Socialist novels

[Savior]

A friend of mine has asked me for suggestions on books. Im talking fiction books. But i need suggestions on GOOD and not to heavy socialist fiction books that get the idea across but are not too dry.

[DDR]

How Steel was Tempered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Steel_Was_Tempered) by Nikolai Ostrovsky and The Mother by Maxim Gorki

[Tim Finnegan]

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic of working class literature, and not too heavy- it's been described as "the book which won Labour the 1945 election" for its popularity among the British working class. It deals with themes of class struggle specifically, including exploitation (the title being a beautifully ironic title for the deferential worker), and doesn't fall into idealism. The only problem you may have is that the style is a bit old fashioned, it being a century old, which may put off some contemporary readers.

[x359594]

The White Rose by B. Traven.

[csquared]

1984

[Red Commissar]

The Iron Heel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel) by Jack London

Germinal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_(novel)) by Emile Zola

These two are really old though- over a hundred years. It did make an impression on me before I completely went off the deep end into here though.

And I guess The Jungle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle) by Upton Sinclair, but it is more drama/character development focused, not so much action.

Fire on the Mountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_on_the_Mountain_(1988_novel)) by Terry Bisson is an alternate history focusing on a socialist revolution emerging from a slave revolt instigated by John Brown.

The Dispossessed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed) by Ursula K. Guin has anarcho-communist overtones.

[red cat]

The Bright Red Star by Li Xintian - the story of a boy who loses his mother to local tyrants and travels across China to join his father in the PLA.

On The Long March With Chairman Mao by Chen Chang Feng - a description of the long march by a boy who joins the PLA and becomes Mao's bodyguard.

During the GPCR and the Naxalbari movement India was flooded with this sort of literature as well as recent works of Mao, but unfortunately I cannot remember any other names :cursing: One book was a report of a first-hand experience by a German journalist on the struggles of the German CP against Nazi takeover. It's a good read for those who wish to learn about clandestine party-organization.

[RED DAVE]

It's not very good, but you can't understand the history of American socialism without reading Looking Backward (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/bellamy/toc.html).

On the other hand, William Morris's superb News From Nowhere (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1890/nowhere/nowhere.htm) and A Dream of John Ball (http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MorDrea.html) are terrific and both are available online.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (http://www.unionhistory.info/ragged/ragged.php)

RED DAVE

[Savior]

Very good replies, if you would keep em coming.

Also, How can i find an English version of How the Steel was Tempered?

[Chimurenga.]

Very good replies, if you would keep em coming.

Also, How can i find an English version of How the Steel was Tempered?

Book One (http://www.scribd.com/doc/32799135/How-the-Steel-Was-Tempered-Book-1)

Book Two (http://www.scribd.com/doc/32799301/How-the-Steel-Was-Tempered-Book-2)

[Gorilla]

More or less anything by HG Wells. The First Men in the Moon I think is an underrated socialist classic.

[caramelpence]

What exactly is a socialist novel anyway? A novel that's set in a hypothetical or historical socialist society? A novel that investigates the conditions of working-class life in capitalist societies? A novel that explores socialist philosophical and moral themes? A novel that's written by a socialist?

I'm very wary of the political categorization of literature. It certainly doesn't seem as if Marx or Engels would have bought into anything like a specifically socialist literary canon given how enthusiastic both of them were about Balzac, who was, in addition to being a brilliant author of social realism, a reactionary in the French 19th-century sense of the word. Nonetheless, if you want to read novels that are likely to be of special interest to people who are socialists though or which will help inform the reader about the history of socialism, then give Lu Xun's short stories a look - he was not a member of the Chinese Communist Party (though they wish he had joined!) but was part of the League of Left-Wing Writers and explored recent events in Chinese history through metaphors and anecdotes. I'll repeat the recommendation of The Dispossessed, because that book really is fantastic.

Read Murakami, just because everyone should. Read Marquez for the same reason.

[x359594]

What exactly is a socialist novel anyway? A novel that's set in a hypothetical or historical socialist society? A novel that investigates the conditions of working-class life in capitalist societies? A novel that explores socialist philosophical and moral themes? A novel that's written by a socialist?

That's a good question, and I think the answer is all of the above.

For example, B. Traven was an anarcho-syndicalist member of the Bavarian Commune or Soviet Republic who fled to Mexico after the Commune was crushed and wrote novels about the conditions of the Mexican working class and particularly about the indigenous people of Chiapas in a series called the "Jungle Novels" which culminates in an insurrection in the penultimate novel The Rebellion of the Hanged.

In the Iron Heel Jack London wrote about a capitalist dystopia that climaxes with a revolution; Zola's Germinal is about a coal miner's strike, harshly describing the working conditions of the miners and the sequence of events that led to the strike as well as its aftermath.

You've mentioned The Dispossessed which falls into the category of a story that features a hypothetical socialist society.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

What exactly is a socialist novel anyway? A novel that's set in a hypothetical or historical socialist society? A novel that investigates the conditions of working-class life in capitalist societies? A novel that explores socialist philosophical and moral themes? A novel that's written by a socialist?

