction." -My Life. In the last chapter of My Life Trotsky quotes Luxemburg and Proudhon to the same effect.

P.S. I would help you go over anything if your interested.

[ckaihatsu]

Oooop! Almost forgot -- I recently modeled it out, to show the *implications* resulting in the larger society, from being arranged around *collectivized* productive property:


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://i50.tinypic.com/ilc20z.jpg

[Little Bobby Hutton]

Communism: A short introduction
Capitalism : A short introduction etc
Go on google i bet someone has put it into PDF

[The Idler]

Oxford University Press
Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction by Colin Ward
Communism: A Very Short Introduction by Leslie Holmes
Socialism: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Newman
Marx: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer
Engels: A Very Short Introduction by Terrell Harver

Icon Books/Pantheon/Totem
Introducing Marx by Rius
Introducing Lenin by Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate
Introducing Trotsky by Tariq Ali and Phil Evans

Hodder and Stoughton
Marx: A Beginners Guide by Gill Hands

Oneworld
Marx: A Beginners Guide by Andrew Collier

Bookmarks (SWP)
A Rebel's Guide to Marx by Mike Gonzalez
A Rebel's Guide to Lenin by Ian Birchall
A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky by Esme Choonara

[Prairie Fire]

You're unlikely to get more populist, entertaining or understandable than Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (2009).

"Capitalism: A love story" was hardly an introduction to communism. It was not even anti-capitalist, let alone Marxist/Communist/Socialist.

The film is simply a "middle class" lament, waxing nostalgic for the prosperous consumeristic fifties, with plentiful manufacturing jobs available for most (with absolutely no mention of how and under what circumstances America was prosperous in the fifties, ie. Imperialism).

http://theredphoenix.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/review-of-capitalism-a-love-story/

While it is true that I read Moore before Marx, and perhaps Moore gave me a push in that direction, I think that I am the exception to the rule. The overwhelming majority of Michael Moore's readership/viewing audience remain content at liberalism/social democracy.


Anyways, I started with the Manifesto. I was like 17 at the time, and I had to learn all of those words as well. If I can do it, any persyn literate at an adult level can.
It may be dry, perhaps, but it is the most basic work on the subject.

I would fervently shun any of these "introducing...", "a begginers guide to...", "Understanding..." books in every sense of the term. These books, in my experience play a role in very effectively diverting new revolutionaries into non-threatening pursuits, re-inforcing all official anti-communist propaganda, obscenely misinterpreting whichever theoretical trend they are said to be explaining, and over-all innoculating new revolutionaries against ever becoming a threat of any kind to class society.

One of the first books I read after the Manifesto was a book that I picked up at a large chain bookstore called "Introducing Marxism", or something like that.

The first bit of the book strengthened some of my grasp of Marxist economics, but mostly it was just sterile academic crap, devoting several pages to the origins of Marxism in Hegel, etc.

The rest of the book was about how Lenin "perverted" Marxism, Stalin was a butcher, all of the third world Marxist movements where illegitimate (and doomed to illegitimacy from the get-go), and how the real heirs to Marxism were the Frankfurt school, Antonio Gramsci (they devoted more time to Gramsci than Lenin), and various other Post-Marxists who have produced nothing but noise in their time. The book also makes reference to Fukuyamas "end of history", basically claiming that neo-liberal capitalism is the highest stage of humyn development, and the whole thing wraps up with a cartoon Karl Marx saying to some obscure post-Marxist shit head
"So the revolution has been called off (indefinately)?", to which the other replies in the affirmative.

This was one of the first books that I read on the subject, a book that was presented as a primer on Marxism. Needless to say, it took years, involvement in a political party, and much more theory,historical study and practice on my part to un-do the damage that this "Marxist" primer did to me.

I have nothing but contempt for any of these primers and interpretations that are presented as "introductions" to the theory and practice of Marxism, but unfortunately these are 90% of the material available on the subject in capitalist countries. You can't buy anything by Lenin at Chapters chain bookstores, but you can find several volumes of various scholars and philosophers dissecting and interpreting Marx with all of the clumsiness expected of a bourgeois ideologue. Even my original copy of the Manifesto had almost ten pages of "commentary" in the introduction, sparing no account of Holodomer, Gulags and the Kampuchean Killing fields.

Fuck all of these bourgie sources. If you want to know what Marx said, read Marx. If you want to know what Lenin said, read Lenin.

Now, it may be a valid critique to say that literature written in the 1800's-1920's may be a bit dry for the internet generation. This is where contemporary Marxist-Leninist literature comes into the picture, especially newspapers and periodicals (including, but not necesarilly newsprint. Most serious ML parties are online now).

That is probably the best starting point for new people. Instead of giving them Marx's thoughts on a textile loom workers strike in the late 1800's, give them something contemporary on an issue that they can relate to. This approach is risky, because not all contemporary Marxist-Leninist analysis is of the same calibre, and much of it is of questionable merit to say the least. Still, immersing people in contemporary analysis and participation in contemporary struggles is the best initial starting point.

Reading the Manifesto can't hurt though (unless you have my copy, with all of the BS in the intro).

[Dimentio]

Lego bricks seem to be a usual way of depicting things today in a pedagogic manner. Why not turn the manifesto or Das Kapital into a brick comic?

http://www.thebricktestament.com/

[Rusty Shackleford]

fucking zeitgeist addendum man. that was the push for me to drop preconceptions about many things. it left my mind an uncultivated field. then, i looked at socialism more seriously. then WABAM! 1 year later. i join the SP-USA being confident that i understand enough to even join a party.

though the zeitgeist series is pretty good at blowing your mind. dont take it seriously. look into more realistic and scientific things afterwards like marxism.

[ZombieGrits]

http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/966/Peter-Singer--Marx--A-Very-Short-Introduction

if you got a torrent downloader, you could probably get this and salvage some introductory lines from it. that site looks like a good place to find other materials too

[The Idler]

@Prairie Fire
While I'm inclined to agree Moore's idea of prosperity is built on imperialism I still think A Very Short Introduction, Introducing ... and a Beginners Guide are a good introduction. There are socialists who aren't Leninists let alone Hoxhaists so this shouldn't get in the way of introducing new people to the basics.
There is an introductory leaflet for distributing at showings of Capitalism: A Love Story here (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/Capitalism_and_Michael_Moore.pdf).

[Durruti's Ghost]

Does anyone else think The Principles of Communism is a far better introduction for those new to revolutionary politics than the Manifesto? It's literally written like a Marxist FAQ.

[AK]

Does anyone else think The Principles of Communism is a far better introduction for those new to revolutionary politics than the Manifesto? It's literally written like a Marxist FAQ.
It's a decent, simpler, shorter alternative to alot of the Communist Manifesto IMO, and much better for referring people to.

[Bitter Ashes]

Lets try the super short info:

"You work less and get more for it"

Done.