Communist Reading List, Key Texts

[Author's Note: This is a mirror of a post on inred.ink]

The following is a list of Important Communist Texts which are condemned and criticized by Edgar J. Hoover in his 1957 book The Art of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It.

I have condensed his bibliography so that you don't have to bother with his inane rambling—as humorous as it is—so that you can read the books that the FBI of the Cold War didn't want you to read. I have read only a few of them, regrettably, but I suspect I am still more well read than Mr. Hoover (based on his description of Das Kapital).

Without further ado:

Karl Marx:

• Capital, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (currently reading)
• The Civil War in France
• The Poverty of Philosophy
• The Eighteenth Brumaire of Lois Bonaparte
• Critique of Political Economy
• Value, Price, and Profit (read)
• Critique of the Gotha Program (read)

Friedrich Engels:

• The Peasant War in Germany
• Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution
• The Housing Question
• Anti-Dühring
• The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (read)
• Ludwig Feurbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy
• Dialectics of Nature

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels:

• Selected Correspondence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• The Communist Manifesto (read)

Vladimir I. Lenin:

• What is to be Done? (read)
• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
• Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
• Materialism and Empiric-Criticism
• Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (currently reading)
• State and Revolution (read)
• “Left-Wing” Communism, and Infantile Disorder
• A Letter to American Workers

Joseph V. Stalin:

• Foundations of Leninism
• Marxism and the National Question
• History of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union