theory

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Welcome to the second week of reading Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg!

If you're just getting started, here's a link to the thread for Chapter 1: https://hexbear.net/post/5178006?scrollToComments=false

We're only doing one chapter per week and the discussion threads will be left open, so latecomers are still very much welcome to join if interested.

Also, as I mentioned last week. This isn't just a book for trans people! Cis comrades would get a lot out of this reading/discussion as well, so don't feel intimidated if you're not trans and/or new to these topics.

As with last week's thread, here is a list of resources taken from the previous reading group session:

pdf download
epub download - Huge shout out to comrade @EugeneDebs for putting this together. I realized I didn't credit them in either post but here it is. I appreciate your efforts. ❤️
chapter 1 audiobook - Huge shout out to comrade @futomes for recording these. No words can truly express my appreciation for this. Thank you so much. ❤️
chapter 2 audiobook
chapter 3 audiobook
chapter 4 audiobook
chapter 5 audiobook
chapter 6 audiobook
chapter 7 audiobook
chapter 8 audiobook

Also here's another PDF download link and the whole book on ProleWiki.

In this thread we'll be discussing Chapter 2: Allow Me to Introduce Myself.

CWs: Discussion of transphobia.

This chapter covers a speech Feinberg gave at the 9th annual Texas "T" Party in Richardson, TX, as well as a (very heartwarming imo) "Portrait" section where Linda and Cynthia Phillips (seen in the thumbnail) discuss their relationship and life experience.

I'll ping whoever has been participating so far, but please let me know if you'd like to be added (or removed).

Feel free to let me know if you have any feedback also. Thanks!

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Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year until Communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Week 17, June 11 - June 17, we are reading Volume 1, Chapters 32-33, and Appendicies 1-2 if you are reading the Fowkes translation.

Finishing out Primitive Accumulation, and onto the appendicies! If you aren't reading the Fowkes version, you can use this as a break time, find the Fowkes version and follow along, or skip the appendices even if you have the Fowkes version. Well done!

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48

(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)


2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28Week 29Week 30Week 31Week 32Week 33Week 34Week 35Week 36Week 37Week 38Week 39Week 40Week 41Week 42Week 43Week 44Week 45Week 46Week 47Week 48Week 49Week 50Week 51Week 52


2025 Archived Discussions

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16

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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the seventeenth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

For every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 16: Monetary Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century, which is approximately 15 pages.

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/theory@hexbear.net
 
 

Hey, all!

For over a month, I've been spending a lot of my free time creating this list of theory. The impetus for this project came from two things: first, this post by @iie@hexbear.net titled "I wish we had a hexbear wiki compendium of good books on 20th and 19th century historical topics" which set the idea in motion in the background of my mind; and second, the desire to expand the currently very small geopolitical reading list in the news megathreads. Initially, I focussed only on books directly to do with imperialism and current-day politics and geopolitics. Naturally, these events required context, so I expanded the list to include more of the 20th century. Then, I realised more nation-focus works would be necessary, and more communist theory, and it kept growing into... this. I have gone through almost every post in c/literature and c/history, looked through a significant chunk of lemmygrad and prolewiki, and gone through the bibliographies and references of several significant works (such as Prashad’s The Poorer Nations and The Darker Nations).

I haven’t the time nor energy to search every nook and cranny of the internet, so it is absolutely guaranteed that I have missed a lot of books. I am certain that this list isn’t even halfway complete - it’s more of a prototype right now. But it still has hundreds of books on it, categorized into many different sections.

Ideally all these books would be written by communists, left-wingers, anti-imperialists, and so on - or at least, are written in a style sympathetic to that position. For the purpose of anti-sectarianism, the works of major ideological positions should be fully featured. This obviously means that this is not going to be a reading list where there’s a consistent ideological position which unifies it - authors on this list are going to disagree with each other, and sometimes very harshly. Personally, I also don’t want this list to devolve into shitflinging between different authors on why X left ideology/state/project is good/perfect/materialist/idealistic/bad/flawed/evil, though I think more constructive criticism should be allowed.

Unfortunately, for more obscure events and countries, non-leftists are sometimes the only ones who have written much on them, and so we must resort to them.

Books are usually listed here with their initial publication date. This is not a recommendation that you get that particular version of the book if there are newer editions - you should of course purchase the most recent one - but a) I think it’s best to know when the book was initially conceived of and written so that we know the context of when the information was being conveyed, regardless of newer editions that may add more information, and b) I don’t want to trawl for new editions of these books every so often to update the year numbers. Additionally, books are generally listed in order of publication date. If a subsection accrues many books that fit under that category but span a lot of topics or a large time period, then a new subsection will be created and the books re-categorized.

