I asked this elsewhere and never got a response, so I’m trying here.

The 1922 Rand Revolt was an extremist left wing-right wing revolution in South Africa which was typified by the slogan "Workers of the World, Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!"

To provide some context, I am a South African history buff who has been doing extensive research on the Rand Revolt as a part of my personal research project. Whenever I post about the Rand Revolt on Reddit, I will sometimes come across comments by redditors who say that Lenin and the International communist community outright opposed and even got mad at the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) over this "racist opportunism", but evidence of this is rarely if ever provided.

One of the Sources i have is from a 1922 writeup from Captain William Urquhart MC, who claims that:

\\\*Before the recent disturbances Communistic speakers warmly championed the rights of the natives. How then is one to explain the false attitude assumed by them in professing to favour “A White South Africa” An explanation will be found in the report of the proceedings of the Third International at Moscow in 1920 (Possibly the 2nd World Congress?). There a plan of campaign in the British colonies was discussed with the full knowledge that the Communistic ideal had not taken root in them. Lenin advocated the turning to account of the Nationalist movement, and so converting any Nationalist rising that might occur into one for the rule of the proletariat. South Africa was specifically mentioned in this discussion. It was pointed out by Trotzky that five men in a room could cause a revolution by exploiting discontent irrespective of its original cause. The Lenin-Trotzky plan was worked on the Witwatersrand.\\\*

Is there any truth to this? What was the reaction of Lenin and other notable communists to this revolt?

In Peirce's phenomenology of signs, he describes the primary as follows:

This mode of existence exists authentically within the being of the subject, as if it were unrelated to anything else. It can only be a possibility. Because as long as things do not interact with each other, any claim that these facts have any existence is meaningless; unless they themselves are existence, they cannot have any relationship with other things.

Here, I discovered this "quality itself"Just as Hegel criticized Kant's thing-in-itself as an utterly abstract and hollow concept that is suffocating, I strongly agree with Peirce that the vividness of sensation is fleeting. Once this vividness disappears, it falls into the categories of second and third nature. However, Peirce precisely presupposed a "quality itself" using symbolic language.

I have no prior knowledge of Pierce's primary theory here, so I don't understand why it is set up in such a way as to avoid the idealistic tint of base. At the same time, Marx criticized the impossibility of this perceptual intuition in his outline on Feuerbach. Actually, I am looking for a comparative study between the two.

That is to say, I urgently want to know whether Peirce's pragmatism and semiotics can be compared and critically reconstructed with Marxism. Here, I am not referring to Baudrillard, Zizek, or other philosophers who conduct phenomenological analysis from a semiotic perspective. I think that is boring, because it seems that no one has directly "attacked" Peirce's phenomenology of symbols.

Seeking aN EASY transition from Hegel to Marx for a stupid person who understands Hegel's Phenomenology of Geist.

The stupid person is me.

I just finished a thesis using Hegel and I got through his phenomenology using an LLM to guide me through each page of The Routledge Guidebook To Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

Yes, the GUIDEBOOK was too complex for me.

My brain is totally fried and mush especially from the thesis. I want something that will be easy enough and engaging enough that I will not find it too difficult to understand and most importantly will actually finish.

I don't want to use an LLM this time I want something digestible.

I don't think I would have finished Hegel's Phenomenology if my degree wasn't resting on it. Now that it's not, I need to go EASY MODE on myself.

However the CATCH, DEAR READER, THAT MAKES THIS A FUN CHALLENGE, is that I do indeed understand Hegel a fair amount (though only his Phenomenology of Geist)

I think this drive and love for Hegel may give me the juice and motivation to finally try and understand Marxism and Leninism and beyond.

I currently have NO BACKGROUND IN MARX OR LENIN

Maybe this is too crazy an ask and I should just start with whatever the general easy way in is. I'd rather you not say The Communist Manifesto because I'd quite like one resource to guide me through Marxism and preferably to Leninism too.

