Everyone talks relentlessly about left-wingers, but few spend any time trying to figure out what they're actually saying.
You all seem like a well-informed bunch. What are some essential books everyone who describes themselves as left-wing would read? What are the key ideas presented in those books and their relevance to the current discourse on a given topic? How did some of those ideas manifest historically and influence our current thought? Which ideas persist? Which have faded into obscurity?
I don't expect expertise, but surely some of you are aware.
>>7930006
What do you mean by left-wingers? Liberal or socialist?
Way too much Zizek on there. Nice to see Paulo Freiere, though. Fromm's nice to read, but I disagree with many of his moralistic ideals. Lenin is absolute trash. Neoliberalism is a joke as well.
Where's C. Wright Mills, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, and Pierre Bourdieu at?
>>7930006
Read Stirner, too.
>>7930006
Why did this thread get deleted yesterday?
>>7930006
Too many continental nonsense-mongers.
>Anarchists:
Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker, Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky
For a history of anarchism, see "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism" by Peter Marshall
>Analytical Marxists and left-libertarians:
G.A. Cohen, John Roemer, Jon Elster, Erik Olin Wright, Philippe Van Parijs, Hillel Steiner, Samuel Bowles, Peter Vallentyne
>left wingers
>>7930057
>Noam Chomsky
Why do so many people think he's some kind of prophet? His linguistics were royally trounced years ago.
>>7930006
A good counter to all of those books;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3543237/Video-Stalingrad-Metro-Paris-shows-violent-clashes-erupt-migrant-camp.html
Look at all those doctors and lawyers
>>7930719
His political stuff is decent for explaining concepts to new people.
>>7930719
>royally trounced
ehhh not really, very much disputed but he's still very influential and respected for the work he's done
his political writing should be ignored though
>>7930738
>his political writing should be ignored though
piggie's shill detected
>>7930731
>leftism is multiculturalism
You realize that in their own times many of the Communist writers, dictators and intelligentsia hated NonWhites and degeneracy? Che Guevara thought Blacks were retarded and Gays were executed in the USSR. The French New Wave filmmakers also hated mass immigration.
>>7930719
>his linguistics were royally trounced years ago
uh, by whom? when did this happens? or are you just a fucking retard
>>7930006
capitalist realism by mark fisher
it's a quick read and pretty easy to understand, i give it to any of my friends who come to ask me about theory
>>7930745
Yes, those are the realities of the times. In many cases social conditioning is so deeprooted than even those who are opposed to it cannot completely break free. This is also why we have state socialism - because people have trouble shaking the state ideology and transferring their thinking to a libertarian model, which is what proper communism is.
>>7930745
I imagine Godard HATES the recent migrant wave in France.
Do you guys think of /lit/ as a conservative board? I know people like to be racist and rapist etc because "look at me, im on the internet!" but do you assume that everybody here is 'muh country great'?
>>7930011
>C. Wright Mills
Seriously. This dude literally invented the term "The New Left."
If you seriously and absolutely are interested in developing an understanding of capital and bourgeois society, then all you need is Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
I cannot stress this enough, Kant entirely determines the deep structure of thinking for both Marx and Hegel. There is no way you can understand terms like "science", "laws of 'x'", "subjective", "objective", "appearance", etc. without Kant. If you want to get a primer, read the Prolegomena and Adorno's Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason.
But you should always just read Marx at the end of the day. Seriously, if you have the choice between the whole Verso and MIT Press catalog and the three volumes of Capital, the latter will be of much more service in a theoretical understanding of capitalism.
Don't get mired in graduate program intellectual goods.
Kant
Hegel
Marx
>>7931036
You couldn't be more wrong.
>>7930006
I'm currently reading State and Revolution. It's relatively lucid, and is unexpectedly only a short read.
The Wretched of the Earth is a good read from Frantz Fanon, by the way.
>>7930858
I actually prefer going to /lit/ especially after hanging around /a/ because /lit/'s probably one of the most domesticated boards in 4chan.
>the culture industry
>aesthetic theory
>society of the spectacle
>progressive
literally 'no'
>>7930006
The left has always been based around the worship of weakness, disease and perversion, coupled with a corroding envy for one's betters
>>7931102
You should find Badiou's writings on State and Revolution. There's much more at work in that text than lets on at first.
Lenin is basically calling for the destruction of the political as a sphere of human activity--and I say that with no value judgement concerning its acceptability.
>>7930858
/lit/ is leftist with a rightist infection
>>7931152
leftism is categorically a degenerative infection so you're wrong on not one but two levels
>>7930858
Studying the classics and the Western Cannon illuminates a true scholar's mind to the Eternal truths of monarchy, tradition and the natural order. If some still swallow the progressive meme, most likely they haven't read enough.
>>7931160
case in point
>>7931290
/lit/ is an infection
>>7931307
literature is an infection
>>7931323
humanity is an infection
>>7930745
>Che bitches about lazy Congolese soldiers
>HE HATED THE BLACKS
>>7930006
>You all seem like a well-informed bunch.
