Hi,this is my first post on this sub and if this in not appropriate to this sub please let me know.I am interested in learning more about socialism/communism(i live in Romania and i won't get a lot of objective information in school.The curriculum focuses more on the ussr,the cold war and communist romania and i'm more interested in other aspects of socialism.) The reason i am posting it here is because i believe that you will recommend books that will be objective and will not fall into the category of "socialism is the devil and has never ever done anything slightly positive and everything that has to do with socialism is objectively evil" or "Marx was like a god of economics etc and he was never wrong".I asked something similar on /r/communism[1] and i got a lot of book written by communists,I would like something more"third party". Thanks in advance and sorry if this post breaks any rules of this sub
Although its size is incredibly intimidating, Leszek Kołakowski's Main Currents of Marxism is a trenchant analysis of Marxism's intellectual development. Although Kołakowski is critical of latter Marxist-Leninists (he was an emigre from Poland), he is very fair to the ideas and hope expressed by Marxism. He would
The anthology Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Michael Geyer contains a number of essays written by specialists both in Nazism and Stalinist communism. As the title implies, each contribution wants to break out of the mold of "these ideologies were of the devil" and explain how they developed from similiar historical developments.
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation by Alexei Yurchak is an anthropological analysis of late Soviet society. Yurchak does a fabulous job of conveying how stultifying official Soviet society could be and how many individuals found a way around it.
Finally, there is a very odd book, but a very perceptive one approaching Marxism from a unique angle: Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions by Stephen Hanson. Hanson seeks to parse out what Marxists thought about the issue of time and time management. It's an interesting perspective on the history of communism that reveals more than what one would imagine- communism simultaneously thought it could transcend the limits of time and scientifically regiment its population according to a rational use of time.
Here are a couple of recommendations you might like:
On Trotsky[ism]:
Robert J. Alexander - International Trotskyism 1929-1985
Isaac Deutscher's three volume Trotsky biography
Pierre Frank - The Fourth International: The Long March of the Trotskyists
M.C. Howard. J. E. King - The Political Economy of Marx
M.C. Howard, J. E. King - A History of Marxian Economics Volume I, 1883-1929
M.C. Howard, J. E. King - A History of Marxian Economics Volume II, 1929-1990
[^ These are very informative but nowhere near a "complete" history] Paul Mattick - Marx and Keynes-The Limits of the Mixed Economy
Simon Clarke - Marx's Theory of Crisis
Donald Arthur Filtzer - E. A. Preobrazhensky and the Theory of Expanded Reproduction in the USSR during the Period of Primitive Socialist Accumulation
Timothy Shenk - Maurice Dobb Political Economist [Biography of an enthusiast of the Soviet Union's system, Communist Party member, and Marxist economist]
Marcel van der Linden - Western Marxism and the Soviet Union [A comprehensive survey of various Marxist theories of the Soviet Union]
Paresh Chattopadhyay - The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience
As for kieslowskifan's suggestion of Kolakowski's Main Currents, it's extremely insufficient on "Left Communist" (of either the council communists [Anton Pannekoek, Otto Ruhle, Paul Mattick, etc, a rather anti-Leninist bunch] or the Leninist oriented [Perhaps "ultraleftist" would be an appropriate word in the context of nearly century old communist theory] "Italian" [As the broad group of theorists were concentrated there] communists [Amadeo Bordiga, Onorato Damen,) tendencies, so I'd recommend The Dutch and German Communist Left and The "Bordigist" Current, both by Philippe Bourrinet. To add, Kolakowski was not really an "objective" writer by the time he started writing Main Currents as he seemed to have developed a grudge against Marxism as a whole after his silly humanist stint ultimately made him lose his Party position and academic job in Poland, and he swung to the right with his move to an English academic job and eventually a professionally paid anticommunist writer. He engaged in bitter polemic with the likes of E. P. Thompson and Ralph Miliband (who both perceived a hostility against Marxism from Kolakowski).
Robert Service is a hack ( http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/12/serv-d15.html - http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/06/pers-j28.html - http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/11/webe-n28.html ), I'd avoid his stuff.
On Marxist/early Soviet jurisprudence/legal theory:
Michael Head - Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal
Michael Head - Marxism, Revolution and Law: The Experience of Early Soviet Russia
[^ The author happens to be very pro-Trotsky, which makes for some very interesting insight]
Janet M. Campbell - Is there a Case for Socialist Jurisprudence?