Edit: please see my comment. Maybe a good approach to this would be 1. What are the easy intros to Marxism and Leninism 2. Which of these uses a dialectical, embodied approach perhaps with historical examples and evolution of ideas? Perhaps like Hegel's Phenomenology and perhaps like the recommended "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific".

I've been learning about marxist theory, but the ways contraddictions are discussed leaves me pause. Hope some people here can help me understand better.

Sussinctly, for what is relevant to my doubts, here is my current understanding of it:

Contraddictions are what all motion (as in change) in the universe is predicated upon.

Contradictions are relationships wherein tendencies of motion

1) oppose one another

2) are premises of the existence of one another.

Contraddictions exist within all things and between all things.

Why does it have to be a contraddiction that drives motion? What is so illogical about a relationship where there is a singular tendency of motion? I can think of cases that fit that description, for example, two identical charged particles interacting, there will be quantitative changes in speed and relative position as they repel each other, yet what is the contraddiction?

Mao in "on contraddiction" and Lenin in "on the question of dialectics" agree that the contradiction in such cases is between action and reaction. This answer is unsatisfactory, while it's true that it fits part 2) of the definition, and while it's true that the force vectors point in opposite direction, action and reaction are applied to two different object, they are not opposing tendencies of motion in the dialectical sense, failing the arguably more fundimental part 1) of the definition.

Also, Engels argues that all changes of positions are caused by the contraddiction of something being in that place and not in another place. This line of argument seems to be unfalsifiable: if we observe something change from A to B, we can always attribute that change to the contraddiction that A was A and not B. A more straightforward explanation is that there is a singular tendency for position to change based on velocity.

Is there something i'm missing in these examples? Is my understanding of what contraddictions are incorrect?

I’ve been seeing a lot of random content on North Korea on my feed lately and I was wondering what books I could read to get an unbiased view on North Korea. On twitter/X I‘ve seen a few Marxists argue that the Western portrayal of North Korea is heavily propagandised, that‘s one of the reasons I chose to ask here.

So I've already read quite a bit, I've read the manifesto, What is to be Done (but I dropped it because it was too dense for me at the time,) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and I'm currently on chapter 12 of capital.

After I read volume 1 of Capital, what order would it be best to read:

State and Revolution,

Left-wing "Communism"

What is to be Done?

The Origins of Family

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

A Critique of the Gotha Programme

The German Ideology

Capital volume 2 & 3

And what are the best translations for these?

Sorry if this has already been asked before, everything about reading orders is buried by/ made for first time readers and they don't mention these.

To get this out of the way first, I’ve found I’m generally in argument with Marx’s conclusions like the problems with the MCM’ circuit, but I’ve found the actual arguments he used to often be unconvincing, which I think is largely due to them being based on Ricardian economics. As someone fairly well versed in mainstream economics, this brings in two sources of confusion for me - first the way of phrasing is just different, with times the same concepts being referred to with different terms and others the terms being used for different concepts, and second, the theory itself had problems which have been addressed as economic theory advanced, but going back to the sources brings in issues with the minutiae of accounting which then distract from the main point. I’m wondering if anyone has resources for Marxist theory explained in modern economic language which addresses the problems with original, or at least a glossary for explaining Marxists terms as they relate to modern economic theory (eg. is use-value the same as utility or is their some subtle difference is how they are conceived?). Such a resource would be much appreciated.

There seems to be a heated discourse online over which version is most accurate/ informative. Are there any particular versions that are more true to source

Bonus points if it's available on Amazon or cheap

I understand that the vanguard party is simply supposed to give up power after, but I feel like that isn’t very concrete. Moreover, bureaucracy seems like a large problem in ML states, is there anyway to prevent it from occurring so far?

Been wanting to do a deeper dive into labor and currently working on a reading list. Slowly making my way through Capital, and I’ve got Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital and Sohn-Rethel’s Intellectual and Manual Labor on hand already. Which are the reads that really helped you learn about the basics of labor and the problems/questions surrounding it (mostly from a Marxist perspective), and what reads do you find particularly compelling?

