Reading list

A general reading-list of books and other texts for new revolutionary activists. This was developed initially for students of The Red Spectre Academy.

Unit 1: The Basics

General Socialist Introduction

• Principles of Communism - Friedrich Engels
• Why Socialism? - Albert Einstein (PARTIAL)
• On Authority - Friedrich Engels
• Anarchism or Socialism? - Josef Stalin
• The Party Before and After Taking Power - Josef Stalin
• Critical Remarks on the National Question - Vladimir Lenin

Marxist Foundations

• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Friedrich Engels

• The German Ideology - Karl Marx

• Dialectical and Historical Materialism - Josef Stalin (Reading guide)

• Critique of the Gotha Program - Karl Marx

• Three Components of Marxism - Vladimir Lenin

• Foundations of Leninism - Josef Stalin

• Manifesto of the Communist Party - Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
• Materialism and Empirio Criticism - Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism and the State

• The State and Revolution - Vladimir Lenin

• The Civil War in France - Karl Marx

• Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism - Vladimir Lenin

Economics

• Wage Labor and Capital - Karl Marx

• Price, Profit, and Value - Karl Marx

• Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1 - Karl Marx

• The Tax in Kind - Vladimir Lenin
• Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR - Josef Stalin

Political Economy

• Political Economy - Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R
• The Poverty of Philosophy - Karl Marx
• Anti-Duhring - Part II: Political Economy - Friedrich Engels
• Grundrisse - Friedrich Engels

Organizing/Party Building

• What is to be Done? - Vladimir Lenin

• How a Communist Club Functions - Daniel Rubin

• Draft and Explanation of a Program for the Social-Democratic Party - Vladimir Lenin

• The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats - Vladimir Lenin