The books that have influenced us most

[Anderson]

Dear Members, What are the books that have influenced you most?

Please quote only books which you have personally read fully and let all others know about the important contribution made by that book.

Also has the book made contribution in shaping up the working class movement?:)

If a poll is done what will be the top 5 books?

[Anderson]

Come on forum members, I thought I had posted an important thread to help me decide which book I should be reading next.
:)

[Stalin Ate My Homework]

Principles of Communism by Engels, it can be read in 20 mins and is easy to understand like all of Engels work which I find to be more precise than Marx.

[Art Vandelay]

If you are looking into anarchism, the best introduction I know is the Abc's of anarchism by Alexander Berkman. As for marxists thought maybe try the Principles of communism as stated above or the Manifesto, both are good introductions to marxism.

If you are leaning towards a specific tendency or have a certain historical character which interests you then let us know and we could most likely point you in the best direction.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Dude I don't even know. Of course the Communist Manifesto opened up my eyes and made me think "Holy shit, I'm not the only one that thinks like this, yay!" I don't read fiction books that often and they have rarely influenced me, but I'm going to say Grapes of Wrath really helped me gain a little bit of a perspective about the capitalist system before I was a full blown commie.

Marx and Engels' book The German Ideology was basically my introduction to historical materialism and it was a very good one, followed the Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. The first book on economics I had ever read was the Poverty of Philosophy by Marx.

Another book I found extremely valuable is The History of the Russian Revolution by Trotsky.

But I'm continuously reading and getting more influenced by other books. For example Worker's Councils by Pannekoek. I just received Frantz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth, so we'll see what that does for me.

[Misocratist]

Long and Sedley's fragments of the Hellenistic Philosophers.

This is not a joke. Taking a healthy 2-years-long breath of fresh air away from the Kropotkin-Goldman / Lenin-Mao circlejerk is the best thing that ever happened to me.

It did not help the working class movement in any way whatsoever, if you mean by "working class movement" the relatively recent 1850-1950 post-hegelian peak of capitalism-bashing. Instead, it provided me with a "new" perspective on the relations between suffering, pleasure, knowledge, virtue and happiness, which helped me to think about and against capitalism more than any 19th century pamphlet.

[x359594]

The books that influenced me run the gamut from pulp fiction to avant garde poetry. For example, Seven Footprints to Satan by A. Merritt introduced me to the marvelous beloved of surrealists. Written in pedestrian prose but with earnest conviction I very much enjoyed the way the uncanny made its appearance in the mundane lives of the characters.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was the first book I read that critiqued consumer capitalism.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X opened my eyes to the black power struggle in the US.

Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal by Howard Zinn cracked the bourgeois propaganda wall for me.

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg made me aware of the power of poetry.

Beyond Theology by Alan Watts laid bare the contradictions of Christianity.

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac showed me that another way of life is possible; the novel is about freedom and the obstacles to freedom. It was also where I read about the Industrial Workers of the World for the first time.

[Deicide]

The first book by a communist author that I read was ''The Revolution Betrayed'' by Trotsky.

[Leftsolidarity]

The Communist Manifesto

The State and Revolution

Marxism: Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle

[marksist-leninist]

Revolution in Revolution? - Régis Debray

[Ostrinski]

The books that I have found most accessible and by extension influential are:

The Communist Manifesto

State and Revolution

The Revolution Betrayed

Reform or Revolution

[eyeheartlenin]

I think the single most valuable book, for me, was Lenin's State and Revolution, where Lenin recovered Marx' own revolutionary stance on the state, which clarifies that there can be no talk of socialist reconstruction of any society, until and unless the bourgeois state is overthrown, indeed, "smashed" (to the atoms), utterly destroyed. Lenin makes the point that the verb Marx used was zerbrechen, which an on-line German-English dictionary defines as "break, crack, smash, fragment, shatter," to describe the necessary task of the proletariat towards the bourgeois state. Lenin's principled stance is the still-relevant refutation of reformism (Grant, Woods, Chávez, etc.) that undertakes to perfect, rather than destroy, bourgeois rule.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The Communist Manifesto

[bcbm]

tha doggfather: the times, trials and hardcore truths of snoop dogg by snoop dogg
q by luther blissett

[Railyon]

Capital Vol 1 by Karl Marx. Only book you will ever need.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti was good.