Want To Help?

Be sure to recommend any books (or, even better, entire reading lists) that I have missed. People in my life tell me that I have a profound ability to miss the obvious, so a massively important book that every communist has heard of and read not being here should not be interpreted as a sign that I’ve deemed it not worthy - I might have just forgotten it. Just as importantly, be sure to recommend that any book be dropped - a book being here should not be interpreted as a sign that I’ve necessarily deemed it worthy. I cast a very wide net.

When recommending books, I advise four criteria:

  1. Non-fiction books only. I might consider eventually putting in a historical fiction and alternative histories section, but not right now.

  2. Not written by a chud, unless the point of recommending the book is to illustrate how important chuds conceive of the world, such as pieces on American strategy written by people high-up in the state - or if there is literally no other choice (military matters tend to attract chuds, for example).

  3. Not too much detail, too far in the past. It would be silly to say that the Assyrians or the Romans or the Mongols haven’t had a large impact on the current world, so books on those topics are fine, but ideally they should be pretty general, and we shouldn’t have a biography for every Roman Emperor or anything like that. The period that I am most focussing on is the 21st, 20th, and 19th centuries, as that’s the best bang for your buck in terms of political understanding of the current state of affairs. This should be as efficient a reading list as possible - reading a lot is hard and life is tiring, and getting lost in the weeds of Cyrus the Great’s military campaigns isn’t helpful if you’re trying to get a grip on the current Middle East.

  4. Related to politics and/or history somehow. This is the loosest of the four criteria, and I don’t really want to be arguing about whether a book on how to care for succulents, or a book on pencil manufacturing, or a book on deep sea creatures, deserve to be on the reading list. If you can argue that it belongs, then, sure, I’ll put it on.


Version 1.0 (that is, the very first version):

Added, uh, the whole reading list.

A ton of thanks to @Nakoichi@hexbear.net for letting me know about the Chunka Luta reading list. Also thanks to @Alaskaball@hexbear.net for their party's book repository.


Version 1.1:

Added dozens more recommended books, spread out across the list, notably including more books for Japan.

Added an Indigenous Theory section and reorganized some books into it. Added a Science section and added some books to it. Expanded "Philosophy" into "Philosophy and Theology" and added some books to the Theology section. Added a Multi-Region section in the Regional Histories section, due to some odd books that cover multiple continents. Apparently I forgot Finland existed, so that now has a section, and a book.

I have been recommended a few reading lists, some of which will take me a long while to get through. Nonetheless, if you have more books to add, then continue to recommend them!

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published anonymously in the early 1970s, now known to have been written by Grace Lee Boggs (玉平) of Sojourner Truth Organization. Although it doesn't seem to be available on STO's archive.

My friend gave me this with some ceremony. I'm curious if anyone else has read it? What are opinions of the text, its author or STO?

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linky to pdf (*advanced class of radlibs, however, is more receptive to piketty than obscure french marxist, so)

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Welcome to the first week of reading Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue by Leslie Feinberg!

Each week we'll read one chapter and discuss it in the comments. There are 8 chapters, and each chapter isn't too long, so this will be relatively light reading for most of you.

Also, THIS BOOK ISN'T JUST FOR TRANS PEOPLE. Obviously the book discusses trans issues, but as I've said before, it covers discussion on gender topics that would be relevant to basically everyone. So I highly encourage you to join if you're interested, regardless of whether you're trans or not.

To get started, here is a list of resources taken from the previous reading group session:

pdf download
epub download - Huge shout out to comrade @EugeneDebs for putting this together. I realized I didn't credit them in either post but here it is. I appreciate your efforts. ❤️
chapter 1 audiobook - Huge shout out to comrade @futomes for recording these. No words can truly express my appreciation for this. Thank you so much. ❤️
chapter 2 audiobook
chapter 3 audiobook
chapter 4 audiobook
chapter 5 audiobook
chapter 6 audiobook
chapter 7 audiobook
chapter 8 audiobook

Also here's another PDF download link and the whole book on ProleWiki.

In this thread we'll be discussing Chapter 1: We Are All Works in Progress.

CWs: Discussion of transphobia, abuse, SA. I should also mention since this came out in 1998, some of the language used might feel a little dated (specific language used is also a good topic of discussion imo).