I'm a Marxist from the post-Soviet space, and I constantly notice that the Soviet Union is accused of "genocide against Ukrainians" during the famine of 1932. In Ukraine, it's called the "Holodomor." I've also noticed this online, especially on Reddit. Is Western propaganda really telling this story?

Usually parties which support capital and capitalism support immigration. They are doing so to reduce the cost of labour and increase profits of capitalists.

But what do those parties who are against immigration do for capital. Sure, they are providing a scapegoat (immigrant) for the fascists to blame. But what purpose would it have for them to win the elections, and deport all immigrants? Capitalists would lose profits, since no cheap labour is avaliable anymore. But by the virtue of supporting capitalism, they would not support the working class either.

So what's the point? What's their role?

I’ve been looking into Marxist value theory lately and trying to imagine what a Marxist society will contain. Specifically, I'm stuck on how we should categorize semiconductor binning and factory Quality Control (QC).

For context, in chip manufacturing, due to physics constraints, chips on the same wafer naturally end up with different performance levels. "Binning" is the process of testing them and sorting them into different tiers (e.g., this one becomes a high-end Core i9, while that one becomes a lower-clocked Core i5) to fit different need of computation.

If chip binning is productive, would Michelin Star Ratings also be productive due to similar nature?

I often see this attributed to Engels

"Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence".

I've just done my first ever read of Socialism :Utopian and Scientific, and noticed it actually reads(as taken from marxists.org):

The great men, who in France prepared men's minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. They recognised no external authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions — everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism; everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence. Reason became the sole measure of everything. It was the time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon its head; first in the sense that the human head, and the principles arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the basis of all human action and association; but by and by, also, in the wider sense that the reality which was in contradiction to these principles had, in fact, to be turned upside down. Every form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion was flung into the lumber room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on nature and the inalienable rights of man.

We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; 

So whilst it is certainly Engels words, and he addresses the revolutionaries as "great men" ​I'm not absolutely certain in saying this applies also to the scientific socialist/Marxist way of thinking, especially as he goes on to mention the idealism and bourgeois culture that sprung from the "kingdom of reason".

Any clarity on this would be much appreciated.

Basically the question, I do understand that productivity or the endeavour for more and more efficiency comes out of capitalist economics goals but how do I know that a set of workers are even working in a factory and not wasting time, for instance?

Szukałem różnych książek na ten temat ale wszystkie były po Angielsku a ja nie jestem na takim poziomie tego języka. Tłumaczeń też szukałem i... ...nie mogłem znaleźć. Najlepiej by było gdyby książki/artykuły były po Polsku. Z góry dziękuję!

does anyone have sources that talk about how capitalists would benefit from mass deportations?

I know capitalists benefit from immigration because it provides them with cheap labour to exploit, so they want to keep immigrants in a state of poverty, marginalization and irregularity; so why would they want to deport their source of cheap labour?

from my understanding (correct me if you read these too and think I'm wrong), when talking about fascism, Bordiga in "Auschwitz or the great alibi" and R. Palme Dutt in "Fascism and social revolution", talk about how to recover from the overproduction crisis, capitalists needed destruction/deportation of "excess" commodities (capitalism is specifically that mode of production where labour-power becomes a commodity, so there are workers that are considered in "excess" and will be willfully destroyed/deported) and means of production to artificially readjust the capitalist economy.

this totally makes sense when looking at the 29' crisis, but how would you explain the rise of fascism and the idea of "remigration" today, when we aren't living through a global crisis ?

I find the "it serves to divide the working class" argument very very vague, simplistic, placing too much importance on ideas and propaganda alone as a determining factor and too volontaristic (besides the fact it's really not an argument, it's a sentence);

I found a PokePreet substack saying that, based on the needs of the market at that moment, migrants are deported when their labour (variant capital) is transformed into constant capital and so they are no longer needed, until capital will need them again and so borders will reopen;

another explanation i heard is that capitalists don't really can or want to deport all immigrants and this is a way to keep migrant workers that try to unionize or ask better conditions fearful, because a fearful working class is an obedient one;

do the bourgeois really want to deport all immigrants or are they aware that it's impossible and it's just a way to blackmail them?

also, I don't understand which functions concepts such as ethnopluralism play

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." -Communist Manifesto

As the title asks, what would be some examples of such a fight not resolved by revolutionary reconstitution, but instead in common ruin? I could picture examples of revolutions either being successful or not, but in both cases one of the classes succeeds; not so much that both are in a state of ruin.

