Then again, I rarely participate in political discussions that I don't know about.

If only more people thought or behaved this way. You're on the right track then. For me my first foray into serious geo-politics was when I wrote a paper on Iran-Contra for a sociology course which also led me to diving into the history of Iran's conflicts with the west, and from there I started trying to unravel the confusing mess that western sources try to make Palestine seem like, only to finally come to the (correct) conclusion that the only answer to any of these problems is for the US and all it's colonial projects be dismantled as soon as possible.

Then when gamergate happened and a whole new generations of kids started getting radicalized by mask off fascists I came to another (also correct) conclusion: The only people truly ready and willing to fight fascists were anarchists and communists and that's how I ended up on the old Chapo subreddit and then here.

The folks around here are extremely knowledgeable and you will learn a hell of a lot through osmosis but eventually you'll want to read some of this stuff yourself. In addition to what @[email protected] gave you I also recommend Kropotkin's Mutual Aid A Factor Of Evolution which is not Marxist per se, but a great refutation of the "muh human nature means communism doesn't work" thought terminating cliche.

Finally I would recommend bumping State and Revolution up the que in that list just because it is such a fuckin banger and isn't long. The opening passage roped me right in:

What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!

When I first read that I was like "Oh shit he predicted what happened to MLK Malcolm X and Fred Hampton all the way back in 1917"

Good!

Let me know if you want some basic Marxist recommendations.