Being stuck at home, reading theory has become a thing I've actually somewhat prioritized and scheduled for myself for the first time in a long time.
However, I find it hard to break from the core of texts. While Lenin and Marx are almost prescient with their predictions, I find many people I talk to suggesting that their premodern writings don't account for things like automation, globalisation, social media, etc.
I'd appreciate if any comrades could share some approachable suggestions (any tendency, I'm down to read whatever) of modern/current writers, or if you want to send me writings predicting the youtube fascist pipeline I'm also down. I'd extra love modern theorists who outline steps forward to revolution and predict outcomes
Mike Davis is great, so is William Clare Roberts, and Aziz Rana (doesn't say in his book he's a marxist but it's written with a Marxist framework and he says as such). There's Andrew Kilman on the economics side. The 2020 socialist register, especially the contributors Ursula Huws, Nancy Holstrum, and Nancy Fraser. Ellen Meiksons Woods and Perry Anderson are two great modern Marxist historians (less so Perry Anderson, he's old lol). There's also Frederic Jameson who pioneered the Marxist critique and extension of post modernism (he's old af but has books in the last 10 years). There's of course also the more popularly known online David Harvey and Richard Wolff but I don't find their work super interesting. Moishe Postone was also great (he died in 2018 sadly).
If you want automation work I highly recommend again the socialist register. They publish an essay collection each year on a new theme, and this years theme has a lot of automation and gig economy writing. The register is topical, so look at the contributing authors from the past 5 years and you'll get a great sampling of modern Marxist and other socialist writers.
Broadly, the last 15 years have seen a resurgence in Marxist scholarship, both in more traditional Marx inspired fields like urban studies, history, and philosophy but also in political theory and political development (Rana and Roberts are two prominent examples, especially Roberts). It's really a breath of fresh air as for a long time Marx studies were stuck in ridiculous value form and transformation problem arguments when there's much more that I find more interesting to discuss and think about.
Myself I'm most interested in political theory, ecology, and sociology, and I try and use ideas from that in my motivations for what I do day to day, cryptography and theoretical computer science.
Upbear for that Frederic Jameson. To be honest, the old-ass Marxists are my favorites - Terry Eagleton is a cool old bastard too (saw him lecture once in DC about 10 yrs ago).
Don't read Zizek - watch his movies, listen to his interview on Chapo, but don't read him.
Yeah second that for Zizek, there are better things to read lol. I also for some reason constantly confuse Terry Eagleton and E.P. Thompson. I have no idea why.
I also own a lot of Jameson books lol. I own Archaeologies of The Future, Late Marxism, The Hegel Variations, An American Utopia, The Modernist Papers, and The Ancients and The Postmodern. I don't own his work on capital (read some of it, do not like it lol) or his postmodernism book though.
