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Oh, and for nonfiction I'd highly recommend some David Graeber, he's really great at soft-selling socialism. He tends to start from a neutral positionand assume the reader doesn't have our sensibilities, and holds them by the hand through a series of individually mild and well-cited statements and leaves them in an unambiguously radical place.
Bullshit Jobs is an easy read and much better than it sounds. Debt: The First 5000 Years is his masterpiece, but is a much more challenging read.
I came here to recommend Bullshit Jobs, Debt by contrast I found too sweeping / less convincing (and in any case a much bigger ask for the reader)
I felt like I already knew pretty much everything Bullshit Jobs was going to say before it said it. Debt had some new ideas for me. I think your background matters a lot.
The Wretched of the Earth is always good. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and The State and Revolution have been what I would consider the 3 most impactful books on me in the "traditional" Marxist Canon (though in 2025 I plan on reading Capital volumes 1-3).
As for non-"traditional," Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti is my favorite recommendation for liberals, the ones who read it generally walk away with far less anti-AES brainworms, and the ones who don't read it wouldn't be willing to be impacted by it anyways. Losurdo's essay Has China Turned to Capitalism? as well as Roderic Day's Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" and China Has Billionaires have been crucial for understanding modern China, as well as understanding why people believe what they believe.
Jakarta Method and If We Burn by Vincent Bevins are really good. Jakarta Method is about CIA mass executions of communists, and If We Burn is about how to understand social movements post 2010.
A lot of good fiction and non fiction mentioned but one I haven’t seen so far is the Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
That one really feels like a key to unlock how much of all propaganda bullshit to me.
A recent one I read was Killing Hope by William Blum. Took me ages to finish it because every chapter just left me feeling like 
Not necessarily explicitly leftist or anti-imperialist but Chaos by Tom O'neill is a lot of fun and brainworm inducing.
Maybe the best thing I've encountered like what you're describing is maybe The Fever by Wallace Shawn. It's a one-man theatre performance about a guy truly beginning to understand the truth and consequences of imperialism for the first time.
Other recommends would be:
The first chapter of The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, read as a standalone short story. It's a climate horror about a wet-bulb event (where at a certain temperature in combination wity 100% humidity means the body can no longer cool itself by evaporative cooling) in Mumbai leading to a massacre that kills tens of millions.
The Semplica Girl Diaries by George Saunders, a short story about a hapless suburban mother trying to make ends meet who, for her daughter's birthday, irresponsibly spends a windfall on a set of ornamental Vietnamese girls who you suspend by a wire through their skulls on your lawn to display your wealth.
Those Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Leguin, a short story about a town whose prosperity depends on the unending suffering of a single girl.
Some other George Saunders stories might include Ghoul, about a worker/prisoner in a demented prison in which everyone is trapped in a deteriorating theme park and goes to work every day but it is enforced by capital punishment that no one can talk about the fact that no one will ever attend the park.
Brad Carrigan, American (this one is kind of wild) about a guy living inside a perpetually filming television show that has continued ad absurdum the ratchet of delivering increasing amounts of product to consumers while supports are continually stripped away.
Hello fellow Saunders-head :)
what y'all think about Lincoln in The Bardo
Had pretty strong issues with it on a first read. It felt like there was far too many location specific plot points with characters needing to align themselves just so (to the point it almost felt slapstick).
That said, I just found my copy over the holidays and plan to give it another shot
Brad Carrigan, American, is awesome. I love it, its so absurd, but among the absurdity are all these threads of thoughts and feelings that seem so familiar. This feeling of hopelessness that accompanies you're growing awareness of the horrors just outside your vision. The sudden change in perception of the people you thought you knew as they clash against your growing concern for the horrors just outside your vision, and your desire to provide any meaningful change you can muster. The desperate attempts to salvage the relations you had, foolishly believing that if you just explained it well enough, the horrors, your concerns, they would change too. Realizing just how vapid and materialistic these people we're, and seeing them for the hedonistic zombies they are. Ultimately, being painted as the villain, always being a downer, never grateful for your position, to good to accept life as it is, and willing to ruin the good life for everyone else for a people they all view as backwards. In the end, the only hope you can hold on to is the hope that, whatever comes after you, is imbued with your convictions and sees it through.
