Recommend Political Books You Think Everybody Should Read Here

[Dantès]

The Other America: Poverty in The United States by Michael Harrington

This is an excellent choice. Harrington's main problem is that he inserts a little of the pathological reasoning into his distinction between those who experience long term or continuous unemployment and those who only experience temporary unemployment but apart from that he is well worth reading; the idea that we were in the same kind of capitalist transition in the early 60s as we are today, when people were being displaced and the elderly, the uneducated and unskilled workers were being scuttled and unable to find future employment is instructive for those willing to open themselves to his themes and thesis.

[Dantès]

Specious reasoning. It's also factually wrong. It has been the Republican party, since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which has carried the populist and agrarian torch....or maybe that excaped your notice?

This would only refute his claim if the history of America began in something like 1964! American political history and even the history of the word, "Liberalism" versus the word "liberalism" is far more complicated, dynamic and dialectical than either of you seem willing to admit or consider.

A good place to start to disentangle some of your seeming misunderstandings might be Domenico Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011) from my favorite left publisher Verso.

For Marxists here are two recent additions:

Terry Eagleton: Why Marx Was Right (2011)

Eric Hobsbaum's last book: How To Change The World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism (2011)

Both from Yale University Press

[Dantès]

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Gag me! Yes let the capitalists take their money and go live in some covered and hidden commune-like setting in the Rocky Mountains! That idea is so purile, banal and inane that only high school students would fall for it.

The best statement on Ayn Rand is still this classic comparison:


"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a life-long obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Originally from a post that no longer exists at Kung Fu Monkey!

[Dantès]

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle McGuire. A difficult but very important read if you are an American. Especially if you are a woman of any race.

Thank you! This sounds like something I might enjoy and find informative!

[brazenhussy]

Thank you! This sounds like something I might enjoy and find informative!

You're welcome, if you read it let me know what you think. It was to me one of the most important books I've read.

[Big Money]

You're welcome, if you read it let me know what you think. It was to me one of the most important books I've read.

.

[chris123678]

It is indeed an excellent choice.

[Dantès]

You're welcome, if you read it let me know what you think. It was to me one of the most important books I've read.

I just purchased this book and will keep you advised as I read it this weekend. Sadly or perhaps predictably, out of all the mess here this is the only recommendation that wasn't something I had already read, so pedestrian that it was worthless, or so puerile that I couldn't help but smile. You are to be commended for recommending this excellent book. "Danielle L. McGuire is an award-winning historian. She hails from Janesville, Wisconsin and is an assistant professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. She specializes in the civil rights movement, 20th century American history and African-American history. She has two children and lives with her husband in metro Detroit. At the Dark End of the Street won the 2011 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, the 2011 Lillian Smith Award, and the 2011 Julia Cherry Spruill Award." We must certainly must get together someday and discuss this remarkable selection. I would have never guessed, but I should have! Shame on me!

[Celticguy]

"The Real Lincoln" diLorenzo.

[Dantès]

Here are some excellent books, if mostly pedestrian and obvious to many here--by which I mean there is nothing the least bit esoteric--to consider if you are in the market to consider books. Many people today no longer are! But this being the home of most if not all the smartest people on the globe (or so many of them say) some might be readers of books of worth beyond those of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Adam Smith or de Tocqueville:

I will start with Gabriel Kolko's classic study of the Progressive era, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (1963, 1977). A revealing and well-written primer on who gained from the progressive era and who was behind all those pesky government regulations that emerged from that era and why. In short, this book goes a long way in debunking any notion of Roosevelt as a "trust-buster" and shows that, in spite of what popular history teaches us about the consolidation of the progressive movement and its accomplishments during this era, the conservatives and market forces clearly established themselves as the power not just outside the government but inside as well in frightening and innovative ways that are still with us. The widely touted Bureau of Corporations was actually set up to make sure that no regulation of trusts or even investigations took place and if by chance there were any investigations that no or little information from them was ever released to the public. In other words, the Bureau was established to pay fealty to the corporations and protect them, not to regulate them or to establish regulations that they hadn't already designed and accepted as necessary for their own purposes. In addition, whatever graft or corruption was discovered or exposed by Congress was to be papered over by the forces at the Bureau and that whatever regulation that emerged was designed not to harm corporations but to supersede the regulations emerging in the states during this period and making it extremely arduous for corporate corruption to continue at the state level. Therefore, it contradistinction to what we have long been taught to accept it was the business interests who pressed for federal regulation in order to override the effects of the progressive era at the sate level. And I bet many of you thought that business wanted government to just get out of the way. How naive! That's just what they tell the stupid and insipid peasants, to make sure they never discover how to make government work for them instead of the real "special" interests in Washington. Here's a short but revealing quotation to wet your curiosity: "In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits himself must also benefit others....The superficial fact that the sharing [of the profits of these endeavors] may be unequal must never blind us to the underlying fact that there is this sharing,,," Theodore Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 5, 1905. I think this is mostly straight out of Adam Smith isn't it? The invisible hand of Capitalism making everything alright, as revealed by the old "trust-buster" himself! Classic sleight of hand!

