Recommended Reading

Combating corporate propaganda and the corrupted "common sense" about the benevolence of the political and economic system under which we live requires the proper tools. Without quality literature that holds within it the power to dispel the myths and articulate methods for our side we have nothing. We should take from Marx the idea that it is not enough to merely interpret the world, but we have to change it. Developing our political weapons, our ideas, allows us the opportunity to train our minds in preparation for the enormous challenges we will undoubtedly face as we go up against the most expansive socioeconomic system Earth has ever seen. The one thing we have to remember, however, is that it runs because of us.

So what I will propose here, and this will remain a work in progress, are some readings that I find pretty fundamental to grasping how to fight back. This list will always be incomplete, as I nor anyone else has the time to read or analyze every book, pamphlet, journal, etc. that could be valuable to our understanding of the world. That being said, what I list here I consider either to be fundamental to developing a serious political and economic of how the world functions or something particularly relevant to the specific topical category. To stay in theme with the blog, I will emphasis works that deal with culture, society, ideology, and how we as radical activist can alter them or challenge the dominant ideology. Still, plenty of other works will make it into the list as well.

I will attempt to break this section down into beginning material, intermediate, and more advanced, because I know the personal frustration that can arise from being handed something way over your head; some of us on the left have perhaps a habit of doing this. It is even more difficult if you are engaging a work, especially a theoretical work, on your own without the benefit of a discussion group. Some of these will be free material available on the web such as certain theoretical works at the Marxist Internet Archive or online journals such as the ISR or ISJ, some will be books available through Haymarket or other outlets, and some will be brief newspaper articles or pamphlets with available links (note: there is also a handy google search bar in the top left of the sidebar). Not everything that I place on this list will I necessarily agree in full with but at the very least it will be a provocative piece that fosters some sort of critical dialogue that I believe to be useful or instructive for us on the left. Other sources anyone recommends I will of course consider as well, suggestions are more than welcome. However, I won't post anything on here that I haven't read or are completely unfamiliar with.

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What is Socialism?

Introductory Material: Just getting into radical politics? Have a vague feeling something is wrong with society but not exactly sure how to articulate it? I feel you, and remember being there. Anything in this section is a relatively brief introduction to socialism and the struggle for a new society where exploitation, alienation, inequality, racism, and oppression are things of the past.

Who Does Obama Answer To? - A short article appearing in the Socialist Worker, written by Brian Jones, that delves directly into the question of why we cannot, even if Obama was as radical as right-wingers paint him, rely on the president to make any fundamental changes to society. It's succinct but the message is clear.

ISO Intro Packet - This is by far the most comprehensive, yet very basic introduction to what we mean when we say socialism. It's available for free from the International Socialist Organization. It includes a brief "Where We Stand" section, explaining that socialism should not equate with Soviet Russia or Cuba, despite the rhetoric used to justify the regimes there. It goes on to make a very convincing case for socialism, explains some fundamental tenets of how socialists should organize, includes a basic historical framework for the arguments presented, and ends with some contemporary comments on the state of the world, especially in relation to war and imperialism. It is not written by one author, but a compilation of various pieces written by a wide array of socialists. It's separated into a few easy sections, each that can be tackled in an hour or two. It is by far the quickest, simplest introduction to what socialists mean, or should mean, when we speak of replacing capitalism with system free of exploitation and inequality.

The Meaning of Marxism - Paul D'Amato's Meaning of Marxism is probably one of the best introductions to Marxist political and economic thought you can find. It a short, lucid book that will lay out, step by step, the essentials of socialist thought. The principles are clear, the language is not over the top, and it won't take you hours like you would digging through tombs of Marx and Engels to pull out key concepts. It brings Marx to today's terms and is highly recommended for everyone, beginner or advanced. Quality reading for the slightly bewildered lefty with vague notions of desiring social justice or the dedicated activist with an already firm analysis of the world. Good for study groups or tackling solo.

The Next Step: Okay, so you've gone through the basics or are already familiar with the fundamentals of socialism, arguments for economic democracy, Marx's critique of capitalism, and why we can't just reform the system, or maybe some combination of those things. This stuff might get a little longer, a little more intense, and, depending upon your commitment, you may or may not want to try to organize some study group around this material. Even informally, it helps to have someone to talk to with this stuff, but it's definitely not required.

