Recommend me some books
Jan 3 2008
I got an amazon.com gift card with massive amounts of $$$ on it for Christmas, so I would appreciate people recommending some good books. I'm mostly interested in history, politics, economics, etc from a radical/libertarian communist/ perspective. (No indecipherable jargon please). All suggestions would be appreciated.
Jan 3 2008
#2
Hmmm...surely some of those suggestions suffer from 'indecipherable jargon'?
Jan 3 2008
#3
its not like i put up lukacs or adorno or some shit... this is all in the 'canon', very essential shit bro.
ill admit some of the 'mathematical' portions of Kapital can be a bit of a strain but the rest is not only brilliant it is actually quite moving.
SOS takes a little time but it is worth it. The rest is quite simple.
Jan 3 2008
#4
I found SOS and The revolution of everyday life hard going. The only situ stuff I'd recommend is 'On the poverty of student life', thought the 'Spectacular times' pamphlets are also worth reading.
For anarchist communism i'd add 'Malatesta: Life and Ideas' and for council communism 'Anti-Bolshevik Communism' by Paul Mattick, both of which are mostly excellent though I'm not sure if they're in print.
Jan 3 2008
#5
"Poverty" is in the Beneath the Paving Stones along with all the shorter works.... an excellent comp of all their 'singles' before the 'albums' came out (for the English Speaking world)...Brinton's account of May 68 is in there as well. It's the best SI intro, only the Totality for Kids is a stumper.
I think the ROTL is quite readable, and i am stupid. Who knows.
Malatesta, check, forgot that.
Also Voline's history of the Ukraine stuff..whats that title...and Arshinov....meh
Any Bookchin?
Harry Cleaver?
oh.
Rudolph Rocker. Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism.
Plus his Tragedy of Spain essay.
Jan 3 2008
#6
severin wrote:
Also Voline's history of the Ukraine stuff..whats that title..
The unknown revolution.
Jan 3 2008
#7
S. A. Smith - Red Petrograd : Revolution in the Factories (academic but good)
Jeffrey J Rossman - Workers Resistance under Stalin (academic but good)
Andy Anderson - Hungary '56
Phil Mailer - Portugal 1974
Black and Red - Dodge Wildcat (a pamphlet, probably cost you a couple of quid, very good).
Arshinov's History of the Makhnovist Movement is good (I prefer it to Skirda's).
If you want Bookchin then I'd probably say start with Post-Scarcity Anarchism or the Murray Bookchin Reader.
If you haven't read it, Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver is interesting, although I think a lot of us who've read it on here would be less impressed if they read it again.
Capital vol. 1 definitely.
Jan 3 2008
#8
The Making of the English Working Class - E.P. Thompson
Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
Capital Vol. 1 is essential.
Iran on the Brink is a pretty good intro to the goings on in Iran at the moment. Written by two SAC members (Sweden).
If you're into sci-fi I'd recommend you to get the anarchist/communist inspired works by authors such as Ian M. Banks and Ursula K. LeGuin.
The latter wrote the Disposessed, and Banks' Culture series is pretty decent.
Jan 3 2008
#9
Quote:
Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the Beach
Don't get this. The SI Anthology has all the same articles plus a bunch more and is cheaper.
Jan 3 2008
#10
Ken Knabb?
Jan 3 2008
#11
yoshomon wrote:
Quote:
Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the BeachDon't get this. The SI Anthology has all the same articles plus a bunch more and is cheaper.
The SI anthology is also riddled with unnecessary 'edits'. It is worth getting for all the stuff that isn't full of '[..........................]'.
There is a new edition but I dunno if that has been changed.
I will admit that Knabb's translation of SOS is prolly the best tho.
Jan 3 2008
#12
Well on a slightly different note, i recomend the Redneck Maifesto.
It gets really weird at points but for the most part os a pretty accurate assesment of class politics and the failure of the left in north america (even if thats not what its intending to do).
Also if your into history, its not at all revolutionary but im currently trying to find a copy of " Romance of the Three Kingdoms" its from fouerth century China, bout a power struggle, based on real events.
The two major works of the Makhnovschina are good.
the Bolsheviks and workers control by Brinton is excellent.
Sakai's "Settlers" is good but i doubt youll find it online (ir anywhere for that matter).
I recently read "the sixties" by Tod Gitlin(former head of SDS, I quite liked it.
Outlaw Woman by Roxanne Ortiz is also a very good personal account of the sixties.
Jan 3 2008
#13
Cant believe i almost forgot "Detroit I do Mind Dying" It s a history of the League of Revolutionary Black workers and the organising in the Detroit Auto plants in the late 60's early 70's. Its fucking excellent!
Jan 3 2008
#14
tastybrain: also, spend some of it on a scanner, so you can put good stuff up on here 
Oh, and this is excellent, although I don't have that much Glaberman to compare it to yet: Wartime Strikes: Struggle Against the No-strike Pledge in the UAW During World War II by Martin Glaberman
Jan 3 2008
#15
Charles H Kerr published a collection of Glaberman's writings called 'Punching Out' that's pretty excellent.
Jan 3 2008
#16
Glaberman def rocks.
Jan 3 2008
#17
rebelworker wrote:
Also if your into history, its not at all revolutionary but im currently trying to find a copy of " Romance of the Three Kingdoms" its from fouerth century China, bout a power struggle, based on real events.
hey! i've read half of that (i got part 1 of a 2 volume set, havent got around to getting the second yet).
not trying to spoil anything, but when you get to the cannibalism part, you'll never be able to look at Lui Bei the same again 
Jan 4 2008
#18
"Singlejack Solidarity" a compilation of writings by Stan Weir
"Poor people's movements" by Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (They're trotskyists, but it is still an excellent book)
"Punching Out" a compilation of writings by Martin Glaberman
"The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the communist movement" by Gilles Dauvé and François Martin
"Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell
"Errico Malatesta: his life and ideas" a compilation of writings by Errico Malatesta
Jan 4 2008
#19
Lots of great stuff here but I'd totally get the novel Q that Severin recommended, and the novel 54 by the same people under a different name.
Also -
Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici (history of women during the formation of capitalism)
The Cotton Pickers by B Traven (novel about workers in Mexico)
Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
The Many Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (history of the proletariat in the Atlantic)
The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker (history of slave ships)
Soul By Soul by Walter Johnson (history of slave markets in the US)
I think Wayne Price's new book The Abolition of the State is worth reading too.
Jan 4 2008
#20
Lots of great stuff here but I'd totally get the novel Q that Severin recommended, and the novel 54 by the same people under a different name.
Also -
Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici (history of women during the formation of capitalism)
The Cotton Pickers by B Traven (novel about workers in Mexico)
Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
The Many Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (history of the proletariat in the Atlantic)
The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker (history of slave ships)
Soul By Soul by Walter Johnson (history of slave markets in the US)
I think Wayne Price's new book The Abolition of the State is worth reading too.
Jan 4 2008
#21
Quote:
Debord's Society of the Spectacle
Kropotkin's [...] Conquest of Bread
Facing the Enemy: Alexander Skirda (history of Anarchist Organization, largely euro centric tho)
If you want Bookchin then I'd probably say start with Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver is interesting,
The Making of the English Working Class - E.P. Thompson
Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
If you're into sci-fi I'd recommend you to get the anarchist/communist inspired works by authors such as Ian M. Banks and Ursula K. LeGuin.
The latter wrote the Disposessed, and Banks' Culture series is pretty decent.
the Bolsheviks and workers control by Brinton is excellent.
Sakai's "Settlers" is good but i doubt youll find it online (ir anywhere for that matter).
Outlaw Woman by Roxanne Ortiz is also a very good personal account of the sixties.
Cant believe i almost forgot "Detroit I do Mind Dying"
"Singlejack Solidarity" a compilation of writings by Stan Weir
"The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the communist movement" by Gilles Dauvé and François Martin
The Many Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (history of the proletariat in the Atlantic)
tastybrain, if you're up for meeting me and my gf you're free to borrow any of these when the massive amounts of $$$ on your amazon gift card runs out.
Jan 4 2008
#22
highly recommended, pretty readable, and not yet mentioned:
WEB DuBois "Black Reconstruction In America"
James C. Scott "Seeing Like A State"
Jeremy Brecher "Strike"
Mike Davis "Late Victorian Holocausts"
Harry Braverman "Labor and Monopoly Capital"
Midnight Notes "Midnight Oil"
Marshall Berman "All That Is Solid Melts Into Air"
James/Lee/Castoriadis "Facing Reality"
David Roediger "Wages of Whiteness"
Jan 4 2008
#23
I just got Beverly Silver's Forces of Labor, and so far it is very good. I'd recommend that too. Lots of interesting stats about global worker unrest over 100 years.
