Hey folks, just posting to share that we're hosting a Beginner Bookclub over at the Decolonial Indigenous and Proletariat study group discord server!. It is made for beginners but anyone can join. All of us attending it are MLs, just like the server itself.

Our meetings take place on Saturdays at 4:30 PM EDT (UTC-4), and I'm the organizer. Additionally, we have Prolewiki members who attend, ready to answer questions and provide context during our reading sessions. Right now, we're digging into 'How Marxism Works' by Chris Harman, which is super beginner-friendly. We read during the sessions so no need to read before. You can pretty much jump in at any point and follow along just fine.

If we see more new faces joining us, we might even consider restarting the book!

If your new/ish to communism we would love to see you. Here’s your invitation to join the server.📚

https://discord.gg/Wj3HnJAQ

note: there are some questions to fill out to enter the server. Just fill them out the best you can and let them know your here for the bookclub

It's a Soros funded organization based out of NYC, run by hedge fund people, they certainly aren't pro communism or Marxism, but they have a lot of videos advocating for unusually things when compared to typical neocon and neolib economix thinkers and institutes in the west, in particular they have a pro-china tilt, I don't really know what to think about them and digging hasn't helped at all, anyone have any decent resources or videos about them? Or suggestions for where to look?

Is it contradictory to run an anti-capitalist business? Is it inevitable to fail under capitalism? And what would it look like under socialism?

I've never thought too much about identifying as one "branch" of Marxism, but now that I think about it I can't really come up with a simple explanation of the main divergences between different currents (ML vs MLM for instance). I suppose I agree more with Marxist-Leninist thought but besides some obvious ones like Trotskyists and patsocs I can only come up with extremely specific details of those divergences (mainly over critical support for AES).

And I definitely can't describe disagreements of less common discussions such as Xi Jinping thought and "Fidel Castro thought".

It doesn't help that a lot of the discussion centers around people like Wisconcom who aren't exactly the height of ideological consistency.

So can anybody help out?

In The State and Revolution, Lenin (and Engels, whom he is quoting) disagrees with communists using "People's State" or "Free People's State" as a programme goal.

If I understand correctly, this is because a) it creates a misunderstanding on the final phase of communism, which is stateless and b) it goes against the Marxist understanding of states as forces of oppression. On the other hand, it seems logical to me that a state following the dictatorship of the proletariat principle would call itself "People's", since the proletariat is the majority.

So, I've been wondering if the existing socialist states have an official line about this, or if there's a consensus amongst M-Ls.

I support the writer's guild strike because they are not part of the bourgeoisie. The same can't be said of a lot of these rich actors who own a ton of capital themselves. So on the one hand, it kind of seems like the bourgeoisie is fighting the bourgeoisie on this one. On the other hand, not every actor in the guild is as successful as Tom Cruise, so some of those striking actors are working class.

Someone curious asked:

Do you know of any resources where I can hear the options of average Soviet citizens during the time of the USSR?

I linked Dessaline's GitHub page: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government.

And I suggested Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds but I don't think it quite fits the description.

Can anyone think of other resources, maybe a peoples' history kind of thing?