It's probably more worth my time to take a leaf out of Roderic's book and not post on here but the idea that he coordinates a network of alts being a more reasonable explanation to you than that he has friends is just too ridiculous. Here's some contrary evidence for you to grapple with:

You can listen to a podcast I've done here: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/8d546709-2b54-498a-a29d-a0bde330a940/id/27767583

You can also watch Roderic on a panel about Losurdo and his book in Stalin here: https://twitter.com/RodericDay/status/1724514720374301034?s=19

Do you really think we are the same person?

I think dota has a lot of avenues for better understanding communism and dialectics.

As one example, the way the five roles fit together in the balancing of their power spikes and the harnessing of their skill sets towards a common goal, it makes me think of this Che quote:

One acquires in the face of work the old joy: the joy of fulfilling a duty; of feeling important within the social mechanism; of feeling oneself a cog that has its own unique characteristics, that is necessary — although not indispensable — to the production process. And, moreover, a conscious cog. A cog that has its own engine, driven further and further every time, in order to bring about to happy conclusion one of the key premises of socialist construction: the availability of a sufficient quantity of consumer goods for the entire population.

Of course, we should increase education for everyone. It enables better workplace democracy and efficiency. But as per the article I linked in my last comment, specialization and division of labour (required for efficient production) means some workers will also specialize in management, i.e., become managers.

I'm curious what "current dogma" you're thinking about that says managers will become obsolete.

I think you are very narrowly defining manager as a manager of capital (i.e., seeking to maximize profits without care for what products are being made). I think you should read this: https://redsails.org/the-relationships-between-capitalists/

As Marx later emphasizes, one consequence of the development of management as a distinct category of labor is that the profits still received by owners can no longer be justified as the compensation for organizing the production process. But what about the managers themselves, how should we think about them? Are they really laborers, or capitalists? Well, both — their position is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are performing a social coordination function, that any extended division of labor will require. But on the other hand, they are the representatives of the capitalist class in the coercive, adversarial labor process that is specific to capitalism.

It is only the last part — the coercive, adversarial role played as representatives of capital — that will become obsolete. The coordination part of management (which includes coaching and motivation and conflict resolution) will remain.

My experience with organizations, from families to RPG groups to community associations to capitalist enterprises, is that in a management void, some people will take on management responsibilities. Since these roles require skill and entail responsibility for certain tasks, it's better to formalize it and train people for it. Do you not also see this in the organizations you are part of? Or could you be underestimating the amount of labour others are putting in to managing your community?

I agree with another poster that more recent writers can be easier entry points into theory because the authors translate it in ways that highlight ML theory's relevance to today and recent history. As the other poster mentioned, Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds is good on breaking through cold war nonsense about the USSR, there's a couple chapters online here. Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter history dissects the dominant ideology of our time. There's a short summary of that book by the author here.

No one here has yet tackled the question on how important it is to read Capital: I think it's crucial. There are so many concepts it lays out and arguments it refutes that it makes reading other theory much easier. I think of Lenin's Imperialism as a sequel to Capital, so it makes sense to me you find it challenging to read. That said, Capital is also challenging to read and it might help to familiarize yourself with some of the concepts it covers before you tackle it. Here are some (mostly short) essays for that purpose.

• Labour & Labour Power
• Commodity Fetishism
• Communist Self-confidence (history of capitalism from feudal era to now and why the working class is revolutionary)
• Social Classes: Necessary and Superfluous by Engels, why were classes historically necessary and why are capitalists obsolete.
• A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work by Engels, on how political economy has traditionally treated wages and why communists must focus beyond wage increases.

I've posted a lot of links from RedSails because it was started for this purpose: to make theory accessible and demystified and relevant for today. If there's a topic or author you want to read more on, it has curated articles for those ends.

I'll end with my favourite Lenin, which I think highlights why we can't "go back" to some better time before capitalism but must go through capitalism to socialism.

Yes, exactly.

I think the confusion about "feudalism is rent" stems from a lack of understanding about what capitalism is and what feudalism is. Feudalism is a very different mode of production: serfs were tied to their lords, but lords also had duties towards their serfs. This essay talks about what changed from feudalism to capitalism, which is something everyone in the 19th century was very aware of. Today, feudalism is so long ago that we have a hard time even conceiving of something that isn't capitalism. (And so we come up with bizarre, indefensible definitions like "feudalism is when rent.")

Marx lays out in Capital that rent, profits and interest are all crystallized surplus-value, i.e., all of them are capital:

Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labour. It is essentially the command over unpaid labour. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent) it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labour. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labour. (Capital Vol 1)

This point is really important to him, as he tells Engels:

The best points in my book are: 1. (this is fundamental to all understanding of the facts) the two-fold character of labour according to whether it is expressed in use-value or exchange-value, which is brought out in the very First Chapter; 2. the treatment of surplus-value regardless of its particular forms as profit, interest, ground rent, etc. This will be made clear in the second volume especially.

Something novel about Marx's books is that they look at capital from labour's perspective, which I wrote about here. There are scenarios in which the difference between rent and interest and profit are meaningful. But for the sake of the liberation of workers from the oppression of capital, they are all the same:

In fact, the form of interest and profit of enterprise assumed by the two parts of profit, i.e., of surplus-value, expresses no relation to labour, because this relation exists only between labour and profit, or rather the surplus-value as a sum, a whole, the unity of these two parts. The proportion in which the profit is divided, and the different legal titles by which this division is sanctioned, are based on the assumption that profit is already in existence. If, therefore, the capitalist is the owner of the capital on which he operates, he pockets the whole profit, or surplus-value. It is absolutely immaterial to the labourer whether the capitalist does this, or whether he has to pay a part of it to a third person as its legal proprietor. (Capital vol 3)

Accusing someone of being "brainwashed" isn't, as far as I have seen, so rhetorically effective that I think we need a drop-in replacement like "hate-passed." If "you're super licensed" sounds silly it's because "you're super brainwashed" is also silly.

What about:

"Do you actually believe that nonsense or does it just give you license to discount the incredible social progress China has made?"

I think the post earlier in this thread used it well. They're not defining the term, they're explaining the phenomenon. Because it uses a familiar term, it is easy to understand and doesn't read jargony:

I think this is better understood as licensing American settlers to unleash their preexisting white supremacist worldview onto a politically acceptable target.

Rejecting the term "brainwashing" means not only improving our understanding of how propaganda works but also improving our rhetoric.

Can you please let me know how often I should post such that I am neither terminally online nor suspiciously off-line?

there's an email listed on the RedSails "contact" page: https://redsails.org/contact/

Just a quick correction, this isn't written by Day. As noted in the forward, it is by JW Mason:

J. W. Mason is Associate Professor of economics at John Jay College, CUNY and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

While obviously capitalism sucks for art, it's not clear to me that a LToV-based system would allow you to make the type of art you want to make without consideration of what the people who use the art will value.