>>2720579I'll leave you with a quote from the Communist Manifesto to dispel some confusion and superstitions about the bourgeois state, so you don't cling stubbornly to reactionary or petty-bourgeois socialism instead of scientific socialism (Marxism):
<1. Reactionary Socialism<A. Feudal Socialism<Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation[A], these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.(1)
<In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
<In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
<The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
<One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.
<In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
<For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
<What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
<In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.(2)
<As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
<Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
<B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism<The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
<In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
<In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
<This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
<In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
<Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
<Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, February 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literaturehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htmIf you're serious about actually understanding Marxism, not the liberalized, toothless version that treats worker co-ops as the end goal, you need to ground yourself in foundational theory, not vague market-friendly nonsense.
Start with Engels for a solid orientation:
"Principles of Communism" lays out the basics in Q&A format:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" helps contrast real scientific socialism with moralistic daydreams:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_Socialism_Utopian_and_Scientific.pdfBefore diving into Capital, it's worth getting a grip on Marx’s political economy:
"Value, Price and Profit", dissects surplus value and wages under capitalism:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf"Wage Labor and Capital", earlier and simpler, good to pair with the above:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wage-labour-capital.pdfTo clarify the transition from capitalism to socialism and the current stages of communism (hint: socialism is not “co-ops in a free market in competition”), Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme” is essential:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critque_of_the_Gotha_Programme.pdfIf Engels' intro texts speak to you, level up with "Anti-Dühring", it covers philosophy, political economy, and socialism in a comprehensive Marxist framework:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/anti_duhring.pdfA text that is important to read and understand the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Paris Commune, which had its errors that Marx criticized and which served as a lesson for carrying out a successful communist revolution, as was done by the Bolsheviks, based on what was learned in the text called "The Civil War in France." The lesson is the opposite of decentralization, fear of acting, or fear of appropriating banks and controlling them for the sake of the domination of the proletariat for fear of causing chaos:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/Another text that analyzes the class struggle in France with the 1848 revolution also helps to understand the dictatorship of the proletariat and what happens to the petty bourgeoisie when it considers itself superior to the proletarians, betraying them, not seeing their common interest, and what its reward is for wanting to identify with the bourgeoisie, which is to be discarded by the bourgeoisie. The text is called "The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850" with the link below:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/Then there’s Lenin, essential for anyone who doesn’t want to be co-opted by reformists afraid of revolution:
"The State and Revolution", the real Marxist theory of the state and dictatorship of the proletariat:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/"Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", explains monopoly capital and financial domination:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/"What Is To Be Done?", revolutionary organization and building a vanguard party:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/"Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder", a guide to dealing with pseudo-left idealists and opportunists:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/