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I don’t know how the 1959 SPD would react but today’s SPD wouldn’t even read this, nor would they understand it if they did, given how far removed it is from the kind of discourse that happens in German politics today. This would read like unintelligible alien babble to most SPD members. It has nothing to do with the things that they concern themselves with on a day to day basis, and trying to reference 19th and early 20th century history would just get you laughed out of the room and dismissed as completely out of touch with modern realities. Today’s SPD has just as little to do with socialism or working class politics as the British Labor party does, which is practically zero. They are all just standard neoliberals now.

The most pressing issues on their mind right now are keeping their auto and weapons industry lobby donors happy, sucking up to the Americans, and fighting against the imaginary Russian “hybrid war”.

Here’s what I mean when i say that the right is unfortunately ahead of the curve compared to most of the European left on the issue of the EU. This is from a pretty conservative account so the framing is right wing but the core of the analysis is not wrong:

The EU is nothing but a facilitating structure of the United States, tasked with upholding the post-WW2 power architecture and preserving American dominance on the European continent—along with everything that comes with it.

As long as the EU exists in its current form, Europe will never be sovereign or capable of charting its own destiny.

It will remain an afterthought of the American Empire, bending over in the most masochistic way imaginable to maintain a global order built on a neutered Europe—one that solely benefits the U.S.

The problem with the EU is that it’s a fake concept at its core.

There is no such thing as a “European people” or a shared “European identity.”

There are French, German, Italian, Spanish, Austrian, Czech, Polish peoples—with their own cultures, histories, and values.

None of these are respected under the EU’s increasingly authoritarian, top-down structure.

The EU attempts to force in decades what takes centuries to grow organically.

It suppresses national identity, culture, and pride, and tries instead to instill a plastic liberal ideology and a hollow, universalist cultural template that not a single European truly believes in.

The EU is modeled too closely on imperial Rome—one rule, top-down, comply or be crushed.

It tries to manufacture a unity that doesn’t exist—at least not in this form.

https://xcancel.com/DlugajJuly/status/2008202267342909866

Of course the prescribed “solution” of restoring the HRE is batshit crazy right wing nonsense, but the point is that they correctly identify the inherent unsustainability of the EU project as it currently exists.

And by being the only ones (with the rare exception of socialists like ourselves who are only a very small fraction of the broader left) who are pointing out that the project does not actually serve the interests of European people, and by at least in part correctly diagnosing the problem (while of course, because they are not socialists, omitting actual class analysis such as pointing out how the EU serves capitalist interests first and foremost) rather than going along with the liberal establishment’s “just close your eyes and ears and pretend like everything is fine” approach, like the broad mass of socdems in Europe do, the right wing gain legitimacy and support from a not inconsiderable segment of the working class (in addition to the petite bourgeoisie to whom this analysis is most appealing) for their reactionary agenda.

The task of socialists is to reframe this critique from a progressive and class based rather than reactionary nationalistic perspective. The reason many on the right want to leave the EU is because they feel it doesn’t allow them to be as racist as they want.

The reason why we want to leave the EU is because we recognize that the EU is itself a racist and colonial institution that serves capital and empire and crushes the working class with neoliberalism, militarism and austerity.

Yes and no. The analysis for Germany leaving the EU and NATO is different because that is something that socialists can and should be openly advocating for. For one thing it’s not a crime (yet). There is precedent with Brexit as far as leaving the EU. And the EU is already fairly unpopular and getting more and more unpopular with working class people. The same goes for opposition to NATO. That is something that already exists and that many people are receptive to, both on the left and the right.

I believe most people who are not ideologically hardened liberal-imperialists can be convinced, they can understand NATO is a warmongering organization. We can point to the example of the bombing of Serbia, Libya, or to NATO deliberately provoking and prolonging the war in Ukraine. The Ukraine war is not as popular with the average person as the liberal media makes it seem, especially working class people who don’t see the point and don’t necessarily buy into the ideological crusade aspect of it.

We can also point to how NATO is a protection racket. It forces countries into wasting resources on military spending that could be spent on education, infrastructure, social security. “Your tax money is being given away to weapons manufacturers instead of being used for your pension, your roads or your kid’s school” is something that especially those who are already somewhat skeptical of whether the system really works in their favor can understand and instinctively feel is true.

It is easy to argue that the EU is undemocratic (the right has already shown that this argument works), that power is held by unelected bureaucrats who enforce a tyrannical rule by decree, but as socialists we can also point out how it is a fundamentally neoliberal and exploitative institution, how being in it prevents states from controlling their own economy. The EU and NATO rob countries of their sovereignty. Again this is something that working class people can understand and agree with.

It is much harder to make the argument for balkanizing a state that ostensibly has democratic elections, that people identify with in terms of their sense of national and cultural identity, than it is to argue against membership in organizations that most people don’t really identify with or have that kind of cultural attachment to. Of course there are also a lot of liberals who do have an attachment to the EU, the “true believers”, but as Brexit has shown, they are not a majority.

