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
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You don’t have be on Twitter to read it; click here for more.
Omnes Omnibus
How about “The Wealth of Nations?” I think people would be surprised by what they read.
TheMightyTrowel
Debt: the first 5000 years
jl
@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.
schrodinger's cat
If plays count then, A Doll’s house by Ibsen.
Bob In Portland
Hey, even pro-Ukrainian irregulars wear masks!
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: Do you have a point? If so, make it.
schrodinger's cat
BJP and its allies are on target to win all the seats in Mumbai, an update on the Indian election results here.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Putin good, USA bad.
jl
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
amk
@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.
schrodinger's cat
@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.
BillinGlendaleCA
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.
jl
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.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: Congress used to win in such big manner before 1984. Now they are as good as regional parties.
schrodinger's cat
@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.
J.Ty
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.
schrodinger's cat
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.
J.Ty
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.
? Martin
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.
schrodinger's cat
@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.
J.Ty
@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.
NotMax
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
J.Ty
@NotMax: Triple-quadruple-quintuple recommending One-Upmanship. Oh man. That book is. Incredible.
schrodinger's cat
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.
raven
Teaching to Transgress
bell hooks
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Black Flags and Wind Mills by Scott crow (anarchists pitch in to help survivors after Katrina)
kentropic
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television — Jerry Mander
JoyfulA
@NotMax: The Death Ship is astounding, and I’d never heard of it before I read it because it was “around the house.”
gene108
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.
Elizabelle
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.
Elizabelle
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
Elizabelle
@gene108: yeah, it looks good
p.a.
John Dos Passes’ USA trilogy.
p.a.
John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy.
KS in MA
Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolitionist Mobs in Jacksonian America by L. L. Richards.
Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Kay
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.
Chris
@Kay:
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.
Kay
@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.
TDA
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