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.