Ten Socialist Classics - Now, don't worry yet! I'm not about to send you off to delve directly into Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg, etc. This is a collection of articles written by different authors at the Socialist Worker that gives a basic introduction to the main themes and ideas expressed in the classic works that a lot of socialists give credence too. My critique is that I believe these are rather limited, and there is a plethora of other authors rather than a small handful selected here. Still, what is important is not so much the authors chosen but the fundamental themes: from the difference between "Utopian" and "Scientific" socialism to the mass strike, from the question of reform or revolution to why imperialism is inherent to capitalism, these questions are fundamental to grasping why the world works the way it does and, more importantly, where our power lies and how best we put our efforts into changing it.

The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document - Phil Gasper, author of numerous works on socialism, gives an actually easy-to-understand interpretation of Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto. Everyone has heard of it, yet how many have read it? A more important question, perhaps, is how many people have read it with any sort of serious context, which Gasper provides, or without the invective preface thrown on top the work by other publishers? I wish I had this version of the Manifesto when I first attempted to read this back in high school, it sure would have cleared some things up. Instead, I got a thin little booklet with an introduction given by some haughty academic who basically said "here's what Marx meant, his ideas were basically shit, his predictions wern't correct, and he was an anti-Semite." The reality, however, is far from that, and Gasper brings this old political document back to life at a vital time when the word socialism has found it's way back into politics.

Fairly Advanced: Here's some tougher stuff. Perhaps it's due to the length, the complicated theoretical ideas presented, the excessive wordiness of it all, or more likely all of that rolled into one. Either way, this is the stuff you put off until you're quite comfortable with the political lingo, have a pretty solid grasp of socialist principles, etc. I would also suggest, and have found it is most conducive to actually comprehending the material and what it is truly trying to express (as it can be quite easy to trick yourself into thinking you know what something is trying to say), to tackle these things with at least one other person but preferably in some sort of group where questions, dialogue, and debate can freely occur.

The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx - Karl Kautsky. Mentioning the name might ruffle some feathers in the more sectarian wings of the left, but his grasp and ability to articulate what Marx wrote is quite phenomenal, and it's a hell of a lot shorter than Capital. The so-called "Pope" of Marxism can be a little wordy sometimes, and you may have to reread a certain paragraph a couple times to really have it sink in, but it will provide a much more lucid understanding of Marxist economics and the flaws of capitalism as a means of providing for human need. It's split up into three sections, "Commodities, Money, Capital," "Surplus-Value," and "Wages and Profits," which are each in turn split into subsections which can be easily split up into different discussions for different evenings. I'd definitely take notes.

Revolutionary Rehearsals - Now, this isn't so much that it's long or too theoretical, but you will be bombarded with different names of cities, places, people, organizations, and acronyms that are too entirely hard to keep track of. It's the work of five different authors and the editor on the various uprisings in France 1968, Chile 1972, Portugal 1974, Iran 1979, and Poland 1980. In every single instance what could be called a "pre-revolutionary situation" was present or an actual revolution occurred; in no instance did a socialist revolution occur, however. The authors take the position that this was due mainly to the failure of the left (in a complicated matrix of unique political, economic, and cultural situations) to organize politically along revolutionary lines. Fascinating read, especially for the history buffs, but gives a practical and insightful look to why it's essential to actually build and organize some sort of organization capable of calling for revolution.

The Really Tough, Headache-Inducing Sort of Reading: Just wait, this section will be fleshed out as soon as possible.

Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics)

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Culture, Consciousness, and Ideology

This section will contain Marx, Gramsci, Lukács, Benjamin, Althusser, Freire, Newton, etc. Definitely check back! All of these will be updated with brief introductions and I attempted to find the bulk of this section in free online version, with the exception of Huey Newton's work which appears unavailable except through book format.

