A People's History of the World [Archive]

Adil3tr

11th August 2010, 23:39

fa2991

12th August 2010, 00:08

I've seen that in book stores a few time and flipped through it. Someone e-mailed me a pdf of it once, and I'm planning to get around to it sometime this month. Hope it's good.

RadioRaheem84

12th August 2010, 00:54

Talking about the USSR under Stalin: "Every protest had to be mercilessly crushed... Vast numbers of people were dragged off to labour camps... The grisly total (of executions) peaked in 1937 at 353,074... Stalin herded millions of people into the slave camps of the gulag... Stalin took away the rights of the non-Russian republics of the USSR and deported entire peoples thousands of miles... at least three million peasants starved to death as the state seized their grain" pp. 476-478.
About China under Mao: "...many millions died in famines... The Great Leap Forward was a massive disaster for which the mass of people paid a terrible price..." p. 574

Is Harman a Trot?

Lenina Rosenweg

12th August 2010, 00:59

Chris Harmon was a British history professor. He died about a year ago. He was a member of the British SWP. His book on the German Revolution, "The Lost Revolution" is good.

fa2991

12th August 2010, 01:01

Is Harman a Trot?

Yep.

RadioRaheem84

12th August 2010, 01:08

Yep.

Well then I will tread those chapters on the USSR and Maoist China lightly.

Everything else sounds pretty damn good by the excerpts I am checking out.

Has anyone in here read Adam Jones's Genocide, War Crimes and the West?

Jimmie Higgins

12th August 2010, 01:14

GOOD BOOK: Chris Harman's A People's History of the World. It has the history of the human race, with side by side analysis of historical materialism in action and Anti systemic movements. My favorite part is his outlining of the development of fascism and the post October revolution Europe.

Just felt like sharing.

I found this book to be very useful and a great overview. It helped me connect the dots on a lot of thinks I knew about but never really saw its connection to other historical trends or what was happening at the same time in other parts of the globe.

I think I understand why Harman structured the book as he did, but my one complaint is that 1/2 of the book is the 20th century alone. I wish there had been more of a focus on earlier developments and the ancient Mediterranean world as well as more depth on history in China. I'd love to read "a people's history of Greece and Rome". I hear the Parenti book about Caesar is good, but that some of his arguments about Caesar being a populist ruler are kinda strange.

RadioRaheem84

12th August 2010, 01:40

I hear the Parenti book about Caesar is good, but that some of his arguments about Caesar being a populist ruler are kinda strange. Well he didn't say that Caesar was essentially good. The main premise of Parenti's book was that liberal historians have hijacked that particular century to praise the oligarchs and defame Caesar for some of his more populist reforms.

Parenti states that he was still a rather a brutal warmonger but that the oligarchs were the real enemies, not the heroes of that period.

Jimmie Higgins

12th August 2010, 01:52

Well he didn't say that Caesar was essentially good. The main premise of Parenti's book was that liberal historians have hijacked that particular century to praise the oligarchs and defame Caesar for some of his more populist reforms.

Parenti states that he was still a rather a brutal warmonger but that the oligarchs were the real enemies, not the heroes of that period.

Did you read it? Was it good at giving a materialist overview of classical Roman society? I've had it on my Amazon queue for a while along with "Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World".

RadioRaheem84

12th August 2010, 01:58

Did you read it? Was it good at giving a materialist overview of classical Roman society? I've had it on my Amazon queue for a while along with "Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World".

Hell yes. It is an excellent read for any Marxist.

It's also amazing how Parenti shows the liberal historians for who they really are with their praise for Imperial Rome and Cicero of all people. He ties the past social hierarchy to today's and applies a very historical materialist perspective.

It's his most praised book and well worth the price tag.

My favorite Parenti book though has to be Land of Idols.

Adil3tr

12th August 2010, 09:41

Well then I will tread those chapters on the USSR and Maoist China lightly.

Everything else sounds pretty damn good by the excerpts I am checking out.

Has anyone in here read Adam Jones's Genocide, War Crimes and the West?

