#1
Dont Mess With Sucess
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...Splitting this off..

tears posted:

ok sick, everyones on board to make a list of books. If you upvoted the original post that is a legal contract that you must contribute to a list of books,

as bhpn said its all like what if i want to read about mozambique, or the drugs trade, or yezhov but all anyone says is "have you read china meiville"?

so pick a topic that you know alot about and like 5 books with 1 that is better than all the rest...and then post it so that one poster can get really arsey about your choices


tears posted:

for example on the subject of the drugs trade, which is something i know a little bit about -


The Global Drugs Trade

Drugs, Oil and War - Peter Dale Scott
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade - Alfred W. McCoy
Narcoland - Anabel Hernández
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America - Peter Dale Scott
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion - Gary Webb

Others
Covert Action Information Bulletin
Lobster Magazine - https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/


marlax78 posted:

im going to pretend i know something about dependency/world systems theory and that this isn't just my amazon wishlist. if someone who actually knows about it wants to add a book u should listen to them

The Modern World System I-IV (1974-2011)
Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (1967)
Unequal Exchange (1972)
Accumulation on a World Scale (1974)
Unequal Development (1976)
Imperialism and Unequal Development (1977)
World Accumulation & Dependent Accumulation (1978)
The Long Twentieth Century (1994)


belgend posted:

On the Rise of Fascism

Aufsätze sum Faschismus (Gossweiler, 1988)
Fascism and Social Revolution (Palme Dutt, 1934)
Ni droite, ni gauche (Sternhell, 2000)
The pre-prison writings of Gramsci, but most interesting: 'Integral Syndicalism', 'What we must understand as reaction' and 'Italy & Spain'

My other 'specialist subject' is the roots and idealist concepts of conspiracy theories but there's no real marxist counter-literature that I know of apart from 'Il Gruppo Bilderberg' by Domenico Moro


#2
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I know I said people want one book that's good but the McCain list is so poor on Korea that I'm gonna post good books instead.

Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 1: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947 - Bruce Cumings - This is the one about the red peasant unions and the People's Republic of Korea which are essential to understand Korean socialism. The second volume is mostly about how horrible America is if that's also your thing.

Socialist Korea -Ellen Brun - One of the only socialist works on Korea and one of the only studies that goes beyond the 50s and isn't complete garbage, is a detailed economic study of North Korean development and the immense accomplishments of the land revolution and industrialization.

Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society - Michael D. Shin ed. - A collection of translated essays from post-democratization South Korean scholars on the political economy of Joseon Korea. Only one of its kind.

Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century - George Katsiaficas - More of an overview of a long period but still good, has the wonderfully citeable claim that the Korean war was a war of national liberation against invasion rather than a civil war (which is obviously true but citation is good).

Capitalist Development in Korea: Labour, Capital and the Myth of the Developmental State - Dae-oup Chang - The part outlining the theory is pretty boring but the rest which goes over the various regimes of capital accumulation in South Korea is very good. One of the few English works outlining Marxist debates within South Korea.

Marxist Perspectives on South Korea in the Global Economy - Martin Hart-Landsberg and Seongjin Jeong - Has a chapter on the basic argument of Landsberg which should save you reading his book. The really valuable part is the discussion of the rate of profit in South Korea.

South Korea: Dissent Within the Economic Miracle - George E. Ogle - Detailed history of the Korean workers movement. Superior to the better known Hagek Koo work. Particularly valuable is the history of female garment workers in the 70s for anyone who has read John Smith and knows those same conditions exist in Bangladesh today.

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society - Jesook Song - Sociology work about neoliberal ideology and politics in South Korea. A good case study for anyone because the left was completely taken in and suffered the consequences.

Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 - Suzy Kim - Honestly, this book promises more than it delivers but it's still good enough and unique in what it's trying to do. Far superior to the similarly named Charles Armstrong "The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950" which really contains nothing not in Cumings. You also may remember his latest work was shown to be fraudulent by another bourgeois scholar who had a personal grudge (and who's work is surely fraudulent but within the acceptable standards of academic citation). I don't think Armstrong is a fraud, I just think he's lazy and the standard of scholarship on North Korea is so low nobody really cares. Sure enough, nothing ever came of it.

The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan - Ken Kawashima - Excellent Marxist work (applies Althusser well actually) on Korean 'precarious' labor under Japanese colonialism. Even if you're not interested in Korea, destroying the fashionable thesis of the 'precariat' is sufficiently valuable.

Visual Politics and North Korea - David Shim - One of those 'Foucaultian' works on discourse which makes it nearly unreadable but it's still the only work I know which details the particular nature of anti-North Korean propaganda and how laughably pathetic the evidence of 'labor camps' and economic figures on North Korea truly are.

Books you should never read under any circumstance:

The Cleanest Race - B.R. Meyers - This book is EXTREMELY RACIST and nonsense. It's in McCain's list which blew my mind. Goes to show you that no matter how many books you read, anti-communism is a mental illness which is not easliy overcome. Meyers doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and this book is a joke even in the severely flawed field of Korean studies.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader/Nothing To Envy/Escape From Camp 14 - These are all garbage.

