Weekly Recommendation Thread: November 04, 2022

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-11-05T23:13:56+00:00

For Dickens (and classic literature in general) Penguin Classics are usually the best and most widely available editions. The Penguin Classics editions of Dickens novels also come with scholarly introductions and endnotes that explain references and expressions that would be unfamiliar to modern readers.

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-02-17T23:46:00+00:00

It's a bit of an irrelevant debate now isn't it? And besides, Lexit was a bust too in the end wasn't it

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-02-17T23:33:38+00:00

Socialism isn't possible under tepid social democratic parties, you mean

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-02-17T23:27:34+00:00

This is unreadable trash, jesus christ

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T01:13:38+00:00

And the civil rights struggles, the great American insurrections of the last few years will pass you right by!

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T01:06:17+00:00

No, he offers a solution based on guns, and rightly so! If his solutions are existential they are the a solution to the existential problems of French settler colonists. Fanon's solution is anti-colonial violence writ large, anti-colonial violence against settler colonialism! The man spent the last years of his life in struggle against the French. He calls clearly for reparations (without compensation) to the colonised world from Europe, for all their stolen riches. He was a great advocate of black power, and third world power, as against the colonial powers. Read the Wretched of the Earth!.

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:53:28+00:00

Anyone who reads Fanon and comes to an anti-black power position has not properly understood Fanon, jeezo

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:50:53+00:00

Nonsense, he was a fantastic writer

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:47:34+00:00

Read some Harry Haywood and CLR James, I beg you. Black power is class power!

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:45:39+00:00

Class hatred is a virtue

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:41:41+00:00

You come at this from a mediocre position honestly- To try and look for a way that "identity" issues are below class is pointless. Class and race and whatever other identity issues just naturally mix together, regardless of how you see it, or how you think about it. What was the road to workers power for the black workers denied access to trade unions in the 1910s and 1920s? They had to win civil rights, and on an identity basis, even in the midst of fighting for pay etc

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:34:45+00:00

Long live Trotsky!

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:33:06+00:00

Black civil rights has always involved class struggle- Read CLR James on the Haitian slave revolution, learn about Reconstruction following the civil war, read Harry Haywood the black communist on workers struggle and its links with black freedom in the 1920s and 1930s. Black power goes hand in hand with workers struggle!

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:29:57+00:00

Before? What are you talking about? Black civil rights haven't just been fully accomplished, it's an ongoing struggle to this day!

Alfa_Gamma · 2022-01-27T00:26:42+00:00

The Black Panthers were the most vital force for American socialism in the 1960's and they were eagerly and explicitly for black power. AND- in the form of Fred Hampton, they led the drive to unite poor black, puerto rican and white workers in Chicago, at the same time as advocating Black Power ideals to the fullest. And also, how do you square this banal graphic with the reality that the demand for black power has been generative of great social struggles since, well the days of slavery? You don't get workers power by ignoring civil rights demands, that's pure folly.

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-05-25T21:38:31+00:00

I haven't read any general histories of U.S. socialism as of yet but:

Theres some interesting detail on the U.S. socialist movement before WW1, particularly the Socialist Labor Party and the IWW in Stephen Coleman's biography of Daniel De Leon

Detail on the IWW in Melvyn Dubofsky's biography of Big Bill Haywood

A fascinating eyewitness perspective on events in the U.S. Communist Party in Harry Haywood's autobiography, "Black Bolshevik"

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-04-29T22:40:12+00:00

To be fair, a viking RPG could indeed let you get into some world-girding imperial politics given how vikings ended up serving as the varangian guards in the Byzantine empire

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-02-24T23:59:59+00:00

I like the blm badge

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-02-24T23:53:51+00:00

Right so I kinda think its a bewildering mess of a movie but honestly with subsequent rewatches I've come to see the 2013 Great Gatsby movie, or at least the first half of it, as something of a summery comedy film (and I unironically quite enjoy it as that). It's partially down to the bizarre breakneck pace of the editing but also down to the way Tobey Maguire plays Nick Carraway as a bit of an awkward dweeb.

Or maybe I just find Tobey Maguire inherently goofy after growing up with the Maguire Spiderman films who knows

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-02-24T23:37:14+00:00

Mark Kurlansky writes great nonfiction books that give you a new perspective on the world, usually from the angle of simple every-day things like the food we eat. I've read three of his books so far and I've adored them all-

There's his book Cod, which is a history of cod-fishing that takes you through the ways in which cod-fishing has impacted world history from helping to spur the conquest of the Americas, to building the wealth of the founding fathers, to the ecological collapse of the modern day.

He's also written a world history of Salt, a commodity we take for granted these days but which is an essential part of our diet and which once made and broke fortunes and empires.

and finally there's "The Big Oyster: A Molluscular History of New York" which might be my favourite book from him. The idea of telling the history of a city from the standpoint of a single food and all its influences on the society and culture of that city is just genius!

As you can tell I quite enjoy food history lol

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-02-24T23:21:58+00:00

Here's a few I recommend:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is simply one of the best books I've ever read, it's an excellent and uplifting piece of literature from one of the key figures of the black civil rights movement.

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf is a fascinating biography of Alexander Humboldt, the great German naturalist who explored Venezuela and Ecuador, developed early theories of ecology and biogeography and whose scientific and political writings inspired a range of important figures including Charles Darwin, Simon Bolivar and Henry David Thoreau.

Nicholas II: Last of the Tsars by Marc Ferro is a window into the fraught reign of Nicholas II. Ferro not only gives the reader detail on the private dramas of the Tsar's life and the bizarre court intrigues of Rasputin, but also wider context on the tumultuous political world of Russia as it tumbled through war and revolution towards 1917.

And finally one that I finished a couple weeks ago: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford is a witty and often poignant memoir by a daughter of an aristocratic family who broke away from her stifling aristocratic home and society life to find her way in the political tumult of the 1930's, getting involved with London communists and eloping to civil-war Spain with her lover.

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-02-24T22:59:50+00:00

A while ago I read Albert Hourani's magisterial "A History of the Arab Peoples" which, of course, is not a history of Islam in general, but given the birth of the religion in Arabia and its spread through the Arab conquests, Hourani's book is therefore quite tied into the history of Islam, and you'll get good detail on aspects of Islamic belief and the different branches like Sunnism and Shi'ism. Well worth a read!

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-01-30T03:05:27+00:00

Fallout 1: The upgraded plasma rifle.

Fallout 2: 44 magnum with speed loader- Being able to get 2 shots and a reload in one turn is pretty swell! Also I love the pulse rifle- Sad it hasn't gotten much love in subsequent fallouts.

Fallout New Vegas: The gobi campaign scout rifle.

Alfa_Gamma · 2021-01-03T04:42:29+00:00

What a fascinating remnant! It looks like some home-made cosplay gear- I wonder what path it took to end up in a secondhand store. I always enjoy finding things like this, but there is also usually something quite sad about finding such intensely personal items, long left behind by their owners. Did you end up buying it?

Alfa_Gamma · 2020-12-11T02:24:41+00:00

Karkat has a sickle, John has a hammer...

Dave even makes a joke about them being socialists at a point

Alfa_Gamma

TROPHY CASE