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I have the opportunity to pitch a book at my leftist book club. What is a book to help counter anti-ML attitudes from people who lean more anarchist and/or have a strong opposition to Lenin/Stalin? (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 days ago by TheDeed@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

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My circles tend to be very anti Lenin or anti Stalin, most of them are anarchists or left leaning people who have a pretty strong opposition to MLs. I would like to have a dialogue with them or least give them some tools so that they can have a good background with which to critique ML even if they don't change their mind and become MLs.

Bonus if it includes info about the Bund in relation to Lenin & the Bolsheviks or information about Jews in the Soviet Union or ML Jews in general - most of us are Jewish, and a lot of strong opposition is rooted in the Jewish experience of those eras and strong emotional and ideological affinity to the legacy of the Bund.

These don't quite cover the Jewish experience as much but, some books or articles top of my mind for at least countering anticommunism are:

Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, But Not Real Revolution
Blackshirts and Reds

Would love to hear yalls thoughts.

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[–] TheDeed@hexbear.net 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Can't tell if this is sarcastic or not since it is hard to read tone via text, but my intent is not to be condescending. Most of my friends are anarchists and I was one myself until extremely recently, and it is still a position that I respect.

I would like to approach this by having readings that open up dialogue so that I don't get kneejerk "fuck Stalin/Lenin" reactions when communism is mentioned.

[–] GoodGuyWithACat@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago

Lenin's "The State and Revolution" should be a good entry point for them. He pulls a lot from anarchist ideas and analyzes how they worked in pre-Soviet Russia to form a conclusion which should be digestible to your friends.

[–] DivineChaos100@hexbear.net 1 points 4 days ago

I was being sarcastic because i have been through this debate a million times from the anarchist side and most of the time no dialogue developed on it because of the condescension from the other side and the fact that they weren't trying to inform me about Marxism but wanted to CONVERT me. So if you're really just looking into getting them to know it even if they don't agree with it i say it doesn't even matter that much what you show (but yeah, State and Rev is an obvious starter).

Just be prepared that they might not like it. I don't know how well versed in anarchist theory they are, but there's ample "debunking" (putting it in quotation marks cause the quality of these is umm, varied) so it's not at all given that they will accept the leninist conclusion. I have read through about half of the works suggested in this thread and am still thoroughly anarchist and have my beef with Lenin and (especially) Stalin.