Good questions!

First off, dialectical materialism is the single greatest tool of Marxism. Marx used it when writing Capital, it’s critical to class struggle, it’s why we have historical materialism. Dialectical materialism is a way of thinking about forces and change, and the motions of change in the world. Not to keep sending book recommendations, but Engels’ work Dialectics of Nature goes over the immense applicability of dialectics to everything (though this is a more advanced text IMO, and quite lengthy). Same applies to Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Mao’s On Practice & On Contradiction are critical for understanding dialectical materialism because the former goes over the dialectical materialist approach to understanding the unity of theory and practice, and the latter helps us understand the nature of contradiction. Contradiction is what compels movement, in a way, and by identifying imperialism as the primary contradiction, it’s useful for identifying what movements to support in overthrowing that, such as Palestinian liberation.

As for the labor aristocracy, they are ultimately the upper stratum of the proletariat. They are kind of like a subclass, if you will. Petite bourgeois relations push towards individualism and fascism as they fear being proletarianized, but the labor aristocracy are already proletarianized, just bribed by the spoils of imperialism into supporting it, or opposing anything that meaningfully represents an alternative. A good look at class ideology is the incredibly short essay Stalin’s Shoemaker, which traces a worker that finds himself in different occupations and thus his mindset changes until ultimately being proletarianized and naturally adopts a more proletarian mindset.

Your third paragraph is excellent, and Ho Chi Minh’s The Path Which Led me to Leninism describes exactly why so many anti-imperialists come to Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism’s strong stance on national liberation struggles and effectiveness in leading them is exactly why it is so prevalent. Both Fanon and Rodney are excellent reads, great choices.

One thing about Lenin and the progressive achievements of the USSR under him is that Lenin died very early on, and it was ultimately Stalin that had to take on that task. Sverdlov, the most likely candidate for General Secretary, was dead, and Trotsky distrusted the peasantry and had menshevik tendencies towards splitting and infighting. For all of Stalin’s faults, it was ultimately Stalin that carried on Lenin’s legacy in the midst of siege and incredible turmoil. The CPC rates Stalin and Mao both at 70% good, 30% bad, and I think that can help contextualize that we don’t idolize these figures just because we agree with much of what they wrote and did. There’s also much to critique.

For Mao, the CPC is very negative on the Cultural Revolution and Four Pests Campaign. The Great Leap Forward is more mixed, but the prior two were seen largely as mistakes even if the reasoning for attempting them were solid. Marxist-Leninist-Maoists uphold the Cultural Revolution and believe it universal to successful socialism, they just believe Mao failed. I’m not an MLM though, and neither was Mao, Mao was an ML. Hope that tangent made sense!

I love that you love Parenti, haha. The “Yellow Parenti” speech is honestly responsible for creating countless MLs, as is Blackshirts and Reds. Anna Louise Strong wrote This Soviet World in the 1930s, so it’s a good look at what the early USSR was like, as was Soviet Democracy. A good intro though to some of the history and context of AES are the Prolewiki pages on The USSR and on The PRC before you delve deeper into these.

Awesome work on your journey so far!

I’m a perfectionist over the smallest things, and get lazy with larger projects 🫠

i went with the shorter 10-minute one (with subway surfers), and i think michael parenti has a point: if you look past the authoritarianism of countries such as cuba, china, vietnam, laos or north korea, you’d find that there’s much more to these countries than their government; pyongyang is a pretty interesting city - it had an unfinished hotel that looks pretty cool, some of the apartment buildings reminds me of those eastern kentucky university dorm buildings in richmond, ky, and mount paektu is beautiful. cuba, china, vietnam, laos also have beautiful sceneries.

one thing you have to know that you DON’T see anyone begging for money or runaway people asking for sex because socialism helps solve economic inequalities by giving production to the people. seriously!

People value and use definitions that accurately describe reality and its relation. Democracy is quite literally rule by the majority, and it isn’t counterposed to the working classes forcibly nationalizing industry held by capitalists. Such an action is “authoritarian” yet absolutely democratic. Socialism and capitalism aren’t a spectrum, because you can’t have classes sharing power over the state equally. As such, either public or private ownership will be principle, either the bourgeoisie or proletariat will be in control of the state. There’s variance in socialization, but fundamentally the “centerpoint” doesn’t exist.

It’s important to recognize that works like Ivan’s War are common in the west, and often exaggerate or even fabricate narratives about the soviets. I’m not sure what the author said in that book, or with what evidence, but it sounds like the author repeats “human wave” myths. Good resources on the Red Army include books like The Soviets Expected It by Anna Louise Strong, who actually lived in and reported on the soviet union. There’s a lot of bias going on that you would do well to work through.

Beria

Just FYI, Beria’s black legend is nearly entirely fabricated between Khrushchev (who couped, murdered and smeared Beria to legitimise his powergrab) and anticommunist hacks like Simon Sebag Montefiore who is a pedofile himself yet he specialise in accusing socialist leaders of the same. I mean sure Beria wasn’t nice guy, no head of security apparatus ever will be a nice guy, but the numbers like arrest falling by 90% and executions by 99% after he took over NKVD or his actions post-war and during the Khrushchev coup are by itself enough to refute the most obvious accusations of tyranny, paranoia and cruelty.