[TrotskistMarx]

Dear friend, sorry that I had to post this in capital letters. Because I copied and pasted from a text document i have stored in my computer. But here are my main book-writters, some revolutionary music groups and revolutionary movies. I posted music groups and movies, because according to some philosophers all forms of art, stimulate the muscles (give you muscle strength), raise the will-power, and increase the warrior and conqueror instints, and the revolutionary passions and emotions, here is the article in capital letters about my favorite book-writters, music groups and movies:

ACCORDING TO MY STUDIES OF PHILOSOPHY, POLITICAL SCIENCE, HISTORY AND THE BIOGRAPHIES OF REVOLUTIONARIES, THESE ARE THE BEST WRITTERS TO TURN YOU INTO A POWERFUL REVOLUTIONARY. SO PLEASE GO TO http://www.amazon.com/, ANOTHER GOOD PLACE FOR FREE WHOLE BOOKS FROM THESE PHILOSOPHERS IS http://www.marxists.org/

SO BUY ALL THE BOOKS WRITTEN BY THESE WRITTERS: KARL MARX, VLADIMIR LENIN, JOSEPH STALIN, MAO TSE TUNG, NICHOLAS MACHIAVELLI, FREDRICH NIETZSCHE (BUY ALL HIS BOOKS, THE PHILOSOPHER OF THE SUPERMAN, VERY IMPORTANT), ROBERT GREENE THE WRITTER OF THE BOOK "THE 48 LAWS OF POWER", PLATO, ARISTOTLE, HEGEL, LUDWIG FEUERBACH, LEON TROTSKY, THUCYDIDES, MONTESQUIEU, LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, BLAISE PASCAL, HOMER, MICHAEL FOUCAULT, SWIFT, LESSING, MIRABEAU, GALIANI, FRANZ KAFKA, ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, HERDER, DOSTOYESVKY, HOMER, HUME, SPINOZA, VICTOR HUGO, KANT, ROUSSEAU, JACK KEROUACK, VOLTAIRE, SPINOZA, LESAGE, REGNARD, DANCOURT, GALIANI, GOETHE, PROSPER MERIMEE, ARTHUR RIMBAUD, ANTHONY ARTAUD, MONTAIGNE, GUSTAVE FLABUERT, BERKELEY, WITTINGSTEIN, JOSE INGENIEROS, MIGUEL UNAMUNOS, FERNANDO SAVATER, JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET, LOPE DE VEGA, HABERMAS, MARCUSE, JULIAN JAYNES, DERRIDA, THEODOR ADORNO, DELEUZE, ALBERT CAMUS, ALDOUS HUXLEY, CARL JUNG, WILLIAM BLAKE, WILLIAM JAMES, ALLEN GINGSBERG, MICHAEL MCCLURE, HENRY DAVID THOREAU, HERDEGGER, MONTAIGNE, THOMAS PAYNE, EDGAR ALLAN POE, OSCAR WILDE, HENRY MILLER, RALPH WALDO EMERSON, JOHN STEINBECK, CHARLES BAUDELIERE, EDUARDO GALEANO, WILLIAM SHAKESPERE, GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, OCTAVIO PAZ, MIGUEL CERVANTES, FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO, GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUES, GONCOURT

HERE IS ANOTHER LIST OF BOOK-WRITTERS THAT YOU MIGHT FIND IN http://www.marxists.org/ AND http://marxists.org/archive/selected-marxists.htm OR BUY THEM FROM http://www.amazon.com/ Karl Marx, Fredrich Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Trotsky, Alan Woods, Allan Maass, Gramsci, Karl Kautsky, Daniel Deleon, Clara Zetkin, James Connolly, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, José Carlos Mariátegui, CLR James, Ted Grant, Sam Marcy, Tom Engelhardt, Bob Avakian, Fred Goldstein, Chris Hedges, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, George Padmore, Hal Draper, Paul Mattick, Paul Lafargue, Paul Craig Roberts, James Petras, Joe Bageant

