The point is to change it

[bloodygranuaile]

Several years ago now I bought a copy of Marxist Classics: Volume 1 with the intention of attending the Marxist Classics Reading Group, and, well, let’s just say I intend to attend a lot of reading groups, but I can only actually attend so many reading groups. I ended up reading the first piece, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and two-thirds of the second piece, Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and then the book sat on my shelf for three years. 

 

I picked it back up a few weeks ago as part of a different book group that was reading Lenin’s The State and Revolution. So first I had to somewhat confusedly read the last third of the Engel’s piece after a three-year break from reading the rest of it, which was fine, and then I read State & Rev, and then there were only 40 pages left so I figured I might as well read Trotsky’s Transitional Program and be done with the book. 

 

I do not tend to be real great about reading, like, proper, classic theory, and nearly every time I do actually sit down to read it I find it very rewarding. This collection was not an exception. For starters, it’s helpful to read the actual works because doing so clarifies what you’ve sort of half-understood by listening to people chat about it secondhand; it also allows you to form your own opinions on what pieces are good and why instead of relying on whether the secondhand version sounds like it vaguely makes sense or not. In addition, many of these pieces are, as the kids say, full of bangers. (They are also full of dunks on political figures who were highly relevant at the time but that, 100 or however many years later, a modern reader may or may not have any idea who they are and what they were doing that the writer is so mad about, especially if you’re earlier in your theory-reading career and can’t remember off the top of your head each of the parties and individual politicians in, say, the German government in 1915. 

 

I will say that while I very much enjoyed the earlier chapters of The State and Revolution, the longest work in the book at just over 100 pages, my interest waned a little near the end, and I’m not sure if it’s because it got less good or if I just have been in a tireder and more cynical mood the last week or two, with an extra-low appetite for many of the tics of political writing, like “any kind of vague or emotionally laden or moral positioning language whatsoever.” I also admit I did not particularly like Transitional Program as a piece of writing; it was useful in that I better understand the notion of a transitional program than I did before, but a bunch of it really got up my nose stylistically, especially the stylistic things that Trotskyists seem to especially like and are still doing over 80 years later. Please do note that this is purely an aesthetic gripe; the notion of a transitional program seems to be a perfectly useful strategic concept. 

 

The Manifesto I don’t have much to say about that’s not already been said; it is one of the few works from the socialist tradition that gets read by non-socialists, and it’s punchy, if a bit pleased with itself occasionally. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was actually a more valuable read than I think I had initially expected; it has nice short discussions of concepts like historical materialism and dialectics that Marxists use a lot and that you know you’re not going to read any of the really big fat philosophy books to understand. (Also, after reading the pamphlet-sized version, I might be slightly more likely to go read a whole book on the subject than I would be just from sitting around going “OK, I know I’m supposed to read a real book about this one of these days…”). While I’m generally not in favor of insisting that there are specific works anyone needs to read to be a real socialist--there’s far too much out there, it’s better to read things you are interested in reading than to slog through something because you’re “supposed” to when your brain and activism energy is elsewhere--these are all pretty foundational works and I think it’s helpful to have finally read them. Next up: Actually reading Luxemburg instead of just reading the graphic novel about Luxemburg.