my summer reading list- suggestions

Only if you have no idea how much work is involved. The difference between a 1000 page novel and a 1000 page history text is that once the novellist has finished writing, checked for language, style and any obvious plot howlers, the job is done. A history text can have one or more historical facts per paragraph. Each one needs referencing and checking. Where you are covering historical periods that lots of different historians have already written about, you can refer to their work and, to a certain extent, lean on their fact-checking work. When you are writing about history that most everybody else has ignored or not written about before, that verification job is orders of magnitude more laborious. Particularly when you are preparing a text that, for political reasons, is going to be read by a wider audience than the normal academic one, including a substantial section whose primary reading aim will be finding mistakes and factual errors in order to ground their attack on the text. That's without dealing with the bigger problem of having to continually review and adjust interpretations of the facts.

We're talking thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hours labour.

I'll be back with a better formatted list of suggestions.

Read Lenin's own works, provided free online: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/sw/index.htm. You should also read Marx before anyone else: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf.htm .

And also Bakunin. He provided the basis for anarchism. How can you skip over him?

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bakunin/BakuninCW.html

Yesterday, I purchased 'Imperiled Life' written by a young anarchist who has a column for counterpunch.org. It's his first book. He makes a case for an 'ecological anarcho-communism'. Looking forward to see what he's got. (don't spoil it any of you read it already)

How is it going, iexist? I'm a bit late, but would still give a few reading suggestions.

I would suggest Communism: Not a 'nice idea' but a material necessity. Although loaded with Marxism ('historical materialism', 'decadence') it is really a good introduction to communism and workers movement history, one of the best I have read recently.

Also, Cornelius Castoriadis, Workers' Councils and the Economics of Self-managed Society. With a really good preface by the Solidarity group this book (you can print it) deals with questions of 'self-government' by workers' councils, its functioning in the community and the transformation of technology in socialism. Very interesting is the part that deals with the question of "centralisation".

Similar to the topics above (Castoriadis) is Ken Knabb's The Joy Of Revolution, at least the chapter 4. (Rebirth).

After this, Cyril Smith, Marx at the Millenium. I would also suggest reading his speech on the Communist Manifesto, but it is not avaible in printed form (as far as I know). The book goes through the work of Marx in order to try to understand Marx’s real ideas and what they have to say about our present situation and is very nicely written. Really, really good look at Marx's thought, which breaks myths on Marx as a bearer of some theory of history, a doctrinaire that is thinking through some mechanical model of history (or an "integral world outlook") - therefore, being very important for us as libertarians.