BUY THE BIOGRAPHIES OF: ALEXANDER THE GREAT, HANNIBAL, KING ARTHUR, THOMAS PAYNE, VLADIMIR LENIN, BUENAVENTURA DURRUTI, PATRICK HENRY, JULIUS CAESAR, NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, HUGO CHAVEZ (WRITTEN BY ALEYDA GUEVARA, CHE GUEVARA'S DAUGHTER), CHE GUEVARA, FIDEL CASTRO, GEORGE WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, JOHN ADAMS, JAMES MADISON, JFK, MALCOM X, FRED HAMPTON, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JIM MORRISON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

AND LISTEN TO THE MUSIC OF: ICE T, MOLOTOV, MOLOTOV U.K.S, TOOL, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, TRACEY CHAPMAN, MELVINS, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, SUBHUMANS, THE SEX PISTOLS, NIRVANA, THE DOORS, THE WHO, PINK FLOYD, JIMMY HENDRIX, SNOOP DOGGY DOG, SILVIO RODRIGUEZ, ALI PRIMERA, SOUNDGARDEN, JANES ADDICTION, NINE INCH NAILS, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, ALICE IN CHAINS, COLLECTIVE SOUL, DINOSAUR JR., OUR LADY PEACE, AFGHAN WHIGS, U2, THE POLICE, STING, GENESIS, GREEN DAY, PUNK ROCK, AND VERY REBELLIOUS MUSIC IN ORDER TO ELEVATE THE REVOLUTIONARY INSTINCTS AND WILL TO POWER IN ORDER TO DESTROY THE CAPITALIST CLASS !!

AND WATCH THE FOLLOWING MOVIES: THE MATRIX TRILOGY, LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY, THE HOBBIT, ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES, ROBIN HOOD 2010, KING ARTHUR, BRAVEHEART, CHE GUEVARA WITH BENICIO DEL TORO, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, GLADIATOR





Dear Members, What are the books that have influenced you most?

Please quote only books which you have personally read fully and let all others know about the important contribution made by that book.

Also has the book made contribution in shaping up the working class movement?:)

If a poll is done what will be the top 5 books?

[roy]

Stop, Train, Stop! A Thomas the Tank Engine Story changed my life. The pop-up version really brought things into perspective for me.

[Anderson]

Dear Forum members, I am not new to communist ideology I think I have had some good theoretical and practical experiences. I have read some books given to me by fellow comrades.

Is it not true that whatever books we read influence our thinking. I want to be unbiased about the different left tendencies as of now and would like to read a book which is common ground between all the leftists. Maybe there is no such book.

Marx and Engels wrote Communist Manifesto.
Are all leftists on Revleft in agreement with this initial work?
I need this clarity because if things in this work are also points of contention between different leftists then it sounds like a bad situation.:(

However if all leftist forum members are in agreement with this historical work then atleast we find a common ground!!:)

[bricolage]

ok you know what these threads are boring cos everyone just posts the same old marx, lenin, chomsky... texts over and over again and it's nothing that you can't learn from 9 out of 10 threads here. so in response here are some things I've got most out of:

working by studs terkel: bunch of people explaining their jobs and essentially how alienating they are. specifically I'd say the first preface by a steel worker called mike lefevre is one of the best things I've ever read, you can read it here. (https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/STerkel.html)

this text by martin glaberman (http://libcom.org/library/1911-1970s-unions-workers-limitations-possibilities-martin-glaberman) has a great section on alienation and also one on how 'we have to make a revolution in order to create new people' not the other way around.

the last verse to big rock candy mountain (http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/obrotherwhereartthou/inthebigrockcandymountains.htm), if this aint communism I dunno what is.

live working or die fighting by paul mason is a great history of organised labour that links it to struggles today.

if you are from the UK (or even if you aren't, but you might find it less interesting) when the lights went out by andy beckett is a very easily readable and entertaining history of when then british class movement was at its strongest. good to learn we didn't always roll over.

it would be good to see other 'off the beaten track' recommendations like this, I mean if you want to know marx then read capital, I think it's really that simple. otherwise let's have some exciting stuff.

oh yeah and pretty much 99% of http://prole.info/ is gold.

