*The Great U75 Politics Reading List Thread.
- Thread starter Idris2002
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What's wrong with your brain?
J Scone
Member
Politics, human nature and the vices of our oppressors haven't changed much in the ~2500 years since Plato wrote his masterpiece. His observation of 'money lenders injecting poisonous loans into society' is particularly relevant today.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Why bother with works councils when a workers' council is so much better?
Stardark
'Cause I'm an asshole...
The ones mentioned so far that I've read...
Small Is Beautiful
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Prince
The Art of War
Anarchism: Arguments For and Against (thanks to lights.out.london, because I misremembered it as The Pros & Cons of Anarchism)
Those not mentioned yet that I've read...
The Fates of Nations (so good I copied and pasted most of it) - Paul Colinvaux
Gaviotas; A Village To Reinvent The World - Alan Weisman
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (link to BBC Saturday Drama, 2 days left to listen, but it's not really the same) - Robert M. Pirsig.
Animal Farm (a good primer, they even made an animated version) - George Orwell
New Rulers of the World - Pilger (I bought this for 10p at my local library, they seemed so keen to be rid of it, but haven't read it yet)
Seems everyone needs to read The Ragged Trousered Philanthopist (what was that Jack Rosenthal film? P'tang Yang Kipperbang?). I may do, someday...
Small Is Beautiful
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Prince
The Art of War
Anarchism: Arguments For and Against (thanks to lights.out.london, because I misremembered it as The Pros & Cons of Anarchism)
Those not mentioned yet that I've read...
The Fates of Nations (so good I copied and pasted most of it) - Paul Colinvaux
Gaviotas; A Village To Reinvent The World - Alan Weisman
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (link to BBC Saturday Drama, 2 days left to listen, but it's not really the same) - Robert M. Pirsig.
Animal Farm (a good primer, they even made an animated version) - George Orwell
New Rulers of the World - Pilger (I bought this for 10p at my local library, they seemed so keen to be rid of it, but haven't read it yet)
Seems everyone needs to read The Ragged Trousered Philanthopist (what was that Jack Rosenthal film? P'tang Yang Kipperbang?). I may do, someday...
Thraex
Needs to posh up his pants
A little bit tongue in cheek, but currently reading "Selected Political Speeches - Cicero" translated by Michael Grant. As is recognised a brilliant orator who was incredibly influential at the end of the Roman Republic.
Wasn't too sure how I was going to find it, but it's very readable, and for me is filling in lots of my knowledge gaps
.
Wasn't too sure how I was going to find it, but it's very readable, and for me is filling in lots of my knowledge gaps
.redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood - Trumpet of Sedition
Fantastic look at the development of political theory during the 16th and 17th centuries
Fantastic look at the development of political theory during the 16th and 17th centuries
I like her writing. Easy to understand.
Agreed, The Origins of Capitalism by her is a really good, concise, easy to read example of her best work.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Thats next on my list.
Finished reading it a few days ago. 'Tis good.
Cartwright
New Member
I just finished reading Theories of International Politics...and Zombies. By Daniel Drezner: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9388.html
It's great for all Politics and IR students struggling to get their heads around the theories of Realism, Liberalism and so forth!
It's great for all Politics and IR students struggling to get their heads around the theories of Realism, Liberalism and so forth!
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Just looked this up and it looks a fascinating book. Will definitely put this on my reading list.
Cornetto
yesh
Worker in a Worker's State -Miklos Haraszti
Riklet
procrastinación
Just about to buy "Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment" by Ellen Meiksins Wood as a kindle book.
Seemed a bit expensive so i got the sample first chapter thing off Amazon n finished that now, definitely want the rest of the book it's really interesting and not too hard to read. Only criticism so far is she's not very good at sourcing comments like "some historians" which are chucked in vaguely regularly.
Seemed a bit expensive so i got the sample first chapter thing off Amazon n finished that now, definitely want the rest of the book it's really interesting and not too hard to read. Only criticism so far is she's not very good at sourcing comments like "some historians" which are chucked in vaguely regularly.
love detective
there's no love too small
If you like that you should also read 'Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages' which is pretty much a prequel to that one and does the same thing but for a different period
Anything at all by Ellen Meiksens Wood quite frankly.
In a similar vein, I'd also recommend a few these:
Karl Polyani - The Great Transformation (The cultural and political origns of our times):
Dominic Losurdo - Liberalism: A Counter-History
Mark O'Brien - Perish the Priviliged Orders: A Socialist History of the Chartists
Paul Foot - The Vote (How it was won and how it was undermined)
In a similar vein, I'd also recommend a few these:
Karl Polyani - The Great Transformation (The cultural and political origns of our times):
Dominic Losurdo - Liberalism: A Counter-History
Mark O'Brien - Perish the Priviliged Orders: A Socialist History of the Chartists
Paul Foot - The Vote (How it was won and how it was undermined)
Just finished the Purple Book an interesting insight to the thinking of people who will be influential in the next Labour government
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The last two are not in the same vein at all.
