And I hate people who are like “oh you don’t need to read theory!” (translation: “Theory isn’t for the likes of you, peasant”) to working class folks.
That said, we’re often too busy to read super long super dense super dry theory (or at least I am) and it’s often not easy for us to even get our hands on theory to read, plus a lot of stuff we’re told is “foundational” is super abstract, written in historical excessively wordy style and has very little human element and is basically not easy to apply to our own lives. I tend to prefer pamphlets that are well edited and get their theoretical point across without excess verbiage, and ethnographic stuff with interviews with actual people (especially stuff on issues that relate to me, like intersections of class and gender) because the human element makes it interesting and relatable.
Like I’ve gotten through like 5 big books on gender performance and class and more than a few grad school theses in two weeks, but I’m still struggling to get through Capital, because Capital is wordy, and abstract and doesn’t have the emotional resonance that stuff with interviews with working class women does for me. That said once you’ve read some of the stuff that has more emotional resonance it’s a lot easier to go back and read Marx and so on, because now there are examples of how the theory is applied to real life and people.
Like don’t get me wrong dense economic and philosophical texts are great and I’m not telling you not to read them, read Marx and Gramsci and Foucault and all those titans of leftist thought if you want, but remember that they’re not the only theory game in town, and that you’re not a failure if it’s hard or you don’t finish, our lives are busy and exhausting, and not being able to get through a famously dense and for most people boring economic text from the 19th century doesn’t mean you’re not smart enough to understand this stuff (also no one understands the Frankfurt school, not even the Frankfurt school)
Some places to read stuff for free:
Marxists Internet Archive (Has an audiobook section which is awesome)
Jurn free academic article search
The Conquest of Bread on project gutenberg
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Sojourner Truth Organization Archive
google books
Please feel free to add more.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 