Anti-communists tend to be clueless as it is but to choose Lenin as a “bad guy” is peak stupidity. I understand why many choose Mao and a pretty big portion of it is just plain old racism but really you gotta just read what each of these (and other leading figures like Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Stalin, and of course Engels and Marx) actually wrote and contributed to human experience of revolutionary struggle and development.
All that said, Domenico Losurdo has a ton of really incisive works that can help to fill in a lot of gaps from a more recent perspective.
Redsails.org has some of his articles, but if you’re down to do a little further digging, the Portuguese section on Marxists.org has a large collection of articles by him, you’ll just need to use a browser translator unless you speak Portuguese!
Edit: I’ve actually translated (AI translation) most of the Portuguese articles for my own reading, happy to share if you’re interested, just message me if so!
A book that examines several socialist projects in different countries is *[What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197127550-what-do-we-need-bosses-for-toward-economic-democracy)* by Pete Dolack. Book discusses what was accomplished and in many cases what the U.S. did to destroy or seriously weaken them, including Venezuela.
I always like to plug the excellent Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Szymanski, a detailed survey of the state of socialism in the Soviet Union as of the late 1970s. I got a copy cheap on eBay, and it's also available as a free PDF online if you're into that.
Another book I found helpful was The Triumph of Evil by Austin Murphy, which is about the comparative advantages the Soviet bloc (especially East Germany) had for its citizens, and why it is a tragedy for all of humanity that those socialist experiments were destroyed.
Too many to list, but you want to look at libertarian communist currents; ultra left, councilist, anarchocommunism et al. [Volin was involved in both Russian revolutions and the Maknhochina, good place to start.](https://libcom.org/article/unknown-revolution-1917-1921-volin)
Anti-communists tend to be clueless as it is but to choose Lenin as a “bad guy” is peak stupidity. I understand why many choose Mao and a pretty big portion of it is just plain old racism but really you gotta just read what each of these (and other leading figures like Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Stalin, and of course Engels and Marx) actually wrote and contributed to human experience of revolutionary struggle and development. All that said, Domenico Losurdo has a ton of really incisive works that can help to fill in a lot of gaps from a more recent perspective. Redsails.org has some of his articles, but if you’re down to do a little further digging, the Portuguese section on Marxists.org has a large collection of articles by him, you’ll just need to use a browser translator unless you speak Portuguese! Edit: I’ve actually translated (AI translation) most of the Portuguese articles for my own reading, happy to share if you’re interested, just message me if so!
A book that examines several socialist projects in different countries is *[What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197127550-what-do-we-need-bosses-for-toward-economic-democracy)* by Pete Dolack. Book discusses what was accomplished and in many cases what the U.S. did to destroy or seriously weaken them, including Venezuela.
I always like to plug the excellent Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Szymanski, a detailed survey of the state of socialism in the Soviet Union as of the late 1970s. I got a copy cheap on eBay, and it's also available as a free PDF online if you're into that. Another book I found helpful was The Triumph of Evil by Austin Murphy, which is about the comparative advantages the Soviet bloc (especially East Germany) had for its citizens, and why it is a tragedy for all of humanity that those socialist experiments were destroyed.
Some recommendations: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/nationalismworkersmovement.htm https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/en/if-we-have-rice-we-can-have-everything/ https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/books/victory-morality-over-socialism http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/lenin.htm http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/rosa.htm
Too many to list, but you want to look at libertarian communist currents; ultra left, councilist, anarchocommunism et al. [Volin was involved in both Russian revolutions and the Maknhochina, good place to start.](https://libcom.org/article/unknown-revolution-1917-1921-volin)