Reading full length books opens up a world that is unavailable on and, in fact discouraged by social media!

“Do you have some book recommendations for books you think everyone should read at least once?” asked a young comrade of mine. Here is my answer:

First of all, please bear with me because this is not a simple question, and I know nowadays many people are looking for at most a 3 sentence comment. That’s exactly part of the problem – that many people are so accustomed to social media that they lack patience for a longer discussion. That includes reading full length books. Without going beyond the 30 second sound bites it’s impossible to go beyond just superficial impressions, and that is part of the explanation for why we are at the political pass we are at.

Your question deserves a serious answer, and a serious answer cannot be given in three sentences. The only way I can really answer that is to tell you what books have been most influential for me. But everybody is different, so these might not apply to somebody else.

“Negroes with Guns” – this book made a huge impression on me.

The first book I read that had a big impact on me was Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams. Williams was a Korean War vet who organized for the civil rights movement in Monroe North Carolina. Unlike other civil rights leaders, he did not recruit from the churches; he recruited in the pool halls. What really distinguished Williams was that he preached and practiced armed self defense. I read his book back in the early 1960s, when I was about 16 years old. It totally dispelled the illusions I had in principled non-violence. Along with this, I highly recommend My Soul is Rested, edited by Howell Raines. This is a series of recollections by civil rights leaders and just rank and file participants – and also a few white sheriffs – from that era in the South. It gives a vivid picture of what was happening in that era.

Deutscher’s 3 volume series has been highly influential also.

Later on in my life I got into socialist revolutionary politics. The first book (actually books) was a three volume biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher – The Prophet Armed; The Prophet Unarmed; and The Prophet Outcast. This is really a history of the socialist (and Communist) movement of the first half of the 20th century, what was happening in the world that impacted that movement, and what conclusions Trotsky drew from those events. As you know, a building’s foundation determines what is possible and impossible as far as the construction of a building. These years set the foundation for everything we’re seeing today in the socialist – and working class – movement. I always found it impossible to really understand political theory without knowing the actual history and what different people were referring to. This 3 volume series explains all of that.

The second book is Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain. This is a history of the Spanish Civil War that brought Franco to power. It is a devastating expose of the ideas of anarchism, since they actually had real power there. I had a younger friend some years ago who was a dedicated anarchist. We talked about and read together several books and essays related to anarchism vs. Marxism. It was only after reading this book that he completely dropped the ideas of anarchism.

Another book that has been important to me is Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, by Charles Beard. This book is about the U.S. Constitution but its importance goes far beyond that. Beard shows how the US Constitution was written by the bankers and slave owners of their time and how they set up a government that reflected their interests in the context of what was going on at that time. It shows the racist and also class nature of the U.S. government. As such, it is a perfect example of the Marxist theory of the state, or “government”.

Natural Science
The number one crisis we face today is the environmental crisis. That is why it’s so important to have at least a vague knowledge of the sciences involved. There are several books about the natural sciences that have been very influential for me:

The first is A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives and low Mecanicks by Clifford Conner. The author goes from the time that people were living in a state of nature through modern capitalism to show that it’s not true that an understanding of the natural world (including mathematics, architecture, astronomy, biology, human health, etc.) was developed exclusively by a few great men, and almost exclusively men of Europe. He shows that it was the collective experience of women and men – workers – that created the basis for and in most cases led this understanding…. and that much of it was not simply through people of Europe.

Dr. Theo Colborn – ground breaking toxicologist and scientific investigator into endocrine disruptors, and one of the real heroines of the environmental movement.

Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn. Originally trained as a pharmacist, Theo Colborn (who died just a few years ago) really pioneered the study of how different artificial chemicals affect our endocrine system over generations. Along the way, Colborn gives a fascinating explanation/description of the absolute centrality of the endocrine system itself in the development of the embryo. Her writing is clear and down to earth without overly simplifying things. I reviewed/summarized her book here.

Big Farms Make Big Flu by Rob Wallace. The author is an epidemiologist. In this book, he shows how factory farming and wilderness encroachment have created the conditions for an acceleration of new zoonotic diseases (diseases that jump the barrier from other animal species to humans). This book was written before covid and it practically predicts it.

History of revolutions
There are several other books that have been very influential to me, including several on specific revolutions themselves. These include The Black Jacobins, by C. L. R. James (about the great Haitian slave revolution). Thois book is especially important because the world historical importance of the Haitian revolution is generally overlooked, including by Marx and Engels, who commented extensively on the French Revolution but not on the Haitian revolution. Some other important books for me are: The Mexican Revolution by Adolfo Gilly (about the revolution led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata), and Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and war, by Leila Al Shami and Robin Yassin Kassab. Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is also an absolute classic but some people find it too dense and detailed. I hardly know what to leave out, but we’re talking about 50 years of reading!

Online articles of mine
You didn’t ask me, and I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I’d like to suggest some articles and pamphlets I’ve written that might be not really a shortcut but a gateway or introduction:

First of all, I think it’s impossible to understand what is happening in the 3/4 of the world that is the ex-colonial world (Africa, Asia and Latin America), without understanding Trotsky’s theory of permanent – or uninterrupted – revolution. And what happens in that part of the world deeply affects what happens in the US and Europe. Theory is just generalized history, and this theory explains that in the ex-colonial world, capitalism cannot accomplish what it did in Europe and the U.S. Therefore, the colonial revolution must be connected with the socialist revolution and also cannot be confined to just one country. In its own way, that is the key to understanding what is happening in both Palestine and Syria today. I have written several articles showing how this dynamic played out in Syria, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Also “The New Apartheid: the rise of Zionism and the founding of the Israeli State”. I also did this as a sliedshow presentation. Part one is here, and Part 2 is here.

Also, this pamphlet – Putin, Assad and the Syrian disaster – gives an in-depth explanation of who Putin is and how his rule developed.

Aleksandr Dugin: Alchemist of “Traditionalism”, mysticism, and fascism, discusses the most important ideologist of the Putin regime. Most people are not familiar with “Traditionalism”, but it really is the ideology of 21st century fascism, and if you consider the idea, you will find aspects of it in the AfD, Trump/MAGA, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. It’s really important to understand this world view. In fact, I would also recommend War for Eternity, by Ben Teitelbaum, whom I interviewed here and whose book gives a great explanation of Traditionalism. (The book itself is excellent!)

So, comrade, this is probably a lot more than you bargained for, maybe too much! But I don’t know how to do your question justice in a shorter way. Meanwhile, feel free to pass these suggestions on to anybody else you think might be interested and also might I suggest that you might find it useful to subscribe to my blog – oaklandsocialist.com.

I will, of course, be very interested in any comments or questions you might have.

Your comrade, John

P. S. My wife also suggested the book, The Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky. That is his classic work explaining how and why the Soviet bureaucracy developed. It is certainly very good, but some readers might find it a bit dry. All tTrotsky’s basic points are explained in The first two volumes of Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky.

Reading full length books opens up a world that is unavailable on an, in fact discouraged by social media!