Any of several books by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. Piven is considered so dangerous by Glenn Beck that he has called for her murder (fact)! Why would this woman excite such anger, animosity and calls for her destruction? I guess it's because she blows his mind! And she does it consistently. Anyone on the left who hasn't read at least one of her numerous books is in for a real treat. She is a radical thinker who continues to look at situations and not only try to change them practically but is adept at narrating her experiences while listing her failures as well as her successes. A good place to start is Why Americans Still Don't Vote And Why Politicians Want It That Way (2000). This is an excellent read that challenges the common perception/knowledge that one or both of the major political parties want more people to vote or want to turn out more voters. In fact, in her years of trying to change voter registration laws and enable more people to vote she has found just the opposite.

Perhaps this is changing, but at least at the publication of the latest revision of this text from the 90s by one of the main proponents and movers behind the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the sad fact is that the parties are both basically uninterested in broadening the electorate. They are more likely to try to influence the voters they already trust than enlarge the electorate beyond their safe bases. It's a compelling argument, and it is only validated to a certain extent by the fact that it is completely ignored in Sasha Issenberg's The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns (2012) which pretends that the parties want nothing more than to entice more voters to vote for them, when in fact a close read of Issenberg shows,that as Piven and Cloward found, the parties are more interested in those who already vote than in expanding the voting rolls.

This argument is also debunked in a subsequent (to her earlier work on why we don't vote) and related study by Piven, Lorraine C. Minnite and Margaret Groarke, Keeping Down The Black Vote: Race and Demobilization of American Voters (2009). Two other excellent and equally compelling works are: Regulating The Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971, 1993) which goes a long way to demonstrating both historically and specifically today, just what the functions of America's Public Welfare system is and who it actually serves. And not surprisingly Piven and Cloward find it serving far larger interests than the motley crew of recipients that it serves better in bad times and much sparser as we see today as times improve, motivated by the need to push people back into the labor force at a lower wage, lest the undeserving poor grow complacent and lazy on their $189 a month foodstamp allotment and their far below poverty stipend. A more intense and academic look at some of this same history and some of the same rationalizations and conclusions with more concentration on Europe and the earlier period is Michael Perelman's The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000).

Another classic by Piven and Cloward is Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (1977) in which the two look at four protest movements in the 20th Century in America: The Unemployed Worker's Movement of Great Depression era; The Industrial Worker's Movement also during and shortly after the depression era; The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s; and The Welfare Rights Movement of the 70s. In each of these cases Piven and Cloward take a close look at what worked in these movements and why they ultimately failed to accomplish their stated goals. In addition and to round this group of readings out iti is also helpful to read their history of the Reagan era: The New Class War: Reagan's Attack on The Welfare State and Its Consequences (1982, 1985). A tip of the hat to Glenn Beck without his calling for her death, I would have probably never read these books by this remarkable author! She is certainly not to be missed and anyone who calls themselves a leftist or socialist or Marxist or any of a number of other unsavory characterizations who hasn't read anything by Piven, should correct that oversight and do so immediately. You'll also be pissing Glenn Beck off. in fact write him and thank him for introducing you to her remarkable work. I did!

