“There can be no revolution without revolutionary theory.”
Vladimir Lenin
This work comprehensively analyzes the capitalist mode of production, in particular through textile manufacturing, by Karl Marx
Das Kapital
This leader, who was jailed 29 times, most famously in Birmingham, spent his wedding night in a funeral home, and was a major Trekkie, convincing the actress playing Lieutenant Uhura, a black communications officer, to not leave the show.
Dr. MLK Jr.
The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.” - Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth
This internet icon is a prolific actor, perhaps most famous for his perennial role in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Danny DeVito
"I don't care if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."
Deng Xiaoping
This work distinguishes marginal improvements in bourgeois structures from genuine revolutionary activity, and when they can overlap, by Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution?
This revolutionary famously advocated for the partition of Switzerland at a UN meeting after they arrested his son. He said Switzerland was a “World mafia” and that he would nuke Switzerland if he could have.
Muammar Gaddafi
“The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.” – Mao Zedong
On contradiction
(Quotations from Mao Zedong / The Little Red Book are also accepted)
This iconic author, poet, and playwright, who was imprisoned for being gay, criticized the vanity of Victorian society in his famous work, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Oscar Wilde
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you cannot kill the revolution."
Fred Hampton
This work defines fascism as a development of capitalism, studies the fall of the USSR, and tirades against the lack of class analysis in the United States, by Michael Parenti
Blackshirts and Reds
As a 14 year old, this leader wrote a letter to FDR where he asked for $10.
Fidel Castro
“There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument... or it becomes the practice of freedom.” - Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
This actor and rap artist, who Jada Pinkett Smith preferred to her husband Will Smith, was an involved Black socialist, and was famously killed in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting.
Tupac Shakur
"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
Marcus Garvey
This work analyzes the appropriation of technology by anti-colonial freedom fighters and the dialects between colonists and the colonized, by Frantz Fanon
A Dying Colonialism
This leader was obsessed with the American founding fathers; his favorite was Thomas Jefferson. In fact, he wrote extensively to President Truman about how he believed his revolutionary struggle was similar to the American Revolutionary War.
Ho Chi Minh
“One must, if you please, distinguish between a “condition” and a “form of government”. A wonderfully profound distinction; it is like drawing a distinction between the “condition” of stupidity of a man who reasons foolishly and the “form” of his stupidity.” - Vladimir Lenin
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
This actor might not be known for his decades of consistent anti-genocide, anti-war, and environmental activism, but he is well known for his role as an incredible jumping superhero.
Mark Ruffalo
“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.”
Huey P. Newton
This work theorizes how a future socialist country ought to manage a multinational state, by Joseph Stalin
Marxism and the National Question
This leader was an avid cinephile who watched movies almost nightly, watching over 8,800 while the leader of his country. In particular, he was obsessed with Tarzan and American Western films.
Marshal Josip Broz Tito
“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is.” - Friedrich Engels
On Authority
One of the most famous actors ever, this moustached man was said to have lost a look-alike contest of himself and was exiled from the US after 40 years because of his political tendencies.
Charlie Chaplin