[honest john's firing squad]

AND LISTEN TO THE MUSIC OF: ICE T, MOLOTOV, MOLOTOV U.K.S, TOOL, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, TRACEY CHAPMAN, MELVINS, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, SUBHUMANS, THE SEX PISTOLS, NIRVANA, THE DOORS, THE WHO, PINK FLOYD, JIMMY HENDRIX, SNOOP DOGGY DOG, SILVIO RODRIGUEZ, ALI PRIMERA, SOUNDGARDEN, JANES ADDICTION, NINE INCH NAILS, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, ALICE IN CHAINS, COLLECTIVE SOUL, DINOSAUR JR., OUR LADY PEACE, AFGHAN WHIGS, U2, THE POLICE, STING, GENESIS, GREEN DAY, PUNK ROCK, AND VERY REBELLIOUS MUSIC IN ORDER TO ELEVATE THE REVOLUTIONARY INSTINCTS AND WILL TO POWER IN ORDER TO DESTROY THE CAPITALIST CLASS !!
Can you please stop posting? Thanks.

[Anderson]

.....let's have some exciting stuff.


Thanks Bricolage. These are very good suggestions. Prole.info seems to be a unique website:):)

[Anderson]

Mother by Maxim Gorky

[Valdyr]

The "Marxist classics" have obviously influenced me a lot. The Manifesto, State and Revolution, Reform or Revolution?, Capital, etc.

Etienne Balibar's Philosophy of Marx has influenced my thinking a lot concerning the relationship between Marxism and philosophy, as well as the concept of ideology.

The work of Jacques Lacan (Ecrits especially of course) and Wittgenstein (Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations) are mandatory, as any reasonable philosophizing in my mind has to weather the acid bath of these two thinkers, as well as that of Marx himself.

Alain Badiou's work on knowledge, truth, and ontology, particularly as advanced in Being and Event and Logic of Worlds.

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

[Mr. Natural]

For a contemporary look at our situation, I recommend Joel Kovel's Enemy of Nature (2003). Kovel is the current unofficial head of American ecosocialism, and Enemy, which is written for a popular readership, engages our current ecological situation with Marxist economics and philosophy. Kovel also offers a grassroots, "ecosystemic" organizing process to oppose capitalism.

If you wish to understand the materialist dialectic in the manner of Marx and Engels, Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003) is a must-read. Ollman is the only Marxist dialectician to trace the materialist dialectic's roots to the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its abstraction process. Ollman makes this difficult philosophy and its klunky dialectical laws come alive in the manner they came alive to the young Marx.

I also want to note the conspicuous lack of works advancing Marxist revolutionary organizing theory. Marxism has been stuck for a long time in this regard, and rummaging through the classics one more time will not get us where we need to go.

Frankly, comrades need to re-commit to revolutionary spirits and minds. The current conservatism and intellectual passivity of the left is dismaying.

My deeply radical, red-green best.

[Valdyr]

For a contemporary look at our situation, I recommend Joel Kovel's Enemy of Nature (2003). Kovel is the current unofficial head of American ecosocialism, and Enemy, which is written for a popular readership, engages our current ecological situation with Marxist economics and philosophy. Kovel also offers a grassroots, "ecosystemic" organizing process to oppose capitalism.

If you wish to understand the materialist dialectic in the manner of Marx and Engels, Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003) is a must-read. Ollman is the only Marxist dialectician to trace the materialist dialectic's roots to the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its abstraction process. Ollman makes this difficult philosophy and its klunky dialectical laws come alive in the manner they came alive to the young Marx.

I also want to note the conspicuous lack of works advancing Marxist revolutionary organizing theory. Marxism has been stuck for a long time in this regard, and rummaging through the classics one more time will not get us where we need to go.

Frankly, comrades need to re-commit to revolutionary spirits and minds. The current conservatism and intellectual passivity of the left is dismaying.

My deeply radical, red-green best.

I've been meaning to read Dance of the Dialectic. I have it but I have so much reading that I haven't gotten to it. You make me want to read it, especially since I'm actually taking Ollman's class this fall and have been in email contact with him.

I also thought of two more books which have influenced me greatly; Mao's On Contradiction and the economic works of Piero Sraffa.

[Comrades Unite!]

Oh easily Marx's writings.
The Communist Manifesto and Capital Vol.1 are my personal favourites.
Haven't read Capital 2

[Luís Henrique]

The books that must have influenced me more are the books I have read when I was a kid, before I could actually be critical of what I was reading. They are a lot, of course, but I think Monteiro Lobato (http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/monteiro_lobato2.htm) and Hergé would be the two more influential writers of my childhood.

