Reading list that will give you the theoretical grounding needed to answer every question in the ProleWiki application

Below is a comprehensive, structured reading list that will give you the theoretical grounding needed to answer every question in the ProleWiki application. I am assuming you want coverage across Marxist theory, history, national liberation, gender, decolonization, and modern socialist states.

I have grouped the readings by topic so you can identify which texts correspond to which questions.

CORE MARXIST THEORY (FOUNDATION FOR NEARLY ALL QUESTIONS)

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

• The Communist Manifesto
• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• Critique of the Gotha Programme
• The German Ideology (especially the chapters on historical materialism)
• Capital, Volume I (at minimum Parts I–III)

Vladimir Lenin

• What Is To Be Done?
• State and Revolution
• Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
• The Right of Nations to Self-Determination
• Marxism and Revisionism

Joseph Stalin

• Foundations of Leninism
• Dialectical and Historical Materialism

Mao Zedong

• On Practice
• On Contradiction
• On New Democracy
• Selected Works on socialist construction and agrarian revolution

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM (FIRST SET Q1, Q4, SECOND SET Q1)

Primary Texts

• Engels – Dialectics of Nature
• Engels – Anti-Dühring (especially Part I)
• Lenin – Philosophical Notebooks (selections)

Secondary Texts

• George Novack – An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism
• John Bellamy Foster – Marx’s Ecology

POLITICAL CURRENTS, STALIN, MAO, SOCIALIST STATES (FIRST SET Q5–6)

History & Evaluation of Stalin and the USSR

• J. Arch Getty – Origins of the Great Purges
• Domenico Losurdo – Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend
• E. H. Carr – The Bolshevik Revolution (multi-volume)

Mao, China, Vietnam, DPRK, Cuba

• William Hinton – Fanshen; The Great Reversal
• Han Suyin – The Morning Deluge (Mao biography)
• Dongping Han – The Unknown Cultural Revolution
• Che Guevara – On Guerrilla Warfare; Socialism and Man in Cuba
• Ho Chi Minh – Selected Writings
• Charles K. Armstrong – The North Korean Revolution

General Analyses of Socialist Construction

• Ernest Mandel – Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory
• Samir Amin – The Future of Maoism
• Martin Hart-Landsberg – Capitalism on a Ventilator (China discussions)

GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND MARXIST FEMINISM (FIRST SET Q4, SECOND SET Q3, Q4)

Foundational Texts

• Engels – The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
• Alexandra Kollontai – Selected Writings; The Social Basis of the Woman Question
• Evelyn Reed – Woman’s Evolution
• Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (materialist analysis of reproduction)

Gender & Liberation Theory

• Sherry Wolf – Sexuality and Socialism
• Leslie Feinberg – Transgender Warriors (historical materialist, trans-affirming)
• Maya Gonzalez & Jeanne Neton – Communization and the Abolition of Gender

SETTLER COLONIALISM, DECOLONIZATION, LAND BACK (FIRST SET Q7, SECOND SET Q2)

Foundational Anti-Colonial Texts

• V. I. Lenin – Imperialism (essential grounding)
• Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth
• Amílcar Cabral – Unity and Struggle
• Walter Rodney – How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Settler Colonial Studies

• Patrick Wolfe – Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz – An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
• Nick Estes – Our History Is the Future

National Liberation Movements

• Ho Chi Minh – On National Liberation
• Kwame Nkrumah – Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism

PALESTINE, ANTI-IMPERIALISM, OCTOBER 7 (FIRST SET Q8)

Historical Background & Anti-Imperialist Theory

• Rashid Khalidi – The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
• Ilan Pappé – The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
• Edward Said – The Question of Palestine
• Ghassan Kanafani – Palestine’s Children; On Zionist Literature

Imperialism & Global Power

• Samir Amin – The Law of Worldwide Value
• Vijay Prashad – The Darker Nations; The Poorer Nations

IMPERIALISM, IMF, WORLD BANK, BRI (SECOND SET Q7)

• Lenin – Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
• Rosa Luxemburg – The Accumulation of Capital
• Samir Amin – Imperialism and Unequal Development
• Michael Parenti – Against Empire
• Eric Toussaint – The World Bank: A Critical Primer; Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank

For the Belt and Road Initiative:

• Deborah Brautigam – The Dragon’s Gift (African development context)
• Peter Nolan – Understanding China

PRESSING ISSUES FOR COMMUNISTS IN YOUR COUNTRY (SECOND SET Q5)

Because this depends on your country, theory more than history is helpful:

• Antonio Gramsci – Selections from the Prison Notebooks
• Lenin – Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
• Jodi Dean – Crowds and Party

GENERAL MARXIST HISTORY & SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS

• David Harvey – A Companion to Marx’s Capital
• Maurice Meisner – Mao’s China and After
• Eric Hobsbawm – The Age of Extremes
• Perry Anderson – Considerations on Western Marxism