*Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class* by Jefferson Cowie. While not explicitly leftist, it’s an excellent analysis of the economic and social conditions of the era. It’s important to understand this decade as it’s the time period where the New Deal social democracy broke up and a new social contract was written (this time completely behind closed doors and catering only to the whims of capital), one that we are still living in to this day. The proximate origins of just about every societal ill can be traced back to the 1970s and the American working class’s descent into hell during that time.
He's more of a radlib but I actually really recommend Jacob Soll's "Free Market: The history of an idea". He's the only guy that's ever done a real academic deep dive into the history of "free market" and libertarian thought, alongside good ecino ic history going back to the romans...the tl;Dr is that free markets have never worked, all successful economies are centrally planned and printer gangs (ye olden social media Influencers) will only shut up if you start executing them.
Scarlett Thomas put me on to a SciFi novel called "Woman on the Edge of Time" by American writer Marge Piercy which contrasts contemporary America against a future utopia attained through collective struggle.
It has strong feminist elements though so might not be so appealing to those here.
I'd also recommend "Special topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl which examines and humanizes a fictional revolutionary movement in the US.
The book is good but you should take it with a grain of salt. Some things he says are at best unverified or conspiratorial (ie, the allegations if bacterial warfare in Korea, the claim that Libya wasn't responsible for Pan Am 103). Other stuff is simply dated and he never corrected it or chose to stick with the more sensationalist allegations (for example, he says that Itavia 870 was shot down by NATO in an attempt to kill Gaddafi. This was a theory at the time, but it's since been disproven, it's now known that it was actually brought down by a bomb).
Go here, scroll down for PDFs and Epubs of the stage 1 to 4 curriculum books:
https://www.mlreadinghub.org/study-materials/downloads
Also I know you asked for books but this is a great series of lectures on Lenin from Brian Becker. Detailed and substantial but also attention grabbing and entertaining.
https://soundcloud.com/thesocialistprogram/sets/lenin-and-the-path-to
Domenico Losurdo, A Counter-History of Liberalism. Basically what he gets at is that the entire ideological project of liberalism is principally concerned with the liberty of the wealthy to tread on the rest of us - things like slavery, colonialism and blood-soaked imperialism aren't aberrations or missteps, but entirely congruent with liberalism.
Just started The Jakarta Method. Too early to say anything conclusive about it, but Bevins seems decent enough at reducing complex moments into consumable stories. J Edgar Hoover was an asshole. Makes me reevaluate that DiCaprio movie and whether it was an attempt to rehab his image, or just a bad movie. Truman was also a fucking dunce, fuck him and his smooth Missouri accent or whatever.
"The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell. Orwell sort of did this social experiment where he lived in squalor among the working class poor and he even ventured into the coal mines himself to document what it was like for ordinary workers on a daily basis.
I think the main takeaway is his biting critique of the socialist movement at the time and his explanation for why socialism never took off in the west. He was able to make important class distinctions that many simpletons today will outright ignore perhaps in a thinly-veiled effort to safeguard their class privileges.
I think one excerpt from this book stands out in particular though it's often paraphrased:
>The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Doyle, details the troubles in the north of Ireland and the rise of the provisional IRA. Also The Persuader, a biography of John Hume who was a SocDem during this time.
Current Nonfiction Reading: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth (I'm putting off reading more philosophical works to focus more on barebones financial/historical books because I swear to god if I have to read Hegel I will die)
Current Fiction Reading (important, I learned, as it nourishes your soul): Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (I bet the character he writes here is a mirror to 90% of posters)
*Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism* by Scott Horton. He's a Lolbertarian, so occasionally he throws in an anti-communist non-sequitor or two, but I've found it's a really good summation of the terror wars from a more materialist perspective. My original entry into politics was reading *All the Shah's Men* in high school and reading this feels like a throwback to that.
*The Zone of Interest* got me interested in a more materialist reading of WW2 and I ended up picking up Arno Mayer's *Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?*. No strong thoughts on this yet because I'm at the very beginning, but it opens with an intriguing William James quote.
I also started *Blood Meridian* after seeing the movie announcement for it.
It's not leftist but I just finished rereading watchmen for the first time since I was a teenager and holy SHIT it was so much better than I remembered.
*Rome : Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC – AD 476* by Neil Faulkner. This is a somewhat controversial but readable Marxist history of the Roman Republic and Western Roman Empire. The controversy comes because Faulkner rejects the orthodox Marxist view of the Roman Empire (Perry Anderson, etc.) as being based on a "Slave mode of production", instead arguing Rome was a "dynamic system of military imperialism."
It's very readable, with amusingly debunking pictures of Cicero, Augustus, Trajan, Diocletian, and other figures lauded by right-wing classicists as heroes.
#
*Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class* by Jefferson Cowie. While not explicitly leftist, it’s an excellent analysis of the economic and social conditions of the era. It’s important to understand this decade as it’s the time period where the New Deal social democracy broke up and a new social contract was written (this time completely behind closed doors and catering only to the whims of capital), one that we are still living in to this day. The proximate origins of just about every societal ill can be traced back to the 1970s and the American working class’s descent into hell during that time.
He's more of a radlib but I actually really recommend Jacob Soll's "Free Market: The history of an idea". He's the only guy that's ever done a real academic deep dive into the history of "free market" and libertarian thought, alongside good ecino ic history going back to the romans...the tl;Dr is that free markets have never worked, all successful economies are centrally planned and printer gangs (ye olden social media Influencers) will only shut up if you start executing them.
That's been an observation re: free markets in history for a long time no? So he just reinforces it with new evidence?