I was also somewhat influenced by Brazilian realist/regionalist literature, particularly José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, Érico Veríssimo and Jorge Amado. Hey, everybody is entitled to being a teenager once in life.

And then there is Latino-American fantastic realism - García Marquez, Julio Cortázar, for instance.

1984 and Animal Farm, of course.

Bertolt Brecht.

Anything by Umberto Eco.

Freud, especially Psychopatology of Everyday Life.

Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach.

And a few historians: Perry Anderson (particularly Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Outlines of the Absolutist State), Hobsbawn (his several "Ages"), EP Thompson (The Making of the English Working Class), EH Carr (What is History?). Hm, they are all English. Does this mean something? Let me add Le Goff now, before people go on taking conclusions.

Antonio Barros de Castro, A Economia Brasileira em Marcha Forçada.

OK, enough; into what you are really expecting.

Rosa Luxemburg on the Russian Revolution, and Reform or Revolution.

Marx, Capital Vol. I; The 18th Brumaire; Grundrisse, especially Formen

Engel's The Origin of Family, Private Property and State

Bettelheim's Class Struggle in the Soviet Union

Robert Kurz's Collapse of Modernisation

Poulantzas' Fascism and Dictatorship

Marshall Berman's All that is Solid Melts into Air

Gerd Bornheim's Dialectics

Evidently, I am influenced by those books both in what I accept and what I reject from them.

Luís Henrique

[Deicide]

Plato's ''Republic''... My adventure began after reading it.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson, i was blown away by the imagery of it when i was about 7 years old. One of the first books i read.

Through Hell for Hitler Henry Metelmann

The Beginning of the Family of the Private Property of the State Friedrich Engels

The Empire of Shame Jean Ziegler

There are of course other books like Das Kapital, Dracula, Chomsky, Zizek, Lenin on Youth, State and Rev., Lenin's Imperialism as the H.S.C., Jean Ziegler's and other books that have left huge impressions on me.

[Anderson]

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson, i was blown away by the imagery of it when i was about 7 years old. One of the first books i read.

Through Hell for Hitler Henry Metelmann

The Beginning of the Family of the Private Property of the State Friedrich Engels

The Empire of Shame Jean Ziegler

There are of course other books like Das Kapital, Dracula, Chomsky, Zizek, Lenin on Youth, State and Rev., Lenin's Imperialism as the H.S.C., Jean Ziegler's and other books that have left huge impressions on me.

I was also very much influenced by Treasure island - Great literature

[Comrades Unite!]

I forgot to mention, Orwell! Animal Farm was simply astonishing as was Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
Also the writings of Friedrich Engels(I agree with some people that Engels writings were sometimes clearer and more accessible than say Marx.)

[#FF0000]

The Tao Of Wu by the RZA

[Yuppie Grinder]

Principles of Communism by Engels, it can be read in 20 mins and is easy to understand like all of Engels work which I find to be more precise than Marx.

It's an important book, but it doesn't paint a very accurate picture of the Communist movement post-Paris Commune, which it can't be blamed for.

[Os Cangaceiros]

The BFG by Roald Dahl

[Creative Destruction]

How Much Land Does A Man Need? by Tolstoy

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Watership Down by Richard Adams.


God help me, but I fell in love with those little rabbits. I first picked up the book from my High School library during my sophomore year, after hearing about the (in)famous animated film that was adapted from it.

I then spent the next week and a half avidly going through this incredible novel. It was the first book I can ever remember reading for enjoyment, rather than for school. That basically lead to other similar books by the likes of Brian Jacques, and eventually to Tolkien.

It was during the following year that I discovered Marx and Engels, but that's another story. ;)

[sixdollarchampagne]

The Revolution Betrayed, where Trotsky makes the point that, either the workers will smash rule by the bureaucracy in the USSR, or there will be a restoration of capitalism there, which was an accurate prediction by The Old Man, and James Cannon's History of American Trotskyism, a charming introduction to the subject.

[DROSL]

Just read the Principles of Communism by Engels, like someone suggested. It's very interesting. I like his description of the three types of socialists. :)

[SonofRage]

Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist

Workers Councils by Anton Pannekoek.
Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk 4

[RedBen]

the bible, sent me running and screaming in the opposite direction.