The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia - Andre Lankov - Special shoutout to this one because anti-communist left-liberals love Lankov since he's one of those IR realist people and "tells it like it is." North Korean studies is not a real field and he is not a real scholar, just another propagandist who presents the "North Korea is rationally evil and there's nothing we can do" rather than "North Korea is crazy and needs to be bombed." IR is trash as well.

Anything which relies on defectors, journalists, Bank of Korea and CIA economic figures, or is for popular consumption (such as Oberdorfer "The Two Koreas"). I recently read some of "North Korea: Markets and Military Rule" by Hazel Smith because she's a left-liberal and an advocate for peace. It was horrid. Not only because it was propaganda but the scholarship was quite poor and lazy. There are only two kinds of scholarship you can trust on Korea: communists and obscure Korean studies scholars writing about minor issues like literature or architecture. Like "The Making of Minjung" by Namhee Lee or Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom's Frontier by Theodore Hughes are fine if you're interested in that stuff but pretty minor. If you want to know about Korea in general and North Korea in particular and it's not on this list it's garbage.

Also I have most of these books as pdfs on dropbox, gonna try to find the few that are difficult to find today now that I'm motivated.

Edited by babyhueypnewton ()

#3
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babyhueypnewton posted:

The Cleanest Race - B.R. Meyers - This book is EXTREMELY RACIST and nonsense. It's in McCain's list which blew my mind. Goes to show you that no matter how many books you read, anti-communism is a mental illness which is not easliy overcome. Meyers doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and this book is a joke even in the severely flawed field of Korean studies.



shubel morgan or whoever loved it lol

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babyhueypnewton posted:

The second volume is mostly about how horrible America is if that's also your thing.



IF you want a brief introduction to US war crimes in Korea

Alan Winnington - I Saw the Truth in North Korea
Wilfred Burchett and Alan Winnington - Koje Unscreened - http://www.redstarpublishers.org/koje.pdf

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Constantignoble posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

The Cleanest Race - B.R. Meyers - This book is EXTREMELY RACIST and nonsense. It's in McCain's list which blew my mind. Goes to show you that no matter how many books you read, anti-communism is a mental illness which is not easliy overcome. Meyers doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and this book is a joke even in the severely flawed field of Korean studies.

shubel morgan or whoever loved it lol



Interesting that those with no knowledge of anything have an opinion on everything. Of course this is all solved if you're in a party and have a division of intellectual labor but until then LLCO will have really important opinions! I have a personal hatred for that book though because arguing that the oppressed people of color of the world are the real fascists and that those who resisted collaboration are the real inheritors of Japanese fascism is so offensive that one day in a better world we will look back on such books as shameful racism from the worst American impulses.

#6
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not to derail the thread, but it's especially easy to believe that kinda stuff when the western maoist line (and the LLCO are maoist) was/is(?) a country where a revisionist communist party holds power is axiomatically capitalist, and because they're not bourgeois democracy they must axiomatically be fascist. i read something from MIM that made that argument, at least. the primary fault would be the assumption that capitalism is fully restored after a revisionist coup -- and if we're going by the comintern definition of fascism with its emphasis on finance capital, then you need a full restoration anyway so the whole thing is dumb. but it absolutely seems extra offensive to argue that the korean workers party are the inheritors of japanese fascism...
#7
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this is only books i have read, or pretended to read, so if it isnt on the list its cos i havent read it, so post it

Political Economy of Imperialism and Neocolonialism
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - V.I. Lenin (1917)
- the big 1

Divided World Divided Class (2nd ed.) - Zak Cope (Kersplebedeb, 2015)
- a book that explains how you are literal parasite scum

Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (see: Volume 2, Political Economy, p805-974) - Emanuel Ness & Zak Cope (Eds) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
- invaluable, with this book at your fingers you will no longer have any trouble pretending to be a wise and smart anti-imperialist

Unequal Exchange and the Prospects for Socialism - Communist Working Group (Manifest Press, 1986)
- do you love denmark? communism? Learning about unequal exchange? well, this book will satisfy all three likes

The Law of Worldwide Value - Samir Amin (Monthly Review Press, 2011)
Capitalism in the Age of Globalization - Samir Amin (Zed Books, 2010)
- Samir Amin is good and smart and everyone acknowledges him as having a huge brain, he has written over 5,000 books

Imperialism in the Neocolonial Phase - P J James (Massline Publications, 2011)
- CPI(ML) publication, provides the best Marxist-Leninist history of the neocolonial phase of imperialism i know, with a special section on india, not afraid to reference Stalin, Joseph. good luck finding a copy

Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism - Kwame Nkrumah (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965)
- excellent, with a specific focus on africa, kwame nKrumah was the first pressident of Ghana but most of your friends never even heard of him, or ghana

Imperialism in the 21st Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis - John Smith (Monthly Review Press, 2016)
- did you put down divided world divided class because copes writing made you feel like a piece of shit, but still want to read a book by a white male? well try this pseudo-trot book instead

The Crash of International Finace-Capital and its Implications for the Third World (2nd ed.) - Dani Wadada Nabudere (Pambazuka Press, 2009)
- Found yourself saying "I like these books but theres not enough references to credit defaut swaps or collaterised debt obligations"? i know exactly how you feel