>lit
>well-informed
>>7930057
>anarchism
>leftist
I'm sick of this, this Marxist and Leninist appropriation, weaponization of the anarchist label. I just want you oppressive statist pigs to know I won't spare any of you when the revolution comes.
>>7931361
right wing anarchism was literally invented in the 70s.
some very dialectical responses in this thread
>>7931396
Right wing anarchism doesn't exist, fascist.
>>7931361
What?
>>7931429
Statist thugs who think they have a friend in Anarchism.
>>7931482
You mean the likes of Murray Rothbard et. al.?
>>7931496
No, the anarcho-capitalists/right-libertarians are the out and out enemy. It is the leftists who think they have a friend in the enemies of their enemy. There is no brotherhood between the machinery of the state and the people of a truly free horizontal community.
>>7931361
You realize that Marxism=/= leftism, right? It's 100% possible to be a non-Marxist leftist, and in fact Marxism is arguably to the right of collectivist anarchism.
>>7931339
Not to mention he wrote about that at a very young age.
>>7931361
Well spooked, my property.
>>7930006
>left wing literature
what a redundant term. you could have just said "literature"
>>7930006
Literally only a single goy on the entire first row.
>>7931806
>the greeks
>left wing
start
>>7930006
>Communism - 17 books, 5 out of them mixed with psychoanalysis, one ot of them as one kind of communism against the other
>Frankfurt School - 7 books
>Postmodernism - 3 books
>Anarchism - 2 books
>Situationism - 2 books
>Accepted but rather dated mainstream economic and sociological work with many falsified elements - 1 book
So, apparently, in order to be a leftist or a progressive you need to believe in dated, falsified, absurd or unsubstantiated economic, social and other kind of nonsensical theories and hold contempt for things such as academic consensus and common sense?
P.S. fuck spam filter
>no Gramsci
>>7932022
That's why I think OP's list needs to be greatly expanded.
A left-wing lit 2.0, if you will.
>>7930858
>Do you guys think of /lit/ as a conservative board?
wew lad
>>7931173 is correct here. You can read a copy of Friedman and call yourself 'conservative', when in reality you're just an idealist cuck
>>7930858
>do you assume that everybody here is 'muh country great'?
poor insight
Documenting the French Radical Leftists Starter Pact
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_5gio3yd3A
http://pastebin.com/jGrwFuJM
>>7930731
ebin, truly ebin
Reminder this happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG2BA9SxClM
>>7930011
I want to start on Zizek, but have been told to avoid him entirely. thoughts?
I'm more interested in what influenced contemporary identity politics and "sjw" leftism. I imagine the stuff on that list isnt exactly relevant to them.
>>7933075
i guess you could start with some of his lectures that are on youtube. He's pretty decent as far as leftist intellectuals go. Just don't expect him to stay on the central topic. The lectures can and will soon descend into completely tangential but interesting topics. That's why the cruelly pragmatic creatures known as women don't like him. When he speaks he doesn't care about efficiency, its more about giving people convoluted but complete insights into topics.
>>7930057
Basically anyone published by Verso is dogshit tier
>>7933075
>>7933201
Here's a typical Žižek lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0sS8dgLa0
It has:
>central topic only loosely addressed
>complaining over capitalism through applied Hegel
>some economic memes
>Social-Democracy is cancer, Stalin4ever
>more memes
>jokes
>funny accents
>Frankfurt school theory used left and right, destroying both communism an capitalism (both enlightenment-born concepts and therefor vulnerable to FS)
>IDEOLOGY
>>7931036
Kant
Schopenhauer
Nietzsche
The aristocratic progression
>>7933075
Avoid him entirely
>>7933117
That's more influenced by Peggy McIntosh's individualized concept of 'privilege' than by Marx or the Frankfurt School. It's a liberal rather than leftist position as it tends to depoliticize and reduce politics to therapy. ie. focus no longer on changing material conditions but on personal moral redemption that comes with acknowledging one's privilege. There's a reason why privilege discourse has been embraced by universities, corporations and the military. It's utterly unthreatening to the power structure and creates many new ways to control people.
>>7933117
3rd wave feminists and puritan writers
>>7933306
The article that started it all, at least in the pop-politics sense. The author is a white women's studies professor who later went on a profitable consulting career.
http://www.cirtl.net/files/PartI_CreatingAwareness_WhitePrivilegeUnpackingtheInvisibleKnapsack.pdf
>>7930858
There's a lot of NRx, evola types here. I would definitely say /lit/ has more right wing people than /his/, but the right wing types here are actually well read, unlike the type you find on /pol/.
>>7930754
Good job denying their agency in holding views that are in opposition to your own.
Did read some of those (Marx). The society he wants to create is impossible as it is opposed to the human nature the will to be equal/the same with everyone else. To put it in another way, you will always want to have more/to be better/to achieve more than other human beings.
>>7933453
As long as you are a rational human being.
>>7931933
There are plenty of Scandinavian Socialists here.
>>7933495
>Scandinavian Socialist
just a reminder that no scandinavian country is at all socialist. Sweden does in fact promotes market captialism
>>7930006
>>7933508
Scandinavian countries practice what they call "democratic socialism", which really is a misnomer, and ought to be more properly called "socialistic democracy". It's just a normal capitalistic system, but infused with a few socialistic ideas. It's not a subset of socialism, like the name suggests.
