The texts

TitleDate Epub
Against Sleep and Nightmare
The Spectator of Democracy .epub
Definitions and Resources .epub
American Fraction of the Left Communist International
An Open Letter to the Comrades of the Revolutionary Workers League .epub
Situation of the American Workers .epub
Capitalist Democracy: A Contrast Between the Position of Lenin and That of Trotsky .epub
The U.S. Elections - 1948 .epub
Aspects of the Russian Question .epub
Trotskyism and the Labor Party .epub
What We Stand For .epub
Korea, the Scientific Slaughterhouse .epub
The Dilemma Is Not War or Peace But War or Revolution .epub
Anonymous
Give Up Activism .epub
Antagonism
Class Analysis, for Anti-Capitalist Struggle .epub
Bordiga versus Pannekoek .epub
Antagonism and Practical History
Beasts of Burden: Capitalism, Animals, Communism .epub
Berkman, Alexander
In Reply to Kropotkin .epub
War Dictionary .epub
Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism .epub
Black, Bob
Wooden Shoes or Platform Shoes: Class Struggle Social Democrats: Or, The Press of Business .epub
Bordiga, Amadeo
The Balkan War .epub
Seize Power or Seize the Factory? .epub
Theses of the Abstentionist Communist Faction of the Italian Socialist Party .epub
Party and Class .epub
The Democratic Principle .epub
Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle .epub
Dialogue with Stalin .epub
Doctrine of the Body Possessed by the Devil .epub
Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party .epub
Activism .epub
The Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism .epub
The Revolutionary Program of Communist Society Eliminates All Forms of Ownership of Land, the Instruments of Production and the Products of Labor .epub
Buick, Adam
Bordigism .epub
Bukharin, Nikolai
Anarchy and Scientific Communism .epub
Cafiero, Carlo
Anarchy and Communism .epub
Camatte, Jacques
The Democratic Mystification .epub
Bordiga and the Passion for Communism .epub
Communist Effort
Platform .epub
Communist League of Tampa
To Hell with Democracy? .epub
Weekend at Bernie's .epub
Damen, Onorato
The Russia We Love and Defend .epub
Dauvé, Gilles
Capitalism and Communism .epub
Notes on Trotsky, Pannekoek, Bordiga .epub
The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin .epub
Critique of the Situationist International .epub
Fascism and Anti-Fascism .epub
When Insurrections Die .epub
Debord, Guy
A User's Guide to Détournement .epub
Endnotes
Communisation and Value-Form Theory .epub
Engels, Friedrich
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy .epub
The German Ideology, Part I .epub
The Communist Manifesto .epub
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League .epub
Synopsis of Capital .epub
On Authority .epub
Gauche Communiste de France
The Russian Experience .epub
Theses on the Nature of the State and the Proletarian Revolution .epub
The Task of the Hour: Formation of the Party or Formation of Cadres .epub
Nature and Function of the Proletarian Party .epub
Present Problems of the Workers' Movement: Against the Concept of the "Brilliant Leader" .epub
Present Problems of the Workers' Movement: "Discipline, the Principle Strength" .epub
The Function of Trotskyism .epub
Welcome to Socialisme ou Barbarie .epub
The Evolution of Capitalism and the New Perspective .epub
Goldner, Loren
Communism is the Material Human Community: Amadeo Bordiga Today .epub
Didn't See the Same Movie: Review of Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che .epub
Gorter, Herman
The World Revolution .epub
Historical Materialism .epub
Open Letter to Comrade Lenin .epub
The Organisation of the Proletariat's Class Struggle .epub
The Communist Workers' International .epub
The World Revolution .epub
International Communist Current
Bourgeois Organization: The Lie of the 'Democratic' State .epub
The Perspective of Communism .epub
The 1950s and 60s: Damen, Bordiga, and the Passion for Communism .epub
International Communist Party
Dialogue with Stalin .epub
The Exploits of University Marxism .epub
Why Russia Isn't Socialist .epub
The Party Does not Arise from "Circles" .epub
Capitalist Development and the American Civil War: the Civil War as the key moment in the subjugation of the black and white proletariat to the requirements of a rapacious bourgeoisie .epub
Internationalist Communist Group
Trotskyism: Product and Agent of Counterrevolution .epub
Communism against Democracy: Theses .epub
Communism against Democracy .epub
Theses of Programmatical Orientation .epub
