Socialist Worker published a series on ten classics of the socialist tradition back in 2008 and 2009. I think that these works would form the basis for a marvelous book club or discussion group, which I may eventually attempt to organize.
In the first installment, Todd Chretien writes about the Communist Manifesto.
Liberal and conservative historians want you to believe that society has always been divided between the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, men and women, etc. — division based on money, race, nationality is built into our human nature.
The Manifesto takes a radically different view: Humans lived for thousands of years in what Marx and Engels called “primitive communism” — by which they meant societies that existed in every part of the world where cooperation and mutual reliance, and not competition, formed the basis of survival. At the time, this was based on cutting-edge anthropological research that was very controversial, but today, all but a few right-wing cranks accept that this is the truth about pre-class human society.
Read the article: The Communist Manifesto | SocialistWorker.org.
Read the book: Manifesto of the Communist Party | Marxists.org.