Antonio Gramsci - International Socialism 114: Antonio Gramsci's Revolutionary Legacy provides a great introduction to his work and thought. For Gramsci himself, read Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Online version is missing Chapter four)
Huey P. Newton - The Huey P. Newton Reader
George Lukács - History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Tough Read, I recommend tackling this one with others in some sort of discussion group, very wordy).
Frantz Fanon - National Culture and the Fight for Freedom, The Pitfalls of National Consciousness, and The Wretched of the Earth
Walter Benjamin - On the Concept of History, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and and interpretation of Walter from the ISJ Benjamin's Emergency Marxism
Louis Althusser - Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Leon Trotsky - What is Proletarian Culture, and Is It Possible? and Literature and Revolution

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General History

Vive la Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution - This "stand-up history of the French Revolution" by comedian Mark Steel is perhaps one of the only books I have repeatedly laughed out loud while reading. It's hilarious and light while simultaneously expresses a sympathetic look back at the revolutionary upheaval in late eighteenth century France. One of the most profound and important revolutions to date, Steel's sympathetic analysis is vital to dispelling the hostility normally directed at the revolution. As a history major, I found the work particularly entertaining, but this is the type of book that would actually make teenagers enjoy reading about history. It's brilliant, really, and should not be relegated to history buffs.

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation - Author Jeff Chang, dubbed "Hip-Hop America's Howard Zinn," gives readers an illuminating look into the complex social, economic, political, and cultural intricacies that gave rise to one of the world's most versatile and engaging musical genres. Hip-Hop is more than just beats and rhymes and Chang enthusiastically details its rise from its roots in the South Bronx. His history often lets the artists speak for themselves and his research reveals the extensive depth to which hip-hop is inevitably tied to social reality of the world around it. It's an entertaining read, and even for those of you not particularly keen on hip-hop culture, the prodigious mountain of scholarly work concerning various economic and political phenomenon that intertwine with it's rise makes this book worth getting. It's exciting, lucid work and, although it's five-hundred and some odd pages, the laid-back style and quality writing make it seem much shorter; my only complaint was that it wasn't longer!

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Literature

Will be updated with literary works that I found to be valuable either to my own personal political development or to our movement as a whole.

12 Million Black Voices - An absolutely poetic, powerful, and poignant piece written by Richard Wright, assisted with a plethora of contemporary photography, that captures the very essence of both city and rural life for Black Americans in the early 1900's. He explores the various social relationships, especially between Blacks, poor Whites, whom he justifiably identifies as tied by common material interests but separated by ideological fervor, and the exploiter classes whom he labels the "Lords of the Land" (Southern aristocracy) and "Bosses of the Buildings (Northern capitalists). Wright was the editor of the Harlem Daily Worker and one of the most prominent Black literary figures of his time. Absolutely essential reading for anyone concerned with the struggle for civil rights and the plight of Black men and women in the United States.

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 - Edward Bellamy outlines what he considers to be the perfect utopian society in Looking Backward, where the main narrator is put to sleep and wakes up one-hundred years later in what is essentially Bellamy's concept of a socialist society. Aside from the obviously unrealistic pretense of the plot, let us be clear from the start that the novel is plagued by a variety of problems, which should be explored. First, however, this novel was what originally galvanized my political metamorphosis from confused, conspiracy-prone, rebellious teenager to understanding that society could fundamentally be organized in a different manner. Bellamy gives often beautiful accounts of particular aspects of how a socialist society could function while weaving in percussive critiques of capitalism. Secondly, the narrator comes from a wealthy background, so Bellamy utilizes this set up to combat the common, and even more theoretically challenging arguments, that proponents of capitalism thrust at us. Needless to say, however, the drawbacks must be pointed out. Bellamy's postulation of socialism represents the concept that Hal Draper labeled "socialism-from-above." Draper even mentions the book in his "Two Souls of Socialism" pamphlet where he criticizes Bellamy's work, far too harshly in my opinion. Secondly, there are undoubtedly prejudices which exist in his work that cannot be excused, but were fundamentally products of his time. He presents the idea that "separation" can be maintained if among the races if different communities desire it, his brief mention of third world nations provides a rather paternalistic attitude towards what he obviously considered backward people, and finally, his treatment of women in the novel is particularly lacking. Aside from all that, the corny love story throughout can become tiresome if you're not into those things, but I've known people who said they don't mind it. Personal preference, eh? Anyway, I've read it twice, it provides the possibility of opening up dialogue for HOW a socialist society could look, even if the fundamental concept is flawed and particular sections are trash. At the very least, it is an entertaining read. The sequel, Equality, can only be found online as far as I know.

Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Fight Club: A Novel

Revisiting Fight Club

Watching the film Fight Club for the first time as a fourteen year old boy I was enthralled with the sense of purpose, of masculinity, of the possibility for personal and societal change; generally, I felt empowered by what I interpreted to be a message that I could change society, and for whatever reason I was compelled to think that Fight Club held some key of how to do it.

I couldn't put my finger on it but something was wrong with society. It would not be until years later that I recognized this not as the fault of personal, individual choices, of ideology, but of the material base which dictates societal norms. Still, the raw nature of Fight Club, it's advancement of a method of personal liberation through what I vaguely understood as counter-hegemonic (without the benefit of being able to articulate it as such) means.

Immediately afterwords, me and the friend who introduced me to the film found an old pair of shabby boxing gloves in the garage and emulated, in the most juvenile manner I'm sure, the scene where Tyler requests the unnamed narrator to hit him. Needless to say, neither of us could hit very hard or take a punch, but for that moment we were thrilled at the prospects opened up to us. For those ten minutes, I felt powerful, like we were actually doing something.

I bring this up because, although at the time I was more concerned with escaping into a world of video game entertainment than understanding and internalizing the conditions of the world around me, let alone seriously desiring to change them, I felt that somehow, someway, something had to be done. It was a very primitive urge to change myself, to change society. And it was because I sat down for a couple hours to watch this very provocative film.

At the time I didn't read much, at least not anything of importance, so it would not be for close to seven years before I actually picked up the novel version of Fight Club.

Initially, I simply wanted to juxtapose the book and the novel, rather simplistically, and draw out a few key quotations from the novel that, I believe, are sorely lacking in the film. But, as I went on, I began to wonder, as how many other people I'm sure, what exactly in this film captured my attention so intensely.

Undoubtedly, when I was younger, surrounded by a culture of masculinity where proving yourself, your manhood, was associated with particular practices, Fight Club touched upon all those symbolic gestures. In a society where no real sense of community exists the words of the author of Fight Club, although I was unaware of them at the time, may provide a clue: "[The theme of] all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.

This absolute necessity of community is something that I believe the left sorely lacks. We systematically fail to reflect upon the need for such a community and do not take nearly enough action toward developing it; this, in my opinion, is detrimental to the growth of radicalism in our society.

A whole array of literature has been written analyzing Fight Club, so I won't go into that here, nor will I pretend to have seriously studied and read most of it beyond some brief summaries.

First, allow me to say that I come to this topic as a fan, as someone who, even minutely, has felt himself influenced by this film and, now, by the novel. Reading the book for the first time recently, with a completely new ideological perspective and understanding of reality than I had previously harbored, I also find myself quite disappointed with what I had previously thought to be some enlightened tomb, a guide towards personal salvation. The critique below applies to both versions of Fight Club, film and book.

Strike one: The entire motif presented throughout the film of a "generation of men raised by women."It was especially prevalent throughout the book and felt like nothing more than a call for primitive patriarchy. Rather than seriously tackling how gender roles are developed under the conditions of modern society, there was this reactionary urge to simply transform males into survival mode as a means of liberating ourselves. The whole "hate our father" because he wasn't there is rather tiring and, more than anything else, is a cliche battered into the heads of society to place the blame of society's failures onto the breakdown of the nuclear family unit, of individual actions taken by dead-beat dads, etc. It is, in it's essence, quite a reactionary fallback position, often laced with racism when directed at certain populations. Aside from that, it completely ignores the fact that human nature, especially gender roles, are not instinctual, fixed things inherent to human beings but are malleable entities inevitably molded by the material base of reality, the social relations of society, and the ideological currents sustaining them.

Strike two: The incessant rambling about destruction destroying beautiful things. "I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn’t afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I’d never see." This nihilistic streak runs all throughout Fight Club, and is never really, as far as I can tell, confronted. Again, it's rather reactionary in it's orientation and almost counters the sense of empowerment expressed in other sections of the film/novel.

Strike three: The plan, it sucks. Now, as this is a form of entertainment, and not a political tract intended to organize and mobilize the masses to overthrow their oppressors, perhaps this strike is overzealous. However, the whole idea that "Project Mayhem is going to save the world" by "creating a cultural ice age" that "forces humanity to go dormant or into recession long enough for the Earth to recover" is perhaps the most reactionary postulation throughout the novel. Those words are explicit stated in the book, but the ideas are expressed in the film as well. Maybe this is some sort of chaotic twist to Walter Bejamin's comment when he posited the idea that "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite different. Perhaps revolutions are the grasp for the emergency brake by the human race traveling on the train.” Maybe this nostalgic, yet reactionary hope of emulating the past is Palahniuk's pull on the brake.

