Hey all, I've just been reading Lenin's "What is to be Done" and I for some reason I really feel motivated to start a book club now, especially knowing that was (a part of) how he got his start in organizing around 1894. Especially by the part where, I am paraphrasing, he says that you become a 'professional' rev. only through years of practice (or use Praxis here). I am not planning on running a secret 'conspiratioral' tight-knit circle of revolutionaries, I don't think my capabilities are fit for anything like that, but running a book club would be a step in that direction. Maybe someone will emerge from it who will?
Anyways, it's s first step, not that we should hope for us to become a vanguard out of a library, just that in terms of organizing, this type of amateurish learning circle is usually helpful in the beginning. As the group grows you can expand to informal propagandizing and agitational work, as the book clubs of the 1890s in Russia did. It would probably just be in the form posts online, but that is our analogue to the printing press.
But I am saying this without any experience and only having read about it, not done it. If any of you have any experience or anything like that, it would be helpful to know. I am thinking of contacting a local left-wing party (not communist, dem-soc) or their youth wing on help with this, but it is entirely achievable and desirable to do it on my own, just that it would be easier with help. I am not familiar with the organisation and don't have any contacts besides the ones or their websites, but I don't see a problem with mooching off of them.
This can also be done online, but frankly, that is not what I am looking for. I know a few places that could plausibly be used for it, free of charge.
OPSEC is important, I know the secret services of neighbouring countries actively have spied on anarchist book clubs and even Fridays for Future, deporting someone for giving a presentation on Marxism (Russian citizen). The rules aren't so draconian here, but OPSEC is still necessary.
as someone who has run many book clubs:
- join a bookclub. this way you can learn what works and what doesnt in practice. while i was running my club i participated in many others to see how things are done differently and adapted them to my own club.
- find a location. make it cozy
- have drinks and snacks. advertise it. people love to snack
- figure out how to organise discussion. this also depends on the amount of people. try to limit to 15 i would say. 15-20 or more people would require breakout groups imho.
- find people to do it. either spread word of mouth or through social media etc. depends on your OPSEC needs.
- be consistent. once a month or once every two weeks (while reading parts of a book, or chapter by chapter) should be accessible for most people.
- your local left wing party probably has a book club / educational thing organised. i would be surprised if not.
but in general its like organising any other recurring event. lmk if you have any further questions.
How would you get membership initially? The other reply suggested posters, that could be one way. I'm thinking more of just gathering membership on social media, but starting an account doesn't necessarily mean anyone will actually see your posts, even if they care about the topic. I know a few left wing oriented groups and organisations that I am a part of that definetly have socialists amongst them...
Any ideas?
I did it through talking about it in related orgs, other book clubs and on university campus. You don’t necessarily need to target socialists (and likely that you won’t get just socialists). A lot of non socialists join reading groups because they find it interesting, but they don’t agree with the texts politically. Just pointing that as a potential scenario in your group.
I’m someone who has only started 1 book club, and did so about a month ago. So far it’s had about 8-11 people at each meeting. What worked for me:
- Have it be a book people want to read!
- We started with a group of about 4 people, and we advertised via word-of-mouth, posters around key spots in the city, and announcements within a relevant casual hangout space. Putting up 60 posters got us 3 attendees, who were enthusiastic to be there, compared to other methods which still got people but less talkative/enthusiastic ones. I’ll note that postering is much faster with a friend/comrade and a packing tape dispenser.
- The location was in a reservable library room with a big TV for displaying questions and comfy chairs. I also made sure to bring snacks and masks. Make it easy for people to use them- unopened snack boxes might go untouched, and people might need to be prodded into wearing masks.
- We have a weekly consistent schedule right after our organization’s regular meeting. Makes it super easy for org members to attend and also makes the reading club work as a way of introducing people to the organization.
- I come up with reading questions before the book club with another org member, it takes about 30 minutes for us to talk about the reading and generate a good set of questions.
- After it’s over many of us will head to a restaurant together. This makes for great socializing time and also lets us discuss book concepts in some more detail.
- facilitating the book club itself, once everyone has gathered, is a fairly low-lift task that can gain someone’s confidence in running meetings.
Could you go more in-depth on the other methods besides postering with which you got attendees?
The restaurant part sounds like a great idea, actually. Only problem is I'm a bit broke, but I'll manage scrape by (or at least I hope!).
I was thinking of holding the meetings at some dilapidated anarchy bunk (no offense), but somewhere in a library or college would probably be better.
I initially got people interested in helping me run/advertise a reading group by directly pitching them on forming a transfeminist organization together, inside a casual trans hangout club at a local university, that I was already a repeat attendee of. In our organization’s first meeting we united on forming a reading group.
In this hangout club we also announced the existence of the reading group and a time/location, once we’d figured that out.
Beyond that and the posters, word-of-mouth was a big thing. Just directly inviting friends we had in the city to come attend.
Your process may be different because there’s less casual hangout space infrastructure for socialists compared to trans people. I’ve also recently had success pitching people on the reading group at DSA events, so your local left-wing party might have some people you can get interested if you can find ways to hang out with them.
In case you want to chat more in-depth, feel free to DM for my Signal! I’m still very inexperienced of course but it still may be helpful
