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Comradeship // Freechat @lemmygrad.ml
DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml

What are you reading?

Currently I'm reading Nina Burton's 'Livets tunna väggar' which translate to something like Walls of Life. It's a book by a Swedish writer who inherits her mother's summer house. When she wants to renovate it, she finds all sort of life around and in the house. She uses said life to teach you something about the intellect of various insects and animals, which goes deeper than humans normally think.

It's a very interesting book that makes me think about non-human life even more. Creatures that are thousands of times smaller than we are have such complex societal structures. Humans have overcommodified animal life for centuries now, seeing them as property and commodities instead of complex and intelligent life forms.

What are you reading?

78 comments

  • Damn bro.. So many ppl are reading several books at once apparently. I don't think my brain could manage so much information at once honestly o.O

    I'm reading "Blackshirts and Reds" by Parenti. Am on page 119 rn, and I gotta say I still enjoy Parenti's simpler style of writing as opposed to Marx'. Also I was surprised how Parenti went into detail abt czechoslovakia even. Specifically abt Vaclav Havél's privatization campaign. Never thought he'd go that direction. I feel like I learned a LOT through this book and I'll keep recommending it to everyone who hasn't read it. I think anyone can profit from reading this.

    After I'm done with this book, I thought I might pick up Mao's "On Practice"? I read "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" by Stalin and "How to be a Good Communist" by Liu Shaoqi, so I hope that book might additionally help me understand philosophy more.

    • If you haven't yet, read Lenin after this. He's much more easier to read compared to Marx.

      • Oh, true. I only read Lenin's "Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism" as of yet. Do you have any specific book recommendations from him?

    • So many ppl are reading several books at once apparently. I don’t think my brain could manage so much information at once honestly o.O

      I hardly have the attention span to only read one or two. I’m usually reading more. I like to have a break between different chapters of a book in reading something else. It helps me hold the information from each passage rather than blending a whole book together in my mind. It (most of the time) prevents me from getting bored in the middle of books.

      • That's a rly interesting perspective. I too feel like I can't remember important stuff from the books I read cuz the information mushes together in the end, but I never thought abt reading another book to counter that.

        Imma try that and see if it works lol

    • On practice isn’t really a communist theory book, it’s more like a book about management.

      Nonetheless it’s still a good read.

    • If you are gonna do Mao, I'd say grab Five Essays. It's got On Contradiction and On Practice both, which are always recommended for good reason, but it also has a few other really good works by him.

      I'm trying to find it as an epud to add to my collection but I listened to the audiobook version which is on Spotify.

  • I’m currently only reading Things Fall Apart and Half-Earth Socialism. TFA is pretty good so far. I’m reading it for school. It’s about a pre-colonial African society, but later on in the book I think they get colonized. HES is so good and I’ll never stop plugging it or the game https://half.earth. If enough people read the book I think it could be really important. It debunks mainstream views of how to solve the climate crisis and argues that it can only be solved through a holistic political and social movement with the backing of science. It describes how planning is necessary and gives some history of socialist economic planning. It argues on behalf of Utopianism by showing how scientific socialism with a clear view of the future can forge a better path toward reconciliation with the earth. I’ve learned a lot so far, and it keeps making connections between ideas and thinkers I already knew a tiny bit about.

  • Cool! I love thinking about non human life. They're essentially aliens to me. I've tried to overcome some fear of bugs being on me so I can hold them. Also saw my first owl (that wasn't a brief glimpse at night flying) last week...I forgot their heads can turn 180° 😅

    I'm reading "Laurus", a translation of a book by Eugene Vodolazkin. 14th century Russian medieval peasant boy becomes a holy fool on a pilgrimage for God in the midst of plague. I haven't read many books in my adult life but as far as I know, it's my favorite (second read).

  • Just started The Three-Body Problem, only read the first 2 chapters but I'm liking it already. I don't really know anything about the Cultural Revolution to be able to form an opinion on whether the author's depiction is plausible or not, so I'll just believe him for now. It's nice reading communist fiction for a change.

  • Half-way through edible and medicinal plants. Lots of toxic plants in Canada. If you see a plant with white flowers growing in a dome over the stem, it’s one of five types that’ll either give you diarrhoea or outright kill you.

    Spruce tree sap is also an antibiotic, in case you need to disinfect a wound.

    If you see a bush with thorns, growing thorny bulbs, you can eat it as long as you strip the thorns off first.

    Also listening to “propaganda” by Edward Bernays. It’s one of the most “mask off” things I’ve read.

