what politics books are you reading?

[catch]

israel getzler's 'kronstadt 1917-1921'

Monte that getzler book looks great. Thanks!

I'm reading the new aufheben at the moment, the Hardt and Negri article is lovely. Will probably go for "Anarchy's Cossack" next.

 

[soulman]

Has anyone read The Blast yet. If so is it worth forking out 15 quid for?

Here's AK's blurb on it

Complete Collection of the Incendiary San Francisco Bi-monthly Anarchist Newspaper from 1916-1917 that Gave Voice to the Worldwide Anarchist Movement. "The pages of The Blast seem to smell of black powder, or better, seem to have blown out of the eye of a social hurricane. A sense of absolute emergency pervades almost every column. Unlike some other radical periodicals, this was not mere prose, propped up by a pseudo-desperate baricade rhetoric. Real people were being locked-up and sentenced to death. Each issue of The Blast threatened to be the last."

 

[mk12]

Im trying to find a good book on the english civil war, from a Marxist/anarchist viewpoint. Can anybody recommend one for me? cheers.

 

[catch]

Im trying to find a good book on the english civil war, from a Marxist/anarchist viewpoint. Can anybody recommend one for me? cheers.

Third Revolution Vol 1 by Bookchin covers it. I've not read hardly anything else about the English Civil War so don't know how it compares to other stuff but I loves Bookchin as you know.

 

[Sorry.]

Im trying to find a good book on the english civil war, from a Marxist/anarchist viewpoint. Can anybody recommend one for me? cheers.

anything by Christopher Hill should do it. He's a Marxist writer in the History Workshop/British Marxist Historian tradition, who specialises in C17th British history.

 

[butchersapron]

A good one for you Matt (as the author was in the SWP) would be The English People and the English Revolution by Brian Manning. Christopher Hill did three absolutely crucial selections of Essays and studies called The World Turned Upside Down; Englands Turning Point and The Century of Revolution. For more on the Diggers, Levellers and other radical groups check out Left Wing Democracy in the English Civil War by David Petergorsky as well as Freedom in Arms: A selection of Leveller writings, ed, by A.L Morton and the very important Puritanism and Liberty: The Putney Debates, ed by A.S.P Woodhouse. And when you've done them have a look at the best new book on this topic for many a year, Ehud's Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution by James Holstun.

Catch, that Getzler book is the one you're after.

Cogg, The Negri is very hard work (it's a collection of his early theoretical work, not a narrative of Italy in the 60s/70s despite the misleading title), but very worthwhile, it shows how the concepts he's using nowadays were originally much more useful when tied to a concrete social movement, and that they'renow pretty much free-floating unattached abstractions - interesting abstractions though. The Behan is also good, but is rather dry - worth getting cheap, but prob not full price.

 

[sihhi]

A good one for you Matt (as the author was in the SWP) would be The English People and the English Revolution by Brian Manning...

A shorter book by Brian Manning is "The Far Left in the English Civil War"

 

[sihhi]

I suppose I should list my lot aswell:

I've currently got 8 on the go at the same time- written drily (not that I'm a better writer) I get tired of them quickly so I have rotate around.

Confrontation at Winnipeg - David J. Bercuson

Origins of Chinese Communism - Arif Dirlik

NATO's secret armies : Operation Gladio and terrorism in Western Europe - Daniele Ganser

Rioters and citizens : mass protest in Imperial Japan - Michael Lewis

The English Terraced House- Stefan Muthesius

Immigration and European Integration: Towards fortress Europe? - Andrew Geddes

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19: New perspectives - Howard Phillips and David Killingray editors

Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell- Enoch Powell

 

[catch]

Rioters and citizens : mass protest in Imperial Japan - Michael Lewis

Can I borrow that one from you when you're done with it?

 

[rednblack]

i read some excellent stuff about the struggle of the burukumin (a japanese underclass) the other week...can't remember where...

 

[charlie mowbray]

Don't you mean MFI connections? (we have secret photos taken from the no.25 bus )

Usual widely inaccurate statements. The local MFI was shut down a good 15 years ago. Research, Larry, research.

 

[gawkrodger]

the many headed hydra: the hidden history of teh revolutionary atlantic - pete linebaugh + marcus rediker

+

bury my heart at wounded knee: An Indian History of the American West - Dee Brown

 

[Idris2002]

Haven't read the first one there, but Wounded Knee is one of the ones I read years ago that I really need to read again.

At the moment I'm reading:

1. _The Transformation of Ireland 1900 - 2000_ Diarmuid Ferriter. Just up to the civil war and partition and so far it's really good. (In Ireland, of course, history books are ipso facto political).

2. _Suicide Bombers: Allah's New Martyrs_. Only been able to dip into it so far, so can't give an in depth comment, but it does look like a good argument that today's Al Qaeda is very much a product of modernity.

3. Not read it yet, but Begona Aretxaga's ethnography of working-class Belfast nationalist women _Shattering Silence_ is next on the list.

 

[Sorry.]

Jonathon Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence

Domination/subordination in heterosexual society and the subversion of sexual dissidence.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Usual widely inaccurate statements. The local MFI was shut down a good 15 years ago. Research, Larry, research.

Perish the thought that you have modernised your furniture as recently as 15 years ago...