Reading Group

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

Currently Reading

Hot Commie Summer with Marx & Lenin

Zohran Mamdani is right: The working class struggles to survive because capitalists have stolen our time and resources. Let’s all learn together how we can win a world worth living in!

Every other Tuesday, 6:30-8pm

July 22—Wage-Labor and Capital (Lohnarbeit und Kapital) by Karl Marx
August 5 & 19—The State and Revolution (Государство и революция) by Vladimir Lenin

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

“Why are we still reading the thoughts of old privileged white men?”

It’s true, Marx & Lenin did not invent socialism. Communist principles are present in every functioning society across history, especially in intact Indigenous cultures. That said, if we want to actually win the class war, we have to understand the valuable intel that comrade ancestors Marx & Lenin gathered about the capitalist class (in late 19th to early 20th c. Europe) that is still strip-mining people and the planet for profit.

Here’s why it’s still smart for socialists to read Wage-Labor & Capital and The State & Revolution in the Zohran Mamdani era:

American leftists must understand our material conditions. As a British settler colony, the US is a direct outgrowth of original European racial capitalism. Though capitalism (via colonialism) has destroyed ecosystems and human diversity across the globe for 500 years now, the ruling class of Western Europe are some of the original innovators in exhausting serfs and turf. While they lived in different historical epochs, Marx and Lenin provide a theoretical framework through which we can analyze our current material conditions.
Marx & Lenin have great explanations for why things suck! Comrade scholars Marx (trained economist who lived in Germany/Prussia, France, Belgium, UK) and Lenin (trained lawyer who lived in Russia, Switzerland, UK) were in the perfect position to analyze the mechanics of our shared economic oppression. Their work holds up great, they’re often funny, and we can trust them: After all, they lived in the Imperial core, benefited from bourgeois university educations, had a huge network of similarly privileged, like-minded people, and still wanted liberation for all the workers of the world!

Past Reads

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