gay_swimmer posted:i'm reading robert service's biography of stalin. i don't know if it's worth a damn or not, trump just put me in the mood to read about stalin and its the LFest book my girlfriend got
It's really bad, well not in the conquest/sebag-montefiore/radzinsky bad way, but its still bad - a nuanced picture of the monster stalin, rather than the traditional bombastic portrait of the monster stalin. Hard avoid
try Ludo Martens' another view of stalin, if you havent already: http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/
other stuff:
Obviously the works of Grover Furr are highly recomended
and sheila fitzpatrick
Thurston's "life and terror..." treads the line between good and bad, he's in the "revisionist" school of stalin studies (and by that they mean the anti-revisionist school...yeah) but still affected by the "anti-stalin paradigm". His "on desk bound parocialism - a reply to robert conquest still remains the classic beatdown of conquest
plus arch getty, father of "revisionist" stalin studies, etc etc
...i always ment to compile a list of stalin books good and bad (mostly bad), which i will surely never do
it's like he expects you to be anti-communist from the start, and layers the communism facts with communist slanders in an attempt to be nuanced. but if you're a communist, the lack of a free (bourgeois) press is no detractor, the holodomor was just the last in a long line of famines, and the accomplishments of communists towards human liberation cannot be denied.
Edited by Red_Canadian ()
https://t.co/cQEJ1taXIg pic.twitter.com/URhUVUElbD
— Post-Woke (@SubMedina) November 13, 2016
The last four minutes of the interview were dominated by both participants sniffing continuously and tugging at their own clothes, just looking very uncomfortable.
bahahaa
Does anyone know who writes the Worker's Spatula? Is it just one individual or several? Either way, bang-up job.
Belphegor posted:Does anyone know who writes the Worker's Spatula? Is it just one individual or several? Either way, bang-up job.
They're an alternate reality rhizzone with a different strain of irony poisoning.
this its really good. the author herself tells of her own experience of having a backstreet abortion in 63 and then getting arrested by the police after she ended up in hospital post her abortion and the nurses shopped her out to the cops :/ :/
toutvabien posted:i finally finished Settlers tonight
Bury them somewhere hard to find!
Found this in a used bookstore plus a bunch of other old Marxbooks. State and Revolution, Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism, On Contradiction, and Soviet Marxism by Marcuse
tears posted:gay_swimmer posted:
i'm reading robert service's biography of stalin. i don't know if it's worth a damn or not, trump just put me in the mood to read about stalin and its the LFest book my girlfriend got
It's really bad, well not in the conquest/sebag-montefiore/radzinsky bad way, but its still bad - a nuanced picture of the monster stalin, rather than the traditional bombastic portrait of the monster stalin. Hard avoid
try Ludo Martens' another view of stalin, if you havent already: http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/
other stuff:
Obviously the works of Grover Furr are highly recomended
and sheila fitzpatrick
Thurston's "life and terror..." treads the line between good and bad, he's in the "revisionist" school of stalin studies (and by that they mean the anti-revisionist school...yeah) but still affected by the "anti-stalin paradigm". His "on desk bound parocialism - a reply to robert conquest still remains the classic beatdown of conquest
plus arch getty, father of "revisionist" stalin studies, etc etc
...i always ment to compile a list of stalin books good and bad (mostly bad), which i will surely never do
I would highly recommend Ian Greys "Stalin: Man of History". Non-Marxist author but one who doesn't stoop to the usual tropes: psychoanalysing Stalins youth, anti-communist rants, etc. Obvious deep admiration for Stalin as a leader and organiser, as well as some nice portraits of Lenin and Trotsky- paints an unfavourable image of both personalities, though again admires (mostly Lenin's) talents and acumen where deserved. Great read
getfiscal posted:I'm reading a book about the Left Communist opposition of 1918 within the Soviets and how it contributed to various debates afterwards and there is a lot of interesting stuff in it to consider. The basic impetus was a widespread movement to force an unlimited revolutionary war against all imperialist states. And it had wide support among party organizations and Left-SRs and such but it was opposed by Lenin and some people around him (like Stalin), with Trotsky uneasy about the idea and taking a sort of absentionist position. There were a series of events and decisive political interventions which changed the tide from a revolutionary war to a separate peace with Germany, which ended up mostly dissipating Left Communists as a faction.
Anyway the more interesting part is that the author traces this to underlying differences in models of imperialism, and how those evolved very quickly during the World War. His basic point appears to be that people like Bukharin (and Trotsky) thought that world-imperialism had to be fought on a world stage and that backsliding into local nationalisms would paralyze the movement. Which is familiar but the arc he suggests is that this informed a wide variety of positions of left oppositionists which had no specific links to eachother otherwise and held different positions on various things. But the fact I found surprising is how much this sounds like Maoism in various ways too, like the debate over peaceful coexistence and the need for a people's war by the third world and such. Anyway I'll have more to say about it eventually once I'm done.
What book was this
i love this one!
text version
swampman posted:What book was this
i tracked it down when i read the post and its The Bolshevik Party In Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition Of 1918
tpaine posted:What's the deal with human interaction? Why do people have to be so mysterious? If I wanted to read people, I'd make them into books! Which I have a huge collection of. I have books on the Civil War, Samurais, and old cars. I have 23 books on the Civil War, 52 books on Samurais, and 44 books on trains. I can read those books and understand exactly what they want to tell me. No mystery! No "Oh I meant to tell you that the average Samurai didn't actually use his katana very much." No subterfuge. Not like talking with people. Good luck understanding anything any of them says! "Oh, Jerry, I don't think I want to have a relationship with you anymore." So what do you want to have with me?! Who are these people???
tears posted:I am now, at last, reading Trotsky's 'Amalgams',
This was a good book characteristic of Furrs obsessive detail and dedication to source analysis, although unless you're really really interested in an exhaustive list of all the many times Trotsky lied its not really that interesting. Furr assumes you already know the ins and outs of the Dewey Commission and are super excited about the Hotel Brisol Affair, and are already familiar with the moscow trials and so on - Furr drops names like the reader is an expert in 1920-30's USSR, so to someone with no prior knowledge I’m sure it would be incredibly dull.
Summing up in Furr's own words "Trotsky lied, alot" - I look forward to part two in which Furr has promised even more exciting revelations about trotsky and his lying.
Might read Thompson's Makings of the English Working Class next as I seem to be on a book reading high.
