The cover story of the most recent issue of this very magazine is about contemporary socialism: what it means to be a socialist in 2019, and how the movement transformed from — as writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood put it — “irrelevant, [from] the dustbin-of-history” to something near-ubiquitous, at least among a certain type of under-35-year-old. For those who're interested in learning more about the origins of the movement, we've consulted a slew of experts, including Maxine Phillips, the former Executive Editor of Dissent, Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of the socialist quarterly Jacobin Magazine, Vijay Prashad, a Marxist intellectual and Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Sarah Leonard, a senior editor at The Nation, Mitchell Cohen, a professor of political science at Baruch College, Chiara Cordelli, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Corey Robin, the author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea, on the best books to get started with. As always, each book is recommended by at least two experts.
Two of our experts recommend books by Irving Howe, a Bronx-born, prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America (and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship) who died in 1993. Maxine Phillips recommends his Essential Works of Socialism, an anthology of major socialist writings by Marx, Engels, Bukharin, Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, and essays from people like Djilas, Silone, Orwell, and Harrington on topics from welfare, to economic power, to work alienation, to the Russian Revolution. “This was the text for my first ever socialist reading group,” said Philips. “It spared me from having to read thousands of pages of Marx, Engels, and others.”
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