Just in terms of single articles or speeches I have a few favourites:
Lenin's A Liberal Professor on Equality
Mine would be Marx (obviously), Gramsci, and Connolly. I've an appreciation for Lenin and Trotsky and Luxemburg too.
You being a Yank I'd say take a look at Eugene Debs. It's always very nice to read from a home-grown socialist who applies socialist ideas to your own country's circumstances, although of course some will be out of date by now. It helps in seeing socialism as this internationalist idea belonging to no country and not some cliched Russian thing.
If you want to read a bit more of Connolly I made this here post on reddit a while back that includes essentially all of his main writings aside from the short book Labour In Irish History.
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/43o24j/james_connolly_selected_writings/
As mentioned in the comments there, State Monopoly versus Socialism is also well worth a read. It's very short too.



MarxismFavorite Piece of Socialist Literature?May 22, 2016 at 1:28 PM