Leftist books, literature, analysis

I just finished listening to this book after a couple of days (I found a free audiobook on an app linked to my library). It was decent. Judith Schwartz’s thesis is basically that a large part of our environmental crises is humans wrecking the soil throwing the water cycle, carbon cycle, and biodiversity out of wack. The only solution is agriculture based on how nature evolved with herd animals (including often condemned cows), diverse plants, and lots of micro-organisms. There’s a lot of random slight anti-communism, but if you remember the book’s about science not politics it’s bearable. She often mentions her sources being out of the mainstream and hated by corporations and universities, but it made me happy in the second half when she started actually condemning the commodification of food, and capitalism as a whole. When she slams Monsanto it’s reminiscent of the stuff at r/fucknestle from my Reddit days. Near the end she criticizes money in general and financialized economy divorced from real consequences and production. I don’t think she has a feasible alternative to capitalism or a way to get there, but the book still has value. I think it’s weird that in most of her positive examples people got some inspiration from native peoples but they don’t actually get to work the land the way they have for millennia, but again, I guess it’s not this short book’s job to outline decolonization. Overall worth the read, as it only took me six and a half hours (11 at 1.7 speed).

And pt2: https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/11/the-mature-labor-aristocracy-and-its-problems-part-2-the-size-and-economic-impact-of-labor-aristocracies/

Cosmonaut is a bit hit and miss, I find, but these seem more the former to me, at least so far.

It's nice to see a Soviet write about nomography, a now rarely mentioned practice that was so relevant in the past.

So I've had this as audiobook in my library for a while and thought I'd finally give it a go on a long train ride, because I'm out of other stuff to listen to.

But my god...there's some useful stuff here, but I'm barely a chapter in and she's already insinuated the Tinyman massacre (on students wanting neoliberal reforms) happened so China could implement neoliberal reforms/shock doctrine, repeatedly compared China's economic model to Russia and the US and coined the term "corporatism", because neoliberalisms natural conlusion "isn't capitalism or neoliberalism or neoconservatism".

Is it even worth going through the rest of it or could other works provide the same info without this anti-communist libshit?

Edit:

From Chile to China to Iraq torture has been a silent partner in the free-market crusade

I'm going insane. Also why in the world would anyone describe torture as a SILENT partner ffs

Has anyone here read this? Thinking about gifting it, but don't want to hand out anticommunist pseudo history a la Archipelago.

Ay comrades,

I've pretty much stopped reading non-political or history related books some years ago, because I felt the need to really spend time on my political education. However, I realized something's been missing because of it. The mind just becomes so dry, factual and scientific without those more creative works. I used to love reading the classics, just art to expand the mind and I'm curious what you guys can recommend to that effect or what you're currently reading.

Back then I loved me some Kafka, Hemmingway, Camus, Vonnegut, Kerouac and Jack London among others.

On the Road influenced me immensely back when I first read it, no other single work had that much of an impact since and I'm kinda looking for something to spark that creative flame again as much as that book did back then. I thought maybe some Hunter S Thompson, but dunno right now

Hello Comrades, One of my close friends is not a marxist, but is one of those people who probably would be if they got a bit more active with learning/participating.

They are very disillusioned by the systems that be (Capitalism), and hate how badly the US/western imperial core has impacted the middle east, etc.

What is a good, simple and introductory book to Marxism-Leninism for this kind of person? I want a book that won't scare them off, but does not make compromises on marxist-leninist principles.

Thank you.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158133

Background

Jack London was many things; he was a writer, an oyster pirate, a prospector, a socialist, and, most tarnishing to our view of him, a proponent of eugenics. London was by no means rich. He was born into a working-class family and was raised by a single mother and a formerly enslaved African American woman. He got his first job at a cannery in his early teens and worked long hours. Dissatisfied, he left and subsequently became an oyster pirate before being hired by the California Fish Patrol. Later, he signed onto a sealing schooner headed for Japan, a journey which would inspire his first published work, "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan." Later, of course, he set off for the Klondike Gold Rush after which he struck true gold with his novel The Call of the Wild.

Socialism

Jack London's novel The Iron Heel is perhaps the best example of his politics in his writing. I admit to not having read that particular book, so I don't have much to say about it. It isn't up for debate that Jack London was a socialist. He often closed his letters with the phrase, "yours for the Revolution." What is interesting, however, about Jack London's socialism is that it was admittedly unscientific. In his essay "How I Became a Socialist," London emphasizes that his socialism grew primarily from his personal experience. Before he was a socialist, London was very much an individualist.