As socialists we need to take an open anti-EU and anti-NATO stance and make this one of the top priorities in our agenda. We can and should agitate against these imperialist institutions at every opportunity, emphasizing how they hurt working class people, but also when necessary not shy away from the national sovereignty argument. If we don’t do this we just cede this ground to the right, who are always adept at exploiting the growing popularity of anti-establishment sentiment for their own nefarious purposes.

There are a few secessionist movements that we should support, such as Scottish independence and of course Irish reunification, but on the whole i don’t think it’s in the best interest of socialists in Europe to get involved with this sort of thing. Hypothetically, if Bavaria decided to secede or if East Germany were re-established, it wouldn’t hurt and i don’t think socialists should fight it, but a) it’s wildly unrealistic at the moment, and b) it would not do nearly as much good as the US, EU or NATO breaking up, and it’s those last two that should be our focus.

In fact, more and more i think that the EU and NATO are the primary contradiction that we as European socialists are facing. It will be impossible to make any real progress toward socialism until we have liberated ourselves from them.

Secession by any part of the United States would be unequivocally a good thing. All in-fighting and division in the imperial core is good insofar as it weakens the empire. No matter by who or how it happens.

Whether it is realistic is another question. At the moment the material conditions are probably not there yet and any overt involvement with secessionist activities on the part of socialists would be tactically unwise.

Secessionism would give the government an easy excuse to declare your group criminal and imprison you. Let the right wing be the ones who push for it. They get much more leeway from the state for this sort of thing.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/category/latin-america/

https://orinocotribune.com/

https://kawsachun.com/

https://www.telesurenglish.net/

https://en.granma.cu/

https://anticonquista.com/

500 years of unchecked European imperialism have produced a culture in which racism and supremacism are embedded to the core.

Great sources! Thank you, comrade!

For the same reason we were called “pinkos” and “commies” and “reds” during the Cold War. It’s a meaningless epithet only designed to otherize and marginalize anyone opposing imperialism and siding with real socialist and anti-imperialist forces.

You can look at it just like any other perjorative used against someone who poses a threat to the ruling class and the status quo.

When people who ostensibly call themselves leftists start calling you these names, that’s just a way for them to signal to the ruling class that they are not like you, that they are part of the obedient ones, that they do not pose a real threat, that they are a system-compatible opposition that the ruling class can ignore or even reward.

Do you know how this was handled in the USSR?

I’m assuming you mean the question of religious attire? Maybe this video will help.

I’m an atheist too, by the way, so i’m not necessarily fully qualified to speak on the issue. I’m just stating my opinion.

Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims

First of all, is eating pork really that much of a central pillar of your culture? Somehow i doubt it. I grew up in a culture with a lot of traditional pork dishes, much more so than the average Western European country, but i’m not going to throw a hissy fit just because i can’t have it every day.

Secondly, what’s wrong with offering options? We do it for vegetarians all the time and we don’t (and shouldn’t) pay attention to the crazies screaming that offering a vegetarian option is cultural genocide of meat eaters. And yes, it is very much possible to offer non-pork options in every canteen even if you are a culture that consumes a lot of pork: just look at China!

China is huge on pork consumption, more so than most Western countries are, and yet they still find ways to accommodate their very sizable Muslim population when it comes to food options. I am willing to bet you will be hard pressed to find a single Chinese canteen without either halal or vegetarian options.

or allowing underage girls to wear a hijab in school, to let their families oppress them?

The question already gives it away: “why do we allow them to wear a hijab?”. Because forbidding it is literally more restricting and repressive than allowing it. When you have to speak of “allowing” that shows that you are preventing someone from doing something they want to do. You are literally the one doing the oppressing once you start banning it. You’re not liberating, you’re just satisfying your own islamophobia.

Also, your own culture pressures people to dress a certain way in public. When you forbid people from going out in public naked, are you also “oppressing” them? There are some cultures where they have lower standards of modesty than we in the West do. Imagine you lived in one of those cultures and they forbid you from wearing pants or a shirt, and they tell you they are liberating you from the “oppression” of your clothes. Would you be ok with that?

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits when they haven’t paid a single euro in taxes before they came here?

This question proceeds from the false premise that immigrants just live off benefits and don’t work. This is overwhelmingly not true. Most immigrants do in fact work. And in a very large number of the minority of cases where it is true, such as for newly arrived refugees in some European countries, it is literally because they are forbidden by law in those countries from working! It is common in many countries to need a work visa to be allowed to work there.

Secondly, many people benefit from social programs more than they put into them. What about children who have never paid taxes? What about disabled people? That is the whole point of having a social insurance system: to make sure people don’t fall through the cracks and end up homeless and starving. Not just because that is the humanitarian thing to do but also because desperate and destitute people are more likely to resort to crime! By taking care of people you make the entire society better.

And if you don’t like people being unemployed - and whether or not they are immigrants doesn’t even matter, i’m just speaking generally now - here’s an idea: why don’t we have a national jobs program that guarantees a job to everyone who wants one?

All great advice!