Against the Myth of Democratic Rights and Liberties .epub
Internationalist Communist Tendency
Trotsky and Trotskyism .epub
The Italian Communist Left - A Brief Internationalist History .epub
Internationalist Perspective
Islamic Fundamentalism: Religious Fanaticism to Reinforce the State .epub
The Economy in the Russian Revolution .epub
Why Wealth Redistribution Cannot Solve Capitalism's Crisis .epub
This is What Democracy Looks Like .epub
Kämpa Tillsammans
Hamburgers vs Value .epub
Kantorovitch, Haim
On Reading Trotsky's Book "The Third International After Lenin" .epub
Kropotkin, Peter
The Conquest of Bread .epub
La Guerre Sociale
The Question of the State .epub
Toward the Human Community .epub
Le Frondeur
Democracy .epub
Les Amis de 4 Millions de Jeunes Travailleurs
A World without Money: Communism .epub
Democracy .epub
Excerpt from A World Without Money: Communism .epub
L'Insecurite Sociale
Communism: Points for Consideration .epub
The Communist Tendency in History .epub
Luxemburg, Rosa
Introduction to Political Economy .epub
Lyon, Bernard
We are not "anti" .epub
Marx, Karl
The German Ideology, Part I .epub
Wage Labour and Capital .epub
The Communist Manifesto .epub
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League .epub
Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" .epub
Letter "On Proudhon" .epub
Value, Price and Profit .epub
New York World interview with Karl Marx .epub
Mattick, Paul
What will I Do When America Goes to War? .epub
Karl Kautsky: From Marx to Hitler .epub
Monsieur Dupont
Democracy .epub
Moss, Sam
The Impotence of the Revolutionary Group .epub
Mouvement Communiste
Anti-Globalization: the Socialism of Imbeciles .epub
Critical Review of "The ABC of Communism" 90 Years Later: The Bankruptcy of the Analysis of Capitalism Made by the Communist International .epub
Négation
LIP and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution .epub
Nicolaievsky, Boris
Karl Marx: Man and Fighter .epub
Pannekoek, Anton
Socialism and Religion .epub
The Destruction of Nature .epub
Roosevelt .epub
The Great European War and Socialism .epub
German Socialism in the War .epub
New Tactics Against War Basis of New International .epub
The New Blanquism .epub
World Revolution and Communist Tactics .epub
Social Democracy and Communism .epub
Communism and Religion .epub
On the Communist Party .epub
Workers' Councils .epub
People's Democracy .epub
Perlman, Fredy
Commodity Fetishism .epub
The Reproduction of Daily Life .epub
Philoren
Money Must Go! .epub
Poor, the Bad and the Angry
A Contribution to the Politics of the Future -- The Basic Perspectives of the Poor, the Bad and the Angry .epub
Notes on Democracy .epub
Our Antipolitics .epub
Reinvention of Everyday Life
A Modest Proposal for How the Bad Old Days Will End .epub
Robin Goodfellow
Marx-Engels and Democracy (Part One) .epub
Marxism in a Nutshell: From the Criticism of Capitalism to a Classless Society .epub
Rosenberg, Arthur
A History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five-Year Plan .epub
Rubin, Isaak Illich
Abstract Labour and Value in Marx's System .epub
Rühle, Otto
Speech in the Reichstag .epub
Moscow and Ourselves .epub
Karl Marx: His Life and Work .epub
Rutgers, S.J.
The Left Wing .epub
Sauvage, Eden
Marx's Dialectical Method .epub
The Poverty of Left-Wing Activism .epub
Smith, Cyril
Marx versus Historical Materialism .epub
Hegel, Marx and the Enlightenment .epub
Socialist Propaganda League of America
Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America .epub
Solidarity
Third Worldism or Socialism .epub
Souvarine, Boris
Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism .epub
Subversion
Ireland, Nationalism, and Imperialism: The Myths Exploded .epub
Labouring in Vain: Why the Labor Party Is Not a Socialist Party .epub
The Revolutionary Alternative to Left-Wing Politics .epub
Surplus Club
Trapped at a Party Where No One Likes You .epub
United Workers Party
Anti-Parliamentarism and Council Communism .epub
Revolutionary Parliamentarism .epub
Wildcat
Capitalism and its Revolutionary Destruction .epub
How Socialist Is the Socialist Workers Party? .epub
The Bosses Have No Country: Marxists and the So-Called Problem of Imperialism .epub
Against Democracy .epub
Wolman, Gil J.
A User's Guide to Détournement .epub
Workers League for a Revolutionary Party
How to Explain a "Transitional Program" to a Simple Worker .epub
World Communist Group
Programme .epub
Theses .epub

