Hello comrades!

[Valdyr]

Hello RevLeft. I've been a lurker for a while, but only recently decided to join the site.

I'm a 17 year-old student from New York who has been developing my thought in a Marxist direction for 3-4 years now. While I don't like to get bogged down in silly sectarian debates over minutae of theory, and am still developing my thought/learning, if I had to apply a label I'd be in the Marxist-Leninist direction.

Given the socioeconomic situation of the area where I live, and the fact that I'm a minor, as a communist I'm a bit isolated. However, I do have one communist friend, and we serve as a voice of political dissent in our school, as well as organizing local activism. Furthermore, three of my teachers in the last few years have been Marxists and have been quite influential - two Marxist history teachers, who have been quite active, and a German teacher from (former) East Germany who is a(n) ML.

While no forum is perfect, RevLeft seems to have more intelligent political discussions than I encounter on most of the internet, and I don't know enough leftists in real life to satisfy my need for discussion about leftist politics. I hope to learn a lot here, since being so young, I'm pretty new to leftist politics.

To wrap up, I have two questions for the users of RevLeft:

1. As a young New Yorker near NYC, living in a largely capitalist (mostly bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie from my cursory examination) neighborhood, but with free access to the city and surrounding areas, what organization would be a good one to join? I don't want to sit idly by as an armchair theorist - I intend to effect change. Note that I lean in the ML direction.

2. What would be some good further reading for a young communist especially interested in history, current events, and the political economy of Marxism/the real world economic and political practice of socialist states? I've already read basics like The ABC of Communism by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, The Communist Manifesto, other basic texts of Marx and Engels, Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism by Lenin, as well as Another View of Stalin by Martens.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[Mr. Natural]

What a treat to run into young lefties with open minds on this site!

Lucky you to have another communist in your high school and to have had three Marxist teachers. And you live in New York, one of the few places in the US where there are Marxist resources and you can still get into a radical conversation (and action?).

I can't recommend any political parties as I don't know the New York scene. I'm on the opposite coast.

However, I am very familiar with a couple of New Yorkers whose works I highly recommend. I'm red-green and work with revolutionary organizing theory.

Joel Kovel, recently fired from Bard College, is the head of the American ecosocialists now. I highly recommend his Enemy of Nature (2002). It conclusively shows capitalism to be an unredeemable horror and offers an ecological revolutionary organizing schema in response. Most of Enemy is clearly written, and it is intended for a popular readership.

And Bertell Ollman's works on the dialectic are essential to understanding Marx's organic perception of reality and the materialist dialectic. I recommend Dance of the Dialectic (2003) and Dialectics For The New Century (2008), which is co-edited by Ollman and Tony Smith and contains numerous concepts of the dialectic. But as Ollman's works conclusively show, you cannot understand Marx's approach to life and society or the materialist dialectic unless you understand Marx's roots in the Hegel's philosophy of internal relations. I'm afraid this critical knowledge is foreign to almost all Marxists, at present. And Marxism has been stuck for a long time....

Bertell Ollman, like Kovel, was fired from his university (Univ of Maryland). He now teaches at NYU at the age of 75. Kovel, too, is in his seventies. And all the Marxist works you mentioned are old. This points to the severe lack of modern updates on Marxism and a lack of modern Marxists.

So glad to have you on board!

[Valdyr]

What a treat to run into young lefties with open minds on this site!

Lucky you to have another communist in your high school and to have had three Marxist teachers. And you live in New York, one of the few places in the US where there are Marxist resources and you can still get into a radical conversation (and action?).

I can't recommend any political parties as I don't know the New York scene. I'm on the opposite coast.

However, I am very familiar with a couple of New Yorkers whose works I highly recommend. I'm red-green and work with revolutionary organizing theory.

Joel Kovel, recently fired from Bard College, is the head of the American ecosocialists now. I highly recommend his Enemy of Nature (2002). It conclusively shows capitalism to be an unredeemable horror and offers an ecological revolutionary organizing schema in response. Most of Enemy is clearly written, and it is intended for a popular readership.

And Bertell Ollman's works on the dialectic are essential to understanding Marx's organic perception of reality and the materialist dialectic. I recommend Dance of the Dialectic (2003) and Dialectics For The New Century (2008), which is co-edited by Ollman and Tony Smith and contains numerous concepts of the dialectic. But as Ollman's works conclusively show, you cannot understand Marx's approach to life and society or the materialist dialectic unless you understand Marx's roots in the Hegel's philosophy of internal relations. I'm afraid this critical knowledge is foreign to almost all Marxists, at present. And Marxism has been stuck for a long time....

Bertell Ollman, like Kovel, was fired from his university (Univ of Maryland). He now teaches at NYU at the age of 75. Kovel, too, is in his seventies. And all the Marxist works you mentioned are old. This points to the severe lack of modern updates on Marxism and a lack of modern Marxists.

So glad to have you on board!

Thank you for the enthusiastic welcome, and the reading recommendations. I'm definitely going to check the books you listed out, as I too have noticed the lack of modern takes on Marxism.