I'm at a loss for what you think I think management is because it certainly isn't "a single manager to solve problems" nor "top-down" nor excluding of employees from reporting or decision-making. Perhaps we agree but use language differently:
These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Of course, we should increase education for everyone. It enables better workplace democracy and efficiency. But as per the article I linked in my last comment, specialization and division of labour (required for efficient production) means some workers will also specialize in management, i.e., become managers.
I'm curious what "current dogma" you're thinking about that says managers will become obsolete.
I think you are very narrowly defining manager as a manager of capital (i.e., seeking to maximize profits without care for what products are being made). I think you should read this: https://redsails.org/the-relationships-between-capitalists/
As Marx later emphasizes, one consequence of the development of management as a distinct category of labor is that the profits still received by owners can no longer be justified as the compensation for organizing the production process. But what about the managers themselves, how should we think about them? Are they really laborers, or capitalists? Well, both — their position is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are performing a social coordination function, that any extended division of labor will require. But on the other hand, they are the representatives of the capitalist class in the coercive, adversarial labor process that is specific to capitalism.
It is only the last part — the coercive, adversarial role played as representatives of capital — that will become obsolete. The coordination part of management (which includes coaching and motivation and conflict resolution) will remain.
My experience with organizations, from families to RPG groups to community associations to capitalist enterprises, is that in a management void, some people will take on management responsibilities. Since these roles require skill and entail responsibility for certain tasks, it's better to formalize it and train people for it. Do you not also see this in the organizations you are part of? Or could you be underestimating the amount of labour others are putting in to managing your community?
Workflow optimization and employee morale will still be important under socialism.
Workflow optimization is just management of people/resources/timelines (and is present in non-repetitive jobs too): what processes aren't working well together, what were the root causes of issues we encountered, how do we fix these problems? This, too, gets better with experience and study and some workers should specialize in this sort of management.
Employee morale (and other aspects of emotional work) will also still be a relevant question under socialism: how do you balance a specific worker's development interests with the needs of the job, how do you manage interpersonal conflict, how do you build consensus for or mediate disagreement raising from decisions the group needs to make? Straight-up boring old motivation questions also do not disappear just because workers have a stake in the fruits of their labour.
It's not clear to me why management would become obsolete. Good management (the coordination of people, resources, and timelines) requires skill and is a science, and the efficiency we get from division of labour/specialization suggests workplaces would be better off if some workers specialized in management roles.
See, for example, Krupskaya:
We, Russians, have hitherto shown little sophistication in this science of management. However, without studying it, without learning to manage, we will not only not make it to communism, but not even to socialism.
I agree with another poster that more recent writers can be easier entry points into theory because the authors translate it in ways that highlight ML theory's relevance to today and recent history. As the other poster mentioned, Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds is good on breaking through cold war nonsense about the USSR, there's a couple chapters online here. Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter history dissects the dominant ideology of our time. There's a short summary of that book by the author here.
No one here has yet tackled the question on how important it is to read Capital: I think it's crucial. There are so many concepts it lays out and arguments it refutes that it makes reading other theory much easier. I think of Lenin's Imperialism as a sequel to Capital, so it makes sense to me you find it challenging to read. That said, Capital is also challenging to read and it might help to familiarize yourself with some of the concepts it covers before you tackle it. Here are some (mostly short) essays for that purpose.
I've posted a lot of links from RedSails because it was started for this purpose: to make theory accessible and demystified and relevant for today. If there's a topic or author you want to read more on, it has curated articles for those ends.
I'll end with my favourite Lenin, which I think highlights why we can't "go back" to some better time before capitalism but must go through capitalism to socialism.
Yes, exactly.
She did! https://redsails.org/winged-eros/
Briefly, Kollontai promotes "Winged Eros", which is a multifaceted connection between people, and not "Wingless Eros", which is sex without friendship or emotion. But on the other hand, she also denounces the bourgeois ideal of love, which is possessive and centered around the economic unit of the married couple, and which denies the multifaceted nature of love.
The essay covers more than just that though: she starts by tracing how ideals of love change as socioeconomic systems develop, and she ends with a discussion of what proletarian ideals of love could be. It's a great essay.
Can you please let me know how often I should post such that I am neither terminally online nor suspiciously off-line?
It's strange to me that being responsive to questions, regardless of the amount of social clout someone has, is somehow spun as a bad characteristic about Roderic here.
I think dota has a lot of avenues for better understanding communism and dialectics.
As one example, the way the five roles fit together in the balancing of their power spikes and the harnessing of their skill sets towards a common goal, it makes me think of this Che quote: