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So, what have you been reading recently? | ๐ Weekly book discussion, review, and recommendations thread, June 28th, 2026
(lemmygrad.ml)
Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
I've been listening to oldhead comrade S4A read Fascism and Social Revolution by Rajani Palme Dutt. It's been very eye-opening, despite not being super far in. I'm still recovering from burnout and a severe depressive episode, and getting back into "reading" (listening, desk job full-time) both fills me with tremendous hope and despair. I'm in the US, and the state of the left here is so dire. There is so much work to be done, and it all feels so impossible at times.
Can anyone recommend shorter readings by Black American communists? I need a fast faith booster!!
Beware of S4A's politics though. Blud thinks western marxism doesn't exist.
Haha, thank you - I only recently started listening to his videos outside of readings and he does come off as jaded and a bit of a crank. That's the only way I can think to word it. I guess that's to be expected as someone who has been an American leftist from the Dubya era.
A fun fact about him: he tried to do a Trump-like tea party in the American Green Party to make it into his Vanguard, and colossally failed.
Fred Hampton Speaks.
Blood in my eye by George Jackson.
Poems: 'Lenin' and 'Ballads of Lenin' by Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes?? I love him and had no idea he was a Marxist. Thank you so much, friend!
The most I know that he was a communist sympathizer who went to USSR and was surprised by the internationalist environment there in contrast to the Jim Crow America.
He had to distance himself from his pro-communist writings during the red scare era when artists and intellectuals were getting arrested without warrants and locked up by the feds.
https://www.cpusa.org/article/langston-hughes-progressive-poet-and-wanderer/