I was proud to be one of Nature's strong-armed noblemen . . . I was as faithful a wage slave as ever capitalist exploited.

Like his socialism later, London's individualism was unscientific and founded only on his personal strength. It was therefore subject to change with life experience. As a sailor, London got a taste of society's bottom most echelons.

I battered on the drag and slammed back gates with them, or shivered with them in box cars and city parks, listening the while to life-histories which began under auspices as fair as mine, with digestions and bodies equal to and better than mine, and which ended there before my eyes in the shambles at the bottom of the Social Pit.

Notice the links to eugenic ideas subtly present even in the foundations of London's socialism. His outrage at the fact that men with "bodies equal to and better than mine" ended up at the bottom of society reveals his yet present individualistic tendencies and Social Darwinist ideas of survival of the fittest. He is outraged about capitalism's contradicting of that principle more or less. That individual strain never really disappeared.

I was now a Socialist without knowing it, withal, an unscientific one . . . Since that day I have opened many books, but no economic argument, no lucid demonstration of the logic and inevitableness of Socialism . . .

The fact that London's Socialism was no more founded on science than his individualism made it no less shaky. By the end of his life, London could hardly be called a socialist at all. It are London's views on the eugenics, however, that are far more concerning.

Eugenics

London's support of eugenics is by far the largest black mark on his legacy. Despite being largely raised by a loving black woman, London was quite racist. He believed white men were generally superior and specifically believed in the "yellow peril" as exemplified by his book The Unparalleled Invasion.

I believe the future belongs to eugenics, and will be determined by the practice of eugenics.

London's support of eugenics, though not as extreme as some, is clear. At the time, it was, in a way, considered "progressive." This belief is exemplified by London's novel, Before Adam. London was no hypocrite. He himself practiced selective breeding in marrying a friend who he believed would produce good children. As mentioned earlier, as London's socialism was unprincipled, his individualism never truly left. That might be one source of this flaw in his image.

Conclusion

Jack London's tale is a reminder to us all that scientific socialism is the only way to avoid falling into traps such as eugenics. Unprincipled socialism, while it may have good intentions, is as subject to corruption as any other political ideology. Marxism is by definition a science; that is what separates it from the rest of the pack.

Hello fellow readers and friends. I finished formatting the ebook for Paul Mattick Sr's book Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy. I have below several links to the various formats on Mediafire and on the Marxists Internet Archive

• EPUB
• MOBI
• MIA ebooks holding all above versions
• Other PDF

For other books on a similar subject also see bit.ly/CommunistEPUBs and the Marxists Internet Archive.

Image Description:

A book cover featuring a black background. In pink text along the top is "Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy" and along the bottom is "By Paul Mattick" and "Marxists Internet Archive". In the center are two black and white photos of John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx arranged in such a way as to have them facing each other.

I ask because I heard that it was a bit liberal. I think one person said that it was "like the American revolution but in space." Which sounds pretty bad to me and, hell, for all I know, it could've been the author him or herself clarifying something to an interviewer. That, and the series is popular and, as weird as this is to most people, when it comes to popular culture and fiction with a huge fandom behind it, I admit that I almost have a negative kneejerk reaction to it; I start to get rather suspicious of it and wonder if it's just another overrated series that everyone is kinda expected to like or at least respect at some level.

Hopefully you get what I'm saying, but either way, I'm bored, and I'm wondering if this series is any good or not.

@[email protected]

I know that you were learning Chinese when I was here previously (perhaps still are) but there are some great translations of Marxist-Leninist texts from China.

Canut International Publishers is actually a VERY underrated publisher of Marxist works.

There are a few underrated Marxist publishers still around.

Too much focus on Pluto Books and Zero Books, but not enough focus on actual Marxist publishers, imho.

Anyway, the link is there for your perusal.

@[email protected]

I know you're not writing yours anymore, but you may find this interesting.

The Soviet Union also has a whole bunch of untranslated novels that are still in Russian or whatever language they were written in (such as Latvian or Ukrainian or so on).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/78826

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/78825

A treat for the Lenin fans among us.

• EPUB
• MOBI
• PDF
• PDF of the Volume of the Collected Works with bookmarks (alt)
• HTML

Image Description:

It is a black portrait-oriented book cover. In the center there is a photograph of Lenin cropped so it shows only his face. He looks intently into the lens. In pink port lligat slab font at the top it reads 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back' and right below that slightly smaller it reads 'The Crisis In Our Party.' At the bottom of the image it reads 'V. I. Lenin.'