*The Great U75 Politics Reading List Thread.

The Great U75 Politics Reading List Thread.

OK, this is the thread where recommend any politics-related books you fell you've benefitted from reading and which you think might benefit others.

I mean politics-related in the broadest sense - not just psephological studies of local elections, or statesman's memoirs, or "The Complete Idiot's guide to World Revolution", but also anything that touches on the political questions that come up or should come up on these boards.

So that could mean not just politics, but also history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, science, hell maybe even religion. And not just UK politics either. Irish politics keep coming up on this board, so we may as well open this thread to non-UK related texts in general.

But let's be careful about fiction - unless we're talking about a novel/book of short stories/epic poem that gives real insight into a political problem or movement (rather than being just a good read), save it for the books forum. Nothing wrong with good reads, they're just better off in the books forum, that's all.

And if comments by posters rile or inspire you - start a new thread, and keep this one for the purpose for which it was intended.

(thanks for doing the needful on the sticky front, mods).

 

ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman
Malatesta, Life & Ideas edited by Vernon Richards
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

 

cue ernie starting a thread about that choice


workers councils-anton pannekoek

anarchism, marxism and the future of the left-murray bookchin(entertaining i like his mattheuesque attitude if not all his ideas, but he does explain how anrchos can sometimes contest bourgois elections.)

anarchy-maletesta

the ragged trousered philanthropists- robert tressel (fiction, but...)

 

Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (believe it or not this is a very cogent and stinging critique of nationalism)

Tommy Sheridan & Alan Coombes, Imagine

Paul Flynn, Dragons Led by Poodles

Alan Clark Diaries (Highly entertaining as a personal history of Thatcher but prepare to be offended)

Laura McAllister, Plaid Cymru: The Emergence of a Political Party

E.F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

Any of Peter Taylor's books on NI- Provos: The IRA & Sinn Fein, Loyalists, Brits

Chris Harvie & Peter Jones, The Road to Home Rule: Images of Scotland's cause

 

The I.R.A. by Tim Pat Coogan

 

'From the Diary of a Snail' - Gunter Grass

'On Liberty' - John Stuart Mill

'Negative Dialectics' - Theodore Adorno

'One Dimensional Man' - Herbert Marcuse

'Soviet Marxism' - Herbert Marcuse

'Ten Days that Shook the World' - John Reed

'Civilisation and Its Discontents' - Sigmund Freud

'The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich' - William Shirer

'Age of Extremes' etc - Eric Hobsbawm

'Guns, Germs and Steel' - Jared Diamond

'History of the English Working Class' - EP Thompson

'The Trial of Henry Kissinger' - Christopher Hitchens

'Heroes' - John Pilger

 

a few key ones for the moment I think:

Out of the Ghetto - Joe Jacobs

Our Flag Stays Red - Phil Piratin

The 43 Group - Morris Beckman (with intro by Vidal Sassoon!!)

Fascism, Stalinism, and the United Frobt - Leon Trotsky

 

The World at 2000- Fred Halliday

2hrs That Shook the World-Fred Halliday

Last of the Empires (history of USSR)-John Keep. This one is truly excellent and teaches you a lot about the USSR, a great starting book for those interested.

 

William Morris:
News from Nowhere
How we live and how we might live
some free/discunted books and pamphlets on socialism from here

 

on line - free to download

Socialist Principles Explained 2000 (52KB)

The Market System Must Go! 1997 (118KB)

Socialism as a Practical Alternative 1994 (107KB)

Ecology and Socialism 1990 (407KB)

Women and Socialism 1986 (361KB)

Marxian Economics: An Introduction 1978 (214KB)

Historical Materialism 1975 (234KB)

Socialist Principles Explained 1975 (194KB)

Family Allowances: A Socialist Analysis 1943 (143KB)

Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse 1932 (187KB)

Socialism and Religion 1911 (261KB)

Overview (Link to selected articles from the Socialist Standard on socialist theory)

Centenary (Link to selected articles from the Socialist Standard, monthly journal of the Socialist Party, since it was first published in 1904)

 

Tanya Reinhart - Israel/Palestine - How To End the 1948 War

Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens - Spurious Scholarship

Edward Said - The End of the Peace Process

More for later...

 

Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds (http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html)

Extracts here: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Parenti/BlackshirtsReds_Parenti.html

A fascinating book which must be read by all anti-fascists everywhere, young and old.

Denver Walker - Quite Right, Mister Trotsky

A long-time Bristolian trades unionists disassembles the Trot myths and exposes Trots as pseudo-leftists.

Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens - online free here.

Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Paolo Sousa - if you want to be a McCarthyite, fine, but read this first.

 

fighting the temptation.......nope, no comments to be made here at all.....

 

Can't believe nobodies mentioned

Greg Palast: The Best Democracy Money can Buy

 

Just to throw something different into the mix:

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy

The thinking mans total bastard. The 1st 3/4s of his book changed my view of European history. It also gives a horrorshow view of a would be 20th century Richelieu.

And of course everything from Machiaveli, but espeacially the Discources.

Sun Tzu (Mao just did a Cut N Paste) on War. Clausewitz still relevant as well.

For a lengthy giggle: Gibbon's, Decline and Fall. Eric Honecker joins me in this recomondation.

Always useful to read against your prejuidices.

 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzche.

You might not agree with quite a bit of whats in it but its a fascinating book that encourages us to reject universalist concepts of morality and deal with problems in human terms.

The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli

Possibly the ultimate theorist of the modern state.

Loyalists - Peter Taylor

Great book and helped me understand the N.I situation a hell of a lot better.

Hawk

 

Adrian Peacock "5 Billion Slaves 200 Phaoroahs" (my new bible!!)

