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Xander77 posted:Orson Scott Card's "we're all the same tribe, we all have the same rules, by which I mean human rules" speech in Xenocide, if you will. Care to copy and paste that, or point in direction of it? <edit> Also, 3/4 of the way through now I can recommend Jane Jacob's Dark Age Ahead. She is not strictly a leftist, more of a capital L liberal and social critic/commentator. Writing in 2004, Jacobs clearly predicts the 2008 housing crash, for instance. The book I think makes a decent companion read to Sagan's The Demon Haunted World. Sagan coming from the world of science, Jacobs form the world of urban design. A couple takes are clunky, but in general Jacobs nails things. As an architect I've always admired Jacobs since The Death and Life of the Great American Cities. gfarrell80 fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Aug 3, 2021 |
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Aug 3, 2021 00:49
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy isn’t the best thing ever written, but it explores politics in a not succ way, the potential need for revolution, and how people will mess up something awesome to make number go up. And lots of chapters about someone going out to look at rocks and lichen.
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Aug 3, 2021 22:43
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I'm reading the lonely century right now which isn't blowing my mind so far, but it is interesting because I've been thinking a lot about the various alienating mechanics of capitalism and how is explains so much of not just my own life but pretty much everything I see on a daily basis. Although, I really would like to read some contemporary books that are comprised mainly of solutions rather than a description of the problem, because at this point I feel like I see the problem clearly. Every book I read seems to be 300 pages of 'this is why it is hosed!' then about 10 pages of 'i dunno, tax the rich, but properly' or something tagged on at the end. Need more, because I'm starting to get a feeling of circling around the same thoughts and not making progress. I'm sure there are some books like that around, they just don't ever seem to come up in my searches and aren't the ones people most often talk about. I will get around to reading the rest of capital at some point, I've read part of it and various other marx writings, but I don't really understand...why communism has gone so badly in its various incarnations thus far - and while I want to, so I can decide if I think it can be fixed, I also am open to hearing ideas on how to improve the actual reality we have, or alternatives to it which are neither capitalist or communist.
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Aug 3, 2021 22:57
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roomtone posted:...why communism has gone so badly in its various incarnations thus far - Any deep discussion on this is really outside the scope of this thread. But for a starter I'd recommend Manufacturing Consent, The Jakarta Method, and Blowback Podcast Season 2. There's a lot of reasons, but mostly if you get in to the knitty and gritty most Communist states are immediately the active targets of pretty intense foreign intervention. The Russian and Chinese revolutions, for instance, both had substantial amounts of foreign troops coming in to intervene and try to kill the Communist baby in the cradle (not to mention Vietnam, Cuba and many leftist movements in South America and SE Asia). And if you look at many metrics, there are apologists who will say that communist states actually did pretty darn good, considering the uphill sledding they were going against (and that most of them are not true communist states anyways). Russkies beat the Nazis, put a man in space, all from a backwards Tsarist peasant society. Cubans do pretty good on medicine, literacy and infant mortality. Chinese depending on how you look at it may be pretty much eating our lunch now, again from a state that only 3-4 generations ago was a 'backward' horribly exploited colonial victim. More leftist lit I finished this summer: Eugene Deb's writings are also a strong recommend: Writings of Eugene V Debs: A Collection of Essays by America's Most Famous Socialist
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Aug 4, 2021 03:53
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gfarrell80 posted:Any deep discussion on this is really outside the scope of this thread. But for a starter I'd recommend Manufacturing Consent, The Jakarta Method, and Blowback Podcast Season 2. Thanks for those suggestions - I'll take all three.
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Aug 4, 2021 04:20
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Baka-nin posted:Two books come to mind, I'd like to throw From Victory to Defeat by Pao-yu Ching and The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao in this ring. I liked these two a lot more than Mao's China & After, Rise of the Red Engineers, and Cultural Revolution at the Margins.
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Aug 4, 2021 20:17
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Phew, finished a real honker of a tome: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West. Plunged in to it only because Chris Hedges noted it in one of his lectures. Tops out at 585 pages. John Ralston Saul nails quite a lot of important observations absolutely, but also goes wildly off the rails with several of his arguments. An abridged version of just the good stuff would probably knock this down to under 300 pages and be a very powerful concise book. Replace Dictatorship of Reason with Dictatorship of Capitalism and it would be more on the mark.