About red texts

What this site is

red texts archives communist documents. These documents are often available elsewhere, but are not always proofread or presented with simple formatting. This site aims to remedy that, at least for a small set of texts.

This site originally began as a personal labor. Documents I intended to read and re-read were proofread and converted to plain text files that were very minimally marked-up with multimarkdown. This work began on 2015-04-05 as a site hosted on neocities. Since 2015-08-05 has had its current domain. In September 2017 red texts became a collaborative project hosted on github thanks to the kind encouragement and hard work of xatasan. The plan is to have many comrades contributing new texts or fixes to existing texts, and, if they wish, hosting these texts on their own sites. Right now there are at least two mirrors, one at tilde.town and another at yuuko.tv, offering more formats and features than this site.

Our markdown files (using pandoc's flavor of markdown) can be got from the red texts project's github page. When viewing the text files, Windows users will need a text editor that handles the Unix-style line breaks that most operating systems use. One option is geany.

Wait--what do you mean by communism?

All through history the exploited have dreamed of a world without poverty and class distinctions: communism. Communism means an end to property, i.e., the right to exclude some people from the land and factories cultivated and built by the common labor of the exploited. In communist society production is for meeting human needs, not for sale on the market. There will be no money, no rich and poor, no state to mediate the conflicts of a class-divided society. Communism is a unified human community.

In the 19th century capitalism increased productivity exponentially. It created an international, interconnected market. Capitalism created -- for the first time in human history -- the possibility of satisfying the material desires of all. Yet this possibility was overridden by the needs of the market economy. What was produced was only what could be sold for a profit. Competition forced capitalists to attack wages at every opportunity. Periodic crises threw workers into poverty amidst plenty. As Marx put it, "accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at the opposite pole."

Still, capitalism played a progressive role in the 19th century. It laid the foundations for its own supersession. The rapidly growing working class -- the proletariat -- was born of socialized production and had no property of its own. It was the first exploited class capable of and needing to abolish property in general. It was the first class whose communism had a material basis.

In the 19th century imperialist competition and environmental destruction did not yet imperil the future of the human species. Moreover, the working class was still small and centered in a few countries. The agenda of the working class, then, was to bide its time and develop its own strength within capitalist society. Workers participated in unions, ran candidates in elections, and even took the side of the then-progressive capitalist states in their wars with feudal rivals.

This peaceful evolution dead-ended in 1914. The First Imperialist World War and the working class insurrections that ended it made communist revolution an urgent necessity and immediate possibility. Starting in 1917 revolution spread from Russia to the rest of the world. Tragically, only in backwards Russia did the working class seize and hold onto power. Russia was a poor, peasant-dominated country, one ravaged by years of imperialist and civil war. The Russian workers could move ahead only with help from the working class abroad. This help never came; the parties of the right and left crushed the uprisings of the western European workers. To ensure the survival of the sole bastion of world revolution, the isolated Russian revolutionaries were compelled to use the revolutionary state to simultaneously repress the peasantry and rapidly increase the productivity of an immature capitalist economy -- all while trying to preserve their autonomy as a revolutionary class. The hope was to hang on long enough for the western European revolution. The "Socialist" content of the Soviet Union was thus wholly political. It existed only so long as the Russian state faithfully advanced the cause of world revolution. When Stalin declared "socialism in one country," consecrating a backwards capitalism as socialism, and ensuring there would be no revolution in the West, the Russian Revolution was finally and unmistakably crushed. The Soviet Union survived and flourished, but only after the revolutionaries were integrated into, and then destroyed by, a state purged of any revolutionary content.

The rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union cost millions of lives but was an appealing model for the Third World capitalist class. Soviet "communism" became nothing more than an ideology of state-driven capitalist development for backwards countries. The "communist" or "socialist" countries that have existed -- from Mao's China to Fidel's Cuba to Chavez's Venezuela -- had and have nothing to do with the communism of the workers' movement. They were or are societies in which the state has taken on the role of capitalist, a possibility foreseen even by the 19th century workers' movement.

In reaction to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, a "communist left" emerged in the early 1920s. These communists defended the Russian Revolution but fought against the compromises and betrayals the Russian communists and the Communist International made in order to defend the Russian state. The communist left, then as now, stood against capitalism and all its defenses: democracy, elections, unions, nationalism, national liberation, anti-fascism, national defense, and so on.

red texts primarily collects documents from this left communist tradition.

Lastly

This project was inspired by sites I used to visit such as the For Communism - John Gray website. To the extent they still exist and I can remember them, these are listed in the links section.

If you have contributions, corrections, questions, comments, or whatever, send them to schalken at warpmail.net.

A word of warning

I don't endorse sites listed here. I have reservations about some of them. All the same, each site linked below should prove interesting or useful in some fashion.

Text archives (sites like this one, but better)

Political groups or individuals