I'll also ping a discussion list each week. Since this is the first week, the ping list will only include the few who've mentioned they're interested, but please let me know if you'd like to be added (or removed).

This is my first time doing something like this, so let me know if you have any feedback for me. Thanks!

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What should I read to understand how to build and verify a cybernetically valid system? (e.g. cybernetically valid planned economy)

I understand that production needs to be controlled, and that the decision-making needs to be linked to the front-line workers (because they have eyeballs on the reality of the work). And it's a design-error if decisions are made removed from work, because the controller doesn't have first-hand knowledge.

But I don't understand how to describe that in formal terms. Is there a list of all possible system-design-errors? Is there a methodology/checklist for confirming if me mum is cybernetically valid?

Is there a textbook on all this?

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Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year until Communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Week 16, June 4 - June 10, we are reading Volume 1, Chapters 26-31

Primitive Accumulation, the original sin of Capital.

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48

(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)


2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28Week 29Week 30Week 31Week 32Week 33Week 34Week 35Week 36Week 37Week 38Week 39Week 40Week 41Week 42Week 43Week 44Week 45Week 46Week 47Week 48Week 49Week 50Week 51Week 52


2025 Archived Discussions

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15

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I'm working on an eco-Marxist book that's kind of broad in its scope. Organising that and finding the right ways to communicate the messages is very different from fiction writing I've done. Is there any go-to book about how to write a solidly dialectical materialistic, academic-level book or did any of the big theorists detail their own writing process?

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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the sixteenth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

For every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 15: The Monetary Offensive of Spring 1973, which is approximately 32 pages.

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The third category of the relative surplus population, the stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power. Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterised by maximum of working-time, and minimum of wages. We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of “domestic industry.” It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery. Its extent grows, as with the extent and energy of accumulation, the creation of a surplus population advances.

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Welcome to the fourth week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week's thread is here.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.

The first book we are covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 7: Imperialism, as a Special Stage of Capitalism, and Chapter 8: Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism.

Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

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I'm back on top of the managing this now: no more midweek posting: readings will be posted Sundays ready for the week.

We are almost finished Volume 1. You could even skip the appendices if you want. The 33% of the three volumes completed corresponds to the way we're about 33% of the way through the year.

Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.


Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15 – [Week 16](https://hexbear.net/post/2338512]


Week 17, April 22-28. From Vol. 1, we are reading Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Appendix I (Commodities as the Product of Capital), and Appendix II (Capitalist Production as the Production of Surplus-Value)


Discuss the week's reading in the comments.


Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.

Audiobook of Ben Fowkes translation, American accent, male, links are to alternative invidious instances: 123456789


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

16
 
 

We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.

Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 'The Commodity'

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)


@invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net @Othello@hexbear.net @Pluto@hexbear.net @Lerios@hexbear.net @ComradeRat@hexbear.net @heartheartbreak@hexbear.net @Hohsia@hexbear.net @Kolibri@hexbear.net @star_wraith@hexbear.net @commiewithoutorgans@hexbear.net @Snackuleata@hexbear.net @TovarishTomato@hexbear.net @Erika3sis@hexbear.net @quarrk@hexbear.net @Parsani@hexbear.net @oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net @Beaver@hexbear.net @NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.net @LaBellaLotta@hexbear.net @professionalduster@hexbear.net @GaveUp@hexbear.net @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net @Sasuke@hexbear.net @wheresmysurplusvalue@hexbear.net @seeking_perhaps@hexbear.net @boiledfrog@hexbear.net @gaust@hexbear.net @Wertheimer@hexbear.net @666PeaceKeepaGirl@hexbear.net @BountifulEggnog@hexbear.net @PerryBot4000@hexbear.net @PaulSmackage@hexbear.net @420blazeit69@hexbear.net @hexaflexagonbear@hexbear.net @glingorfel@hexbear.net @Palacegalleryratio@hexbear.net @ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml @RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml @joaomarrom@hexbear.net @HeavenAndEarth@hexbear.net @impartial_fanboy@hexbear.net @bubbalu@hexbear.net @equinox@hexbear.net @SummerIsTooWarm@hexbear.net @Awoo@hexbear.net @DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net @YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net @asnailchosenatrandom@hexbear.net @Stpetergriffonsberg@hexbear.net @Melonius@hexbear.net @Jobasha@hexbear.net @ape@hexbear.net @Maoo@hexbear.net @Professional_Lurker@hexbear.net @featured@hexbear.net @IceWallowCum@hexbear.net @Doubledee@hexbear.net