Read something you enjoy. Eliminate distractions (turn your phone on silent and put it outside of your reach). If reading difficult material try to do it in a structured way, take notes or highlight important passages. Have a drink or a snack nearby. Taking a break every couple of hours is also healthy.

But also understand that not being able to read for long periods of time is not the same as being lazy. Some people just don’t have the time or the mental energy after being exhausted from work.

I’ve had periods in my life where i would regularly read for 6 or more hours a day easily and not even notice how much time has passed, but i also have periods where i am unable to dedicate any time at all some days, or have to consciously make an effort to set at least an hour or two aside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

I would say the science on this doesn’t seem very solid.

Yeah you can point to convection in the warmer liquid making heat transfer more efficient, to evaporation reducing the total amount of liquid, or to the fact that formation of ice isn’t solely tied to temperature falling below zero, and you can - under specific circumstances in which the conditions for the formation of the initial seed crystals are not ideal - have water below the freezing point but not yet frozen, but i think these are marginal effects at a large enough scale.

For practical purposes i would say it depends on what size the volume of water is, how much warmer the warm water is, and how cold it is outside (plus maybe some secondary factors like what kind of container it is in - closed, open, good thermal conductivity, bad, lots of surface area, etc.). Obviously if there is a big difference in temperature between the two volumes, the amount of thermal energy in the warmer water will be so much higher that even allowing for the possibility of some effects leading to more efficient energy transfer away from the warmer volume, you’ll still have the cold one freeze first.

I mean, the most simplified way to think about it is this: the warm water needs to first reach the temperature of the cold water before it can go to freezing. But by the time it does that the cold water will have already cooled down even lower. The formerly warm will now be in the same state as the cold water was initially, but the cold water has a head start. How can the warmer ever catch up if the rate of cooling depends only on the temperature differential between the liquid and the outside?

Of course this is an idealized model and in the real world you will have secondary effects (such as the evaporation i mentioned earlier - for instance if the temperature outside is just below zero and not some crazy low negative temperature, then maybe there is enough time for the evaporation of the warmer volume to make a difference), but can those make a big enough difference in your specific use case? I would suggest you just do the experiment yourself. Put two identical buckets of water out in winter when the temperature outside is below freezing, one with hot water one with cold, and see which one freezes first. My money is on the cold one, but trying it out is the only way to know for sure right?

Because before every revolution there were people who thought there would never be a revolution in their lifetime. History proved them wrong. It is unwise to reject entirely the possibility of something happening, especially when it has happened before. And by actively working towards it we can increase the chance of it happening again. We are not passive passengers on the moving train of history, we are its drivers.

On the topic of Russia, check out the sources i refered to in this response: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/7072432

Start with “When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet”. It sounds counter-intuitive to start with such a late work of hers on a relatively niche topic, but you can read about the Soviet Union, Stalin, Mao, etc. elsewhere too, whereas When Serfs Stood Up is really unique in that it was the first firsthand western account of Tibet right in the immediate aftermath of its liberation, and it showcases a lot about how communists should strive to approach building a new society.

One thing to note about reading Lenin: While his works are (in my opinion) the best way to really solidify one’s understanding of communism, they can also be a bit overwhelming for beginners or just in general people who are not familiar at all with late 19th early 20th century European politics, because of the large amount of discussion and references to contemporary political movements, figures, publications, etc.

It definitely takes a bit of patience and willingness to delve into that specific historical time. Which is why your recommendation of reading “Blackshirts and Reds” and “Reform or Revolution” before getting into Lenin is absolutely the right approach imo. Perhaps even add some of Engels’ works such as “The Principles of Communism” and “On Authority” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” is great but may be a bit daunting at this point) in there before Lenin.

Others have given great recommendations for what your friend should look into, so i will just add one thing that you definitely shouldn’t suggest to them which is reading Das Kapital. That is an almost guaranteed recipe for someone to lose interest in socialism because of how long, technical and (for a newbie) boring of a work it is, despite its enormous, crucial importance to socialist theory. Literally anything else would be better.

Edit: Ok, since nobody has mentioned this i will also add that if your friend is interested in history it can be very interesting to read contemporary accounts such as “Ten Days That Shook The World” about the October Revolution. Or literally anything by Anna Louise Strong. I cannot recommend her enough to beginners as her writing style is very accessible. This is not socialist theory though, it’s history. For beginner theory definitely refer to the reading recommendations in the other responses.

Applying this to Mamdani, his government could be a great moment to push for reforms from the left by organising, and intensify class conflict whenever his reforms get pushback from the ruling classes.

The key to this is supporting Mamdani’s more radical reforms (i.e. those that genuinely help the working class) while not supporting the Democratic party and its institutions. Support “Mamdani the Radical Reformer” and “Mamdani the Agitator”, not “Mamdani the Democrat”.

As communists we must maintain our own independent political organizations that are unapologetically led by the working class and for the working class, and which exist wholly outside of the bourgeois parties. Anything less is entryism and doomed to fail. First and foremost this should be seen as an opportunity for agitation and propaganda, for showing workers what they can demand and what they can achieve through organizing outside of bourgeois structures.