Fellow American Comrades, how were you able to overcome the liberal propaganda?
I grew up in a conservative American family and was indoctrinated with chauvinistic beliefs from the beginning. It took me years of studying political science and economics just to warm up to leftist ideas, let alone embrace them.
Finally, I decided to read “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” by Stalin off a recommendation from one of my professors and it really changed my entire interpretation of the world. That started me down a path of reading any Marxist literature I could find.
I’m curious about the path that the rest of you took to get here!
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Born Muslim and I slowly went down the Bernie-Hassan-ML pipeline, and began reading Marxist texts. I think I started with the Manifesto, then chapter one of Capital, then maybe Blackshirts And Reds. From there I can't remember what I read exactly but I used multiple reading guides on what to read next. I've also reread chapter one of Capital a few times but could never stick with the whole text. I'm going to come back to it after reading a few more things on my horizon which I feel will be useful. (Also so far my favorite text to simply read was Wretched of The Earth)
I'm currently reading Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World, by Malcom Harris, which I'd recommend to any Californian Comrade. Even non-Californians could take something from it as well because I'd say it does a good job at providing an easy to follow narrative for how Capitalism in CA developed, which has been helpful to teaching me how to think about the logic of capital. (At least on a way that is easier to convey then some of Marx's writings.)
My parents are from Syria and Iran, and weren't particularly anti-government (not exactly favorable eitheir but considered them better then US puppets) so I was never really inundated with the Imperialist propaganda about foreign adversaries. When you apply the logic that most of the what the US says about your community is bullshit, it becomes very easy to apply that to other countries, making you open to changing your biases when provided with enough evidence.
Palo Alto is a great book, but its so long and grand in scope that all I remember is: California loves eugenics.
The Bionomist section is so revealing to the sheer scale eugenics is baked into the American system.
Personally I'm very interested in the continued throughline of joint-stock ventures.
Ironically though, I feel a good bit of optimism reading it as well here on California. The amount of relavent information is vast and I think quite helpful in radicalizing other Californians.
Palo Alto is a great book, but its so long and grand in scope that all I remember is: California loves eugenics.
Das Kapital is such a dense text. I too haven’t been able to get through it. I remember being told as a child that Muslims hated me and wanted me dead and then I found out a good friend of mine in middle school was a Muslim which was one of my earliest awakenings.
Personally, I’ve been devouring Stalin’s books. Something about his writing style clicks so nicely for me. I will check out that book my Malcolm Harris! I’m fascinated by the history of labor organizing in the US that has been scrubbed from our history lessons.