Unequal Exchange: a Study of the Imperialism of Trade - Arghiri Emmanuel (Monthly Review Press, 1972)
- looking to show off how strong your brain is? demonstrate it by reading this book

Marx & Engels: on Colonies, Industrial Monopoly & the Working Class Movement (Kersplebedeb, 2016)
- sometimes you may encounter a rare creature who insists that they "only read the classics", in order to innoculate against this, try the contents of this little book, perfect for carrying in your pocket or handbag. Also has great introduction by Cope and Lauesen

Vladimir Iljitj Lenin: On Imperialism and Opportunism: Extracts from articles and speeches 1899-1923 - Communist Working Circle (Publishing House Futura, 1974)
- The Lenin equivalent of Marx & Engels: on colonies, not updated with a shiny new introduction, sorry

Trade is War: the West's War Against the World - Yash Tandon (OR Books, 2015)
- trade IS war, and you too can understand this through reading this book

Super Imperialism: the Economic Strategy of American Empire - Michel Hudson (Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1972) -- there is an updated version of this book "Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance" (2003), which I haven’t read
- like the above book but older and american, good chapter on lend-lease, perfect opinions for passing off as your own when arguing about world war 2nd

Imperialism and its Class Structure in 1997 - MC5 (Maoist Internationalist Movement, 1997)
- none of the other books on this list are rude about bob avakian, if you found this a problem try the theoretical output of a person with the unlikly name “MC5"


Politial Economy of the Colonisation of Women
Women: the Last Colony - Maria Miles, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia von Welhof (Zed Books, 1988)
- a book about women: the last colony, and about how all the above books don't pay attention to this

Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale, revisited - Maria Miles (Keynote lecture at the Green Economics Institute, Reading, 29 October 2005)
- Brief introduction to the work of maria miles, hopefully this will make you want to read patriachy and accumulation proper

Exodus and Reconstruction: Working class Women at the Heart of Globalization (2nd Ed.) - Bromma (Kersplebedeb, 2013)
- its short, i like it, its what i tend to recommend to people who seem to forget that their precious revolution will not be led by the manly men

Counting for Nothing: What men Value and What Women are Worth - Marilyn Waring (University of Toronto Press, 1999)
- everyone knows that gdp is bs, but waring demonstrates how accounting systems of national wealth obscure the importance of half the worlds population


sOme extra stuff that isnt books
The General Characteristics of Imperialism - Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist
Monthly Review July-August 2015 (Volume 67, Number 3)
The Bias of the World: Theories of Unequal Exhange in History - John Brolin (PhD thesis, Lund University, 2007)
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comedy section, anyone?
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AZ_IZ_OT posted:

tears posted:

Divided World Divided Class (2nd ed.) - Zak Cope (Kersplebedeb, 2015)

So does he solve the value-utils gap


uhhh *handing copy of book*

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yes, he solved the vals-utils gap
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zac cope solved the value-untils gap, but it was entirely without eroticism
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value-utils gap ftw
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What is the value-utils gap?
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im reporting u for marginalism
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#23
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Read Marx you idiot
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im gonna advance a controvertial theory that reading a book is an important preliminary stage in arguing against a book
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tears posted:

im gonna advance a controvertial theory that reading a book is an important preliminary stage in arguing against a book


tell that to the anticommunists eh

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AZ_IZ_OT posted:

if you can prove me wrong, you'll get your own personalized audiobook of Capital Vol I



recording a "personalized audiobook of capital volume 1" is such an unrealistic outcome from an internet debate that it's evident you're not actually interested in the truth. the truth, though, isn't contingent on an internet argument -- this debate already happened and the day-to-day functioning of capitalism proves marx right

Edited by marlax78 ()

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#32
Dont Mess With Sucess
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glomper_stomper posted:

who won the book knowledge contest(?)


It's not even half over yet. Next up are the individual time trials.

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“This is a surprising book. At a time when confusion about Globalization surrounds us, Zak Cope pulls us towards what is fundamental. He outlines the 19th & 20th century recasting of the diverse human world into rigid forms of oppressed colonized societies and oppressor colonizing societies. A world divide still heavily determining our lives. Working rigorously in a marxist-leninist vein, the author focuses on how imperialism led to a giant metropolis where even the main working class itself is heavily socially bribed and loyal to capitalist oppression. Much is laid aside in his analysis, in order to concentrate on only what he considers the most basic structure of all in world capitalist society. This is writing both controversial and foundational at one and the same time.”
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AZ_IZ_OT posted:

remember to perform a proper baton pass while defending the reification of bourgeois economics


you suck dude

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#37
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good job i wasn't laying into into ayn rands book "atlas shrugged" on the objectivist irony forum...

...although also i have read that book
#38
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Az is oot is taking half measures, when he reaches as advanced an intellectual stage as me, Keven, instead of arguing against books he hasn't read he'll both not read books and not argue about them.
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"Sadly my option sets don't include reckless consumerism" is a pretty good way to refuse to buy a 6 dollar ebook or whatever though.
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