/leftypol/'s Books for the Bunker discussion

I believe David Graebers: Debt, The First 5000 Years to be an extremely important contemporary leftist book.

Have you guys read it? I would read it again if we were going to discuss it as part of this group

Its quite chunky so maybe people will be a little scared off, if everyone is up for it though I think its a great place to start

Ideas for books after January?

Maybe in October we could read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution in honor of the 100th anniversary.

I'm good with Debt

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/pr...

It's available here in audio format.

How will it work? Will we discuss the material at the end of the month?

Could we please do something smaller? Like, 150 pages or so? I'm gonna opt out for January if we're going to be reading a 550 page book. I intend to get to it by myself anyway.

What about "Towards A New Socialism" by Paul Cockshott? Only about 200 pages, more relevant to praxis, and best of all: not fucking dense and tedious?

This is just my humble opinion of course.

Guys, can we read something else? 550 page book is to much for me on top of my reading list already. What about "Towards A New Socialism" by Paul Cockshott?

Debt sounds good, as I've been meaning to get around to that. Considering it's so big we might have to extend the discussion to February as well though.

If we're looking for reading after January I'd suggest Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (for theory). It's around 500 pages as well and explains how Marxism and Marx's political economy can be applied to the digital age.

BrainBytes wrote: "Debt sounds good, as I've been meaning to get around to that. Considering it's so big we might have to extend the discussion to February as well though.

If we're looking for reading after January ..."

I like this idea, but not two big books right in a row. I will say though after reading a few chapters of Debt, it's not a heavy book to read so far. Also, having a audibook version makes it easier. Clean your room, communte, whatever while listening.

Yeah good point. Something smaller, perhaps?

I'd like to suggest David Harvey's Brief History of Neoliberalism (around 200 pages, goes over the neoliberal push starting int he late 70s) or Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret of Capitalism (232 pages, nice history debunking the glorification of free trade and free market.)

I hadn't heard that title before - probably quite a short pithy read too

I'm keen for the David Harvey Brief History of Neoliberalism.

Also, hi everyone! I'm new in there parts

Hi there! Good to have ya!

Here is the link if you want to look it over:

http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=3...

It clocks in at 257 pages, and Harvey's writing style makes it easy to read. Plus a number of the pages are charts and graphs.

A book a day keeps the /pol/ away

Chris wrote: "We're already talking the book for Feb.? You guys are ambitious af."

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Helen Keller

If you have a book suggestion, try to add it to our bookshelf please. That way we have it as suggested reading if we don't ever oficially read it.

Edit: Also, put the book in the past so that people don't think it's the next one.

Chris wrote: "What I would say and what I did was: mark any book you want to add as a suggestion as "to-read"; DO NOT put any date on it at all and also tag it with the bookshelf: "suggestions".

This way, any ..."

Thank you, this is better.

My mistake.

Sup fam, what are we gonna do at the end of the month when we're done reading the book? Are we gonna discuss it here or maybe on a discord or something?

SlickEntryism wrote: "Sup fam, what are we gonna do at the end of the month when we're done reading the book? Are we gonna discuss it here or maybe on a discord or something?"

Maybe a hangout? I'd recommend recording it and throw it up on a new youtube account then.

We should actually make points to discuss beforehand if we decide to do this. We would need some structure otherwise it would be a very low quality discussion.

Also, seeing the time you guys are posting at I presume you are American? What would be a good time of day to include both American and European comrades?

Agreed. Why don't we have a thread about this when we get half way through the month?

Yeah that'd be good.

Also if this reading group stays around for long enough we should read Žižek's new book Lenin 2017.

Zizek is hard to follow while he's talking. I can't imagine how dense that book will be. However Amazon says it's only 192 pages so it might be a good choice.

We also have Comrade Wolff's new book "Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown" (2016)

http://www.rdwolff.com/books#capitali...
https://www.amazon.com/Capitalisms-Cr...

So how about we vote for the next book to read?
Lets take 10 books and vote them in a poll and post it in /leftylel/