An Injury to One is an Injury to All
I read it on a thread and bought it, Dance of the Dialectics. A very readable book.
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Fundamental Books, Texts
Ok comrades, I have a good amount of money to spend on my radical education. I need some books that are "must have's" for revolutionaries, those that are the building blocks to more advanced theoretical works. Preferably those books for ANY radical leftists but especially those for Anarchists, Libertarian Socialists/Communists/Marxists.
These are the books I already own:
Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
Anarchism: In Theory and Practice - Daniel Guerin
Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire
Che Guevara - Jon Lee Anderson
I've read more than this but these are the only ones I actually own.
Last edited by Sosa; 15th March 2012 at 00:12.
I read it on a thread and bought it, Dance of the Dialectics. A very readable book.
A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a must have for any revolutionary.
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Can't believe I forgot that book. A must read.
This is probably a bit obvious, but what about Das Kapital? The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin is decent anarcho-communist literature.
[FONT=Trebuchet MS]Politics For Dummies (Brainwashed Capitalist Edition)[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS]Socialism: any country providing free healthcare for its citizens.[/FONT] [FONT=Trebuchet MS]
Anarchism: a system involving no government, invented by the Sex Pistols.[/FONT]
Political compass:
Social: -957 million
Economic: -55 billion
Sorry if you have read these already
If you want to know about Platformism I say this is eassential
The Civil War in France - deals with the Paris Commune
The State and Revolution - Lenin explaining Marx's theory of the state withering away
...thats all I'm confident in mentioning
Marx- Essential Writings of Karl Marx (Red and Black), Das Kapital, Grundrisse, The Geramn Ideology,
Lenin- Essential Works of Lenin (Dover)
Kropotkin- Mutual Aid, The Conquest of Bread
Luxemburg- Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (Pathfinder), The Accumulation of Capital
Trotsky- History of the Russian Revolution, The Revolution Betrayed
Gramsci- Prison Notebooks
American Labor History- The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
Russian Revolution- The Bolshevik Revolution by Edward Carr
Don't worry if it's obvious. I forgot all about Kapital (borrowed it a few times and never finished it)
Also the Marxist Internet Archive is indispensable
http://marxists.org/archive/index.htm
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky is a good look into the propaganda proccess.
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Manufacturing Consent was good, but don't look much further into Chomsky imo.
Unless you want to read some nice and interesting conversations with nationalists.
I don't really see the point in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. It just points out what should be painfully obvious to anyone considering anti-capitalism to begin with: The entire edifice of bourgeois parliamentary republicanism is a load of bullshit. Seems like the target demographic is liberals.
Stay away from Proudhon. He's crap.
Guy Debord- Society of the Spectacle
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (highly reccomend this, about communism and it's impact on the world)
Killing Hope by William Blum (an excellent history of American imperialism since the second world war)
The Vietnam Wars by Marilyn Young (about the Vietnam war)
Cuba by Richard Gott (about Cuba)
Socialism Today and Tommorow by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel (I think this is absolutely excellent, about what socialism should look like and the experiences in Russia, China, and Cuba and the good and bad of those societies. Book is a little dated, being from the 1980's)
"The exploited are not carriers of any positive project, be it even the classless society (which all too closely resembles the productive set up). Capital is their only community. They can only escape by destroying everything that makes them exploited...Capitalism has not created the conditions of its overcoming in communism-the famous bourgeoisie forging the arms of its own extinction-but of a world of horrors." -At Daggers Drawn
"Our strategy is therefore the following: to establish and maintain a series of centers of desertion, or poles of secession, of rallying points. For runaways. For those who leave. A series of places where we can escape from the influence of a civilization that is headed for the abyss." -Tiqqun, Call
I dunno, of course he's not relevant now, but if one wants to trace back the lineage of leftist thought then Proudhon is essential.
I forgot I have that one. Haven't gotten around to reading it yet though
I might add some more later:
Essential Writings of Marx (Red and Black Publishing)
Essential Writings of Engels (Red and Black Publishing)
Marx-Engels Reader -- If you don't mind reading abridged writings.
Lenin Anthology -- See above.
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
Bakunin on Anarchism -- Again. Some abridged writings.
A People's History of the World
A People's History of the United States
EDIT: No Gods, No Masters -- pretty good collection of anarchist works by various authors
Last edited by Caj; 15th March 2012 at 02:56.
"All immediatists [. . .] want to get rid of society and put in its place a particular group of workers. This group they choose from the confines of one of the various prisons which constitute the bourgeois society of 'free men' i.e. the factory, the trade, the territorial or legal patch. Their entire miserable effort consists in telling the non-free, the non-citizens, the non-individuals [. . .] to envy and imitate their oppressors: be independent! free! be citizens! people! In a word: be bourgeois!" -Amadeo Bordiga, "Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism"
why not? I don't have many of his books but I have Hopes and Prospects, The Essential Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot and Manufacturing Consent
I know that his book on Anarchism isn't great (in fact I've heard it's not worth reading) but he provides very good foreign policy analysis.
Forgot Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement by Gloria Ramirez. If you already know about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, then skip this. It's kind of an introduction into their history, beliefs, etc. Still good though.
"The exploited are not carriers of any positive project, be it even the classless society (which all too closely resembles the productive set up). Capital is their only community. They can only escape by destroying everything that makes them exploited...Capitalism has not created the conditions of its overcoming in communism-the famous bourgeoisie forging the arms of its own extinction-but of a world of horrors." -At Daggers Drawn
"Our strategy is therefore the following: to establish and maintain a series of centers of desertion, or poles of secession, of rallying points. For runaways. For those who leave. A series of places where we can escape from the influence of a civilization that is headed for the abyss." -Tiqqun, Call
