my addition to my 2018 post on this topic: I think my current best “new to socialism? read this!” is Engels
Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
basically a tl;dr of the evolution of socialism from “perhaps we should improve society somewhat” to its more Marxist form
oh this is the best intro to thinking about colonialism i think you could hope for. pure bangers within
Aimé Césaire - Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
one of those things where reading it and realizing it was written in 1950 just totally reorients your brain about what kind of thinking was possible in different periods. like ppl still dont get this.
Some of my old posts in this thread make me cringe a bit today, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re learning about a new subject in public! Anyway, where I’m at now is that I don’t really like to hew to a hard ideological line but the politics I’ve most consistently vibed the strongest with with are social ecology, especially the writings of Murray Bookchin.
I haven’t been reading a ton of theory lately cuz I’ve been super busy, but I did knock out that big recent Andreas Malm book and I thought it was fantastic. The extended critique of Extinction Rebellion’s philosophy and methods was as instructive as it was vicious.
I appreciate this thread, it opened a worm hole for me late last night. The Situationist stuff was interesting to read about and I’m going to check my library for some of the book recs
A good article I read not too long ago. Gives a good explanation of how and why red-browns appropriate and misuse leftist thinkers to forward fascist ideology.
A few that have provoked thought (my descriptions):
Aihwa Ong - Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (1987) link
Why did Malaysian factory women experience possession by spirits in their place of work? Ong details for us the economic, political and cultural forces behind a story at the periphery of the capitalist system, taking Foucault’s rejection of the notion that capital-labor relations have an overdetermining logic. She concludes that the visitations were an unconscious form of protest against labor discipline and male control, revealing a sense of dislocation in human relations and a greater need for spiritual vigilance in domains reconstituted by capitalist relations of production.
Steven Shaviro - No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism (2015) link
In a neoliberal hellscape where real subsumption leaves no aspect of life uncolonized, artists are hemmed in on all sides. It has become increasingly clear that contradictions do not lead to the demise of capitalism - for Shaviro, the intensities of works of trangression and negativity only serve the aim of extracting surplus value and accumulating profit. Shaviro praises art that revels in the sleaze and exploitation of our present conditions, refusing to hide their complicity or take the moral high ground. The inefficacy of these works help move us towards the disinterest and epiphenomenality of the aesthetic. Oscar Wilde’s dandy is taken as a model for an abundant, post-capitalist future - an attitude of self-cultivation, and qualified, temporary satisfactions.