He is critical of stalin, as am I, but to mao he concedes the reasoning behind his actions, he says that Mao did what he did because he had to.

anticap

12th August 2010, 14:39

I downloaded the PDF and set Adobe Reader to do just that: read it to me, while I went about household chores. I enjoyed it very much.

(Tip for Windows users wanting to use this feature: download the two Microsoft files found here (http://www.datafurnace.net.au/sayzme/html/documentation.html), install them in order, then go to Adobe Reader's options and set the voice to "Mike" or "Mary" instead of the default "Sam")

NoOneIsIllegal

13th August 2010, 05:35

I love the book. Some days, I will occasionally flip open a certain chapter and read it. Fantastic reference.

fa2991

13th August 2010, 06:03

Qayin

13th August 2010, 09:47

I own this book. Big Trotskyist influence its really noticeable

Queercommie Girl

13th August 2010, 09:56

Generally speaking it's a very good book. The best aspect about it is that it is very non-Eurocentric, examining global history from a truly global rather than just Western perspective. Its sections on ancient China are quite good too.

I don't agree with two points made in the book:

1) I don't agree that the People's Republic of China and the USSR under Stalin are "state-capitalist". I think both are "deformed worker's states". Although I've been influenced by Trotskyism I'm on the side of the "deformed worker's state" Trots rather than the "state-capitalist" Trots.

2) In the sections on primitive communism, Harman seems to make the case that while the two genders were equal, they still had different social and sexual roles in a rather rigid sense. Then he went on justifying this using a kind of biological reductionist argument. He is not looking at the actual archaeological evidence which suggests that gender roles were actually rather fluidic during the primitive communist era. He also does not have a lot of material on LGBT and queer history, either during the primitive era, or the ancient era, or the modern era. The word "homosexual" was only mentioned once in the entire book. This is frankly quite a shame.

bailey_187

13th August 2010, 22:09

Did you read it? Was it good at giving a materialist overview of classical Roman society? I've had it on my Amazon queue for a while along with "Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World".

It was ok, but it didnt go much into production relations etc, and is pretty much only about the era of Caeser

I think a better materialist overview of Roman history is the book Rome: Empire of Eagles, 753 BC-AD 476, by Neil Faulkner. The author is a Marxist archeologist and former member of the British SWP (he was expelled/left over the Lindsy German thing i think)

RadioRaheem84

13th August 2010, 22:11

I think a better materialist overview of Roman history is the book Rome: Empire of Eagles, 753 BC-AD 476, by Neil Faulkner. The author is a Marxist archeologist and former member of the British SWP (he was expelled/left over the Lindsy German thing i think)

Will buy!

anticap

19th August 2010, 04:24

:lol: Thanks for letting me in on Adobe Reader's "Read Out Loud" function. It amuses me to no end when there is an ellipses in the text and the narrator yells "DOT-DOT-DOT-DOT!"

You're welcome, and yeah, it is pretty funny. :)

I use the program (SayzMe) at that link a lot, too, for non-PDFs. I'm not a big fan of reading on the computer, at least not at a desktop, and I have no laptop to lounge around with, so I "read" a lot of stuff that way and have gotten pretty used to that robotic voice and its idiosyncrasies. (It also says "emdash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Em_dash)" and reads out footnote numbers, like "left square bracket, one, right square bracket," etc. It's good for the visually-impaired, though, if slightly annoying for the rest of us.)

Barry Lyndon

19th August 2010, 15:44

Hell yes. It is an excellent read for any Marxist.

It's also amazing how Parenti shows the liberal historians for who they really are with their praise for Imperial Rome and Cicero of all people. He ties the past social hierarchy to today's and applies a very historical materialist perspective.

It's his most praised book and well worth the price tag.

My favorite Parenti book though has to be Land of Idols.

To be honest the true heroes of ancient Rome from a Marxist perspective would be the Gracchi brothers and Spartacus. Just throwing in my two cents.

RadioRaheem84

19th August 2010, 16:27

To be honest the true heroes of ancient Rome from a Marxist perspective would be the Gracchi brothers and Spartacus. Just throwing in my two cents.