  • I just finished Nagieb Mahfouz's Cairo trilogy, which was awesome. I'm now reading Histoire du phénomène Stalien by Ellenstein, while also reading a book on therapeutic relations. I also have Malcolm X's biography laying around for after.

    Next major novel is wither 2666 by Bolaño, Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann or something by Ngugi wa thiongo.

  • That sounds really interesting!

    I'm listening to:

    • Wretched of the Earth - I've read about half of it in the past, but I'd like to finish it.
    • At the Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs - neat ideas unfortunately locked in the authors views on race and humanity.

    And reading:

    • Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey - I like the ecology bits, but he's somewhat reactionary and unfocused. Pretty writing, though.

  • Getting back into Homer’s Odyssey. I read a kid’s version in 4th grade and didn’t realize how much I missed out on. Ancient Greek Mythology and Literature was a lot more sexual than I thought and the exposition makes a lot more sense when characters explain stuff pages at a time instead of just in small paragraphs. Spectacular work of art, can’t recommend it enough. Other than that, on my break at work I read through Mao’s Little Red Book 📕.

  • I just started reading Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It, by Bruni de la Motte and John Green. It's a great analysis of the DDR.

    Furthermore I'm reading Killing hope by William Blum. A great book about Amerikan interventions/coups.

    And ofcourse the Communist Manifesto (again).

    After those I want to read An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991 and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).

    • Any reason in particular why you're going to look at An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991? I'm keen on improving my knowledge of the USSR and would like to look at a retrospective account that isn't completely anti-communist. Have you heard that An Economic History provides something like that? I'll take a look myself if yours is a recommendation.

      Is Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) the one by Dean Spade? I picked up and flicked through it last week. It's not bad. The parts I read were quite US focused but that's not necessarily a problem. I quite like the format of this series (it's got a similar design to two books by Malm) because they're not intimidating and easy to pick up and start.

      • First of a sorry for the late reply.

        The reason why I’m reading An Economic History of the USSR is because a Marxist-Leninist friend recommended it to me. It has some nice information, but I would recommend Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti if you want some more general information. He gives a far broader field of information about the Soviet Union and the rest of the communist bloc.

        Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) is indeed the one by Dean Spade. And yeah, it is a little too much focused on the US, but I would still recommend it.

        Furthermore, I would really recommend reading Stasi State or Socialist Paradise. I just finished it and must say that it is one of the better books that I have read this year. It’s a light read but still contains so many great examples and information. It’s a great book for when you’re waiting for the train for example.

  • Thanks to the latest Macro N Cheese podcast episode, I’ve ordered a copy of Carlos García Hernández’s Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory. It seems to be hard to find physical copies of it in the US right now (perhaps because it’s new), so I have to wait two weeks for it to arrive from Australia. Amazon & Kobo have ebook versions.

    Edit: I suspect what I may eventually come to find that this is essentially what socialism with Chinese characteristics is, but first I’ll need to learn more about what actually goes on in China.

    • I hadn't heard of Hernández before, but I was intrigued by the title so I gave it a listen. He said he doesn't subscribe to dialectical materialism and his entire framework of defining socialism without even considering the ownership of the means of production strikes me as deeply idealistic, so I'm not so sure how seriously I want to take his work.

      • He comes from a philosophy background, and I’m not really interested in his weird Kant vs Hegel diversion, but for his attempt to synthesize fiat money & socialism, which is what I suspect China has already achieved. China is allowing some limited private ownership of the means of production, and they have sovereign fiat money.

        As far as I know (which isn’t all that much) fiat money/Keynesianism/MMT hadn’t yet been developed when Marx was writing on capital. I have a suspicion that these innovations may have “resolved” some of capitalism’s internal contradictions, such that it might never collapse on its own. For instance, did Marx consider that the State might just print money to bail out the too-big-to-fail monopolies indefinitely, or that the State might prop the monopolies up by becoming their buyer of last resort? American capitalism seems to have entered uncharted territory.

      • I also just ordered Carlos Martínez’s new book, The East is Still Red – Chinese socialism in the 21st century. He contributes to Midwestern Marx.

  • I was trying to read Anti-oedipus by Deleuze& Guattari, but now I'm actually reading their "what is philosophy" since I was pretty fucking lost. Maybe not lost, but not exactly prepared for the density.

    • Yeah, I’ve heard you need to be very well read in classic philosophy and random Fr*nch stuff (including the language) to really understand them.

  • Just Capital right now. Finished the Roman portion of Hudson's Antiquity - highly recommend this if you're into pre-capitalist history or if you are interested in debt.

78 comments