Group reading suggestions.

[white_wolf]

Last edited Fri Jan 13, 2012, 01:10 AM - Edit history (1)

So a group from school is going to start reading some of Marx's works and I was wondering if you all had any recommendations. We have the reading list of course, but there are only a few things on there by Marx and Engles for this project I'd like to focus just on them and not Lenin, Trotsky,Stalin, etc. Here are our current selections in the order we plan to read them: Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology, Marx’s Capital,Das Kapital chapter 10, Critique of the Gotha Programme.

[Starry Messenger]

1. I'm reading Marx & Engels on the Civil War right now.

I bought a book of the writings but some of them are at Marxists.com too:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm

They are shorter, but it is interesting to see our own history through the eye of Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. A little teaser here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/03/26.htm

"From whatever standpoint one regards it, the American Civil War presents a spectacle without parallel in the annals of military history. The vast extent of the disputed territory; the far-flung front of the lines of operation; the numerical strength of the hostile armies, the creation of which hardly drew any support from a prior organisational basis; the fabulous cost of these armies; the manner of commanding them and the general tactical and strategic principles in accordance with which the war is being waged, are all new in the eyes of the European onlooker.

The secessionist conspiracy, organised, patronised and supported long before its outbreak by Buchanan’s administration, gave the South a head-start, by which alone it could hope to achieve its aim. Endangered by its slave population and by a strong Unionist element among the whites themselves, with two-thirds less free men than in the North, but readier to attack, thanks to the multitude of adventurous idlers that it harbours — for the South everything depended on a swift, bold, almost foolhardy offensive. If the Southerners succeeded in taking St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington, Baltimore, and perhaps Philadelphia, they might then count on a panic, during which diplomacy and bribery could secure recognition of the independence of all the slave states. If this first onslaught failed, at least at the decisive points, their position must then become worse from day to day, while the North was gaining in strength. This point was rightly understood by the men who in truly Bonapartist spirit had organised the secessionist conspiracy. They opened the campaign in the corresponding manner. Their bands of adventurers overran Missouri and Tennessee, while their more regular troops invaded eastern Virginia and prepared a coup de main against Washington. If this coup were to miscarry, the Southern campaign was lost from a military point of view.

The North came to the theatre of war reluctantly, sleepily, as was to be expected considering its higher industrial and commercial development. The social machinery there was far more complicated than in the South, and it required far more time to get it moving in this unusual direction. The enlistment of volunteers for three months was a great, but perhaps unavoidable mistake. It was the policy of the North to remain on the defensive in the beginning at all decisive points, to organise its forces, to train them through operations on a small scale and without risk of decisive battles, and, as soon as the organisation had become sufficiently strong and the traitorous element had simultaneously been more or less removed from the army, to go on to an energetic, unflagging offensive and, above all, to reconquer Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. The transformation of civilians into soldiers was bound to take more time in the North than in the South. Once effected, one could count on the individual superiority of the Northern men."

[Odin2005]

2. I love Marx's pieces on the Civil War.