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I'm happy that it's so! I give it my highest endorsement - concise but solid introductory critique and analysis of 20th century socialism, and his dry sardonic humour is like Lenin's in places, making it an easy but also informative read
He's very good in that he doesn't describe Soviet societies through rose-tinted glasses, but also describes where they went wrong. Like how he talks about disincentives for innovation which heavily contributed to the econnomic decline and ineffective use of labor.
Very much to learn from him and this book in particular.Big agree! Reinforces the notion that future socialist experiments must take into account the deficiencies of past socialisms and find ways to overcome them
Yeah, there definitely is a lot to learn from past attempts and how to build systems that can account for wrong paths they've taken, just in case we ever get the chance to move past whatever we have now.
He's so talented. I've only watched his speeches but really look forward to diving into his writing.
Agreed, hoping he outlives Kissinger or there's no justice in this world
I've been reading through The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. I've been enjoying it so far and it's descriptions of an Anarchist society. It's also got some somewhat spiritual elements to it, mostly in terms of philosophy, and I find that very interesting as well.
It's the only explicitly socialist scifi book that I've read and it's beautiful. Would love to know more books like it.
I can't give you books exactly like the Dispossessed, because Le Guin is Le Guin and nobody is like her, but check out the works of Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod and Kim Stanley Robinson.
The Fall Revolution series, starting with the Star Fraction is an obvious starting point, though I had great fun with the standalone Newton's Wake: A Space Opera, which is really more a satire of transhumanism in many ways than it is anything to do with socialism.
Walkaway by Doctorow. I don't think he uses the word "socialism" once but it's about an anarcho-communist society
I've been reading Pedagogy of the Opressed, it's been really good so far!
It's a concise marxist view on opression and how to combat it with liberatory teaching. It's very relevant to current events, feels immediately applicable to radicalizing people who are nearly there and developing yourself as a socialist, and I couldn't recommend it more.
Fantastic book that was included in the curriculum during education grad school.
I had actually read it already, because someone recommended it at a Socialism conference, so it was great to bring that to a classroom setting with other educators in training.
Another one I can't wait to read. I've read quotes from that book and his writing is just incredible.
I reread Androids after a long, long time recently and it goes WAY HARDER than I remember. The movie is just a kinda grimey and polluted, in the book the world is really close to being uninhabitable.
It's fascinating to me because most cyberpunk properties present a world which, while definitely bad and dystopic, is portrayed as sustainable on some level. Thing could potentially suck as much as they suck now forever.
In Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep, the environment is getting worse and worse and everyone still on earth in a decade or two will be dead.
Well, there's a difference between inevitable doom unless something changes, and inevitable doom that could only have been prevented if something changed fifty years ago. Like your average Blade Runner or Cyberpunk 2077 or other setting will eventually destroy the planet and kill everyone, sure, but there's still a human agency there that could at some point replace a system leading to that with a system that doesn't. In Androids, the time to not make a fatal error was before World War Terminus.
Word for World is Forest is great, it's like a mix of the energy of Speaker for the Dead and Princess Mononoke
I'm reading Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, Stahl's Psychopharmacology, and Southern Gods by John Jacobs. Next up is The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross; if you like cosmic horror, Scottish humour, and spycraft, these are must reads.
Thank you. I've been intrigued by Mieville and Stross for so long, just need the time to get into them.
Perdido is a bit hard to start due to the the usual noun soup issues that plague genre fiction, but after a few chapters this fades. As with most of China's books, it's pretty left wing. Charles Stross is also a left winger (he did a really good interview with Trash Future a month ago).
Dune. Only about 1/6th in but really great. Deep but easily readable and doesnt feel like a load of nonsense bullshit which fantasy sometimes does for me.
I get what you mean by the "nonsense bullshit" thing, I'm just curious what you think it is about Dune that helps it escape that issue.
I can't quite put my finger on it, obviously it has loads of made up words and terms in it too, but it somehow just feels like a real account of an actual place/time and the made up stuff just seems 'right' somehow, whereas in some fantasy stuff it just seems like they are just pulling stuff out of thin air for the hell of it.
Yeah that's a good point and I agree. I'm sure there are some really cool analysis done about what makes lore feel real versus fake, which would be interesting to read.
'Debt: the first 5000 years' by David Graeber, I'd highly recommend it.
Currently working my way through Asimov's End of Eternity. So far, very horny.
That was almost all I could think about while reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Philip K. Dick really loves his boobs in sweaters.
I don't read enough, I started the Shock Doctrine in June but I'm still on that
That book messed me up, the stuff about Chile, and how they broke peoples solidarity was so hard to read
Yeh, shock doctrine is rage inducing. You think it can’t get worse, but every chapter is just evil.
Capitalist realism by Mark Fisher. I really like it so far.
The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. It does a good job explaining what's wrong with the current police system, their role in perpetuating problems, and suggestions with examples on ending policing in the US.
That’s a good and pretty quick read, Verso booka was giving it away for free when the riots first broke out a few months back.
It really is. I've used the book and some of it's points help guide some lib friends to supporting abolishing the police.
Currently reading "On Practice and Contradiction", a collection of writings by Mao with an intro by Žižek, very interesting and enjoyable, I'm learning a lot
On Contradiction is what finally made dialectical materialism snap for me. It's a great text, along with On Practice. Combat Liberalism is a complete shitpost in comparison.