[SonofRage]

the bible, sent me running and screaming in the opposite direction.

Crazy stuff in there eh? It makes me wonder how many Christians actually read it.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk 4

[Comrade Jacob]

The obvious:
The manifesto
Principles of communism
Origins of family, private property and the state
The little red book
"The essential works of Lenin"
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Capital. Vol 2

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Crazy stuff in there eh? It makes me wonder how many Christians actually read it.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk 4

It was the same with me. Once I realized that Jesus's link to David was through Joseph instead of Mary, and that according to the gospels it was God that was Jesus's real father, it made me realize that he in no way could have been the supposed Messiah.

The only way that could have worked out is if Joseph and Mary were cousins, which is NEVER mentioned in the gospels AT ALL (kind of an important thing, don't you think?)

[Comrade Samuel]

It's starting to feel a little redundant seeing the manifesto every other post.....I'd say J.D Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye' was a bit of an eye opener.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough-especially for other teenagers. Even if your school does not require you to read it (or possibly has banned it) you should definitely try to get your hands on a copy.

[Dr Doom]

Ireland, Nationalism and imperialism, the myths exploded (http://libcom.org/library/ireland-nationalism-imperialism-myths-subversion) was one of the key texts that helped me break with left nationalism.

The Making of the English Working Class (http://libcom.org/library/making-english-working-class-ep-thompson) - E.P. Thompson

Caliban and the Witch (http://libcom.org/library/caliban-witch-silvia-federici) - Silvia Federici ( seriously good book about the history of women during the early years of capitalism )

Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement (http://libcom.org/library/eclipse-re-emergence-communist-movement), by Dauve

also mostly anything by bukowski, beckett, d h lawrence, cormac mccarthy etc etc

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

In terms of my more mature turn to leftism (i've always stood on the left, as it were, but I was largely reformist-left or LOL STALIN until my late teens) I was actually influenced quite heavily by fiction.

I read Iain M. Banks' Culture novels - and I liked them - but I found myself in disagreement with the idea that humanity "wasn't ready" for a communal society. Perhaps if taken in context with the so-sci-fi-its-magic setting of the culture - but I found that I increasingly believed that we could manage it now - that as much a product of technology the society of the culture was, it was also a product of a different mindset and different attitudes.

After that, i re-read the Manifestoand later tackled Kapital (which was a mistake for a guy with very little grounding in economics and I hope to read it again)

Beyond that, I think I was influenced in many ways by the Bible - if mostly indirectly - because my mother was and is a devout Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition (tho I think she - like me - mostly took the more "leftist" teachings to heart) I have identified as an atheist since I was 10 or 11, but a lot of it has stayed with me. I suspect that the above factors are the reason why my mum (and me, until I took my confession and washed my hands of the whole business) were usually arguing with the priests at our church (tho I am still on friendly term with the remaining priests who served there when i still went to church)

[Firebrand]

A lot of people seem to have been recommending non-fiction, which is perfectly fine but can get a bit heavy so here's some fiction to counterbalance it.

The Dispossessed by Ursula leGuin- no leftist's reading list is complete without it. Possibly the most real vision of an alternative society i've ever read.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver- A brilliant if depressing exploration of the everyday poverty that so many people live in.

The Night Watch by Terry Pratchett- because seriously, who doesn't love Terry Pratchett

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams- because Vogons

[Futility Personified]

The Beach is probably the book that's influenced me the most. The idea of freedom that you find in travelling had a very powerful effect on me, but the admission that between tourists and travellers there is ultimately little difference salved the fact that realistically i'll probably struggle to afford it. The description of a free life as experienced therein also fed my desire for escapism, but what is the point in escaping? Any utopian ideal will ultimately be caught up with. It made me think about such things quite a lot, even if the political aspect of the book is small (or anti-anarchist as some might perceive it) and how things need to be changed so the whole of humanity can be brought into a better existence.

[TheIrrationalist]

Honestly the book that influenced me the most was Céline's Death on Credit. Basically it just shattered my world view and everything I knew previously. Second most influential must be Camus' Stranger. These books made me really think for first time seriously of what it is to be. It was, and is a surprise to me how much influence a work of fiction can have on a person.