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Nov 6, 2021 21:57
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C. Wright Mills: 'The Power Elite', 1954. Awesome book. In my world it would be required reading for US high schoolers.
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Dec 7, 2021 01:36
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Eric Foner’s Reconstruction was pretty foundational in how I see american politics. I had to refrain from throwing it against the wall a few times at the incredible sense, well meaning northerners coming south and scratching their heads at why the freedmen didn’t want to participate in a wage labor system especially when there was very little cash to go around. Gosh, these people just want to tend their own crops and be left alone. We can’t have that now can we?
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Jan 3, 2022 12:23
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Alex Nunn's book about the Corbyn Leadership with emphasis on the wreckers from Labour HQ and their shithousery promises to be a good read for any UK-centric politics-heads. Especially if the Forde Report drops unredacted (surely someone will leak it?) soon as suspected.
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Jan 14, 2022 00:13
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Prole posted:Alex Nunn's book about the Corbyn Leadership with emphasis on the wreckers from Labour HQ and their shithousery promises to be a good read for any UK-centric politics-heads. Especially if the Forde Report drops unredacted (surely someone will leak it?) soon as suspected. Wonder if there is book about the shenanigans pulled on the Bernie 16 and 20 campaigns. I wouldn't want to read it, but would be good to have as a historical record. Another few leftist lit: Anything by Frederick Douglass. I read his first biography about his enslavement and escape. He shows a great psychological understanding of the tools used by oppressors to keep the oppressed compliant. Many of which you'll recognize as used by the capitalist to control wage slaves. It is a beautiful book, shows how compassionate individuals who show kindness to slaves quickly have the habit beaten out of them. Also the story of how he learned to read is amazing and hugely class and indoctrination loaded. Also: Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine. David Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
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Jan 25, 2022 03:36
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In case anyone is interested in some small sales going on: PM Press is having a sale where all of their ebooks are $1.99. You use the coupon "read" at checkout to get the discount. Goes until Feb 22. Verso books is having an "up to 40%" off on select stuff: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5258-red-day-radical-reading. Also, buying the physical version gets you the ebook version too. Shipping is $5 or free for a $40 order. This goes on until Feb 18.
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Feb 15, 2022 04:26
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Some smaller suggestions Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows Dialectics and Systems Theory by Richard Levins The Principal Contradiction by Torkil Lauesen For Marx by Louis Althusser Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution by Helen Yaffe Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century by John Smith
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Feb 15, 2022 05:57
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If anybody is looking for a leftist work of fiction that's not 900 pages and is even something of a pageturner, I cannot recommend Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart enough. It's like the inverse Starship Troopers in that the movie is disposable, the book is essential. If you enjoy how the movie ST was rediscovered/reconsidered over the last 10 years, WtD is a perfect fit for you. You will marvel and repeatedly shake your head in awe that this was published pre-9/11. The author says in an updated forward: quote:“I read this book for the first time in almost ten years to prepare this introduction. On one level I am pleased to see that it holds up. On another level, I was appalled. I found myself wondering if the current administration had read it and used it as an instruction manual.” That's not hyperbole, it straight up reads like an instruction manual. The movie is about the president fabricating a war to distract from personal affairs. The book is about how the the Gulf War was overtly staged and exaggerated and how a few Hollywood types helped George Bush design and direct it. There are many real world characters, it starts with Lee Atwater on his deathbed handing off the blueprints. There's a hardboiled detective trying to unravel it all, WtD is like a genre fiction take on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place. There are many footnotes detailing real world facts and events, and at the end of the book are a long list of lingering questions. Note: The book was originally published as American Hero. Avoid that version, as it was republished a couple years later as WtD with a couple extra chapters that recontextualizes the whole work into metafiction territory.
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May 8, 2022 21:34
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ProperCoochie posted:If anybody is looking for a leftist work of fiction that's not 900 pages and is even something of a pageturner, I cannot recommend Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart enough. Awesome recommendation. TrashFuture got me to read Baudrillard since they talk about him so drat much.
