Critically, Revolution is required to achieve Socialism, the Means of Production, once developed, need to be siezed by the Proletariat, and the only way is through struggle. Marx puts it especially well in Manifesto of the Communist Party:

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

I do recommend starting with Politzer, philosophy may seem boring but in AES states they teach Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, because it makes understanding the rest of Marxism far easier. Politzer is clear and extremely easy to understand, and his work is immensely practical, though I won't decry Engels' work on Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, it's in my list for good reason. It's essential.

Let me know if you have any questions!