Good Reads

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

I'm heading to the bookstore today, as I do every weekend to find good books. This week I'm looking for historical books on communism, socialism, economics, etc,.

If anyone could be kind enough to offer up some suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

They Take Our Jobs: And 20 Other Myths About Immigration by Aviva Chomsky

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

War Without End: The Iraq War In Context by Michael Schwartz

Non-Leninist Marxism (no authors really, put out by Red and Black Publishers)

[x359594]

I have one title to add to Anti-Capitalist's list: Workers' Councils by Anton Pannekoek published by AK Press.

[Brosip Tito]

Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton

The Enigma of Capital and The Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey

[Ostrinski]

Somehow I doubt many of these would be at a general bookstore.

[daft punk]

A decent bookshop will have lots of books by and about Trotsky. The ones about him are mostly written by liars. They ones by him will be available to order, don't expect them to be on the shelf. You will find things like Ragged Trousered Philanthropists in stock probably.

[Rooster]

I saw a book called Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography I think in a chain bookstore. I'm not sure if it's any good or not but it looked interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Marxs-Das-Kapital-Biography-Changed/dp/0871139707

I tell you what, if you want a good read then you should look for The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson. I think there's a new print out so it should be available.

[x359594]

Somehow I doubt many of these would be at a general bookstore.

Only the last two titles on Anti-Capitalist's list would be hard to find a general bookstore. The others can be ordered from their respective publishers.

[La Comédie Noire]

Richard Evan's Trilogy on the Third Reich.

The first book is called The Coming of The Third Reich.

They should have it at a general book store.

[Ismail]

E.H. Carr's three-volume The Bolshevik Revolution is a classic and I've seen all sorts of leftists (albeit mostly Trots and "Stalinists") cite it.

The Invention of Capitalism is apparently a great read (http://exiledonline.com/recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious/), written by Michael Perelman.

[ed miliband]

E.H. Carr's three-volume The Bolshevik Revolution is a classic and I've seen all sorts of leftists (albeit mostly Trots and "Stalinists") cite it.

The Invention of Capitalism is apparently a great read (http://exiledonline.com/recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious/), written by Michael Perelman.

and it's available for free on libcom :)

[Ismail]

and it's available for free on libcom :)Quite right, although I know people whose eyes are threatened with doom if they try reading books on the computer.

[Q]

Anything from this list (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=7728), if you haven't already:



Depends on what you want to read really. Some startup suggestions:
Basic Marxist programmatic thinking:
- The Communist Manifesto (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm).
- Critique of the Gotha Program (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm).
The Erfurt foundation:
- The Erfurt Program (http://marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm).
- The Class Struggle (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/index.htm) (Commentary on the Erfurt Program).
- A Critique of the Draft of the Erfurt Program (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm).
And on a more contemporary note:
- Revolutionary Strategy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205) (read a review here (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1001677), click here if you want a more readable PDF copy or perhaps a hardcopy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/revolutionary-strategy-marxism-t168571/index.html)).
- Against Keynesian politics (http://vimeo.com/36874394), a critique against the "common sense" of the contemporary far left.
About being human:
- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/)
- In what way is Engels' Origins still valid today? (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004710) (If you prefer a video, click here (http://vimeo.com/30016524)).
- Origins of religion and the human revolution - Part 1 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002142) and Part 2 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002151).
- When all the crap began - Part 1 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004288) and Part 2 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004297).
- On matriarchy and primitive communism (http://vimeo.com/29767554) (video)
- Primitive communism and the matriarchal family: are they Marxist myths? (http://vimeo.com/15023785) (video)
- Radical Anthropology Group (http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/RAG.html)
On economy:
- Wage labour & Capital (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm).
- Value, price and profit (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm).
- The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/index.htm) (while I haven't read them yet, they are reportedly more easy to follow than Capital volume I (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm), volume II (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/index.htm) and volume III (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm)).
- Problems with Marx's labour theory of value (http://vimeo.com/35878144) (video)
- The role of power and money (http://vimeo.com/36009350) (video)
- Where is the capitalist crisis going? (videos) Part 1 (http://vimeo.com/29272377) and Part 2 (http://vimeo.com/29327821).
On the state:
- A lecture of Werner Bonefeld on the political nature of the capitalist state (http://vimeo.com/36451059) (video)
- The state and revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/)
On the Soviet Union:
- The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm).
- What about Russia? Theories of the Soviet Union (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russiai-theories-soviet-t168685/index.html) (video and discussion).
On Marxism as a science:
- Marxism and science (http://vimeo.com/15032076) (video)
- On democracy (http://vimeo.com/12209953) (video)
- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm)
- My own comments about "gaining true knowledge" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1464).

While this is my own take on a "startup", I hope this is a good start and of course there is many more to learn. Always keep your mind open and question everything, because if things stay unquestioned, they become stale dogma :)

[The Idler]

Socialism or Your Money Back (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Socialism-Your-Money-Back-Socialist/dp/0954473310/) by the Socialist Party of Great Britain is excellent.

[Deicide]

I highly recommend The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change by David Harvey. It's a marxist analysis of 'post-modernity'. However, I doubt you'll find it in a mainstream bookstore.



This is a truly excellent critique of postmodernism and more particularly of the socio-economic reshaping of our contemporary culture that shaped it. Harvey does not delve into the more involved subdivisions within postmodernism, do not expect to discover the differences between post structuralism, deconstructionism or any of the other myriad postmodern schools, nor does he mean to. It is indicative that he titles his book as dealing with postmodernity rather postmodernism as such, the one simply being the philosophy of the other. It is with postmodernity, that is the current contemporary formation of capitalism, that Harvey is concerned and it is with that most modernist of theoretical tools, Marxism, that he explores it.

I had always suspected that Marxian analysis still retained more strength than the collapse of Soviet Communism suggested and now I am sure of it. The deliberate employment of a meta-narrative to investigate a movement so opposed to such formations is instructive and Harvey demonstrates how often postmodernists have to fall back on universals in the end. Harvey's main strength is in detailing how the change in the economic practice of capitalism has changed since 1973 and how that has affected social and in turn cultural currents.

While Professor Harvey runs the full gamut of cultural experiences here; art, philosophy, cinema etc he pays especial attention to architecture. He also pays especial attention to the investigation of the experiences of space and time and how these are affected by economics and how they shape cultural feeling. The latter half of this book is in many ways the most difficult as his models operate in a fairly high level of abstraction. However after the initial difficulties of thinking in these terms are overcome this proves to be a very rewarding approach to the issue. I'm not going to pretend that I understood everything here but I understood enough.

This is a book that provides the essential analytic tools and models for operating in a postmodern world even to those for whom the works of Derrida and Foucault hold no appeal at all. Harvey's concerns about the new aesthetic in public life, the dangers of charismatic politics and the resurgence of a narrow geopolitical outlook are equally as pressing now as they were in 1990. In order to see beyond the incestuous breeding of imagery to the realities beyond, increased inequality and big power chauvinism, this is precisely the sort of thing that you need to read. And now I'm off to read Das Kapital.