Various other books I recommend:
E. J. Hobsbawm - How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism
E. J. Hobsbawm - Revolutionaries: Contemporary Essays
David Renton - Dissident Marxism (Interesting chapters on Mayakovsky, Kollontai, Lunacharsky, Victor Serge, Karl Korsch, etc)
David Renton - Fascism: Theory and Practice
Tom Bottomore (ed.) - A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Jacques Bidet - Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism
Perry Anderson - Considerations on Western Marxism
On the "Frankfurt School"/Institute for Social Research:
Martin Jay - The Dialectical Imagination-A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950
Rolf Wiggershaus - The Frankfurt School-Its History, Theories, and Political Significance
Good books on the Revolution and early Soviet Union:
E. H. Carr - The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin
E. H. Carr - The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923
E. H. Carr - Socialism in One Country 1924-26
Alexander Rabinowitch - The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd
S. A. Smith - Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-1918
Civil War/Red Army related: Matthew M. Hurley - A Workers' Way of War The Red Army's Doctrinal Debate, 1918-1924
Neil Harvey Croll - Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Russian Civil War
Lenin related: Katy Turton - Forgotten Lives: The Role of Lenin's Sisters in the Russian Revolution, 1864-1937
Lenin Collected Works
More philosophical stuff:
Anton Pannekoek - Lenin as Philosopher
Sochor Zenovia - Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy
David Bakhurst - Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy
Other interesting stuff on Bolsheviks: Cathy Porter - Alexandra Kollontai
Isaac Deutscher - Stalin
Memoirs and personal accounts:
Victor Serge - Memoirs of a Revolutionary
Alexander Shlyapnikov - On the Eve of 1917
Alfred Rosmer - Moscow Under Lenin
Russian Social Democracy/Bolshevism misc.:
Jonathan Frankel - Vladimir Akimov on the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903
D. A. Longley - Factional Strife and Policy Making in the Bolshevik Party 1912-April 1917
Richard Mullin - Lenin and the Iskra Faction of the RSDLP
German Revolution/Social Democracy/Communist related:
Pierre Broue - The German Revolution 1917-1923 Paul Levi, David Fernbach - In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg-Selected Writings of Paul Levi
J. P. Nettl's two volume biography of Rosa Luxemburg
Larry Peterson - German Communism, Workers' Protest, And Labor Unions-The Politics Of The United Front In Rhineland - Westphalia 1920-1924
Z. A. B. Zeman, W. B. Scharlau - The Merchant of Revolution: The Life of Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus) 1867-1924
Frederick Alfred Miller - Left-Wing Splinter Parties in the Weimer Republic
Henry Tudor, J. M. Tudor - Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate 1896-1898
On "The Woman Question":
Anne Lopes, Gary Roth - Men's Feminism: August Bebel and the German Socialist Movement
Lise Vogel - Marxism and the Oppression of Women-Toward a Unitary Theory
Karen Hunt - Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question 1884-1911
On China:
Maurice Meisner - Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism
Livio Maitan - Party, Army and Masses in China: A Marxist Interpretation of the Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath
Nick Knight - Marxist Philosophy in China From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923-1945
Nick Knight - Li Da and Marxist Philosophy in China
Leon Trotsky On China
Arif Dirlik - Revolution and History Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937
Lee Feigon - Chen Duxiu, Founder of the Chinese Communist Party
"Analytical Marxism":
Primary works:
Jon Elster - An Introduction to Karl Marx
G. A. Cohen - Karl Marx's Theory of History
John E. Roemer - Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory
On Marx's Capital:
Roman Rosdolsky - The Making of Marx's Capital
Michael Heinrich - An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Other contemporary works of theory:
Andrew Kliman - Reclaiming Marx's Capital
Andrew Kliman - The Failure of Capitalist Production
Christian Fuchs - Digital Labour and Karl Marx
On Karl Marx:
David McLellan - Karl Marx A Biography
David McLellan - Interviews and Recollections of Karl Marx
**In progress
The two I'd recommend are Edmund Wilson's To The Finland Station and Robert Service's Comrades. To The Finland Station is a look at the development of socialism as a political ideology, from it's origins in the early 19th Century, through to Lenin's arrival in St Petersburg. It's a highly comprehensive history of the various schools of thought that were eventually synthesized into Lenin's socialism. Comrades is a history of socialism in the 20th Century, with a focus on the USSR and it's influence on socialist movements around the world.