Tom Segev "One Palestine Complete"

Anthony Giddens "Beyond Left And Right"

Anthony Giddens "Runaway World"

"Globalization-and the challenges of a new century" edited by Patrick O'Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger and Matthew Krain

Chris Harman "The Lost Revolution"

Paul Frolich "Rosa Luxembourg"

Michael Moore "Stupid White Men" (of course!)

Will Hutton "The State we're in"

Man, theres so many good ones these days

 

• unfinished business: the politics of class war, class war
• bandit country: the ira and south armagh, toby harnden
• ballymurphy and the irish war, ciaran de baroid
• rebels, peter de rosa
• ireland's civil war, calton younger
• guerrilla days in ireland, tom barry
• web of deceit, mark curtis
• the antichrist, nietzsche
• ten men dead, david beresford
• de profundis & the soul of man under socialism, wilde
• making of the english working class, thompson
• friends in high places, paxman
• the discourses, machiavelli
• rogue state, blum
• the return of grand theory in the human sciences, skinner (ed)
• class, (oxford reader) joyce (ed)
  [/list=a] oops! forgot discipline and punish, foucault; mutual aid, kropotkin; bakunin on anarchism, dolgoff (ed); anarchy in action, ward.
  
  should be enough to be going on with!

 

Teresa Hayter, (2000), Open Borders, the case against immigration controls. London: Pluto Press.

Mark Curtis, (2003), Web of Deceit, Britain's real role in the world. London: Vintage.

Peter Marshall (1993), Demanding the Impossible, a history of anarchism. London: Fontana Press.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, (1994), Manufacturing Consent, the political economy of the mass media. London: Vintage.

Mary Wollstonecraft, (1792), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (Available in Penguin edition).

 

Power without Responsibility by James Curran and Jean Seaton. Quite a dry academic text, but very useful in illustarting how the media in this country have been taken over by capital.

 

John Pilger - Hidden Agendas

Marx and Engels- The Communist Manifesto

Vladimir Lenin - The State and Revolution

Leon Trotsky - History of the Russian Revolution

Tariq Ali - 1968: Marching in the Streets

Chris Harman - The Fire Last Time: 1968 and after
- A Peoples History of the World

Anti-Imperialism - A guide for the movement (Bookmarks, 2003)

CLR James - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution 1791-1803

Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Spartacus

{Btw - I have also just finished reading Tariq Alis first novel, Redemption, which I picked up second hand for 39p (good value but that it was so cheap is not surprising as the book will only really appeal to cynical ex-Trotskyists, as it is about the Trotskyist movement and the events during the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91). Nethertheless some on here would probably find it of interest now, as it has a thinly disguised Ernest Mandel arguing that Marxists should make a turn towards religion to stay relevant in the modern world. Tariq Ali has the SWP alone in the Trotskyist movement really arguing against this nonsense. Redemption though has to be remembered is a novel, and would certainly not make any essential political reading list of any description.}

 

For the Conservatives out there

'The Road to Serfdom' - F Hayek

'The Wealth of Nations' - Adam Smith

'Reflections on the Revolution in France' - Edmund Burke

'Whatever happened to the Tories' - Ian Gilmour

 

How could I forget?

'The Rights of Man' - Tom Paine

'The Social Contract' - Rousseau

'Leviathan' - Thomas Hobbes

 

I can't resist book lists.


Capital vol 1 KM
Georg Lukacs - History and class consciousness
Antonio Gramsci - Selection from the prison notebooks

EP Thompson - Making of the English working class
Laurence McKeown - Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners 1972-2000.
Bob Holton - British syndicalism

 

David Cannadine: Class In Britain

edited to add: for ernestolynch:- witold s sworakowski, "world communism, 1918-1965: a handbook"

 

All these sound good, folks, keep 'em coming - just one thing: don't just tease us with a title, give summary/reasons why your choice is good as well (could be one line or a whole essay)

 

Noam Chomsky: Latin America - From Colonization from Globalization.

The book that banged the last nails into the coffin of the idea that the Americans are basically a force for good in the world.

 

Despite flagrant egotism and his best efforts to establish himself as Oxbridge's answer to Noam Chomsky... How about George Monbiot's 'Age Of Consent'? I say this, not because I'm drawn to the naive jump from Shit Street to a revolutionary world parliament, but because the analyses of the existing economic and corporate global bodies are pretty incisive. But more so, generally speaking, the stuff pertaining to electoral duty and accountability is apt, right down to the immediate, local level. I don't need Monbiot to tell me that, and it may not orbit much further than the Guardian readership, but if you can steal it from Waterstone's then it's worth a read!

 

no one has suggested this one yet -

'the communist manifesto'
- by some german bloke writing in the 1840s.
Very readable and full of fantastic phrases and surprsingly contempoary in much of its analysis.

'the rise and fall of the great powers'
paul kennedy - 1987ish.

excellent overview of great power politics over the past 500 years. Hes writing from a r/wingish POV but its excellent history thats strips away all the layers of myth, religion, propagandor and ideology to reveal the economic imperatives and 'real politic' behind interanational relations.

'the chatto book of dissent' - probably out of print now, my edition was published in 1991.
a collection of dissenting voices ranging from ancient rome to situationist graffiti to IRA comuniques. Great to dip into and can lead you into much wider reading based on the selected highlights here. Perfect for political dillitantes like yours truly.

'the english rebels' - not sure about the author. Published in 1981 it charts the history of english rebellions from the 1381 peseants revolt to the sufferagettes. Some bastard borrowed my copy and then left for mongolia.

Mike Davies - City of Quartz.
City planning as 'urban apartheid' in late 80s LA. Foretells the LA riots that erupted a few months after its publication.
The chapter on survilance is particularly precisent.