Anyone have more books with socialist/anarchist/leftist themes? I don't really like reading theory, I get a much better connection when reading a good story about the struggle between man and the capitalist society.
So far I've read:
The Jungle (sucks)
The Gambler
The Conspiracy
Antoine Bloye
The Grapes of Wrath
1984 (sucks)
Brave New World
Homo Zapiens
I'm also looking at reading Sartre, PKD, and Nietzsche.
I also forget to mention I've read Kafka's major short stories and The Trial.
...
The Culture series is pretty good (start with Player of Games). China Mieville also wrote a historical fiction on the October Revolution which is apparently very good.
Also you really need to read theory fam
Sucks for you. Here is something the editor of Bunkermag wrote.
It's not that I don't read theory it's that I like reading fiction and I like fiction that explores socialist themes.
I've never heard of this but it sounds just like what I was looking for. Do you know of any more contemporary books?
The Culture Series seems interesting and I had heard of October before but had forgotten it.
In dubious battle
Germinal
You suck.
I read a review of In Dubiou Battle and the reviewer made the argument that it was an anti-communist text. They argue that Steinbeck was a New Deal "socialist" who disliked the communists and fascists equally, much like the book It Can't Happen Here (which really sucked).
Oh, and if you're reading PKD I recommend A Scanner Darkly and The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick if you're interested in his philosophy
Some of the communist characters can be shady, but I wouldn't call it anti-communist. He was sympathetic towards the URSS in A Russian Journal
Is Exegisis really worth reading? I really like Dick as a fiction author but I'm not sure if I really care what his explicit views were.
I find sartre's fiction rather boring but do really like his philosophical contributions to existentialism. Nietzsche is wild just be prepared to spend an inordinate amount time on single pages when you need to reconcile ideas in your head and clarify what exactly is trying to be expressed internally
It's a dense book, but I do find many of his ideas interesting, reminds me of Ernst Bloch and Hegel
Do you think Nietzsche's philosophy can fit within a socialist worldview? I see him brought up as a counter to Marxist collectivism but I think they're aligned because both have at their core the overcoming of alienation and the alignment of the subjective self with the objective self. Generally he is used to advocate for hyper-individualism that is essentially feudalism but my neophyte's impression is that this application is wrong.
PKD is somewhat similar.
I think Nietzsche's desire to revive and celebrate overcoming tragedy through life affirming Dionysian collective experiences can be analogous to class struggle as the collective effort to negate capitalist relations. I'm a no degree pseud tho so I could be talking out of my ass.
This is something I have taught about
The point should not be fiction with leftist themes but narratives that go deeper.
Fox example HP, we've discussed how the liberal ideology goes fucking deep on HP even when the story never gets too deeply political.
So our concern should not be about books that have leftist themes but how can we write ideological narratives that go deeper than politics.
Leftist (non)fiction. memoirs of a revolutionary by Victor Serge, an anarchists who fought with the bolsheviks in the russian civil war, among other things. Feels like a leftypol bingo. Victor hangs out with illegalist stirnerite egoists, meets Lenin, Bordiga, Trotsky, Stalin, Emma Goldman, and other figures of the early 20th century left. Serge also wrote quite a few novels, though I haven't read them yet.
China Mieville
that old We, I forget the author
Alexander Bogdanov wrote some sci-fi too I think
October isn't fiction, it's babby's first history of the Russian Revolution. I'm midway through it and so far it has been very shallow, and his prose is worse than I remember.
Best has to be Jack London's The Iron Heel and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.
It Can't Happen Here is fucking terrible. It's a bunch of centrist garbage.
I didn't see that when reading it can you give me an example.
Obviously Homage to Catalonia
To be honest, there are a lot of books out there that could definitely be improved by the author knowing some theory. Pic related.
hoe about Kim Stanley Robinson's work? Like the Red Mars trilogy and the Three Californias trilogy.