A Little Communist Reading List

Madeline Davis
2 min readFeb 2, 2021

A colleague at my charity job asked me to make them a little reading list to help them educate themselves about their politics. It’s mostly just my favorites from my bookshelf and is in no way meant to be comprehensive on anything, and it’s worth saying this comes from a UK trans charity working perspective.

Bolded ones are zines or articles, stared ones are more accessible

General Socialism

Capital by Karl Marx (Do not read alone, focus on first two chapters, and use the David Harvey or Harry Cleaver Guides)

Capitalist Realism — Mark Fisher

*Red Rosa — Kate Evans

Reform or Revolution — Rosa Luxemburg

*A Brief History of Neoliberalism — David Harvey

Democratic Confederalism — Abdullah Ocalan

BIPOC Socialism and Abolition

The Golden Gulag — Ruth Wilson Gillmore

*As Black As Resistance — Samudzi & Anderson

Insurgent Empire — Priyamvada Gopal

*What about the Rapists — Dysophia

Queer Socialism

*Captive Genders — Stanley & Smith

Invert Journal V1 (In particular Gender as Accumulation Strategy and Transsexual Solidarity)

Normal Life — Dean Spade

*Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Survival, Revolt and Queer Antagonist Struggle

Pink Triangles, Radical Perspectives on Gay Liberation — Pam Mitchell

*Radical Transfeminism Zine

*Dangerous Spaces, Violent Resistance, Self-Défense & Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender

Raha, Nat. 2017. “Transfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 116 (3): 632–46. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3961754.

*Wages for Transition — Harry Josephine Giles

How Do Gender Transitions Happen — Jules Gleeson https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/how-gender-transitions-happen/

The Limits of Trans Liberalism — Nat Raha

Hot Allostatic Load — Charity Porpentine Heartscape

Anything from https://pinko.online/

Feminism and Socialism

*Feminism, Interrupted — Lola Olufemi

*Women, Race, and Class — Angela Davis

The Xenofeminist Manifesto — Laboria Cuboniks

*Quiet Rumors, An Anarcha-Feminist Reader — Dark Star

Anything from LIES, A JOURNAL OF MATERIALIST FEMINISM

*Anarchism and Other Essays — Emma Goldman

Charities and Socialism

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded — INCITE Collective

On Being Included — Sara Ahmed

*How To Fire Your Boss, A Workers’ Guide to Direct Action

*The Constructive Subversive’s Guide to Organisational Cange

*Accomplices Not Allys, Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex, An Indigenous Perspective

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