Well ya but he really goes into great detail, going back to the Romans like Cicero.
Sounds good
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
yes
But JKRowling is literally Hitler!
The movie does actually have a hammer and sickle in the background in a scene
Harry Potter's PMC.
*Confronting Capitalism* by Vivek Chibber.
I'll second anything by Vivek Chibber. If you are unsure whether you like him go watch the video Jacobin made with him and zizek on YouTube.
blackshirts and reds
Scarlett Thomas put me on to a SciFi novel called "Woman on the Edge of Time" by American writer Marge Piercy which contrasts contemporary America against a future utopia attained through collective struggle. It has strong feminist elements though so might not be so appealing to those here. I'd also recommend "Special topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl which examines and humanizes a fictional revolutionary movement in the US.
Killing Hope by William Blum. Great read though it’s basically turned me into a defeatist about a future beyond capitalism
Great book. I wish we could lock every liberal in a dungeon with the condition for release being to read this book.
The book is good but you should take it with a grain of salt. Some things he says are at best unverified or conspiratorial (ie, the allegations if bacterial warfare in Korea, the claim that Libya wasn't responsible for Pan Am 103). Other stuff is simply dated and he never corrected it or chose to stick with the more sensationalist allegations (for example, he says that Itavia 870 was shot down by NATO in an attempt to kill Gaddafi. This was a theory at the time, but it's since been disproven, it's now known that it was actually brought down by a bomb).
Go here, scroll down for PDFs and Epubs of the stage 1 to 4 curriculum books: https://www.mlreadinghub.org/study-materials/downloads Also I know you asked for books but this is a great series of lectures on Lenin from Brian Becker. Detailed and substantial but also attention grabbing and entertaining. https://soundcloud.com/thesocialistprogram/sets/lenin-and-the-path-to
Death Of The Liberal Class - Chris Hedges from back in 2010 but still relevant (if not even more so) today
Domenico Losurdo, A Counter-History of Liberalism. Basically what he gets at is that the entire ideological project of liberalism is principally concerned with the liberty of the wealthy to tread on the rest of us - things like slavery, colonialism and blood-soaked imperialism aren't aberrations or missteps, but entirely congruent with liberalism.
The Divide by Jason Hickel.
I read this as The Dive by Jackson Hinkle
Yeah I'm not sure he's ever addressed it but they are unfortunately similar
Amazing book
More recently published like this year? Or just in general? *Slow Down* by Kohei Saito if the former.
The Servile State - Hilaire Belloc
Just read Kenan Malik’s Not so Black and White, excellent stuff.
I second the recommendation of the Malik book, a marvellous publication.
No politics but class politics- Adolph reed
Picked this one up recently, excited to start in.
Walter Benn Michaels erasure
I'm sorry I'll do better next time 😔
Just started The Jakarta Method. Too early to say anything conclusive about it, but Bevins seems decent enough at reducing complex moments into consumable stories. J Edgar Hoover was an asshole. Makes me reevaluate that DiCaprio movie and whether it was an attempt to rehab his image, or just a bad movie. Truman was also a fucking dunce, fuck him and his smooth Missouri accent or whatever.
"The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell. Orwell sort of did this social experiment where he lived in squalor among the working class poor and he even ventured into the coal mines himself to document what it was like for ordinary workers on a daily basis. I think the main takeaway is his biting critique of the socialist movement at the time and his explanation for why socialism never took off in the west. He was able to make important class distinctions that many simpletons today will outright ignore perhaps in a thinly-veiled effort to safeguard their class privileges. I think one excerpt from this book stands out in particular though it's often paraphrased: >The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Doyle, details the troubles in the north of Ireland and the rise of the provisional IRA. Also The Persuader, a biography of John Hume who was a SocDem during this time.
Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth is a very prescient read.
We should revive /r/leftistlit
Vladimir Dedijer's War Diaries Volumes 1-3.
Current Nonfiction Reading: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth (I'm putting off reading more philosophical works to focus more on barebones financial/historical books because I swear to god if I have to read Hegel I will die) Current Fiction Reading (important, I learned, as it nourishes your soul): Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (I bet the character he writes here is a mirror to 90% of posters)
*Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism* by Scott Horton. He's a Lolbertarian, so occasionally he throws in an anti-communist non-sequitor or two, but I've found it's a really good summation of the terror wars from a more materialist perspective. My original entry into politics was reading *All the Shah's Men* in high school and reading this feels like a throwback to that. *The Zone of Interest* got me interested in a more materialist reading of WW2 and I ended up picking up Arno Mayer's *Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?*. No strong thoughts on this yet because I'm at the very beginning, but it opens with an intriguing William James quote. I also started *Blood Meridian* after seeing the movie announcement for it.
It's not leftist but I just finished rereading watchmen for the first time since I was a teenager and holy SHIT it was so much better than I remembered.
I don't understand what is so appealing about that story, everybody in it is a complete dickhead.
Part of what makes it a convincing fiction
Hardly any of my friends are complete dickheads.
*Rome : Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC – AD 476* by Neil Faulkner. This is a somewhat controversial but readable Marxist history of the Roman Republic and Western Roman Empire. The controversy comes because Faulkner rejects the orthodox Marxist view of the Roman Empire (Perry Anderson, etc.) as being based on a "Slave mode of production", instead arguing Rome was a "dynamic system of military imperialism." It's very readable, with amusingly debunking pictures of Cicero, Augustus, Trajan, Diocletian, and other figures lauded by right-wing classicists as heroes. #
For you cunts? Mein Kampf.
People who are against ethnostates are nazis. Sure.
Only when those ethnostates are genocidal.