I would also generally like to suggest as long as I am here, and at some point I will do a more articulate recommendation, anything by the well-know Marxist, David Harvey. For Marxists he is certainly not to be missed but the rest of America would do well to read this brilliant author. So if you see his name on a book grab it. A great place to start is his book on Neoliberalism: A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005). For those interested in Labor history, two books, which cover the 20 years of American labor from 1920 to 1940, by Irving Bernstein, are not to be missed. The first is entitled The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (1969, 2010), and second is The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1940 (1969, 2010). These two books go a long way to helping us all understand the worker's movement in this country during this volatile and transformative period. The first volume takes an individualized approach to workers, covers the period of the 20s and shows that workers were already in trouble long before the crash in 1929. It demonstrated that the history of the worker's rights is the history of police repression and violence against strikers and those who supported them. The second volume shows how the union movement of the 1930s and 1940s was really the high point of working class power in this country. It's almost nostalgic to read these two books today and Bernstein is an elegant and descriptive writer who makes this history throb with the life of the workers and their struggles. It's combined 1300 pages of labor history should be required reading by every person before they be allowed to graduate high school. In preparation for these two volumes one should also seriously consider at least the first two volumes of Phillip Foner's magisterial 10 volume study of America Labor: History of the Labor Movement in the Unites States which tracks American labor history from the Colonial period, to the Stock Market Crash in 1929. Once one has digested the work of these two authors they can begin to talk about labor issues in America with some dexterity and knowledge. And for those who want to know more about women's issues in Labor than either of these men who were writing in a much earlier period were able to muster, although both are not terrible or lax in including working women in their studies, they do not concentrate on women or their particular plight, a good place to start is Thomas Dublin's Women At Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (1979, 1993). This work while slightly dated now is a Bancroft Prize winning attempt at Women's Labor History and how changed the consciousness of the women who labored in Lowell and how that change in those working women changed the landscape of American labor and the broader American culture--an exciting and important read!

I do not consider any of this to be the last word on any of these issues only the starting place for greater and more in depth study. Now if you are still reading and most aren't, you can go back to the really important issues of the day, whether or not the current mayor of New York City is married to a lesbian, past lesbian or post-lesbian! Because from the backwoods of Washington State where the hillbillies gather 'round their ever present pig styes that is a dramatic, important, and compelling question, certainly worthy of the attention of the smartest people on the planet. Just ask them! And see how they respond to it! I would love to talk politics but so little of that actually happens here and so much of what is said is blather and bullshit and any attempt to be serious just reverts to who wants to rape who and why and such comments like this one from one of the righties here: "I'm busy right now giving your wife anal." I'm sure the level of discourse is generally uplifted by that and similar comments and a general tone of acceptance of racism, sexism and homophobia all under the name of free speech, because and this is nearly verbatim just because someone says things that disgust us doesn't mean they aren't entitled to say them and what better place to talk about anal rape and who is or is not a lesbian than a political message board because that is sooo political. But let a liberal say one word about any of this or even point all this shit out and immediately they are branded a trouble-maker or worse because they complained about the rhetoric and horror of horror's found it offensive, they are then denied the privilege of reading the writings of those who offend them from that day forward, because that is how freedom of speech works, here! So under this rubric if I complained about the ideas of Hayek, or found them exceeding offensive, which I most certainly do, then I wouldn't be allowed to buy his books anymore. Isn't that something? Now that is what I call "freedom of speech." Because for some reason engaging in such offensive speech, is preferable and quite allowed, but finding it offensive, not so much, because that is the unofficial policy here where they have no policies! So read these books so I have some one to talk to since I can't read the rapist posts anymore but am still subjected to the hillbilly homophobe's lesbian questions and other bullshit here far too trite to detail.

[Dantès]

"The Real Lincoln" diLorenzo.

Why not tell something about the author and the book. I haven't read the book, but I can only guess the level of discourse there. di Lorenzo is a whacked out right wing racist libertarian and racist contributor to various Southern white pride websites, and we all know what that means. In addition, and in spite of his well known racist affiliations he was still brought down personally by Ron Paul while the latter was still in Congress to speak out about the evils of the Fed because in addition to being a racist Lincoln scholar diLorenzo is also an expert on the federal reserve. And isn't that convenient.

[BRUTALITOPS]

I probably said 1984 two years ago but I am saying it again.

[Dantès]

I probably said 1984 two years ago but I am saying it again.

I love it when right wing libertarian types recommend books by hard core socialists! I just get a special tickle out of that!

[BRUTALITOPS]

I also watch movies directed by people with different political views than mine, and watch tv shows starring actors with different political views than mine. Amazing, I know.

What 1984 says with regards to language, thought, corrupting power, privacy, and security are all relevant, interesting, and engaging, and I can fully enjoy them and take away something from that novel regardless of what his personal political views were.

The biggest tickle of them all though is I briefly unignored you to see what you had to say knowing full well that it was likely to be idiotic. Ah well.

[Voted4Reagan]

A Deficit of Decency by Senator Zell Miller

My family is more important than my party.

Zell Miller