Theory informs praxis! We engage in ongoing political education in socialist history and thought.

(See also: PDSA’s recommended media resources.)

Currently Reading

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis

Abolish Rent takes aim at one of the foremost engines of inequality and injustice.

Rent drives millions into debt, despair, and onto the streets. The social cost of rent is too damn high. Written for anyone fed up with the permanent housing crisis, complicit politicians, and real estate greed, Abolish Rent dissects our housing system from the perspective of those it immiserates. Through unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organizing and collective action, harness our power and win the housing we deserve.

From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis take us to trilingual strategy meetings, raucous marches against gentrification, and daring eviction defenses where immigrants put their lives on the line. These are the seeds of the revolutionary movement we need to make our housing, our cities, and the world our home.

Every other Tuesday, 6:15-8pm

• November 18: Abolish Rent—Chapters 1-3
• December 2: Abolish Rent—Chapters 4-5
• December 16: Abolish Rent—Special guest author Tracy Rosenthal!

Fireside Books & More, 2421 Broadway, Redwood City (by Caltrain station)
Virtual: Google Meet

What to expect: Peninsula DSA’s reading group sessions will kick off with comradely icebreakers followed by a guided discussion. We have until the bookshop closes at 8pm. Light refreshments and KN94 respirators provided. Wearing DSA gear is encouraged!

BYO book! Please consider ordering your copy of our reads from our friendly hosts, Andrew and Taylor at Fireside Books & More, by visiting their Bookshop.org storefront or emailing orders@firesiderwc.com.

Past Reads

2025

• Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism by Wendy Liu
• Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Defeat of Communism by Michael Parenti
• Wage-Labor and Capital (Lohnarbeit und Kapital) by Karl Marx
• The State and Revolution (Государство и революция) by Vladimir Lenin
• What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis (2025) by Malcolm Harris
• ABCs of Socialism by Jacobin + Verso.
• Ideas for the Struggle (2004, revised 2016) by Marta Harnecker.
• Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) by Vladimir Lenin.

2024

• Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (2023) by Malcolm Harris.
• San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958 (2024) by Robert W. Cherny.

2023

• The Wretched of the Earth (1961) by Frantz Fanon.

2022

• How to Read Marx’s Capital (2021) by Michael Heinrich, in tandem with Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021) by Andreas Malm (Ecosocialism WG crossover!)
• The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (2020) by Vincent Bevins
• Why Marx Was Right (2011) by Terry Eagleton

2021

• “Capitalism and Class Struggle” (2020) by Vivek Chibber, from The ABCs of Capitalism series from Jacobin and Catalyst Journal
• “Capitalism and the State” (2020) by Vivek Chibber, from The ABCs of Capitalism series from Jacobin and Catalyst Journal
• “Understanding Capitalism” (2020) by Vivek Chibber, from The ABCs of Capitalism series from Jacobin and Catalyst Journal

2020

• ‘Disband, Disempower, and Disarm’: Amplifying the Theory and Practice of Police (2018) by Meghan G. McDowell and Luis A. Fernandez
• Mistaken Identity: Mass Movements and Racial Identity (2018) by Asad Haider
• No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey
• On Contradiction (1937) by Mao Zedong
• On Practice (1937) by Mao Zedong
• Production for Use (1983) by Pieter Lawrence
• Stalinism and Bolshevism: In Defense of October by Leon Trotsky
• War is a Racket (1935) by Major General Smedley Butler

2019

• Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) by Angela Y. Davis
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009) by Mark Fisher
• Civil Disobedience (1849) by Henry David Thoreau
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (2017) by Richard Rothstein
• The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
• In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis (2016) by David J. Madden and Peter Marcuse
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) by Paolo Friere
• “The Strategy of International Class Struggle and the Political Fight Against Capitalist Reaction in 2019” (January 3, 2010) by James Cogan, Joseph Kishore, and David North
• “Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and Other Forms of Intimate and Community Violence” (2007) by generation FIVE

2018

• How Nonviolent Struggle Works (2013) by Gene Sharp
• “The Lesser Evil? The Left, the Democrats and 1984” (November 2, 2018) by Mike Davis