I’m working through the manifesto and i’m really struggling with chapter 3s Feudal and Petty-Bourgeois socialism section. It seems he’s waxing a bit into prose, or i lack important historical context. Is there something i can read that will provide this? Barring that i would also love any links or recommendations to literature that helped you understand
Oh and if this is stickied somewhere i apologize for dumb
That can happen with theory. Are you wondering who Sismondi is? You’re going to keep coming across this problem, I’m afraid. I’d say just read it quite quickly and focus on the bits you do understand. Then read something else and do the same. Then come back to the Manifesto later.
You don’t have to understand every word/section the first time you read anything although I understand the urge to try. I think part of the trick with any kind of learning is letting go of the idea that you have to understand everything the first time. I think schools/universities teach this way impliedly and explicitly and it’s a travesty. It slows you down over potentially insignificant details.
If you just keep going and read things multiple times, you get a feel for what’s important because you’ll see the same thing discussed elsewhere. Chances are if no other Marxist has picked up an argument since Marx, it’s mainly of academic interest. The crucial bits appear again and again. (Not to say there’s no value in reading carefully or analysing lesser known ideas but save it for later when you’ve got more of a foothold.)
From Chris Harman’s, ‘How Marxism Works’:
But though Marxism is not difficult, there is a problem for the reader who comes across Marx’s writings for the first time. Marx wrote well over a century ago. He used the language of the time, complete with references to individuals and events then familiar to virtually everyone, now known only to specialist historians.
I remember my own bafflement when, while still at school, I tried to read his pamphlet The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
I didn’t know either what Brumaire was or who Louis Bonaparte was. How many socialists have abandoned attempts to come to grips with Marxism after such experiences!
This is the justification for this short book. It seeks to provide an introduction to Marxist ideas, which will make it easier for socialists to follow what Marx was on about and to understand the development of Marxism since then in the hands of Frederick Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and a whole host of lesser thinkers.
Maybe this pamphlet is what you’re looking for? (Link above)
One thing I’d recommend is Engles, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian. This will give you some explanation of the ideas of people from around the time of Marx and Engels. But in a way it will be more of the same as Engels will introduce loads of new names.
PS I can’t tell you about Sismondi. I glossed over it and have yet to get round to looking further into it.
Are you wondering who Sismondi is?
Haha you nailed it. i was already starting to lose focus and when that name dropped i got frustrated and came here. Thank you for the links and encouragement
You are going to keep on encountering this as you read up on theory and history.
Try not to be too down on yourself when it happens because you shouldn’t expect yourself to be completely across the most important topics of political debate in Europe from nearly two centuries ago.
Imagine a person in a century from now reading articles from, say, The Guardian and coming across something which references “Trumpism” or “the MAGA movement” to critique it; that person almost certainly isn’t going to understand what the MAGA movement refers to but the Guardian article is going to treat it as if everyone grasps what they’re referring to because the Guardian is part of a contemporary discussion right in this very moment where it’s topical and relevant and so of course everyone grasps what it means today but this will not be the case in a hundred year’s time.
I’d recommend one of two approaches here:
Either skip over these sorts of terms because the fact that they don’t mean anything to you may be indicative of the fact that they are no longer relevant to contemporary politics (for example, you don’t hear people talking about Manichaeism or Fabianism today because it bears no relevance to today’s politics) or to put a little note next to the name with a shorthand version of what that person’s thought represents (for example, when reading Lenin lambast Bernstein you might put a little note saying “incremental reformism under bourgeois democracy to achieve socialism” so that whenever you encounter Lenin striking out against Bernsteinism then you can know what he’s really criticising when he does it.)
It will make more sense as you read more theory. Good luck with it!
This (scroll down halfway to the economic doctrines section) talks about different economic schools including the petty-bourgeois views of Sismondi and others. You should also read the Principles of Communism.
ProleWiki also has two beginner reading lists for Marxism: 1 2
thanks, these are great resources. I was worried about being able to comprehend a lot of theory based on manifesto and what I’ve read (so far) of das kapital.
I would recommend reading a lot of other theory before starting Kapital. The USSR also wrote a textbook on Political Economy that was designed for students and may be easier to understand. It also talks about things that aren’t in Kapital like imperialism, socialism, and feudal and slave societies.
The Marxism textbook translated by Luna Oi is another decent beginner resource. I believe it’s on the internet archive
AI like chatgpt can be useful to help explain or rephrase blocks of text, if that suits you
