For all books - fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
Currently reading Khrushchev Lied on chapter five point 31
Will the next thread (So, what have you been reading recently?) be published today for the current week?
Already did.
awsum
I've been listening to oldhead comrade S4A read Fascism and Social Revolution by Rajani Palme Dutt. It's been very eye-opening, despite not being super far in. I'm still recovering from burnout and a severe depressive episode, and getting back into "reading" (listening, desk job full-time) both fills me with tremendous hope and despair. I'm in the US, and the state of the left here is so dire. There is so much work to be done, and it all feels so impossible at times.
Can anyone recommend shorter readings by Black American communists? I need a fast faith booster!!
Beware of S4A's politics though. Blud thinks western marxism doesn't exist.
Haha, thank you - I only recently started listening to his videos outside of readings and he does come off as jaded and a bit of a crank. That's the only way I can think to word it. I guess that's to be expected as someone who has been an American leftist from the Dubya era.
A fun fact about him: he tried to do a Trump-like tea party in the American Green Party to make it into his Vanguard, and colossally failed.
Blood in my eye by George Jackson.
Poems: 'Lenin' and 'Ballads of Lenin' by Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes?? I love him and had no idea he was a Marxist. Thank you so much, friend!
The most I know that he was a communist sympathizer who went to USSR and was surprised by the internationalist environment there in contrast to the Jim Crow America.
He had to distance himself from his pro-communist writings during the red scare era when artists and intellectuals were getting arrested without warrants and locked up by the feds.
https://www.cpusa.org/article/langston-hughes-progressive-poet-and-wanderer/
I'm reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Fairly short but I'm reading to on work breaks only. It primarily discusses gift economy. As an Indigenous person I'm deeply invested in Indigenous lessons on economics, politics, and liberation.
The book is easy to comprehend and critical of the current economic systems of Canada and the USA. I wonder if it will become more international focused.
I guess I'm always scared for the ball to drop with Indigenous essays on politics and economics. Like I'll see some kind of red scare statement like I did with reading The Takiniway essay Reconciliation is A Dead Strategic Proposal. I found it thoughtful at first and slowly growing kind of infantile as it went on. It was anarchist so I guess not surprised but still.
Finally finished Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Really informative in understanding where the Holodomr myth came from. It did lead me to wonder: are the Nazis in the current Ukrainian government the continuation of the OUN the book mentions?
The OUN, UPA and the SS Galicia are practically worshipped by the Banderites in Ukraine and the Kiev regime has declared the OUN and other Nazi collaborationist fascist organizations as Ukraine's national heroes, built monuments for them and renamed streets after them.
The British and Americans smuggled OUN/UPA and Ukrainian SS members to the US and Canada after WWII and those Nazi collaborationists and their descendants formed the Ukrainian diaspora organizations that pushed the Holodomor myth, spread anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda and were behind pushing revisionist history in the 90s in Ukraine, and especially after the 2004 color revolution.
Many members of these groups returned to Ukraine after the USSR dissolved and eventually wormed their way into power. Some of the current Kiev elites are direct descendants of OUN/UPA members, and many others at some point associated with those Nazi collaborationist Ukrainian diasporas in Canada and the US.
So yes, the current fascist regime in Kiev are the direct ideological and sometimes actual descendants of the WWII Nazi collaborationists. The rest of the Kiev elite who aren't ideological Nazis are mostly former criminals who were part of various mafias and organized crime in 90s and 2000s who have useful criminal connections.
Some articles you can read:
Partnering with neo-Nazis in Ukraine: an inconvenient history
How Nazi Collaborators Are Celebrated in Wartime Ukraine
The roots of fascism in Ukraine: From Nazi collaboration to Maidan
Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
And it's also worth reading from this longer piece explaining the background of the SMO, the chapter entitled "Ideology of Nationalism in the Service of the Kiev Regime in Modern Ukraine"
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
reading and dissecting two of Stalin's works that a comrade from here provided. It resonates with alot of what I'm hoping to spread w/ my own words and within this country's history and material conditions. P exciting!!!
I remember that I read On the Juche Idea a year ago, but didn't understand a lot of it. I feel like I read the Communist Manifesto without The Capital since the book has a very "eagle's eye view" of the revolution (with principles and goals), but not the day-to-day or cadre-level stuff.
Maybe I'm missing some important context.
You should read
Thank you.
A warning about "What is to be Done?": It is honestly far more obscure and less helpful than one might think, though it definitely has some useful parts to it (my book had a lot of notes explaining who the people Lenin mentioned were, yet I still had trouble following at times).
Just finished The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and am mildly frustrated. It has an interesting philosophy, that has some parallels to dialectical materialism, but if you look at it in more detail it falls apart into empty platitudes and made up mysticism. It was good enough to pass the time, but i will not recommend it.