Jan 4 2008
#24
Two books that I read when I was about 19 which had quite a lot of influence on me were Ante Ciliga's The Russian Enigma, and Jorge Semprún's autobiographical novel What a beautiful Sunday.
The New York Times Book Review wrote:
Half a century ago, the appearance of a slim book called Au Pays du Grand Mensonge (In the Country of the Great Lie; in English The Russian Enigma) created a minor sensation in Europe’s left-wing circles. Its author; Anton Ciliga, was a Yugoslav Communist who had spent 10 years in the Soviet Union, nearly six of them in prisons, camps and Siberian exile as a member of the Trotskyite opposition. He succeeded in gaining freedom and departing for the West just as the Soviet Union was about to be swept into the maelstrom of Stalin’s purges, and his book was one of the first in what has since become known as ‘the literature of disillusionment,’ as well as one of the earliest to disclose the hell of the Stalinist gulag … Not surprisingly, Ciliga was raked over the coals by West Europe’s Stalinists and soi-disant ‘progressives.’ Nonetheless. The Russian Enigma has stood the test of time. To this day, it remains a penetrating and powerful account of Stalin’s monde concéntrationnaire, and of the men and women whose dreams (and bodies) were interred within its vast domain.
Wiki wrote:
What a Beautiful Sunday (In French, Quel beau dimanche) another fictionalized account of life in Buchenwald and after liberation was published by Grasset in 1980. It purports to remain faithful to telling what it was like to live one day, hour by hour, in the concentration camp, but like Sempun's other novels, the narrator recounts events that precede and follow that day. In part, Semprun was inspired by A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, and the work contains a criticism of communism as well as fascism.
Devrim
Jan 4 2008
#25
Nate wrote:
Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici (history of women during the formation of capitalism)
Yip reading that at the moment, I'd recommend that one as well
Also
Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters - A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid 1950s to the early 1980s by Toby Boraman
Class Matters by Bell Hooks
Fragments Of An Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber
Valencia (a novel) by Michelle Tea
Have had that novel Q recommended to me before and is on my to read list
Jan 4 2008
#26
Q is readable online if you can stand that much screen time or if you have access to a printer. I like actual books so the online bit doens't do me much good.
Jan 4 2008
#27
Q is awesome. Munster is Revolutionary Russia basically....
Jan 8 2008
#28
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. They all seem really interesting and I'll probably get a fair number of them 
catch wrote:
tastybrain: also, spend some of it on a scanner, so you can put good stuff up on here
Catch, can I actually do that? I think I have an old scanner somewhere and would be willing to put a little time in.
MJ wrote:
tastybrain, if you're up for meeting me and my gf you're free to borrow any of these when the massive amounts of $$$ on your amazon gift card runs out.
I'll definitely take you up on this once I run out.
Jan 8 2008
#29
Some great recommendations here.
I'd second:
Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement, by Dauve
Capital or course
Reading Capital Politically
And I'd also add
The Third Revolution, by Bookchin
Which catch recommended to em years ago but I only just got around to reading. It really is very good, and teases out the revolutionary currents within the struggles of the proto/proletariat in a way I really like.
Jan 8 2008
#30
Quote:
Catch, can I actually do that? I think I have an old scanner somewhere and would be willing to put a little time in.
You need some OCR software to go with the scanner - Abby Finereader or ScanSoft OmniPage seem to be the most commonly used ones. Obviously you can't submit copyright material (who would do that? ) but all registered users on the site can submit stuff to library/history so there's nothing stopping you!
Anton Pannekoek: Workers Councils
Debord's Society of the Spectacle
Vaneigem's Revolution of Everyday Life
Peirat's history of the CNT
Christie's history of the FAI
Das Kapital (Vol 1 essential...the best of the rest {of Marx and Marx/Engels} can be got in anthologies, just not Stalinist translations/editions)
For Workers Power: Maurice Brinton
Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the Beach
Kropotkin's Mutual Aid and Conquest of Bread
The revised History of the IWW (Thompson/Bekken)
Rebel Voices (Kornbluth)
Facing the Enemy: Alexander Skirda (history of Anarchist Organization, largely euro centric tho)
most of these titles are available thru AK press...best place to buy from
for ('Meta") Fiction: Q by 'Luther Blissett', absolutely fantastic
If anymore come to mind I'll mention.