I'm actually reading Xi's book right meow. Had enough of China Bad rhetoric in the media and wanted to hear their side.
It's good. Surprising, too. A lot of the marxist groups I've been around treat marxist literable like holy scripture. Xi on the other hand celebrates new ideas and creativity among new and younger party members to be dynamic and meet new challenges, and encourages new interpretations of Marxism. It's almost the antithesis to a conservative interpretation of Marx.
It's also seems that it would be quite user friendly to new students of Marxist ideas as it's quite detailed with succinct footnotes and references.
:chairman-moa:
Finally ran out of memes and started reading a leftish "book", People's Republic of Walmart
I recently read through it! I thought it was like, 95% good and neat, especially as planned economies aren't really discussed all that often in most people's socialist dreams but are really interesting. But I deduct a point for the authors then more-or-less saying "I know what you're thinking - the Soviet freaking Union. Time to spend the next umpteen pages describing the inexcusable horrors and authoritarianism of the USSR because we're writing a book for liberals and socdems and you'll call us tankies if we don't."
Like, they try and sneak in some good things the USSR did (like defeating the Nazis, raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions, etc) but it has an equal and opposite "And it was done by the madman dictator Lenin/Stalin/Khrushchev/etc, was it worth the degradation of freedom to have such reductions in poverty?!"
No, no, it's a great book. Can't expect 100% good takes all the time. The Soviet discussion is in chapters 7 and 8, and if you're unfamiliar with some of the economic goings-on of the Soviet Union then it's good information, you just need to be ready to glaze over some of the more lib stuff.
Still making my way through Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity with rl reading group and very much recommend the Philosophy Now episodes on it to the people who read How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Long story short, Simone makes the argument that to truly be free, one must work towards the freedom of the people around you for no man is an island, etc, etc. But she goes into the type of personalities you run across in the world and they apply greatly with what we're seeing with the rise of fascism.
The book is very reference heavy, but the Philosophy Now eps are very accessible. Sadly, the host regularly uses North Korea as his example of oppressed people in these eps though. Coulda been perfect agitprop otherwise. Still useful tho.👍
Re-reading Vijay Prasad’s Washington Bullets. Short book in simple language but so dense in detail of all the steps US takes to kill socialist leaders. The preface is by Evo Morales, former PM of Bolivia.
Reading Old Gods, New Enigmas, its very good but I'm finding reading it pretty slow going. First discussion post will be up next Sunday.
The looking back at early and proto-socialists in Davis' book has also got me considering restarting GDH Cole's A History of Socialist Thought, which I started before but didn't get vey far. I'd like to use Cole's series as a jumping off point to then dive into the works of the people he mentions and look into the movements he talks about as I go along but I think that would take forever.
GDH Cole’s A History of Socialist Thought
That sounds super interesting. I’d do the jumping off thing too, if I had the time
Been reading the Baaaaahhhhhble for research purposes and I have to say, genesis is pretty entertaining and sometimes seemingly totally random. “God was pissed one day and decided to kill this random dude who doesn’t matter to the story at all.” The KJV is also quite beautiful. Reading it as an example of Near Eastern literature (like Gilgamesh) is cool.
Polished off How To Blow Up A Pipeline on tour, cracked into Parenti's 'Against Empire' today. Jakarta method and then Lenin's 'Imperialism' are up next!
Hey, Evo, can you pass me the funny papers when you're done with that part?
Two books I'm bouncing between. I'm on the tail end of Transgender Health Issues by Susan Roslaugh, which has been a pretty good summary of the stats out there on everything related to trans folks receiving medical care.
Also have started Michael Eric Dyson's Come Hell or Highwater, which is about Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans.