[smellincoffee]

I tried to name five, and failed. Eight it is.

In order of my being exposed to them..

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond. I had never encountered history that was not limited to human actors, and particularly the actors of Great Men. This book made me realize how interconnected disciplines of knowledge had to be, and introduced me to the concept of human history being driven by forces external.

To Have or to Be?, Erich Fromm. Though long uneasy with occasional impulses to buy, collect, and horde, Fromm was the first author to prompt me to think critically about consumerism.

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius. This introduced me to mindfulness, and the importance of individual responsibility and reliance, which would prove a good foundation when I learned of anarchism.

A Life of Her Own, Emile Carles. I'd read Marx before encountering this book, but even in my most radical moments only considered myself a social democrat. After Carles, though...the left was wide open to be. Before I'd been cautious, not wanting to go near ideas like communism which I saw as essentially statist. Carles essentially introduced me to left-libertarianism, or anarchism. (I later read Emma Goldman, but she's too individualist for me.)

Technopoly, Neil Postman
Postman awoke in me an antipathy toward the ethos of the machine, of ideologies and systems of governance that treat man only in the aggregate, as an economic input or a cog in the productive cycle. He clued me in to the worship of efficiency.

Honorable mentions:
The Sea Wolf & The Iron Heel, Jack London
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Carl Sagan; this convinced me back in in 2005 or so that evolution was true and my only real opposition to it had been the religion I'd already abandoned.
The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler. This gave voice to the feelings I had about American urbanism, articulating my problems and giving me the vocabulary to build on them in research. Four years after reading it, I'm still obsessed with urban planning and place-making.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I also wanted to mention the first Redwall novel.

I've loved Jacques and his work ever since.

(Redwall Abbey is basically a commune, after all...)

[Os Cangaceiros]

I liked "Mossflower" and "Salamandastron" a lot better than "Redwall".

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I liked "Mossflower" and "Salamandastron" a lot better than "Redwall".

You got to admire a man who basically told the exact same story over and over again for over 20 books, and yet somehow manages to knock it out of the park every single time.

Seriously, even the worst Redwall novel is still fun reading.

But the man was just a naturally gifted storyteller. Anyone who ever had the privilege to attend one of his live readings can attest to this.

[Os Cangaceiros]

If you like that sort of story (ie talking animal stories), I'd recommend "The Dark Portal" and subsequent novels in that series.

[Firebrand]

The redwall books never really did it for me. They were altogether too black and white, and i found the moralising irritating. I prefer it when books about animals either maintain a bit more of the animals natural behaviour patterns, or involve an animist world view like the one found in the anansi stories for example.

[DoCt SPARTAN]

The world Is our weapon - Subcomandante Marcos form EZLN

Ho Chi Minh - Biography

Communist manifesto

peoples history of the USA - Zinn

Homage to Catalonia - Orwell

etc.

[Anderson]

Any suggestions for a book by any author which can be re-printed (hard copies) for circulation to people ?
The book should be able to explain in layman language the basic concepts of proletariat struggle and expose the bourgeois exploitation.
Also please give me the content link.

[Red Economist]

I'm not a great person for reading books from start to finish, but kind of just dip into them for specific ideas I'm already thinking about. So I've read large chunks of these books to satisfy my intellectual curiosity.

1. The Black Book of Communism; I haven't read this in full but I got through about 300 of the 800 pages. It just turned my stomach so much I had to stop reading. reading this book was the first time I stopped being in "denial" and really looked at the violence committed by communists in a serious way. the book itself is flawed and propagandist, but I wasn't really interested in the statistics and simply wanted to understand the violence on a human level and for this- it left a very deep impression. it led me to consider walking away from the far left, to deepen my understanding of Marxist theory in many ways and made me take the irrationality of revolutionary and dictatorial violence more seriously as an issue in it's own right. What ever it's (considerable) failings, I would recommend this book as a 'rite of passage' for communists as it does illustrate how far the 'Communists' fell from the theoretical expectations.

2. The Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm (Read in Full); An enormous insight into the psychology of fascism, it's origins in capitalism and authoritarianism more generally. Fromm's works in general a just a good read (his 'Man for Himself' was a clever weaving of psychology and ethics), but some of the ideas in this book I use consistently as a basic understanding of social psychology.

