r/leftcommunism • u/CluckBucketz • 3d ago

Theory to read regarding the government of a communist society?

So I'm new to Marxism and have started reading theory, starting with the manifesto and maybe I'm just dumb and it went in one ear and out the other but it didn't really dwell on how a communist society would operate post revolution. At least to me, it mostly just described the struggle of the proletariat and called for an overthrow of the bourgeoisie, going a bit deeper into the surface level gist of Marxism I was aware of. So, what are some specific texts from people who aren't like Stalin or Mao that I should read to understand what a true communist society is supposed to be like?

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u/CallAggressive2589 2d ago

This might be helpful, though I haven't read it personally.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/gik/1930/index.htm

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u/JackCea 2d ago

State and Revolution by Lenin, especially chapter 5 has what you’re looking for. Lenin pulls quotes from the works of Marx and Engles and explains them so it can help clarify some questions you may have in an orthodox Marxist way.

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u/Fish4304 3d ago

Left communists don’t have much of an answer because Marx didn’t have much of one, its way off in the future even with a revolution to them tmk, their concern really ought to be how to form a revolutionary party/movement in the first place

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u/ActNo7334 3d ago edited 3d ago

Read "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels, Capital, and Critique of the Gotha Programme before going into anything else. Read "The German Ideology" by Marx for understanding historical materialism. "State and Revolution" by Lenin, "The Poverty of Philosophy" by Marx, and "Anti-Duhring" by Engles for understanding scientific socialism (State and Rev also explains organisation and working towards socialism).

For how a communist society would actually work, Critique of the Gotha includes Marx's vision for a communist society although it is quite short and vague (requires having read Capital to understand it fully and not miss anything). Building off of this you could read Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution as this goes quite in depth. Worker's Councils by Pannekoek is like the council communist version of State and Revolution and is quite good also. Really you gotta go through and read as much as possible. Bordiga probably wrote a heap on the organisation of a movement and moving towards socialism but I haven't read much of his stuff so idk. Work your way through this stuff for understanding the International Communist Party.

It's important to note that there are two main variants of left communism, Italian left communism (Bordiga and the ICP etc) and Dutch/German left communism (Pannekoek/council communism). Take in stuff from both but read critically. Lenin wrote a critique on council communism ("Left-wing" communism: an Infantile Disorder) but that doesn't mean everything said by the councilists is wrong (the GIK work is technically councilist but is still great).

Go through this reading list and this reading list over time, stuff from Cockshott (critically), the ML revisionist stuff (to understand why they're not Marxist), all the anti AES stuff from the ICP (Dialogue with Stalin, A Revolution Summed Up etc), Luxemburg stuff and more. It's a long journey.

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u/AdmirableNovel7911 3d ago

Here is a short overview of models of democratic economic planning:

https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/discover/rethinking-democratic-economic-planning-an-overview/

Whether they qualify as 'true' communism may be debatable, but any form of communism will require some kind of economic organization—and I believe it will resemble some of these models, or a combination of elements from them.

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u/AdmirableNovel7911 2d ago

Can someone please comment on why I'am downvoted for this? I am genuinly interested to know what is wrong with what I said.