Its simply Incredible.
It's my favourite Saunders story, from my favourite of his collections. I agree, and I've never encountered another person who's read it except my partner!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar had a lasting impact on my outlook at life. It highlights the dangers of greed and overconsumption.
Malthusian drivel. From each caterpillar according to their length and colorfulness, to each caterpillar according to their hunger.
I'm not sure they really do what you describe, but I quite like This Soviet World, and The Cold War and Its Origins (or at least the parts up until the end of WWII that I have read). Killing hope as already recommended is great. Maybe Triumph of Evil?
This Soviet's World's depiction of science and agriculture is the starting point for a future. I love the idea of science being something people just do.
If you want to be completely immunized against all capitalist philosophy forever, I recommend The Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukacs.
He goes through the history of philosophy in Germany, taking apart each 'significant' philosopher in turn (Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kirkegaard, Nietzche, etc.) and showing that, at each stage, the philosophy being written (as well as the period in which it becomes popular) are entirely dependent on the psychological needs of the bourgeoisie in justifying and maintaining their rule at that specific moment in time.
He also shows at every stage how dialectical materialism is correct, and is the only true successor of the entire philosophical movement originating in ancient Greece. Just like communism is an evolution beyond the highest degree of capitalist organization, dialectical materialism is the evolution beyond the highest development of liberal philosophy (Hegel's dialectical idealism).
There is a price for this knowledge though, as the book is over 850 pages long.
If you want just a key slice, the chapter on Nietzsche is very good and gets across some key points, and is 'only' about 100 pages.
Fkin links direct to libgen, viva la hexbear
this very loosely fits but the Mistborn series, at least the first three books, are essentially about a workers/slave uprising and protracted peoples war against a tyrannical god-king and the aftermath and failure of the liberal project that follows
also a cute little love story in there and neat magic system involving eating metal-flakes and metabolizing them
The follow up series really hits hard the importance of a vanguard party
Blackshirts and Reds
Read Settlers, but seriously.
Also Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad
haven't read it yet but from what I've heard Losurdo's Liberalism: a Counter-History seems to fit
I have read it and I would disagree. That's a book for us.
"Kill Anything That Moves" left me feeling quite mind-injured.
Kill Anything That Moves
Killing Hope
The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
The Devil's Chessboard
Confessions of an Economic Hitman
I also liked The Illumantus series, but thats fiction.
Illuminatus cured me of conspiracism. Kind of like smoking the whole pack of cigarettes.
I heard reading a thousand plateaus can give you schizophrenia
No, but it will make you into a 
Only if you understand it (impossible)
I'll third Killing Hope.
Manufacturing Consent is of course a classic too.
The Man in the High Castle by PKD
Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti
didn't you find it kind of overly Doomer and pointless?
Also, what was the book written by some poloitican about a race of sci-fi aliens that starts a cult. The super rich aliens on the planet got bored and started kidnaping and torturing people for fun. It is trash but the guy that wrote it was like the head of a British bank or something so the vibe is super fucked.
So, I can think of two works specifically. And I have an idea of a third.
Thin air. It is a cyberpunk military fiction book. The inciting probelms are 1. Struggling to pay rent. 2. Disability accommodation 3.toxic masculinity. The author is British and went on to be a terf though his suspicious self loathing of masculinity. However that and market forces were in his good period and hard boiled action works about how capitlaism fucks stuff up.
Iron clad or Ogre by Adrian Tchaikovsky. They are both fun adventure stores about class struggle. Orge is more fleshed out and it specifically deals with a revolution being coopted. The twist at the end of that one actually hit me in the guts.
Then finally I don't know how to shape the idea. Any super hero book. Batman's super power is being rich. Spider man doesn't have to pay rent. And the only thing that holds him back from saving more people is having to have a day job. Technically any story where it isn't about asset accumulation has the potentially for a leftist reading but I haven't worked that out.
Oh, and The Time Wanderers. It is a soviet mystery sci fi novel in the far future. It is about the optimism and seeing a beautiful future ahead of you and the sadness of knowing you won't get to see it but your descendants will. It hits hard given how things have gone.
Me reading this thread: ✍️
The Dawn of Everything by David’s Wengrow and Graeber completely re-wrote my understanding of early human history and development in the best ways
