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I suggest reading Marx. There is no need to excuse the atrocities of “actually existing socialist” states, because they have absolutely nothing to do with what Marx wrote, or the actual needs and desires of revolutionary workers.
Despite being under siege from Western imperialism, 20th century socialist projects still generally achieved superior results in measures of physical quality of life compared to capitalist countries when adjusting for levels of economic development:
In 30 of 36 comparisons between countries at similar levels of economic development, socialist countries showed more favorable PQL outcomes ( p < .05 by two-tailed t-test). This work with the World Bank’s raw data included cross-tabulations, analysis of variance, and regression techniques, which all confirmed the same conclusions. The data indicated that the socialist countries generally have achieved better PQL outcomes than the capitalist countries at equivalent levels of economic development.
I found ‘Farming Cuba: Urban Agriculture from the Ground Up’ by Carey Clouse really up lifting. It’s about the grassroots urban agriculture projects that were started by normal Cubans during the special economic period and then encouraged and formalised by the Cuban state. The book is very easy to read and also left me feeling very hopeful. Reading it was like realising that another world isn’t just possible, it’s already here - just localised and somewhere else. But the general lessons felt extremely prescient for the challenges that are going to face us because of climate change and definitely helped reinforce my bloomer side against my doomer one.
Idk if this helpful to say, but don’t feel like you have to be constantly ‘on’ politically. You mention in some of your posts in this thread that you do a lot of activism. Make sure that you take care of yourself and that you let yourself have a life outside of politics.
There was this thingy that was released recently: https://www.bookdepository.com/Fundamental-Principles-Communist-Production-Distribution-Group-International-Communists/9798615430794 It is a really interesting little book with “the road not taken” kind of approach to communism. And some criticism of the ML approach.
