this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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I was a far-right lunatic until about 2009, when I started turning left. I have read many (center-)leftist articles from Jacobin, Common Dreams, The Guardian, and, from Brazil, Carta Capital and IHU (Catholic liberation theology).

Lemmy (despite my suboptimal instance) and communist friends got me interested in actual Marxism, but I have not yet really studied it. So please recommend:

  • The best Marxist Lemmy instance for my background.
  • Marxist books or videos in approximate reading/watching order. For the next many months (I suspect six months) I will have very little time, though.

Bonus:

  • reasonable tolerance of Catholic faith and individual morality
  • contextualized on Brazil, Cuba, broader Latin America or China

Background: Brazilian Catholic male autistic ADHD IT analyst with an electronic engineering degree and MsC in computer science. I have a son with my wife. I highly value privacy and software freedom. I read English well, but Spanish quite poorly. Native Portuguese speaker.

EDIT: I got a lemmygrad account. I am still processing the other recommendations.

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There are many Brazilian comrades on lemmygrad.ml that could help with materials in Portuguese, and I'm sure the PCB (partido comunista brasileiro) also has a good introductory reading list.

For a shorter english introduction, I maintain this crash course socialism that goes over the basics.

[–] jorge@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! This is the original poster, now with a lemmygrad account. I looked at all reading recommendations and I think I will start with your crash course. Your commitment to privacy and software freedom (being a Lemmy dev) are big positive signs to me. The working class cannot organise when Big Brother is always watching and advertisers (including political propagandists like Cambridge Analytica) use AI to individually manipulate us.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago

No probs! Glad I could help.

This war has many fronts, and one is who owns and controls our social media platforms. US-capitalists own nearly all of the communications platforms worldwide, and use them to advertise to us, sell us pro-US lies, turn us and our data into products, and forward that data to their government to spy on the world. Reddit is (i think) the 5th most popular site worldwide, so this is one small way I can try to help reverse that trend, and allow people to create their own social media outside of US control.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 months ago

Welcome! For your first question, Lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net are explicitly oriented towards Marxism (Hexbear also has Anarchists and other leftist types, Lemmygrad is Marxist-Leninist). For your second, I actually wrote an introductory reading list you can check out if you want.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hi friend!

For what Marxist instance would be best given your background, well there are only two total, to my knowledge, so you could just try out both and see what you like best! They are Hexbear and Lemmygrad. Lemmygrad is smaller but is more focused on Marxism-Leninism in particular. Hexbear has a ML-ancom and everything in between left unity stance and places great emphasis on making the space safe for people of marginalized groups. Lemmy.ml has many Marxists but is not explicitly commie.

For reading recommendations, this can be a difficult question to answer because there are many important texts in the Marxist tradition and some of them, particularly the foundational ones, are dense and challenging to read. I do strongly recommend reading the core works of Marx and Engels, since they define Marxism and later works are based on them. The order in which to read books really depends on how you prefet to read and learn.

I prefer to read from "the beginning" and already knew the relevant philosophical background so I just read Das Kapital right after The Communist Manifesto. But reading Das Kapital takes a long time. Reading groups dedicate months just to Volume 1. If you prefer a faster introduction and summaries, then I recommend Heinrich's companion text. Heinrich inserts some of his own opinions, but you can balance these out by reading Marxists critical of Heinrich, like Michael Roberts. If you want an even faster and simpler introduction, you can work backwards by reading short overviews from newer texts and blogs and so on and then make sure to try and tackle Capital later. But remember that the farther from the original works you get, the more likely that you will learn something incorrect about them without being in a position to notice it.

Another strategy is to start with Lenin, particularly his own notes on Hegel and Marx, and proceed to Stalin's overview of Marxism-Leninism, which includes an overview of Marxism. These are much easier to read than the source texts. All of the works so far will have Portuguese translations.

Regarding tolerance of Catholic faith, both instances will likely not care so long as this does not mean contradicting community standards, e.g. a vocal tradcath would contradict the feminist stances of both instances. Both instances have Christian comms, similar to subreddits. Lemmygrad's all seem to be inactive, though. Hexbear is, generally speaking, against insufferable New Atheist contrarianism (and so many of its original proponents became reactionary).

Regarding having Latin American context, both instances of course have a good amount of comrades from Latin America. I know that Hexbear has an active Latin America comm.

[–] ledlecreeper27@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

r/communism reading list or ProleWiki reading list. A lot of these books are available in Portuguese on ProleWiki or if not you can go to marxists.org

[–] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Cowbee (auth, btw, jsyk) has an intro reading list: https://lemmy.ml/post/22417306

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Don't know what you mean by "auth," it's pretty standard Marxism, but thanks for linking it!

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

You might try also asking !brasil@lemmygrad.ml.

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins mentions Brazil quite a bit.

[–] Dragon@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

I translated the communist manifesto into a rap for people who want a quick intro https://youtu.be/0Rw0QvEjwuQ

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago

Way more chill and non-toxic than Reddit's r/Communism

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