Yesss, we have to study lots of stuff. I personally have reserved time to study the works of Hukalaka Meshabob, the legendary Austro-Marxist who led the Commmunist Party of Bulgaria in 1911-13. That is not a typo, by the way. Meshabob, although a brilliant Austro-Marxist, was a bit of an egomaniac. He threw an extra "m" into the name of the Party to indicate that it was a Meshabob party.
But even more importantly, it is necessary to read the collected works of Sol Rubinstein-Garcia, the editor of the theoretical journal of the Bolshevique League of New Jersey in 1948. Rubinstein-Garcia was a drinking buddy of CLR James. The two used to frequent a bar called "The Chartreuse Garter" on Avenue B that was a hangout for alcoholic Schachtmanites and Trotskyists. After a night of one too many boiler-makers, Rubinstein-Garcia told James that lox was incomplete without bagel. Poor James, in his drunken stupor, thought that Rubinstein-Garcia said that Marx was incomplete without Hegel. This led James into a massive study of Hegel and consequently to his eventual split with the Trotskyist movement, which was insufficiently Hegelian in his view.
But most importantly, it is crucial (let me emphasize this--CRUCIAL) to master the economic theory developed by Grimsley Sneffingham. Sneffingham, an undeservedly obscure figure, came up with a synthesis of Marx, Keynes, and Picardo. Yes, Picardo--not Ricardo. Picardo is the Portugese economist who refined the theory of fictitious capital and came up with something called science-fictitious capital. In this theory, depressions are explained by visitations from far-off galaxies. For instance, the current problems of global capital could well be explained by unidentified flying objects that appeared last year over the island of Dominica and that were reported on in the Weekly Globe, in the same issue as the article "I Gave Birth to A Sixty Pound Baby."
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)