To understand how a post-capitalist society may look like, we think it’s quite important why the first attempts failed.

Capitalism

Bini Adamczak: Communism for Kids | (Book, 2017) | A nice introduction to some basics of capitalism (market, labor, crisis) and some attempts to overcome it via state socialism, market of cooperatives and finally communism.

Michael Heinrich: An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital | (Book, 2013) | Videos | In our opinion Heinrich wrote one of the best introduction to Marx’s ground-breaking work Capital. So if your are in for an in-depth reading, enjoy.

John Holloway: Crack Capitalism | (Book, 2013) | In this book Holloway criticizes capitalism via the dichotomy of doing agains labour, very beautiful.

Patriarchy

Roswitha Scholz: Patriarchy and Commodity Society: Gender without the Body | (Article, 2009) | Scholz developed the theory of value dissociation to describe why capitalism needs patriarchy.

Silvia Federici: Caliban and the Witch | (Book, 2004) | Federici links the rise of capitalism, witch hunt and the rise of modern patriarchy. Although the book has some (serious) historical flaws, it is still very interesting and many of its basic concepts remain true.

Racism

Cedric Robinson: Black Marxism | (Book, 1983) | Robinson argues that capitalism is structured by ‘racialism’ and thus argues that capitalism is always a racial capitalism.

Vivek Chibber: Marxism Is Way Better Than Critical Race Theory | (Short Video, 2020) | Although we don’t agree with all that Chibber says (in general terms he is ‘only’ market socialist) a materialist perspective on racism is important.

Real Socialism/State Socialism

In German: Robert Kurz: Collapse of Modernization | (Book, 1991) Kurz argues that reals socialism is basically a capitalist society with a similar societal structure (wage labour, commodity production, state). It’s a really good analysis. Short article in English.