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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

In my day, never was longer.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Petty moves from a petty man.

The willow is too close to the house.

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You are here: Home / Books / Late Night Open Thread: #RecommendARadicalBook

Late Night Open Thread: #RecommendARadicalBook

by Anne Laurie|  May 16, 20141:46 am| 39 Comments

This post is in: Books, Don't Mourn, Organize, Excellent Links, Open Threads

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Hey: Recommend a great radical book you've read. I'll start: Audre Lorde's "Sister Outsider" (http://t.co/qr8q17sXNf) #RecommendARadicalBook

— alexis goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) May 15, 2014

Labor's Untold Story: The Battles, Betrayals & Victories of American Working Men & Women http://t.co/bq7IhqcgCx #RecommendARadicalBook

— billmon (@billmon1) May 16, 2014

The Militarization of Indian Country by Winona LaDuke http://t.co/aVeFTRUakJ #RecommendARadicalBook

— Lauren Chief Elk (@ChiefElk) May 16, 2014

Animal Farm #RecommendARadicalBook pic.twitter.com/Dc7KNHnM4s

— Chris Oestereich (@costrike) May 16, 2014

************

You don’t have be on Twitter to read it; click here for more.

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Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 16, 2014 at 1:56 am

    How about “The Wealth of Nations?” I think people would be surprised by what they read.

  2. 2.

    TheMightyTrowel

    May 16, 2014 at 1:57 am

    Debt: the first 5000 years

  3. 3.

    jl

    May 16, 2014 at 2:09 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Second that. Get yer copy here. It don’t seem so thick on a ‘puter.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300

    Another book that might not seem radical, but gives you a very different perspective on how the U.S. got all economicked advanced and gubmint role from way back is

    American Economic History by Jonathan Hughes and Louis Cain

    You can get any of the last four or five editions. The chapter on the economics of slavery is horrifying and sends chills up your spine, and having the facts handy are good antidote of any of this ‘maybe slavery wasn’t so bad nonsense’. Not much about horrifying physical and emotional abuse you see in recent movie, but the facts about how awful it was on a day to day basis when that shit was not going down are also horrifying.

  4. 4.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:09 am

    If plays count then, A Doll’s house by Ibsen.

  5. 5.

    Bob In Portland

    May 16, 2014 at 2:11 am

    Hey, even pro-Ukrainian irregulars wear masks!

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 16, 2014 at 2:20 am

    @Bob In Portland: Do you have a point? If so, make it.

  7. 7.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:20 am

    BJP and its allies are on target to win all the seats in Mumbai, an update on the Indian election results here.

  8. 8.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:22 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Putin good, USA bad.

  9. 9.

    jl

    May 16, 2014 at 2:22 am

    I just got my copy so haven’t read it yet. But looks interesting and has gotten very good reviews. About worker ownership (outright, cooperatives or offering workers ownership shares) as an economic model. Has a chapter on history of worker ownership as economic policy in U.S. going back to the commies Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and early history of federal efforts to promote worker shareholding in U.S. economy. I’ll probably read that chapter first.

    The Citizen’s Share: Putting Ownership Back into Democracy
    by Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman, Douglas L. Kruse
    Yale University Press 2013

  10. 10.

    amk

    May 16, 2014 at 2:29 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yup. It’s a clean sweep across the board except for two southern states, Tamil Nadu & Kerala and one eastern state, West Bengal. bjp has been the governing majority all on their own, without the necessity of any coalition partners. This single party majority happened 30 years ago when congress was given such a sweeping mandate. That bjp went from just two seats in 1984 to almost 280 seats now is incredible. Let’s see what Modi does with it.

  11. 11.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:34 am

    @amk: They are going to win all six seats in Mumbai, I wonder if that has happened before.
    Mumbai or Bombay is the most polygot and diverse place in all of India, with no single linguistic group or caste being dominant.

  12. 12.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    May 16, 2014 at 2:35 am

    Watching the programs that I recorded earlier today, I caught the end of TRMS with a story about a 40 foot crude oil geyser. I happened about a block away from my cave, really smelled awful.

