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I hope as many people join as possible! With that being said, I will also be participating, as I have not yet done a step-by-step readthrough myself. I will actively be looking for feedback on improvements. Primarily, I wish to ruthlessly cut what does not add tremendously to the guide, as I firmly believe the goal of this guide is to equip people with the basic knowledge needed to join an organization active in their areas, and carry on your studies with the party you join.

I also think this list will be very helpful both for new comrades that have not studied much, as well as comrades that have studied a lot. I have included lesser-read works that I believe deserve study and discussion. Each weak, I will give my thought process on why I included each work, why they have their place, and whether or not I think they should be taken out or replaced.

I will be reading everyone’s comments eagerly, and cannot wait to study alongside everyone! The same goes for the Sovietology group, I learned a lot, and cannot wait to learn more!

I recommend posting this on c/socialism as well. That comm seems to get more engagement. .world’s c/latestagecapitalism may also be beneficial, though most on that are defederated from Hexbear so it would mostly be agitprop.

I hope as many people join as possible! With that being said, I will also be participating, as I have not yet done a step-by-step readthrough myself. I will actively be looking for feedback on improvements. Primarily, I wish to ruthlessly cut what does not add tremendously to the guide, as I firmly believe the goal of this guide is to equip people with the basic knowledge needed to join an organization active in their areas, and carry on your studies with the party you join.

I also think this list will be very helpful both for new comrades that have not studied much, as well as comrades that have studied a lot. I have included lesser-read works that I believe deserve study and discussion. Each weak, I will give my thought process on why I included each work, why they have their place, and whether or not I think they should be taken out or replaced.

I will be reading everyone’s comments eagerly, and cannot wait to study alongside everyone! The same goes for the Sovietology group, I learned a lot, and cannot wait to learn more!

I know I’ve linked this for you before, but you really should read Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation, rather than trusting Adrian Zenz, a far-right Christian Nationalist on the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as your source of truth. You claim I live in an alternate reality, but when you don’t even dare engage with the perspectives of Uyghur people living in Xinjiang, and don’t dare investigate the motivations behind the talking points you parrot, do you really care? Could you locate Xinjiang on a map, let alone Urumqi?

Socialism is enormously emancipating for the individual, but it is not an individualist ideology. The freedoms of Chinese workers are higher than those in the west, while the freedoms of Chinese capitalists are lower than in the west.

Why do I live rent free in your head? Genuine question, there are plenty of socialists on Lemmy, why single me out in particular?

There are close to 0 Pol Pot supporters on Lemmy, and practically nobody thinks Mao and Stalin did nothing wrong. Many people here think Mao and Stalin did more good than bad, but nobody thinks they were perfect. Further, support for the Russian Federation is purely as it relates to resisting the US Empire, the biggest threat to the global south in the world today and the biggest obstacle for socialism.

Yes, there are many Marxist-Leninists here, but at least do the bare minimum and explain our views correctly. Go praise Pol Pot on Hexbear.net or Lemmygrad.ml and get bombarded with replies, downvotes, and maybe even a ban.

That’s not very nice

The infiltration strategy is a lost cause. You cannot implement socialism within the boundaries of a capitalist state, and the people are the engine of revolution, meaning they themselves have to be socialist-minded and aware. You cannot “trick” people into socialism, this would collapse any goodwill a worker party had.

Revolution needs both a mass revolutionary socialist party that the working class looks to for leadership, and a class conscious working class. The primary tasks right now are to build up a revolutionary socialist party, as well as channel the energy currently going towards the social democratic movement into revolutionary socialism. Both are accomplished by building up the cadre membership and periphery membership. The two best orgs in the US at the moment are PSL and FRSO, and I would say that the PSL is far bigger and a bit more theoretically correct than FRSO. If a group splinters from the DSA and takes a solidly revolutionary line, it might surpass them in numbers, but it will take a long, long time for the entire cadre to be as politically developed as anyone in PSL and FRSO.

In short, revolution isn’t just something you do, or something that falls into your lap. It happens when there is a large, revolutionary socialist party, a class conscious working class, and a crisis in the capitalist class. We can directly contribute to the first two by getting involved with a socialist party. Both Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation have two tiers of membership, general membership which is low commitment in time and money, and cadre membership, which requires significant time and money. See which is more active near you (almost certainly PSL, but varies), and consider joining the general membership!

There are two problems, here.

The first is that Brazil’s election was between soveriegnty and vassalization. The US election will maintain imperialism, will maintain capitalism, will maintain settler-colonialism, will maintain the genocides on Palestine and Cuba, and more. Neither mainstream party fundamentally challenges the dynamic. Brazil on the other hand was fighting between BRICS, and US subjugation. Not socialism, not capitalism, but their place in the world economy, which did change.

The second is that you cannot reform capitalism into socialism, not even if you elect people that genuinely want socialism. The capitalist state is not a neutral entity distinct from the economy, but the part of the overall system made to maintain it. Even if you elected every single self-described socialist, you still would need revolution in order to smash and replace the capitalist state with a worker state.

We don’t want revolution. We need one anyways. If we could do this peacefully, then Marxists would all be reformists, but to believe in reformism is to reject how we understand capitalism and the state, how class struggle functions, the entire underlying thesis for socialism to begin with. The good news is that every socialist revolution that has solidified worker power has managed to dramatically uplift the lives of the working class. A better world is possible, and our predecessors showed us how.

If we cling to reformism, this will at most leave us with social democracy, which quickly turns to fascism during crisis of profitability. It will maintain imperialism, as is intrinsic to the monopoly stage of capitalism. It will continue to prevent the working class from actually having power.

Again, I don’t give a shit. “Personal responsibility” is a moralist framing that removes responsibility of society to take care of everyone and blames poor people for conditions they did not choose to be born into.

I don’t frankly give a shit about “personal responsibility,” that’s a moralist framing that has no place in the question of what should be done about disadvantaged youth. You’ve dodged this point every single time for no other reason than to reveal your naked cruelty.

The point has been made over and over again, at this point you are being deliberately obtuse.

You’re pointlessly trolling.

Yep! There’s no moral or economic justification for it. Society has a responsibility to the youth.

Sure. And these people should be taken care of by society as well.

Do you believe in social responsibility at all?

I think that society has a duty to raise the next generations socially, as generations are social existences. The problems of one family aren’t theirs alone, they impact everyone. Taking care of the young isn’t an individual responsibility, but a societal one. This is the only conclusion from a moral and and economic perspective. You want to punish people, you do not want a better society, economy, or world with as little pain as possible. You just want people to suffer, because you’re either willingly cruel or unwillingly ignorant.