I'd love any knowledge on the topic

Was asked recently “what is late-stage capitalism” (alternately: “late capitalism) and found that I didn’t really have a concrete answer, despite hearing it a lot and even using it occasionally.

On a cursory look online, I’m not really finding a conclusive, scientific definition either. It seems the term dates to the 1860’s (though not to Marx or Engels), and has been used sporadically by leftists of various stripes ever since. But at least according to Wikipedia, there wasn’t really a comprehensive theory about it until Ernest Mandel’s 1972 book Late Capitalism. Even then, it seems like the term’s colloquial meaning has continued to evolve from Mandel’s conception into the 21st century, especially with the advent of the Digital Age.

Now, when I hear this phrase, I think of something like “late-stage cancer.” It’s firmly ensconced in its host body, highly advanced in its development, and features “perfected” forms of extraction and accumulation supercharged by advanced technology (e.g crypto and futures trading, the so-called “gig economy,” and the morally-laundered yet ruthless expropriation of labor from supposedly “post-colonial” nations by foreign capital).

Still, in terms of actual Marxist theory, I fail to see the ontological distinction between this and modern industrial capitalism in general. The notion of “capitalism, but more” or “capitalism in decline” is pretty vague. It’s unclear at what exact point a capitalist society crosses the threshold into this “new phase.” It doesn’t seem like this terminology is present in the neolib lexicon like e.g. “middle class” but similarly its definition seems to be more vibes-based than empirical. Am I missing something here? Do I need to read Mandel to understand it? What’s your take on “late-stage capitalism” as term or concept?

I would like to know your opinions about Lenin's New Economic Policy. What are the main debates within the Marxism community about its implementation and results?

Aveces me pregunto debido al atraso del desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas de la URSS que los marxistas del siglo XX pensaban que el capitalismo iba a ser muy fugaz o duraría muy poco, pero siento que en realidad se estaban saltando las etapas de desarrollo tecnológico e industrial que se consideraba un requisito previo a la revolución socialista.

Esto se ve relacionado (aún que no sé si con lo de la "naturaleza dialéctica") con las teorías sobre el "techo tecnológico" de la humanidad y que el crecimiento de conocimiento científico está limitado primero solo por el modo de producción y después por límites de las leyes físicas de la naturaleza.

Hello, in the increasing normalization of Uber like economy I made this website that is supposed to be the antithesis.

communet.org

The purpose is to connect people in this disconnected society and to go against the dependence on services and consumption that is based on exploitation.

The idea is that, people together can reduce labour necessary to live and increase life fulfillment. That materializes in the creation of babysitting coops, community kitchens, rotative grocery shopping, carpooling... 6 families together can decrease by 6 the amount of labour necessary for cooking, groceries, driving kids to school, taking care of kids. Other types of communities that exist but are decentralized, rare or monetized are, travel house trading, language exchange, bicycle maintenance.

Many other communities are possible, the website is supposed to facilitate or even allow them, the website allows you to make or join a listing, inside the community you have web page where the participants can update and chat.

The website is not innovative, it's just sad that people can make such beautiful things together and they aren't, this website is just a desperate manifestation of my frustration.

As suggested by the header, I am looking for compilations or essay selections which includes shorter works by key marxist theorists. As I read a lot while traveling, it's difficult to devote that reading time to read longer works, considering the retention ability of mine will be compromised.
So, I am looking for essay selections, or article compilations—that are shorter and therefore easier to read in one sitting— of key marxist figures. For example a compilation which includes Lenin's article "The Three Components Of Marxism" and Gramsci's "On Intellectuals" among many others