  13. 13.

    jl

    May 16, 2014 at 2:42 am

    OK, last blast since I have to go. Omnes fault for leading off with Adam Smith and getting me riled up.

    Good intro to a progressive friendly view of political economy, economics of asset ownership, debt, social power structures and evolution of preferences, money and capital. Uses standard economic modelling techniques so can compare and contrast directly with standard neoclassical economics (Marxists and heterodox economics snobs will hate it). Some college level math, but nothing beyond algebra and basic calculus, and plenty of explanation to talk you through the equations. The author is numerate, and likes to look at data, so some statistical thinking also. But lots of text to explain, so even math afraid should at least take a look.

    Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution
    Samuel Bowles
    Princeton Univ Press, 2006

    Also, check out Dean Bakers e-books on economic policy at Center for Economic and Policy Research. (CEPR)

    Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People
    by Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker (2013

    The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive
    Dean Baker 2011

    http://www.cepr.net/index.php/books

    Got some very good dead tree books you gotta pay for too.

  14. 14.

    amk

    May 16, 2014 at 2:44 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: Congress used to win in such big manner before 1984. Now they are as good as regional parties.

  15. 15.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:49 am

    @amk: Not in Bombay, though. In the 60s and 70s many socialists used to win in Bombay. Madhu Dandavate, George Fernandes etc. come to mind. Unfortunately, they never could create a credible alternative to the Congress. I am thinking of the failed experiments under Morarji Desai and later under V P Singh.

    ETA: I have had relatives who marched with Gandhi and were later disgusted with Indira Gandhi and her autocratic rule.

  16. 16.

    J.Ty

    May 16, 2014 at 2:56 am

    Utopia by Moore? Plato’s Republic? Just thinking out loud here but those are two of the books that knocked me out of my skull when I read them as an impressionable youth.

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 2:58 am

    Not in Bombay, though. In the late 60s, 70s socialists used to win,
    Madhu Dandavate, George Fernandes etc. come to mind. Unfortunately, they never could create a credible alternative to the Congress. I am thinking of the failed experiments under Morarji Desai and later under V P Singh.

    ETA: I have had relatives who marched with Gandhi and were later disgusted with Indira Gandhi and her autocratic rule. FWIW, I have no love lost for either the BJP or the Congress.

  18. 18.

    J.Ty

    May 16, 2014 at 3:07 am

    Oh, and I am super not excited about Modi. I know that India is all corrupt and stuff and he’s saying he’ll streamline blah blah, but… wholesale slaughter of innocents over sectarian bullshit.

    Maybe he’ll be good. Hopefully he won’t be a crazy religious fanatic, even if “subtly” like the ones we have running the House here. But. Yeah. Not optimistic.

  19. 19.

    ? Martin

    May 16, 2014 at 3:09 am

    Since daughters school open house was tonight, would like to reiterate how thankful I am that her school and my son’s HS each do an entire semester of radical/banned books. She’s reading Animal Farm (and made a great propaganda poster for it) and previously read The Chocolate War, he’s reading To Kill a Mockingbird and previously read Of Mice and Men.

  20. 20.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 3:11 am

    @J.Ty: The stock market is soaring through the stratosphere right now. I am not hopeful either. But since I am a guest and going to leave in two weeks, I am keeping my mouth shut.

    ETA: Talking to people, I don’t think this is a mandate for Hindu revival, but for change, against an inept and corrupt government. But I am not sanguine about the Hindu wingnuts and what they will do in power.

  21. 21.

    J.Ty

    May 16, 2014 at 3:21 am

    @schrodinger’s cat: That’s basically my take as well, and his actual policy proposals that don’t involve looking the other way while your constituents slaughter minorities (and again, I know that’s not an actual proposal) seem promising, especially in a place as messed up as India is economically.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    May 16, 2014 at 3:47 am

    Surely an incomplete listing:

    Cane by Jean Toomer

    The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

    Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

    Molloy by Samuel Beckett

    The Death Ship by B. Traven

    The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes

    Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse

    The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

    A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells

    Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

    El Señor Presidente by Miguel Asturias

    Where Is Vietnam? poetry anthology, edited by Walter Lowenfels

    The Castle by Franz Kafka

    The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Laura Ries

    Too many SF novels and short stories to recount here.

