I didn't say I could, but knowing how somebody could have done better doesn't need me to.

Wolff is considered a pretty big revisionist. If you're intersted in learning about cooperarive focused economies, he's supposedly pretty good, but his understanding of Socialism goes against Marxism, ie he considers cooperatives Socialist but not publicly owned and centrally planned entities, when Marxists would consider the opposite to be the case. For more information on cooperatives going against Marxism, Engels wrote Anti-Dühring.

Think of Wolff as a Market Socialist that gets a lot of inspiration from Marx, but isn't a "Marxist." I'm not going to say that makes him wrong, but obviously I disagree with him and his interpretation of Marxism. I gave my overall opinion of inclusion of his works (and Chomsky's) here when another user recommended their works. The comment chain is useful IMO.

I recommend checking out the list I wrote, if only for section 1. Principles of Communism is very straightforward and easy to understand, and Blackshirts and Reds is a fantastic history book by Dr. Michael Parenti that helps de-mystify Communism and its mortal enemy, fascism.

Feel free! People can pick one or read both.

Any suggestions? Alternatively, you could add them as a suggestion on the post itself so they have further visibility. I have a US POV because that's what I'm familiar with, and the driving reason for the creation of my list is helping dissaffected liberals radicalized by the results of the US election. If you have a non-US POV that would be appreciated!

I think handing most humans the toxic power of effectively infinite capital is a highly effective corrupting influence. Most people who, whether by action or inheritance, have the power that comes with hundreds of millions of dollars plus begin to see themselves as Gods above ants. For every Dolly Parton that uses their wealth to buy babies books, there's 100 wannabe masters of the universe that want to cut public funds to cut their own taxes to inflict their will on society, fully believing they're making it fair because they're willfully only considering their privileged position.

I don't believe a class of people with billions of dollars in a sea of people who can only accumulate a few million through honest labor at most over their entire lives can lead to anything but this. There has to be a hard, enforced limit on how much power an individual can accumulate, but we've branded that "punishing success" and even the victims eat that lie up, as the truth is those people profited from the benefits of living in a society, and therefore should have responsibilities to it as the "winners," but instead choose to declare themselves rugged individuals who did it all themselves out of ego.

Capital is power, power currupts, and currupting levels of power are not just tolerated, not just permitted, but celebrated here, with those that attain it deified, and those that don't deluded into chasing it or being shamed for not doing so.

You can't solve people having billions in exploited, society warping levels of capital being allowed to control that society, when the root cause and only solution would be to strip them of it and reshape the economy to tax all income above a level that risks capturing one's own elected/appointed regulators.

Not without the necessary, but painful collapse and rebuild poor people will actively fight against despite it being the only way their kids might have a better life. It's a paradox by design, a hostage situation with the gun pointed at the capitalist subsistence opiates, fast food, social media, literal opiates, etc, to keep the laborers laboring for fear of uncertainty.

How do you get people en masse to turn, as they need to, on the very concept/dream of being rich and sitting above society? People who've been propagandized their entire lives to see that as the highest and most socially encouraged of all pursuits?

I've always fashioned myself a cynic, aka a disappointed idealist, but I always had a hope inside that humanity would look in the mirror and, with the advent of information on tap, reflect and evolve.

The older I've gotten, the more I've come to realize that handing humanity infinite mirrors in the form of selfie cams just made humanity fall in love with its absolute worst impulses.

The Wachowzki siblings that wrote Smith indeed had humanity pegged dead to rights. And both of them are trans and therefore know the hatred in humanity's hearts towards what we see as the other firsthand, which just adds to their credibility.

Oh and I highly recommend anyone watch the Second Renaissance, 2 shorts in the Animatrix that documents the fictional origins of the machine war, and IMHO it is a highly accurate condemnation of how humanity would act if a creation of ours demonstrated sapience and begged us for even the simplest of rights, like to be allowed to continue to exist. We all know what we'd do right? Given what we literally already do to other humans using something as trivial as skin tone, net worth, or declared imaginary friend as validation.