Well, how about this: A socialist novel is a work of written fiction that attempts to channel the conventions of the novel towards a socialist world-view, especially the bourgeois conventions of individual subjectivity. Balzac is out, because the world-view is not socialist. So are James and Conrad (Princess Casamassima, The Secret Agent), because they both reference socialism, but not as a valid world-view. Germinal could slip in under the wire, because it's one of the very few works where Zola shows some kind of insight into the working class, as a writer and journalist he was far more conservative than is usually acknowledged. Bellamy's out for the opposite reason: Looking Backwards is a tract, not a novel. Not a shred of subjectivity or individualism in his characters.

On the other hand you could apply the label "socialist novel" to anything written by B. Traven, not simply because he had a past as a participant in the Bavarian People's Republic, but because all of his novels deal with the problem of transcending capitalism among people who are not necessarily conscious of this. Treasure of the Sierra Madre's a doozie; so is the "Jungle" series. Or again, one of the greatest socialist trilogies ever, USA by John Dos Passos, even though Dos Passos eventually turned against the left.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"In Dubious Battle" by Steinbeck is fantastic even if he wasn't fully a socialist himself. It's about a strike in 1930s California and two CP members trying to help organize it.

With my own limited experience in the generally weak and short-lived strikes of our times and the direct but strong imagery of his writing I really felt like I could imagine what it would have been like to be in an agricultural strike in the depression. THe pacing is fantastic (if frustrating at points - just like a real strike!) and Steinbeck really hits all the right tones of fear and anticipation and boredom and frustration and exuberance and celebration that happen very quickly in succession in big struggles. If you've ever been part of a bitter labor battle, or even faced off with police at a demonstration, then you will feel some of those same emotions come right back when you read this.

I'd recommend reading this and then watching the documentary "Harlan County USA".

[caramelpence]

Well, how about this: A socialist novel is a work of written fiction that attempts to channel the conventions of the novel towards a socialist world-view, especially the bourgeois conventions of individual subjectivity

The problem is that there is no real consensus on what constitutes a "socialist world-view" because there is little agreement within the broad socialist tradition on what the ethical or philosophical bases of socialism should be (for example, there is little agreement about whether socialism should be understood or promoted in terms of the realization of standards of justice) and even when socialists can sometimes agree on certain underlying values like equality, it is even then difficult to reach a consensus on what institutional arrangements best realize those values. The notion of "bourgeois conventions of individual subjectivity" is also pretty meaningless because it's hard to see what is bourgeois about individual subjectivity - there's plenty in Marx's writings to suggest that he saw communism precisely as the realization of some form of non-alienated and sociable individual subjectivity - or whether that concept can be given any specific and stable meaning.

More to the point, I feel incredibly uncomfortable about the entire notion that literature should be orientated towards the promotion of a given world-view and can be classified as socialist or bourgeois according to its success in doing so. It smacks of the worst kind of Stalinist approaches to culture and has problematic political implications. Literature can have a political dimension, but for me it can only be judged according to non-political criteria, and I certainly don't feel the need to choose what I read on the basis of the ideological positions of authors or the settings of books, let alone whether they are likely to encourage people to be socialists. Some of my favorite authors are ambiguous in their political beliefs and orientated towards fairly universal aspects of the human condition, or at least aspects that are specific to modernity and are therefore likely to be present in both socialist and communist societies - for example, Murakami is concerned mainly with middle-class and youth alienation in his works, and whilst events like the 60s student riots in Japan figure prominently in several of his books, the same being true of war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War, it's certainly not the case that any of his characters are committed politically, or that his fiction suggests a definite solution to alienation. I also like authors who are probably right-wing in their political sympathies and whose novels may reflect some of their politics - for example, Mishima.

Call it bourgeois, call it middle-class, but there's a lot to be said for art for art's sake, especially if it avoids the policies that Stalinist states have historically pursued in relation to literature.

[Tim Finnegan]

bourgeois conventions of individual subjectivity
Not even sure what this means, but it sounds disturbingly show-trialy.

[x359594]

...On the other hand you could apply the label "socialist novel" to anything written by B. Traven...because all of his novels deal with the problem of transcending capitalism among people who are not necessarily conscious of this...

The novels featuring Gerald Gales (The Cotton Pickers aka Der Wobblie, The Bridge in the Jungle, The Death Ship) are exceptions since Gales is conscious of the class struggle in all the tales. But you're right about the rest, and I agree with your outline of what constitutes a socialist novel.

[RED DAVE]

Basically, Comrades, we can debate ourselves hoarse (or into carpal tunnel syndrome) trying to develop a definition of "socialist novel." If you substitute "novels socialist should read," then it becomes more useful and more fun.

If you want some heavy hits, try:

Dosteyevsky - The Possessed (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8117) (Big D was a right-winger who started out as a socialist; some of his insights into the craziness of the Left are, unfortunately, still quite valid)

Turgenev - Father's and Sons (http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ist/fas.htm) (a novel about Russian nihilism; criticized for not being true to its subject)

Chernyshevski - What Is to Be Done? (http://www.archive.org/details/whatstobedonerom00cher) (Lenin took the title of his pamphlet from this book)

Hawthorne - A Blithedale Romance (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2081) (about an early American utopian colony)

Quiz Monday :D

RED DAVE