Today i started A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I wanted something easy to read and engaging, so i chose a popular romantasy book. Two chapters in it is definetly interesting, but the worldbuilding โ especially the economics โ is infuriating! It is a weird mix up of capitalist culture, medieval customs and the assumption that peoples behaviours won't change through economic change (ignoring base & superstructure!!!). I'm hoping this gets better throughout the book or better yet resolves into a critque of some kind. Also the filler words are sort of annoying, adding nothing and sounding weird. Also i am trying to not judge the book for something irrelevant to why i'm reading it.
I might read The Alchemist
The opening always moves me
but I never read past the first chapter when I was a child
and when I listened to the first chapter on audiobook, I was somewhat moved as well
Finished Losurdo's Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend; started Gerald Horne's Counter Revolution of 1776; and am in the middle of Rockhill's Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism.
I find that I can focus more if I'm reading multiple books at once, switching texts after a chapter or so.
I'm burnt out, comrade. I've been busy translating videos for my friends so they don't fall down the right-wing pipeline so that's sorta like reading?
Continuing Nkrumah's work on Neocolonialism. Coming off of Fanon's writing really helps contextualize Nkrumah's writing here, identifying the struggle against Neocolonialism in nominally independent states.
This week, my comrades and I started and finished Wage, Labor, and Capital. It was a doozy. I think that the reading was hard but not too difficult. I learned some new things, and I know for sure I missed some things too. All in all, I'm glad my group is finally moving out of philosophy and starting economics, even if economics hurts my brain and it's not my favorite.
I tried starting "The Problem of Recognition in Transitional States, or Sympathy for the Monster (2024)". I've seen a lot of praise heaped on this article, so I want to read it badly, but sometimes the language is too difficult for me to understand. I really want someone with a higher reading comprehension to sit down and read with me. Sadge.
Unfortunately, Frome's prose does hold back her writings from a pedagogical perspective. As brilliant as they often are, they are written from a more academic perspective, which often makes them difficult to parse.
Reading the Stalin book by Losurdo. So far I like how most of the book is just giving context
I've also picked up a book about Hegel so enjoying that too
I've finished reading Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage by Paulo Freire and started Neuromancer by William Gibson.
What were your thoughts of Paulo Freire? His books are on my wish list.
An extraordinary educator and teacher. In the book I read, he discusses how to raise young people who are open to criticism and to offering criticism, as well as the propagandistic education prevalent in the West and how to overcome it. He is not a Marxist-Leninist, but rather closer to democratic socialism; however, his writings on epistemic curiosity, teaching and learning, and solidarity are refreshing and contain insights from which socialists too, have much to learn.
The fact that evangelical lobbies in the West have also banned his writings and are trying to ban it further proves that the education of the people in Latin America is being stifled.
Personally I've been reading a lot of despondent posts on LinkedIn and wanting to lose it on the C-Suite overlords bringing about the AI jobpocalypse, but that's more of a personal doom-scroll daily event because they got me in October -- and not actual literary works. I just ordered "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory" by David Graeber. I'll keep you posted on if it's a good read.
Currently reading:
I recently realized that I've never made an effort to specifically study dialectical materialism, so that's my focus right now as I wait for more opportunities to volunteer with the local PSL. Better late than never, I suppose, and I'm really enjoying it. Eventually, I want to tackle Capital again (got halfway through vol 1 previously). Then I want to revisit Lenin's Imperialism. After that I'm not sure. H.W. Edwards? Lauesen? Amin? Smith? I also know that at some point I need to look into the national question, but I'm not even sure where to start.
Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good week.
I recommend following Lenin's imperialism with Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, Nkrumah's work on Neocolonialism, and finally Cheng Enfu's work on Neoimperialism. Africa is largely absent from Lenin's book, and Fanon helps analyze the class struggle in the colonial context. Nkrumah carries that to the neocolonial era, and Cheng Enfu carries that to the modern day. This gives you a fairly complete view of how imperialism has aged since Lenin.
Just finished Phenomenology of the Capitalist Eternisation by Joรฃo Romeiro Hermeto. Overall really enjoyed it, some parts were slightly beyond my understanding but it was definetely the wakeup call i needed to get more involved than i already am in organising. Capitalism isnt this eternal monolith that many perceive it as, and it can be overcome!
Moving on to an easier read in Half Earth Socialism by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass. I played the game based on it a while ago andordered the book before completely forgetting about it. Its very much a utopian book, so im mostly reading it for fun and less for studying but so far it has quite a lot of useful info about the perils of weather control systems. A good break from theory while i focus more on my last term of uni!