I like both Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy and Vladimir Adoratsky’s Dialectical Materialism for beginners. On Contradiction (as well as On Practice) are essential.

For more depth, Anti-Dühring and Materialism and Empirio-Criticism are excellent.

Self and other.

You too comrade!

Sartre’s intro is the only one I like.

Have a great week everyone! We’re approaching the new year soon.

As always, communism will win.

That’s really cool!

Thanks for recommending the list I made! OP, I designed the list to be pretty gentle up front and work up over time, but you can skip around if you feel like it!

Generally, it’s a two-stage process. One must be sufficiently unsatisfied with the status quo or open to new ideas before new information is accepted that overturns your worldview. The working classes are generally going to already be closer to that, but even among workers there is significant striation. New information does work, but on people who are in the proper stage for it. It’s driven internally.

What we do is focus on those that are radicalized and lead them to correct theory and practice over time. Agitating among those whom the system benefits (or those who believe the system benefits them) is far less effective than focusing on those left behind. Dialectical Materialism informs us that it is through the working classes actively engaging in social relations that they come to working class ideology, we meet them there and guide them to proper theory and practice.

Hoping things shake out well for you! Happy Christmas/Solstice as well, comrade!

I’m doing okay, thank you! It’s been hectic lately with work and my personal life, but not in a bad way. How about you, Maeve? Doing well, I hope?

Incredibly inspiring, despite being so close to the empire it’s humanity that prevails over capital.

Support for attacking Venezuela is very unpopular here in the States. Comrades here are doing great work trying to agitate against this.

You too Oppo!

Have a good week everyone!

As always, communism will win.

Generally, radlibs materially benefit from the system enough for it to actually work for them, thus they license themselves into believing “DNC good.” Without reading theory and without feeling like the DNC isn’t working, they kinda stick around there. Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” is essential reading IMO.

And thanks!

I feature Nia Frome’s work quite prominently in my ML reading list, I agree!

I share this somewhat frequently over on Lemmy.ml, sometimes it seems to actually break through a bit.

No problem!

No, thank you! I always learn from your comments, comrade.

We don’t actually have an issue with the label, just the strawman version of a Red Scare nightmare the label entails. Lots of us call ourselves tankies, but when it’s used as an insult and a caricature to terminate discussion it becomes a problem.

“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).

The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.

"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”

“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)

“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”

"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:

During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”

Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."

Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:

Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.

TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.

Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.

I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.” That should give you a more well-rounded view.