*The Great U75 Politics Reading List Thread.

[tony.c]

anthony.c

Strumpet City by James Plunkett - novel set around the 1912 Dublin Lockout.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - novel about the exploitation of mainly immigrant labour in the Chicago slaughterhouses in the Thirties.

Out of the Night by Jan Valtin - the story of a German Communist Party member's fight against the rise of the Nazis.

No Retreat by Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey - an account of militant antifascism in Britain between 1977 and 1997.

 

[signor sinistra]

A few more books:

The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn - A book about various heretical movements in medieval and Reformation Europe, that attempts to explain what effects (essentially economic and social dislocation) would cause people to believe in such millenarian ideas. He also compares the apocalyptic beliefs from centuries ago with Nazism and Stalinism in the twentieth century.


Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin - A literary criticism of Rabelais' (another heretic) Gargantua and Pantagruel written by a Russian during Stalin's era that invoked the carnival spirit and earthiness and was a veiled criticism of Communism (another bloody heretic i suppose). "The official feast asserted all that was stable, unchanging, perennial: the existing hierarchy, the existing religious, political, and moral values....That is why the tone of the official feast was monolithically serious and why the element of laughter was alien to it. The true nature of human festivity was betrayed and distorted. But this true festive character was indestructible; it had to be tolerated and even legalised outside the official sphere" Bakhtin


On Another Man's Wound by Ernie O'Malley - An autobiographical account of the Irish War of Independence by a man that became a senior officer in the IRA Southern Command. The book is well written and quite matter of fact in tone. O'Malley was ambivalent around the time of the Easter Rising, but gradually became more involved. The book isn't political theory as such, more an account of what was done and why it had to be done.


The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin - A science fiction novel. It's just been reprinted and i saw a mini review of it the other day. It's been 20 odd years since i read it so i am going to have to get hold of it again. Vague plot - two adjacent planets with very different resources and politics, a journey from one planet to another, but not everyting on the other planet is as first seems.

 

[nino_savatte]

Jean Baudrillard- The Consumer Society: Myths & Structures

It's pre-Simulation and Simulacra but it's an interesting read all the same. He doesn't think much of growth or GDP. Come to think of it, nor do I.

 

[Irenick]

'If This is a Man' - Primo Levi
'The Grapes of Wrath' - John Steibeck
'Slaughterhouse Five' - Kurt Vonnegut
'Capital' - Karl Marx
'Hidden Persuaders' - Vance Packard

 

[ska invita]

Just reading this and its amazing:

The End of Utopia - Politics and Culture in a Age of Apathy by Russell JAcoby

A right kick up the arse of academics and progressives, making clear how and why the left is loosing/lost its backbone - also has made me see more clearly where we are right now, politically speaking. he's got another book out, came out last year with more of the same. Cant recommend this enough.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Utopia-Politics-Culture-Apathy/dp/0465020011

 

[imposs1904]

Just finished reading 'Standing Fast' by Harvey Swados.

A really good novel about a group of young men and women in late thirties America who become members of a Trotskyists, and work together to set up a branch of their organisation in Buffalo over the next few years, and how their personal and political lives take divergent paths.

I only found out about it after I read an interesting article about the novel at the Workers Liberty website.

It was originally published in the early seventies, and is now sadly out of print but you can easily find a secondhand copy via bookfinder.com.

regards,
Darren
Inveresk Street Ingrate blog

 

[Geoff kerr-morg]

Leon Uris Trinity and Mila 18
Louis de Berniere Birds Without Wings
Eamonn McCann War And An Irish Town
Gil Courtmanche A Sunday By The Pool In Kigali

 

[riglet]

Krazy & Ignatz: Herriman

 

[Grego Morales]

Society Must Be Defended - Michael Foucault

 

[Grego Morales]

False Dawn - John Gray

 

[moono]

Belushi;

'Age of Extremes' etc - Eric Hobsbawm

Somebody just bunged me that. Thick, innit.

 

[Threshers_Flail]

Reading Age of Extremes at the mo, very good read, takes ages to get through the one chapter mind. You just gotta make yourself really or it'll just collect dust or become a very expensive place mat.