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May 9, 2022 09:27
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ProperCoochie posted:If anybody is looking for a leftist work of fiction that's not 900 pages and is even something of a pageturner, I cannot recommend Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart enough. I've always really liked the film (like Network and The Truman Show, it's one of those eerily prescient stories about how mass media infects/affects human lives/minds) so I am amazed I never thought to look up the novel. Thank you for this recommendation.
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May 9, 2022 15:06
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A couple excellent recent reads: Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, Timothy Mitchell (2011) White Collar: The American Middle Classes, C. Wright Mills (1951)
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Aug 8, 2022 18:49
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I have three books that come to mind right away as those that were the foundation of my politics. Wondering if you all have similar books: 1) The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin 2) The Prize by Daniel Yergin 3) Reconstruction by Eric Foner
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Oct 3, 2022 03:02
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Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated <- woof, a real eye opener. Also I did finish Gerald Horne's The Counter-Revolution of 1776 and can recommend it. Horne has a very academic prose style and the book becomes somewhat repetitive on its main points, but guaranteed to blow your mind a bit if you're married to the traditional history of the founding. Excellent use of primary source writings.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:05
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the written word is inherently reactionary and thus all books, no matter how "leftist" they pretend to be, are right wing. true materialists must shun the bourgeois abstractions of "theory" and "analysis" and immerse themselves only in the realm of the physical world, the staging ground for the revolution
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Dec 15, 2022 04:36
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^^This is the thread for leftist books, not anarchism(liberalism).  Just finished up with Parenti's 'The Assassination of Julius Caesar.' A very breezy read and not much different from modern historiography, but I imagine it was much more transgressive when it came out.
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Mar 17, 2023 11:05
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Yadoppsi posted:^^This is the thread for leftist books, not anarchism(liberalism). I liked this (and love Parenti in general), but I did think he was a little fast-and-loose when dealing with historical figures who opposed Roman oppression in some fashion. It's a bit weird to take famous quotations attributed to, like, Calgacus, as genuine when we know it was common practice for ancient Roman historians to use famous generals or tribal leaders as mouthpieces for their own views. I still think there's a lot to glean from that because, as Parenti takes a lot of care to point out, historiography has been dominated by the ruling class so it therefore reflects their views and prejudices. So for Calgacus you could use him as a springboard for an ideological rift within the Roman ruling classes of Tacitus' day, etc. rather than the angle Parenti took. Still though it's a good read and made me totally re-evaluate Clodius from the typical portrayal you get of him from both ancient and modern historians.
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Mar 17, 2023 14:11
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Yeah, it mainly made me reassess Clodius and just double downed for me how much of a pathetic little toadie gently caress Cicero was. fun read
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Mar 17, 2023 18:33
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Parenti is awesome. Currently on "Inventing Reality: Politics of News Media" Other good stuff: The State, 1918, Randolph Bourne Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies, 2010, Judith Stein Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, 1989, Barbara Ehrenreich. The Professional Managerial Class, 1977, John and Barbara Ehrenreich edit, also: William Morris: "Useful Work versus Useless Toil", "The Hopes of Civilization", and "How I Became a Socialist" Rosa Luxemburg, "Socialism or Barbarism: The Selected Writings of Rosa Luxemburg" Suggested essays: "Reform or Revolution" "The National Question" "Women's Suffrage and Class Struggle" "The Crisis of German Social Democracy" "Stagnation and Progress of Marxism" "The Accumulation of Capital - an Anti-Critique" "Order Prevails in Berlin" gfarrell80 fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Oct 18, 2023 |
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Oct 14, 2023 02:25
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Paul Robeson, "Here I Stand" 1958. Most popular black entertainer of his day. Lifelong working class supporter. Victim of McCarthyism. Breathtakingly awesome dude. A Paul Robeson figure is something our generation completely lacks. Black Bourgeoisie, 1970; Edward Franklin Frazier. C. Wright Mills, "The Marxists", 1962 gfarrell80 fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 23:03
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