>>7931352
Better informed than /pol/, for fuck's sake.
And /his/ apparently has contempt for discussions on books.
>>7933609
And after all those years of grand study culminated in appealing to a small minority of voters to end up losing to a much more powerful celebrity figure in the democratic party, returning to silence.
He should have started with the greeks.
>>7934327
Hillary is the True Patrician Choice. Hail to the Kween
>>7933221
>Žižek
He seems cool.
one-dimensional man is a bunch of mystical garbage
>>7933897
Actually, one always uses the term social democracy here, and never democratic socialism. That is an anglophone term that american "socialists" use about us.
>>7933383
I'm familiar with that one. I was more interested in the ideology's development between this and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
>>7930764
It'd be hard for anyone with a brain not to - but Godard must be seething.
>>7933289
>and puritan writers
It's really funny that the Progressive Left in America has more or less gone in a circle to near-religious puritanism.
Sure, their reasons couldn't be more opposite, but the ends are the same and the blindness that they can't see it is hilarious
>>7934901
That's not the "Progressive Left", moron. That's the politically correct corporate capitalist hegemony that needs to be overthrown.
>>7934901
>Sure, their reasons couldn't be more opposite, but the ends are the same and the blindness that they can't see it is hilarious
The joke stopped being funny to me when free speech came under attack from the right and the left
I imagine leftist consequentialists are in a state of absolute disgust right now with all the
MUH MEANS MATTER
from the radlibs
>>7934915
Free speech is degenerate. Neither women, foreigners nor peasants should have the right to express themselves (nor rights at all for that matter) and no amount of pulling on your pecker to the autistic judeo-masonic constitution of the regicidal degenerate hellhole known as the USA will change.
>>7933117
That garbage starts with Hegel.
And it has nothing to do with 'leftism'.
>>7934911
Politically correct cultural marxists*
fixed that for you
>>7934875
democracy is a leftwing creation
>>7933117
All of the intellectual SJW's I follow on twitter self describe as anarchists. They hate any form of hierarchy and authority that tells them what they cannot do
>>7930006
No need to read that shit
>>7932693
Friedman was a liberal, though not in the modern American sense.
>>7934892
It actually all comes down to the loudest minority with the biggest persecution complex. Black women
Kimberle Crenshaw gave it a name but basically it's all about giving most attention to those with the biggest compound of oppressions. It's also afrocentric in a sense as well since many of the advocates want to keep it focused on da oppresun of the black woman. THey don't give a shit about gypsies and shit like that, cause they're not western educated middle class twats
>>7936790
Sorry, I forgot the mention the ideology, Intersectionality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
>>7934875
It seems that the swedish have some of the freest markets out there, backed with a welfare state that encourages work rather than depenency. I might say that they are more free market in practice than the US,with less anti competition regulation ( putting money in the hands of a few businesses in the us) and a government that assists capitalism for the common good, rather than opposes it. Also I think the lowest Payed also have high taxes to pay for their support. Would this diagnosis be correct? (Assuming you are from Scandinavia)
>>7934929
10/10 Bait
>>7931147
Thanks. Finishing up on State and Revolution, will look that up.
>>7936815
That sounds quite accurate for Sweden I think, not so much for here in Norway where our market is decidedly more unfree (which I don't mind)
This is another meme Americans need to unlearn, we aren't really all that monolithic.
>>7936680
I know, I don't like it either.
>>7935023
I know Hegel was a protestant German idealist but can you elaborate on the connection between him and contemporary identity politics and "sjw" leftism?
>>7932541
>A left-wing lit 2.0, if you will.
Anyone?
>No Georges Sorel
>No Werner Sombart
>No Ikki Kita
>>7938151
What are their significant ideas?
>>7938151
Sorel is mostly remembered for his influence on Fascism. I doubt most lefties would want to associate with him.
>>7939191
>Sorel is mostly remembered for his influence on Fascism. I doubt most lefties would want to associate with him.
Maybe.
Reminder that THIS is the quality and depth of discussion that right wing /lit/ brings to the table. Compare the thousands of posts like this to any of Marx posters. There is no comparison
>>7941242
lol read David Friedman and Hayek, then maybe, we'll allow you to play with the Big Boys
>>7941271
>David Friedman and Hayek
>Right wing
lad, wew
>>7936765
Man, I should really learn French...
>>7930858
more so right wing in the highly idealistic traditionalist sense and less baseline conservatism/American republicanism/neo-nazi fanboys
>>7941280
I'm not right wing or left wing, i'm on the side of liberty and economics
>>7941290
>behold! a cuckold!
>>7941242
Well you can write essays about marxist theory all day long, but it will still be inferior to what right wingers believe in and what we have now. Also don't know if you're talking about liberals or socialists, but most people here haven't actually lived in a socialist country so I can't really respect their opinions on certain things.
>>7930006
Start with the greeks. They were the highest civilization in the ancient world and they also happen to have some ideas on how the world should be run. Wouldnt it be interesting to get a word on civilization from the originators of it?
Go to the source and all that...
