For context (feel free to skip this paragraph, though, if tl;dr), I've always considered myself an individualist anarchist and an illegalist. I've never had anything against collectivist anarchists, and in fact I tend to agree with them on a lot of things, but I've just never had the patience for a whole lot of theory, and I'm perfectly frankly a selfish piece of shit who does want a better world for everyone but is primarily interested in making things better for himself (and others, in parentheses) right here and now to whatever degree possible. I've read the Communist Manifesto once and some Bakunin here and there and remember little of any of it; the sum of my political philosophy is more or less that the capitalist system/the state has stolen from me, so I don't regard any of its institutions as valid and regard myself as existing outside of them. I am serious about putting illegalist philosophy into practice; ACAB means ACAB, I don't call the police, and I don't steal from small or minority-owned businesses, but banks and retail chains are fair game. The point being, I'm not entirely new, but also not especially educated when it comes to political theory.
I've always regarded Marxist-Leninists as a strange but mostly pleasant variety of exotic creature that I occasionally interact with by chance, and although I disagree with some of the things I've heard coming out of their mouths (for example, they seem to be very quick to explain why mass civilian deaths under Stalin both didn't happen and were unavoidable but also totally justifiable even if they did), I've rarely or never had a bad experience, so I don't judge too much, but I don't understand them.
At any rate, I spent the last few days on a caffeine-fueled bender reading through various internet shitposts until I came across pic related and downloaded a copy, and it's so obviously full of blatant lies, half-truths, and misinformation even to someone completely uneducated like me that a light switched on in my brain and I immediately started downloading every legitimate book on communism I could find just so I can have some idea what I'm talking about when I confront people who think like this in meatspace. But I'm getting overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Marx? Seems like I could get away with rereading Communist Manifesto and the 2024 version of the first volume of Capital for now while I wait for the second volume to get a retranslation. Che? Well, he's got a couple of short books I found and I found a sympathetic biography purporting to explain his take on Marxism. I'll start there.
But Lenin? Tens of tens of thousands of pages for a 45-volume collection of just the "important" stuff. I don't even know where to begin.
This obviously isn't going to happen overnight. I'll probably never understand history of communism or all the various praxis stuff as well as people who have devoted their lives to it, but what parts of Lenin's bibliography should I be reading if I want to best understand his take on Marxism? And are there any other works by "major" authors I should be reading to have enough of a general understanding to have a conversation with people? I'm not opposed to reading a few thousand pages soonish or even tens of thousands over time, but.
I don't think a book has ever made me this angry.
And suddenly, I want to have some idea what I'm talking about when it comes to political theory.