 

[michael1968x]

"Social Inequality & Class Radicalism in France and Britain" by Duncan Gallie. A very clear and empirically grounded analysis of why many more workers in France than Britain hold radical class views of inequality, politics and society.

 

[articul8]

The Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan.

Great novel whic puntures naively romantic Irish nationalism without justifying colonial oppression.

 

[butchersapron]

Anyone read The New Spirit of Capitalism?

 

[articul8]

not yet - how is it?

I can't wait for this:
http://www.akpress.org/2007/items/jacquesvache

 

[butchersapron]

Not very good - at least 200 pages in it isn't.

 

[nino_savatte]

The Consumer Society - Jean Baudrillard.

This is a book by a more youthful Baudrillard before he went all postmodern on us.

 

[Robert Side]

Web of debt by Ellen H Brown.
Relates absolutely to the present Credit Crunch
and possible solutions for money reform ; of enormous importance to ecology globalisation and the stupidity of exponential growth.

 

[eyrie]

Am in the midst of 'Web of Debt', which I'm finding difficult, not because of the language or subject, but because she gets so carried away by her own enthusiasm she forgets to check some facts: ie, the whole discussion of 17th c. English history, which is pretty confused, to say the least. Unfortunately then it makes me question how much other stuff is elided over. But the subject, yes, is *the* key one - what is money, who creates it and how, how it affects the rest of the economy and politics, and how we can do it differently.

A few other good books on this subject of money:
'Money upside down' Haas (2003) - a German PhD thesis turned into a book, considered arguments once you get past the clunky English.

'What is Money?' (Routledge, 2000) - academic essays which taken together show that all standard economic theories, including Marxism, have misunderstood or misrepresented both the history and nature of money

"The Role of Money" Soddy (1935) - a physical scientist tackles the question of money - not always clearly written but some great bits of analysis

"The Nature of Money" John Kutyn (1996-2005) - slightly mad Canadian ex-banker, campaigner for local currencies in New Zealand

"Creating New Money" Huber & Robertson (2004?) From the New Economics Foundation (NGO Central). Good on the subject of how money is created now, but fantasically suggests that bankers are going to somehow be willing to give up their status as masters of the universe without a fight.

Dealing with anything else - the encroachment on civil rights, the environment, cuts to government benefits and services, privatisation, even the war - feels like an exercise in how many fingers can be found for how many holes in the dyke, when in fact the dyke needs to be entirely rebuilt on new foundations.

Happy New Year?

 

[tbaldwin]

2 Good reads for Different reasons.

Diamond in the Dust a biography of Ian Stuart the dead skrewdiver singer.
you can read it on the internet if you follow the links thru wikipedia. some of it is really funny.

Soledad Brother George Jackson.

 

[audiotech]

2 Good reads for Different reasons.

Diamond in the Dust a biography of Ian Stuart the dead skrewdiver singer.
you can read it on the internet if you follow the links thru wikipedia. some of it is really funny.

That read was worse than watching:

As I recently acquired a DVD of it.

 

[tbaldwin]

Another good book re Fascism is Morris Beckmans Jewish 43 Group.

 

[audiotech]

Vidal Sassoon in March 1992 wrote a foreword to Morris Beckman's book and remembered proudly 43 Jewish ex-servicemen and women coming together '...who did not intend to allow the fascists ever again to rule the streets of London, who were joined by many gentile friends...'

 

[audiotech]

Reading Marx's Capital

Free course online.

 

[trevhagl]

That all seems very boring. "Bash The Rich" by Ian Bone is hilarious

 

[The Black Hand]

That all seems very boring. "Bash The Rich" by Ian Bone is hilarious

True. I like Martin Lux "Anti Fascist".

 

[frogwoman]

mark curtis web of deciet

 

[frogwoman]

misha glenny - mcmafia

 

[Fledgling]

John Bolton- Surrender is not an option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad. A bit too arcane, spends a lot of time talking about high level discussions and strange not quite anecdotes, nowhere near enough in-depth criticism of the UN which is what I'd hoped for. He could have used this to take the organisation to pieces. Instead Bolton goes for a memoir which wastes time on irrelevant discussions of his general vision.