Howdy folks, hope you stayed warm and cozied up with a good book. So tell us: what have you been reading this week?
Debt: The first 5000 years. Graeber is astonishing, and I think there's a ton of untapped educating and organizing power around a lot of the concepts he lays out. Like, it's one thing if we could show that commercial economies and relations of exchange, where any and all social relationships can be cancelled out like any other financial debt, are fundamental products of human nature. But they're not: in fact, most of our ideas about private property come from Roman jurists trying to figure out how to deal with the endless moral dilemmas that arise from owning other human beings. I'll probably do some kind of effort posting about it when I'm done. Lots of fantastic stuff to absorb in this one.
The whole bit where he lays out how private property spawned from slavery rocked me, so good
Reading this as well. I'm not cery far into it but it has been insightful already. It is always a bit shocking to recognizing something you were taught in school and didn't question turns out to be mythmaking, but it also feels good to critically revisit these topics. And the whole section about the origins of currency has delivered in this regard. [spoiler: early societies were much more complex and diverse than having a barter economy until someone was smart enough to invent currency to efficiently trade and establish a free market in the modern sense]
It also gives some perspective on fiat currency opponents, gold standard, bitcoin as a digital gold weirdos, since this has also been somewhere between more complex and a myth.
Started reading it too recently, only 2 chapters in, but love it so far. When he claimed that barter pretty much didn't exist (besides in highly specific circumstances), and the entire idea of “damn, I can't exchange one beer for three fish, because the fishmonger doesn't want beer, I wish somebody invented coins already” is bunk, I was like “no no no, this can't be”. I started googling elsewhere an indeed, there's very little evidence in anthropology, that barter was a widespread thing at all. Mind → blown.
whom amongst us has had the ability to read an entire book in a single weekend and then had their attention spans ruined by smartphones and social media? couldnt be me of course
I am currently trying to figure out how to undo this. I want that attention span back.
Let's say you used to play soccer when you were younger, and now wonder how to re-bulk your atrophied leg muscles, twenty years later. It's the same thing; squatting sucks at first (okay, always) and you have to manually push yourself through plateaus, set timers to force you to endure for such & such time, etc.
Eventually you start reading Marx for enjoyment, like me-- hrm, wait, maybe forget about all that...
Hmm, my family already thinks I'm weird for liking obscure academic stuff, maybe I should just take up soccer instead.
Oof, I feel this. It took me like eight months to read the book I mentioned in my reply and it's around 280 pages. Slowly getting back to the point where I can turn off electronics and zone out reading for a while. Be kind to yourself, it'll come back.
Finished Imperialsim: the Highest Stage of Capitalism this week and wow, Lenin is a good writer. This and State and Rev were knockout hits.
Other than that, I've been reading Russia:People and Empire, which is a history book about the development of different parts of Russian society from the medieval period to 1917. I also bought Pursuit of Power, which is a big book about something. Not sure what, I'll find out when I read it
This morning I finished Red Rosa, a graphic novel (Verso) about Rosa Luxembourg. It's an easy and engaging entry that left me wanting to read more of her works.
I'm almost done Massacre, which describes the fall of the Paris Commune and the psychotic murder spree perpetrated by Versailles invaders under the command of Adolphe Thiers in painful detail. I spend more time then one probably should thinking about what would have happened if the commune seized the bank of France or moved on Versailles before they could regroup.
The Commune (and everything, really) seems to have taught that you must always always always attack as a revolution. Take advantage of the moment and never let your enemies have a second of rest, for they will consolidate and crush you. Also God damn they should've taken the bank.
Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich, a book on the grand strategy of the Anglo-American Empire. The thesis is that, relative to Eurasia, Anglo-America an island Empire with primary objective of preventing a stable Eurasian power from arising.
It talks a bit about the WWI conspiracy against the German Empire, but it's mostly on American & British intelligence agencies funding the rise of Fascism in Germany once it became clear the "Civil War" in the USSR was doomed to fail.
The Anglo-American Threat to Albania, it is a set of memoirs by Enver Hoxha talking about the Albanian Labor Party discovering British & American double agents & financial conspiracies against Albania between WWI & WWII.
The Longer Telegram, a new Atlantic Council report where they are trying to draft a sound imperialist strategy against China, inspired by The Long Telegram, which outlined the Cold War strategy against the USSR.
I'm reading zizek, first as tragedy then as farce.
Its interesting, and zizek writes well, but man, that guy loves to ramble. Sometimes I feel like he's showing off by incorporating pop culture examples for his points, and other times I feel like he completely forgets what point he's making.
Its OK, but I'm not sure yet what to think.
Farming Cuba: Urban Agriculture from the Ground Up by Carey Clouse. It's good folks. About the transformation of Cuban cities during the Special Economic Period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's inspiring to read about. One of those, another world isn't just possible, it already exists kinds of realisations. Makes me feel hopeful for what can be achieved. It also contains an essay comparing Cuba's response to its crisis that of the US to Katrina, and let's just say, death to America. The US learnt nothing from Katrina and will continue to learn nothing from each subsequent crisis until it collapses.
Baboon metaphysics. Considering reading "The CAFO reader" or "Religion and the decline of magic" next.
I am no longer able to distinguish between 'theory' in a broad sense and 'irrelevant' (in a broad sense) academic pursuits. I have no idea in which corner I can find the tools to see through our matrix.
still the same stuff as last week. what you think I read all that in 7 days?
On War, by Clausewitz. Informative but rather dense read so far. Dude clearly wasn't writing with the average peasant in mind.
Any particular reason that you're reading old ass war theory by a Prussian general?
Kim Stanley Robinson, I instantly started with the mars trilogy. I’ll likely finish Blue Mars today, which is turning out to be my favorite so far.
I requested Ministry for the Future at my local library, so I'm waiting on that right now while catching up on school work.
The Expanse books are also pretty good (if you haven't already read them), I recently finished book 8 and I can't wait how they'll close out the series this year because let me tell you, Tiamat's Wrath has some WILD shit going down.
They're a really enjoyable read because the chapters are usually only about 8-10 pages long and switch perspectives each time. Book 1 only has two main characters for the most part, but later books really expand (pun not intended) the roster of points of view. The show is very slow, especially in the first two seasons but it picks up the pace later, and in some aspects it's a lot better than the books because the authors are part of the screenwriting team and made changes that accommodated the earlier parts of the story for later developments.
culture warlords by talia lavin. Jewish antifascist pretends to be a nazi to infiltrate nazi chatrooms/other online spaces and reports her findings
I'm rereading The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. It's a solid gritty fantasy trilogy that people who liked the GoT books might like. It's a little more adventure-focused and a little less court intrigue/warring nobles focused tho.
Also reading some recs from !guns@hexbear.net on tactics stuff out of curiosity.
The Life and Death of the Great Lakes. It's about how humans have totally fucked up the ecosystem of the great lakes by introducing invasive species. Super interesting read!