Ok then...
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
I'm after something that covers Chinese state spending on infrastructure and fixed capital since the world financial crisis - can anyone recommend anything for me?
Just read Globalization and the Postcolonial World by Ankie Hoogvelt - not a bad summary of the development of the world economy since the second world war but at times the arguments are hard to follow and I wasn't always satisfied that they really justified the conclusions. The stuff about the 'new information economy' (ie. that information and knowledge are more important to the creation of value than labour) wasn't convincing at all and the Chapter on the Islamic revolt is poor in hindsight too, massively underestimated it and seemed a bit sneering especially where he claims that the 'lumpen intellectuals' who lead it can't take it anywhere because they are outside academia.
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman - know your enemy. It's probably the worst book I've ever read. Full of logical inconsistencies and circular arguments. Can't believe that some people actually take it seriously.
The Poverty of Development Economics by Deepak Lal - again, know your enemy - he's better at pretending his propaganda is serious scholarship than Friedman but it's still shit. Claims import tariffs in India distorted the market and export incentives laid on top exacerbated it, yet when talking about essentially similar measures in South Korea he claimed the export incentives were 'market conforming' as they 'corrected' the distortions created by the import tariffs. He does this so that he can claim in SK the two canceled eachother out so it would have been exactly the same without state intervention, presumably because SK was considered an economic miracle and India, well, wasn't. He also claims not to advocate laissez faire but rather second best welfare economics - ie. that market imperfections are inevitable and in deciding whether to take state action you should do a cost-benefit analysis to weigh up whether interventions aimed at negating the imperfection will create new, bigger ones. But he always, every time, concludes that they will and so ends up advocating laissez faire anyway.
Oh, also recently read Making English Morals by MJD Roberts. Didn't like that much either
Basically makes a Habermas type argument that moral reform associations created civil society - a public space, free from the influence of state and market, in which rational critical debate could take place, but this was destroyed later when state and market began to encroach on it. Completely ignores the fact that it was never free of state or market interference and that the majority of the population never had access anyway. No comment on what the objects of moral reform thought about it either. Useful as a history of the groups themselves and of middle class intellectual opinion at the time but not a lot else.
Just read Globalization and the Postcolonial World by Ankie Hoogvelt - not a bad summary of the development of the world economy since the second world war but at times the arguments are hard to follow and I wasn't always satisfied that they really justified the conclusions. The stuff about the 'new information economy' (ie. that information and knowledge are more important to the creation of value than labour) wasn't convincing at all and the Chapter on the Islamic revolt is poor in hindsight too, massively underestimated it and seemed a bit sneering especially where he claims that the 'lumpen intellectuals' who lead it can't take it anywhere because they are outside academia.
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman - know your enemy. It's probably the worst book I've ever read. Full of logical inconsistencies and circular arguments. Can't believe that some people actually take it seriously.
The Poverty of Development Economics by Deepak Lal - again, know your enemy - he's better at pretending his propaganda is serious scholarship than Friedman but it's still shit. Claims import tariffs in India distorted the market and export incentives laid on top exacerbated it, yet when talking about essentially similar measures in South Korea he claimed the export incentives were 'market conforming' as they 'corrected' the distortions created by the import tariffs. He does this so that he can claim in SK the two canceled eachother out so it would have been exactly the same without state intervention, presumably because SK was considered an economic miracle and India, well, wasn't. He also claims not to advocate laissez faire but rather second best welfare economics - ie. that market imperfections are inevitable and in deciding whether to take state action you should do a cost-benefit analysis to weigh up whether interventions aimed at negating the imperfection will create new, bigger ones. But he always, every time, concludes that they will and so ends up advocating laissez faire anyway.
Oh, also recently read Making English Morals by MJD Roberts. Didn't like that much either
Basically makes a Habermas type argument that moral reform associations created civil society - a public space, free from the influence of state and market, in which rational critical debate could take place, but this was destroyed later when state and market began to encroach on it. Completely ignores the fact that it was never free of state or market interference and that the majority of the population never had access anyway. No comment on what the objects of moral reform thought about it either. Useful as a history of the groups themselves and of middle class intellectual opinion at the time but not a lot else.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
If you say so, however I don't see them being very influential on government policy anytime soon.
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