What are you reading?

Fess up here!

Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own.

Might be the most radical book that I know of.

David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology for the 4th time, I'm designing a class based around it for the Spring.

I just finished Revolution and counter-revolution in Spain. Am not sure whether to recommend it. The factual narrative is useful, and there are a few good political analyses, but only when the invective lets up and he decides to calm down.

Morrow also wrote a pamphlet called "The Civil War in Spain", which I read immediately before. It's bad.

I don't know what's next. I'm in the middle of I, Claudius and Memoirs: Duc de Saint-Simon, but am losing interest in the Graves. I've been meaning to start Left-wing communism: an infantile disorder sometime, so perhaps that.

People without government : an anthropology of anarchy by Harold Barclay

because i am both reading and writing at present,i am reading several things at once.this breaks several of my own working rules,in that im dipping when i much prefer to read from cover to cover.i hated when a student to be asked to read only a portion of a book,always believing that the point made would be different from the xperience and meaning of the whole book.i guess that the difference lies in my choice.the second,is a kind of corrollarry that i read one book befor mving oto the next.

but that is said and done.

ive just received a copyorical materialism 13.2.i like difficult reading.this is a briliant journal that now comes out four timews a year,althiough the copy in front of me is a back issue.having complained elsehwere on this site about difficult computer programmes-i still dont know if the publishers of hm will be sending me my subscription this year.getting one is nowhere near as easy as going into a real bookshop,where at least if i come out empty handed i know what is going on and why.

im also looking for an essay by george orwell which i think is a negative perspective on sport.i think the essay is about football or the olympics?can anyone help,otherwise i will just keep dipping and hoping.

i also recieved a propsectus for thsi years intercultural studies in portland,oregon.does anyone have ideas about this intellectual thread in britain or a good place to start reading.im very interested in this"discipline"but feel my slight"toe hold"not give much of astart with reading.

Who Rules America by G. William Domhoff
(which for some reason Librarything is refusing to link)

Very, very interesting so far. Both in its general thesis and in little facts that it exposes here and there. A strong compendium of the evidence for the view that there is an American ruling class and that it dictates policy in America.

I am reading Civil Disobedience and other essays right now. No other leftist-oriented things in my pile at the moment.

im reading issue 1 of a brlliant marxist journal,called"historical materialism".this issue is from 1997 but which ive only recently acquired.i haqve commented mor fully on the revolutionarythinker is lostinthelibrary.

Have you checked out The Battle for Spain? It's fantastic. A little dry, but worth the read!

Whoops! I thought you could reply directly to peoples' messages...

Anyway I'm reading civilization and its discontents right now and then probably moving on to revolution in danger.

im interested in starting a revolutionary socialist reading.study/activity group in the nw london area where i live.

id like it tio be open and serious without being tedious or academic.definitely oppossed to sectarianism and dogmatism or personal abuse.

id prefer no apologists for social democracy but welcome class struggle anarchists.perhaps we can learn from each other inclduing respect for each others various outlooks,that do not require us to agree.

i feel that in these difficult times,we need all the support we can get,and this includes in my view from each other if we are to win others to our ideas and abetter wau of living in a genuinely egalitarian society,actively run by those who work and live in it.

i hope to fidn some interest out there.

even if youu are more distant geographically perhaps there are other ways to learn from each other.

do get in touch

revolutionarythinker, that sounds good. I hope you bring it to fruition.

What's on the reading list for your theoretical group, revthinker?

I just started Wretched of the Earth which I thought I had already read but it must have been in college and I have forgotten it. The foreword is by Sartre and is suitably angry.

Hi there. I've just joined the group. I've recently finished Radical Sydney : places, portraits and unruly episodes, a tour of historical sites of resistance in Australia's largest city and companion to Radical Melbourne.

for reasons i wont bore anyone with,progress is slow.see my post on revolutionarythinkerlostinthelibrary.
i also read fanon so long agao ive forgotten.i only remember it as an important book.fanon seems to get a mention in some of the intellectual pantheons i would not go anywhere near,including certain kinds of arabism and islam-but i will not use this as an opportunity to blast away at arabs or islam.

although i have been a revolutionary socialist all my adult life,much if it in or around political organisations,trade union rank and file,campaigns etc.i know at my age just how little i know,so i would want to give frantz fanon a space in whatever we study.

ive just finished historical materialism journal 1 at last and have begun freedmans marx on economicagain with the group in mind.

anyone out there want an invitation?

is gimboid13 australian or are you interested in books with specific connectiosn to cities?

I'm Australian. An old lefty with an interest in Australian history. Reading history can be a radical activity IMO as it opens up alternatives the conservatives don't always want explored.

Just finished a quite extraordinary new novel on my Kindle. We're Fucked, by a Northern Irish guy called Sean Armstrong. A more passionate indictment of modern British society would be hard to find. Proper grown up fiction tackling serious themes, and genuinely left wing, though he does come down hard on the Socialist Workers.

I also just managed to pick up a copy of The General Strike by Rosa Luxembourg. Stirring stuff and more relevant than ever given the state of the world.

Non passera !

19: I remember reading Reform or revolution? in college and being pretty convinced by her arguments (you can probably guess which side she came down on)....:)

Gonna look up that title by Sean Armstrong. Our local "Occupy" group has a library tent with all sorts of titles and I have picked some of my books to donate including The Shock Doctrine, 23 things everyone should know about capitalism, a couple Michael Moore books, and if only I had my old college copy of the Communist Manifesto I would donate that too. Oh well.

I have to say, The Shock Doctrine should be obligatory reading for anyone looking to talk sensibly about the world.

I've always had a soft spot for Rosa, she always seemed so unsullied by the Stalinist horror and guff that came after.

And one more word about We're Fucked as well. It is a hard book to take on, Armstrong doesn't pull any punches, but the sheer, unbridled outrage he clearly feels about the state of things really struck a chord.

Good luck with the camp, and hang the rich!

I have some interest in the Shock Doctrine, at least what I've read about it.
I am currently finishing The Spirit Level, which is an exposition of the data in defense of economic equality from a very liberal perspective. Despite the perspective, the data is very interesting indeed.

Hello everyone, just dropping in to recommend this book I am reading right now, Tropic of Chaos. Grim reading but, I think, essential in understanding the conflict-gripped parts of the world.

Wow, this is an old thread. I'm currently starting Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century

Fred Goldstein's book Capitalism at a Dead End, a great analysis of the economic crisis.

Woody Guthrie wrote a book that's now available at Amazon....

http://www.amazon.com/House-Earth-Novel-Woody-Guthrie/dp/0062248391?tag=hydfbook...