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*The Great U75 Politics Reading List Thread.

Animal Farm....George Orwell
1984....George Orwell
Mclibal
The clash of Fundimentalisms....Tariq Ali
Bloody Foreigners....Robert Winder
The 9/11 wars....Jason Burke
 
brogdale said:
The official blurb on the book:-
.....Bevir utilizes an impressive range of sources to illuminate a number of historical questions: Why did the British Marxists follow a Tory aristocrat who dressed in a frock coat and top hat?
Click to expand...
Or why they continue to do so.
 
Just arrived from amazon "exemplary comparison from homer to Petrarch" by olive sayce.
Re reading burnham's managerial revolution
 
Have you read Martin cricks history of the sdf? Made me reassess the reutation of the fed and of hyndman, the Marxist dogma has been dictated by Engels' hatred of hyndman and ignored the positives of that org.
 
barney_pig said:
Have you read Martin cricks history of the sdf? Made me reassess the reutation of the fed and of hyndman, the Marxist dogma has been dictated by Engels' hatred of hyndman and ignored the positives of that org.
Click to expand...

No, but Hyndman certainly appears to have been a complex and interesting character. According to Bevir's analysis Hyndman's Tory radicalism infused much of his scientific/positivist interpretation of Marxist dialectics. He thus held to political/parliamentary reform as a means to socialism, and yearned for a return to 'the golden age' much like other tory radicals of the time. So a Marxist, reformist monarchist must have made an intriguing, if perhaps infuriating figure.

In his defence, in 1908 Hyndman wrote to the (ex) Fabian and christian socialist Holbrook Jackson saying:-

"I have always been ready for nearly 28 years to co-operate with anyone who wished to bring about the formation of a thorough-going Socialist party in Great Britain." Yet he did not accept that such a party should dilute its Socialism to appease the trade unions, and went on to say.."...now a Socialist Party, in the combined sense, is opposed by the I.L.P. in favour of the Parliamentary Labour Party."

I find the notion of 'where it all went wrong for British Socialism' and interesting topic to read around atm.:)
 
brogdale said:
No, but Hyndman certainly appears to have been a complex and interesting character. According to Bevir's analysis Hyndman's Tory radicalism infused much of his scientific/positivist interpretation of Marxist dialectics. He thus held to political/parliamentary reform as a means to socialism, and yearned for a return to 'the golden age' much like other tory radicals of the time. So a Marxist, reformist monarchist must have made an intriguing, if perhaps infuriating figure.

In his defence, in 1908 Hyndman wrote to the (ex) Fabian and christian socialist Holbrook Jackson saying:-

"I have always been ready for nearly 28 years to co-operate with anyone who wished to bring about the formation of a thorough-going Socialist party in Great Britain." Yet he did not accept that such a party should dilute its Socialism to appease the trade unions, and went on to say.."...now a Socialist Party, in the combined sense, is opposed by the I.L.P. in favour of the Parliamentary Labour Party."

I find the notion of 'where it all went wrong for British Socialism' and interesting topic to read around atm.:)
Click to expand...
Carl levy socialism and the intelligentsia http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w64OAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false is worth a read. Not just for early history of British socialism but also for the problems today.
 
J Ed said:
Any recommendations for a book on modern Irish history?
Click to expand...

Roy Foster's Modern Ireland 1600-1972 is good (but revisioinist). Also Diarmuid Ferriter's The Transformation of Ireland 1900 - 2000.

Tim Pat Coogan has his own book on Ireland in the Twentieth Century, which I think may be called Ireland in the Twentieth Century.

E2A: And Conor McCabe's Sins of the Father: the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy.

E2AA: TP Coogan is a journalist, and it shows in the way he writes history. While Ferriter deals in overall patterns, Coogan's more about the evocative anecdote. I'd say the two books complement each other.
 
Depends what angle you're coming at it from. Robert Ginsborg's A history of Contemporary Italy gives a good left-sympathetic overview, Robert Lumley's States of Emergency does the same with much narrower focus on the autonomous movements and Steve Wright's Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism has an even narrower focus on the evolution of the operaismo into autoinomism but with really valuable politico-historical outlines as well. And yet narrower still we have Italy 1977-78: Living With An Earthquake and Working class autonomy and the crisis : Italian Marxist texts of the theory and practice of a class movement 1964-79 - both from Red Notes.

For a general overview of the terrorism aspect i found Richard Drake's The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy to be conservative but with some really useful stuff that didn't appear anywhere else. See also Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a 'black' terrorist by Stuart Christie, The Judge and the Historian - Carlo Ginzburg, great investigation into the fallout fo the bomb PInelli fell out of a window for, Strike One To Educate One Hundred: the rise of the Red Brigades. Loads and loads of i was a teenage terrorists pap out there too.
 
Thanks a million mate, the first one sounds good, just looking for an overview of that whole period, not specifically from an anotonomia perspective, but something sympathic is obviously a bit easier read.
 
That or the Lumley one's are pretty likely to be what you're after then - both excellent books i learnt a lot from. Ginsborg did a 2nd volume for the post-88 period that's rather different in tone and sympathies which i wouldn't recommend.
 
butchersapron said:
Depends what angle you're coming at it from. Robert Ginsborg's A history of Contemporary Italy gives a good left-sympathetic overview, Robert Lumley's States of Emergency does the same with much narrower focus on the autonomous movements and Steve Wright's Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism has an even narrower focus on the evolution of the operaismo into autoinomism but with really valuable politico-historical outlines as well. And yet narrower still we have Italy 1977-78: Living With An Earthquake and Working class autonomy and the crisis : Italian Marxist texts of the theory and practice of a class movement 1964-79 - both from Red Notes.

For a general overview of the terrorism aspect i found Richard Drake's The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy to be conservative but with some really useful stuff that didn't appear anywhere else. See also Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a 'black' terrorist by Stuart Christie, The Judge and the Historian - Carlo Ginzburg, great investigation into the fallout fo the bomb PInelli fell out of a window for, Strike One To Educate One Hundred: the rise of the Red Brigades. Loads and loads of i was a teenage terrorists pap out there too.
Click to expand...

All those books are great. The one about Stefano Della Chiaie in particular.

:cool:

There is a lot to be gained from reading about the years of lead
 
butchersapron said:
I wonder how come I have a copy of it then?
Click to expand...
Very strange. After reading it only last yer I asked about it. It's not on amazon, or on wiki, and I remember either asking charlesmowbrary or it being asked on libcom and I was told it didn't exist. Cant fully recall. The only place it's referenced is abebook as a two book set.

Clearly overdue a reprint methinks.
 
This set going for 140 quid is what i have, which is a 1975 reprint of the 1940 two volume edition. The confusion mostly comes from the most easily available edition (the 1979 Cienfeugos press edition) omitting part 2 which is mainly a collection of documentary material rather than narrative or analysis.
 
Didn't know where to post this but spotted a new review by the Socialist Party of The Provisional IRA by Tommy McKearney.

What do people make of the review? I seems to me to be the same old tired analysis trotted out every time.
 
"The grip of death" - Michael Rowbotham.
A book that has changed the lives of it's readers. The first book ever written on the subject and arguably still the best.
 
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