It is possible that the motive was not to seriously suggest this as a means for societal change, but to emphasize that such desires for a regressive transformation to an archaic past are unsustainable and unworkable, if so, this strike becomes a plus.

There are other problems as well, for instance, the charge that Fight Club does not take up the issue of race, while perhaps beyond the scope of such a limited vision, stands true.

Now, there are a variety of things I liked. Here, however, we will have differentiate between what was expressed in the book, and what was expressed on film. Quotes like "Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing" do nothing but reinforce that charge, as crude "post-racial" assertions, often touted by the right, are implicitly laced throughout the novel.

On film, it is obvious that anti-corporate invectives are rightfully rampant. The distaste for the idea that planets will be named after big multinationals is an example of this. Likewise, an the anti-consumerism challenges a fundamental basis by which capitalism functions: to constantly expand it's markets and sell more things to us, regardless of whether we need them or not. I believe, however, that this ultra anti-consumerism stems from the regressive tendencies towards evoking past methods of organization for the future and is, ultimately, yet another reactionary streak. However, this is a subjective interpretation and I believe is quite open to debate. Still, something rings piercingly true of consumer culture when, after the narrators apartment is blown up, he explains how he lost "Everything, including your set of hand-blown green glad dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simply, hard-working indigenous aboriginal peoples of wherever..."

The film is sorely lacking in many regards, though. There are some vital nuggets, especially of working class resistance that, that were unfortunately left out of the film.

The narrator, in my opinion, does right to displace the blame of environmental catastrophe from himself personally: "For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot he bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born."

This can even be interpreted as a critique of the whole idea of "green capitalism" or saving the world through our individual choices as consumers. Rather than fundamentally reworking how society is organized to structure it on a sustainable basis, we should instead spend the few dollars we have and the precious free time we are given from the workweek by recycling and buying special light bulbs. This is not to say that individual life choices are not important, personally, but they fall far short oft he drastic measures we need to take collectively to save Earth. I find that this idea resonates throughout the novel.

The explicit call for working class resistance and the humanization of working people through their own activity is a prominent theme in the novel. Unfortunately, the film mysteriously leaves much of this out. I will not take time to anaylze each particular phrase but, to highlight a few key examples of vital quotes in the book that are removed from the film:

A HAIKU he writes:

"Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave"

[After Tyler gets the narrator a job that he claims will "stir his class hatred" he explains] At cockroach level, we can hear the captive harpist make music as the titans lift forks of butterflied lamb chop, each bite the size of a whole pig, each mouth a tearing Stonehenge of ivory.

“Getting fired,” Tyler says, “is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quite reading water and do something with our lives.”

[Tyler was a] Guerilla waiter. Minimum-wage despoiler.

[Calling about the random bodily liquids he desposited in rich peoples' meals at the hotel job] "Hello, I said, I’ve committed a terrible crime against humanity as part of a political protest. My protest is over the exploitation of workers in the service industry."

[This is the only one, to my knowledge, that actually appears in the film, when they kidnap the police commissioner who is leading the charge against Fight Club] “Remember this,” Tyler said, “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people we do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.”

"What Tyler says about being the crap and the salves of history, that’s how I felt."

“Remember this,” Tyler said, “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people we do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.”

"Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first."

However, out of all these, perhaps the most fundamental quote is this: "Imagine, when we call a strike and everyone refuses to work until we redistribute the wealth of the world."

How much stronger of a call to worker's power can you get than that?

The most promising theme, I believe, no matter how misguided the actual plan becomes, is the fact that the novel presents the idea that people have to take history into their own hands, they are not simply idle consumers: "When Tyler invented Project Mayhem, Tyler said the goal of Project Mayhem had nothing to do with other people. Tyler didn’t care if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world."

Fight Club is a mixed bag, there is no doubt about it. However, if there is one thing you take away from it, and especially if you get the chance to read the novel, is that we have the power to control history. Let's take it into our hands.