    Unsure if these count as “radical,” but what the hey –

    Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean by B. R. Burg

    One-Upmanship by Stephen Potter

  23. 23.

    J.Ty

    May 16, 2014 at 3:53 am

    @NotMax: Triple-quadruple-quintuple recommending One-Upmanship. Oh man. That book is. Incredible.

  24. 24.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 16, 2014 at 3:54 am

    BJP’s ally Shiv Sena won the election in Mumbai South constituency where I am staying right now. They flipped the seat held by the Congress in the last two cycles.

  25. 25.

    raven

    May 16, 2014 at 5:14 am

    Teaching to Transgress
    bell hooks

  26. 26.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    May 16, 2014 at 7:30 am

    Black Flags and Wind Mills by Scott crow (anarchists pitch in to help survivors after Katrina)

  27. 27.

    kentropic

    May 16, 2014 at 8:13 am

    Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television — Jerry Mander

  28. 28.

    JoyfulA

    May 16, 2014 at 8:37 am

    @NotMax: The Death Ship is astounding, and I’d never heard of it before I read it because it was “around the house.”

  29. 29.

    gene108

    May 16, 2014 at 8:38 am

    Saw the new Godzilla movie. It’s very well done. Yeah, there are some plot holes that you have to tune out but it really is a quality big budget Godzilla movie. Soooooo much better than the craptastic 1998 movie.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    May 16, 2014 at 8:58 am

    Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, from 1944.

    Well written, even. Link is full text, free on the internet.

    He’s also done a history of the Caribbean: From Columbus to Castro.

  31. 31.

    Elizabelle

    May 16, 2014 at 9:04 am

    To remind what progressives in the late 19th and early 20th century got right (and that Americans take for granted, silly rabbits):

    Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon, The United States 1877 to 1919

    Painter letter, outlining her book

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    May 16, 2014 at 9:05 am

    @gene108: yeah, it looks good

  33. 33.

    p.a.

    May 16, 2014 at 9:28 am

    John Dos Passes’ USA trilogy.

  34. 34.

    p.a.

    May 16, 2014 at 9:29 am

    John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy.

  35. 35.

    KS in MA

    May 16, 2014 at 12:00 pm

    Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolitionist Mobs in Jacksonian America by L. L. Richards.

    Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    May 16, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    I have so many! :)

    I like Delano, which is a short book – a snapshot of one Cesar Chavez-led organizing campaign and then the vote on a union. It’s not especially pro-labor but it’s really good political reporting and it is about an election after all.

    The Overton Window adherents will love it because it’s an example of that. The growers end up aligning with the Teamsters because they are so afraid of Chavez who they feel is this radical mystic (plus he’s not white) so they almost run to the Teamsters for refuge although they started out vehemently anti-union. It’s not the “enemy of your enemy is your friend” exactly, it’s more the least frightening, least Left, available option.

  37. 37.

    Chris

    May 16, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    @Kay:

    It’s not the “enemy of your enemy is your friend” exactly, it’s more the least frightening, least Left, available option.

    Sounds like the New Deal in a nutshell.

    If memory serves, the Teamsters were one of the few unions that supported Republicans, as well as being up to its eyeballs in Mafia ties. I can see how bosses might be fond of them.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    May 16, 2014 at 8:07 pm

    @Chris:

    From the book: “whatever the Teamsters were, they were not a union run by a radical Mexican mystic, and to the growers this was a most seductive enticement.”

    But there was one more layer! There were breakaway locals of Teamsters who wouldn’t deliver the produce while the farmworkers were on strike which Chavez was able to spin as this huge grassroots Teamster support (not true) that was contra to the leadership, and that left everyone confused. They didn’t know what was going on. What was mostly going on, I think, was the “Mexican mystic” was creating this whole complicated narrative to make it seem his position was stronger than it was.

  39. 39.

    TDA

    May 16, 2014 at 11:51 pm

    Occupy [Life] – Some creative folks building a floating city in the ocean. A place to develop a more just society. A world without bias and eco-damage, a space to grow food and play music.

    https://www.createspace.com/4097655

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