What are you reading?

[Roger Mexico]

Re: Blood in the Machine

I loved this book and recommend it to everyone. I didn't actually know anything about the Luddites, beyond clichés, despite their struggle and multi-faceted political action having been so seminal to the industrial workers' movement that came later. Not to mention its relevance today in the face of global labor disruption wrought, again, by the reckless, undemocratic and often illegal deployment of tech by today's barons.

I've stopped to wonder why my years in Marxism never led me to read up on it before. A few explanations come to mind, one of them being the fact that England was overlooked as a source of historical lessons due to its lacking any modern revolutions à la française. Another explanation may lie in the generally tech-friendly, futuristic attitudes of Marxists in general and the Russians in particlar. To a lesser extent, it could also have been simple prejudice - the fact that the British are largely disliked by the Global South on a level similar to Americans.

In any case, I'm not done with the theme and will be reading some related material next, which I'll post about here, I suppose.

Have you read The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson?

IIRC it has a rather lengthy section on the Luddites, and more generally is one of those "required reading" books on early-industrial-era British class politics, at least according to all my college professors 20 years ago.

[Madrigal]

Have you read The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson?

IIRC it has a rather lengthy section on the Luddites, and more generally is one of those "required reading" books on early-industrial-era British class politics, at least according to all my college professors 20 years ago.

E.P. Thompson is quoted several times in Blood in the Machine, but I hadn't caught on that it would be a good idea to read him directly. I looked up the book and it seems like it would be a great read. Apparently, he was once in the Communist Party. I put it on my list along with The Condition of the Working Class in England by Engels. That one would be much shorter than E.P. Thompson's, but I think it's more like a snapshot. Engels also wrote it young, before he got so tedious (Anti-Dühring, anyone?). I'm reading some historical novels first though.

[Madrigal]

The Age of Revolution (1789-1848), Hobsbawm

My novel hasn't arrived so I figured I'd read this in the meantime. I only ever read the last book in this tetralogy on the long 19th Century and the short 20th Century. I forgot how much I liked Hobsbawm.

[Madrigal]

Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë

So this is her only historical novel. She wrote it in the mid-19th Century but it's set in the year 1812, when the Luddite struggle was at its height. There are two events in the novel that seem closely based on real events involving a notorious mill owner. It's not bad, but it's annoying how she makes allowances for the mill owner (one of the novel's heartthrobs), and although she sympathizes with the Luddites, the ringleaders are written off as drunks and serial debtors while their followers are just poor devils in desperate circumstances. She also somewhat sanitizes poverty and class conflict (some people I'm sure were supposed to die did not in fact die at all - the Luddite leaders were sent to Australia instead of being hanged, and the mill owner survived the attempt on his life). And she doesn't miss a chance to portray a rich person who gives back to the community. In the end, not even the government is really villified, which gives you the impression that all of these tyrants and ruffians are really just going through life doing the best they can. I guess she knocks the Church a bit but they too have their saving grace. To boot, despite the feminist undertones throughout the novel, she ultimately can't really break away from the expectation that a woman needs to be led by a man.

I started North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, also featuring the Luddite struggle as a backdrop. I think it might show a sharper social awareness. Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Brontë's and wrote her biography. She was also admired by Dickens, who apparently asked her to write this novel. Dickens didn't shy away from showing what social inequality really looked like, so that gives me some hope for this story.

[Catoptric]

Authoritarianism Predicts Trump Support - Matthew MacWilliams

The Rise of Trump: America's Authoritarian Spring
by Matthew MacWilliams
https://archive.org/details/the-rise-of ... cWilliams/

2016 article
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... an-213533/

Recent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp19ZKI2m2w

Edit (A bit of a rant)

I somehow accidentally deleted an EPUB folder that I use to add onto my kindle (after converting to ACW3) as well as for my laptop and backup, and it was months of files I accumulated (such as entire series of books as well as historical stuff, and curiosities.) I suppose it was for the best, since I don't actually read any of it, but it sort of comprised my worldview (so in some ways it was a coping mechanism for not having a way to externalize.)

Perhaps it would have just added to anxiety to have to mess with it. Minimalism is really best; though I know I will still go over some of the books that I was hoping to check up on (I forgot the names of the rest that I didn't write down. Mostly it was stuff that I just happened to come across while reading something, and overwhelmingly it would have just been something I figured someone at some point would read, when I know that isn't the case.)

Emil M. Cioran

Eightball (1989-2004) Daniel Clowes
https://archive.org/details/eightballth ... Issue%201/

Comic - Wimmen's Comix (circa 1970, 2016)
https://archive.org/details/the-complet ... tal-empire

[aether]

'In the United States, monopoly capitalism leads to underinvestment and to the concentration of wealth'

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/artic ... 35_23.html

[Madrigal]

Technofeudalism, What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis

I thought the title was just a hyperbole, but he's actually serious. And I think he might even convince me by the end of the book.

I don't actually have any time to read these days but I have this stupid job that forces me to execute a program function between files that eats up minutes of my time. So I thought what better way to spend those dead minutes than reading this book.

I'll probably post about whether I'm convinced by the end (only half-way for now), but I'm thinking I might read the first volume of Capital again later.