Parenti mentions this. All he was trying to do with Assassination was dismantle the liberal history of the era, and show the liberal historian for who they really are by who they strenuously defend in history.

It would be the same if a millennium down the line, historians defended the oligarch over Hugo Chavez or another populist President (not to say that there is much comparison between Hugo and Caesar).

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/8305

Check out this link to a speech of his on the subject. You will love it.

19th August 2010, 17:11

The author is a Marxist archeologist and former member of the British SWP (he was expelled/left over the Lindsy German thing i think)

Nah, he was expelled from life (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19504).

Barry Lyndon

19th August 2010, 19:43

Parenti mentions this. All he was trying to do with Assassination was dismantle the liberal history of the era, and show the liberal historian for who they really are by who they strenuously defend in history.

It would be the same if a millennium down the line, historians defended the oligarch over Hugo Chavez or another populist President (not to say that there is much comparison between Hugo and Caesar).

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/8305

Check out this link to a speech of his on the subject. You will love it.

This is awesome! I have been fascinated by ancient Rome for years(one of my high points in life was visiting the ruins of Rome's Forum, I think they have marked the spot where Caesar was assassinated). Kudos to Parenti for giving a decent Marxist analysis of that era. There are a uncanny number of historical parallels between the USA and the Roman Republic/Empire, so such analysis is badly needed.

anticap

20th August 2010, 04:10

To be honest the true heroes of ancient Rome from a Marxist perspective would be the Gracchi brothers and Spartacus. Just throwing in my two cents.

Karl Marx listed Spartacus (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm) as one of his heroes, and described him (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/letters/61_02_27-abs.htm) as "the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history" and "[a] great general ([though] no Garibaldi), noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus#Politics

Jimmie Higgins

22nd August 2010, 00:15

Nah, he was expelled from life (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19504).I think the comrade meant the author of "Empire of Eagles".

I just got that book in the mail this week and I have the Parenti one on the way as well as Howard Fast's "Spartacus". It's my own self-taught Marxist history of classical world course:D.

bailey_187

22nd August 2010, 00:20

Nah, he was expelled from life (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19504).

I was talking about the author of the book, who i mentioned by name in the sentance just before the one you quoted lol. AFAIK, Ferguson is still alive.

ckaihatsu

22nd August 2010, 00:21

It's my own self-taught Marxist history of classical world course:D.

Uhhhhhhh, shouldn't you be paying tuition to a college first before you attempt that kind of thing?

x D

Jimmie Higgins

22nd August 2010, 00:56

Uhhhhhhh, shouldn't you be paying tuition to a college first before you attempt that kind of thing?

x DOf course you are right - I need some professorial condescension to make my experience complete!

ckaihatsu

22nd August 2010, 01:00

Of course you are right - I need some professorial condescension to make my experience complete!

(Out come the tweed jacket and framed diplomas....)

Rosa Lichtenstein

6th September 2010, 00:56

Lenina:

Chris Harmon was a British history professor. He died about a year ago. He was a member of the British SWP. His book on the German Revolution, "The Lost Revolution" is good.

Well, he wasn't a prof. He was in fact the editor of International Socialism (http://www.isj.org.uk/) (until his death).

Before that, he was the editor of Socialist Worker.

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=610=125

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11061

I had the good fortune of meeting him once or twice. A great comrade and Marxist. His work was one of the reasons I joined the SWP-UK.

ContrarianLemming

6th September 2010, 06:44

also, read Howard Zinn's one. It's as good, if not better, a truly fantastic book.

Jimmie Higgins

6th September 2010, 09:50

also, read Howard Zinn's one. It's as good, if not better, a truly fantastic book.It's apples and oranges IMO. Harmen's book is very useful for marxists or people who want a marxist overview of historical developments... "The history of all hitherto societies is..." the class struggles surveyed in "A People's history of the World". But I think Zinn's book is better for historical anecdotes, hidden history, and it was the first in what is now a real genre of history books: left-wing materialist histories for a popular audience.