3. Maurice Cornforth's Three Volume introduction; Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Theory of Knowledge. Ok, not one book- but certainly functions as a single volume. This was the first resource for me to actually study Marxist theory in any detail and is a continuous point of reference for the finer points of Marxist theory.

4. The Sexual Revolution by Wilhelm Reich; made a enormous impact in helping me come to terms with my bisexuality and helped explain the link between sexual repression and mental illness.

5. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (edited by O.Kuusinen). A fantastic piece for general reference on Marxist-Leninist theory (in the Khrushchev era) that is very well written and explain key concepts. However, I wish it had an index as it cannot be swallowed in one go.

Lesser Mention:

The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky

I read Trotsky's book during my early days and this was my first resource on figuring out what really happened in the USSR. I still basically agree with him that the USSR was 'socialist' and bureaucratic, but would see some of the roots in Lenin's theory of the vanguard of the proletariat.

The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham

Best considered as the intellectual precursor to Orwell's 1984 (and a direct influence on it) for setting out a (vaguely) Marxist vision of a future transition to Totalitarianism. An interesting book but one that falls down on the subtleties of Marxist theory. Burnham rejected Dialectical Materialism and the most solid criticisms of the book arise from this as he takes a rather crude 'economic determinist' view of (then) future history.

The Road to Serfdom, Fredrick Hayek (Read in Full)

I read this after reading the Black Book to see how intellectually credible Hayek's position was. (Review is on my revleft blog). It is well worth the read, but dodges several key questions and does not sufficiently answer others. it was something of a disappointment (shortly followed by reading parts of Milton Freidman's Capitalism and Freedom, particularly the section of where he rejects Corporate Social Responsibility) that turned me back towards the far left.

Progress or Collapse, Robert De Vogli

A book that will reliably produce depression and suicidal thoughts. It's by a non-Marxist author whose priority is on environmental politics but looks for a much wider social context. it certainly points out all the major problems that currently exist in capitalism as a socioeconomic system and the political/intellectual obstacles to reforming/changing them. Books like this fairly clearly point out that the future of capitalism will require some more radical solutions and that the far left should not be dismissed (though the author himself does).

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread.

I listened to the Communist Manifesto as an audiobook (download it and many other audio-books for free at Librivox.org), but Conquest just made it all make sense.


Runner up is Malatesta's Anarchy.

[Rosso]

I have to say that the catcher in the rye was the first novel which confirmed my feelings that something wasn't right in this society.

[Comrade Jacob]

I'm not a great person for reading books from start to finish

1. The Black Book of Communism; I haven't read this in full but I got through about 300 of the 800 pages. It just turned my stomach so much I had to stop reading. reading this book was the first time I stopped being in "denial" and really looked at the violence committed by communists in a serious way. the book itself is flawed and propagandist, but I wasn't really interested in the statistics and simply wanted to understand the violence on a human level and for this- it left a very deep impression. it led me to consider walking away from the far left, to deepen my understanding of Marxist theory in many ways and made me take the irrationality of revolutionary and dictatorial violence more seriously as an issue in it's own right. What ever it's (considerable) failings, I would recommend this book as a 'rite of passage' for communists as it does illustrate how far the 'Communists' fell from the theoretical expectations.

The statistics are ridiculous and the book is ridiculous, I don't need to go into detail I'm sure you know why.

[Red Economist]

The statistics are ridiculous and the book is ridiculous, I don't need to go into detail I'm sure you know why.

Yeah, I realize. the statistics are bollocks and the approach is flawed. But as the first attempt to catalogue what happened after the fall of the USSR, it is as good a place as any to appreciate the enormity of how badly things went wrong, to really understand just how many people were affected by communism's mistakes and what it cost them.

[Црвена]

Dystopian literature introduced me to politics, Brave New World in particular made me hate capitalism, everything by Orwell introduced me to the left-wing and I decided to join the left through reading the usual socialist thinkers' works.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Society of the Spectacle.

[Mikula Mali]

Must say Factotum by Charles Bukowski, but trough his recomendaton I found Upton Sinclair- The profits of religion, Sherwood Anderson - Black lough, John Fante - Wait till spring Bandinie. And of coarse there is John Steinbeck.