As the title says! I have uploaded a new study guide targeting ~20 hours of reading time. I understand that it cannot be comprehensive with such a limit, but at the same time I wish to include a diverse range of voices, convey the core fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism clearly, and to avoid common pitfalls.
Any feedback is appreciated, as long as it doesn’t add bloat.
I like the list for the most part and believe that the decisions for what to cut and what to keep in each section are well-reasoned.
My main concern is with whether too much is being asked from Nia Frome’s 5-10 minute “Tankies” article.
The way I see it is that while the first two sections do more than a good enough job of correcting misconceptions about Marxism, they do not do an adequate job (in my opinion) of addressing the ‘elephant in the room’ for most people, which is AES.
Good point. I do include Why Marxism? as this also directly confronts the question of AES (even Iran and the Russian Federation), which was the primary purpose of including it alongside Why Socialism? When viewed as a back-to-back contextualization of AES and an explanation of support and critical support, I feel that it’s stronger than just “Tankies” on its own.
If the reader makes it to Stalin and actually reads Dialectical and Historical Materialism, then this helps dramatically in humanizing the soviets. By the time they make it to the section on Cultural Hegemony, they will be well-equipped to confont the brainworms of Western Marxism Jones Maonel rightly attacks.
Do you agree with this assessment, or do you think I need to add something more? I was at most considering adding “Yellow Parenti” to the intro section, as Blackshirts and Reds is far too long to keep the list under the 25 hour limit I increased to.
I don’t disagree. Admittedly, it’s a bit difficult to put myself in the shoes of a lib who’s been exposed to this list for the first time. Different people would be curious about it for different reasons.
I hope you’re right that reading the works in the first section back-to-back would be enough to motivate them to read further.
I would rather aim for 20 hours as the goal as opposed to 25. If I were in your shoes, I would add “Yellow Parenti” at the end of a section (maybe after the checkpoint) as a “strong recommendation” and just not count it to the hour count because it would technically be “optional”.
I had 20 hours originally, but felt it necessary to include the topics of cultural hegemony and social progress. Is there anything you can recommend trimming? It’s around 22-23 hours right now, not 25.
Yeah, that’s understandable of course. It becomes very difficult to find anything to trim once we get to this level. The only thing I can think of, and I would pose this as a question rather than a suggestion, is “Value, Price, and Profit” absolutely necessary for the basic course? The “Political Economy” section would certainly feel quite thin if it’s excluded.
Aside from that, I don’t think much can be done in terms of cutting things out. Maybe if there are shorter alternatives to works such as “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, or a couple essays to replace “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, but at this point we’re resorting to quite extreme measures.
I believe the only way to go beyond this, which is completely out of scope of this project, is to create more works such as the Abriged version of “What is to be done” and use those for introduction rather than the unaltered classics.
My original had Value, Price, and Profit left off, actually! It’s the only one I’m seriously considering re-trimming. I added it back because it helps provide a firmer base for economic understanding, making sure the Political Economy section isn’t under-developed. I’m 50/50 on taking it out.
I agree, if there were more abridged versions of texts like Imperialism, The State and Revolution, and Foundations of Leninism I’d be very satisfied with cutting ~3 hours out of this list and bringing it back down to 20 hours, while still keeping the additions.