This is recapping an exercise in college where some friends and I sat around thinking – if a potential socialist convert were to agree to read any three books on socialism, what would you offer? Well, now I have to come up with ten, even though I’m not so sure I’d call myself a socialist anymore. Here are the ten books I think place socialism in the best light, with the best explanations.
1. Socialism Past, Present, and Future – Michael Harrington.
2. The Essential Works of Socialism – Irving Howe (yeah, maybe an anthology is cheating, but his selections are representative and excellent)
3. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1868 – Karl Marx
4. Design for Utopia – Charles Fourier
5. Foundation – Isaac Asimov (sold me on the whole concept as a teenager)
6. Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy (her utopia was compelling, but also disturbing)
7. Marx’s Concept of Man – Erich Fromme (sold me as a teenager on the concept of alienation)
8. A Theology of Liberation - Gustavo Gutierez
9. The Shape of Things to Come – HG Wells
10. Rerum Novarum – Pope Leo XIII (much more radical than either Catholic conservatives or secular socialists want to acknowledge)
Honorable mentions: The Communist Manifesto (the first five pages of which contain nothing but compliments for capitalism as a progressive force in historical context), People of the Abyss – Jack London, The Iron Heel – Jack London, The Permanent Revolution – Trotsky, The State and Capital – Lenin, Looking Forward – Edward Bellamy, Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution – Peter Kropotkin, and Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman
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September 9, 2010 at 6:59 am
Anonymous
You read Erich Fromme as a teenager? I couldn’t even get through his boring stuff in college.
September 9, 2010 at 8:53 am
Che
Revolution in the Revolution by Regis Debray.
September 9, 2010 at 11:11 am
Anonymous
The Wretched of the Earth.
September 9, 2010 at 1:35 pm
longwind
The first three Gospels (that’s Matthew, Mark and Luke). John’s so ideological he could be a Marxist–but not a socialist.
September 9, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, I don’t remember too much “socialist” in the Gospels. The Sermon on the Mount deals with charity, but not necessarily equitable distribution or common ownership. Where socialism comes up in in Acts where all are told to put their wealth into a pool, and one couple is struck down by God for holding back.
1Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. 2With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.
3Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”
5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. 6Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
7About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”
“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”
9Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”
10At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
And there are those who dispute the socialist interpretation of the Bible. This site argues that the Bible is anti-socialist and pro-free market capitalist. Nevermind that capitalism wouldn’t exist for another 16 hundred years or so.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/department57.cfm
September 9, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Eric Kirk
I guess this is a Christian socialist rebuttal.
http://skeptically.org/bible/id14.html
September 9, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Nick Bravo
The problem with socialism is one of individual ownership. In socialism the individual owns nothing, not even themselves. In a socialist society if the collective decides you the individual must die then the individual must die, no debate, no arguement, just complete submission to the whims of the mob.
September 9, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Eric Kirk
Nick, that’s like a fourth grade interpretation of socialism.
September 9, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Anon
I much prefered. “Beyond The Chains Of Illusion” to Fromme’s other work. I still remember sitting around in the mid seventies, stoned (of course) reading Fromme, listening to Dylan, and searching posters of Paul Klee’s for prophetic predictions. I still think Dylan saw the future, we just fucked it up.
September 9, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Bodie
I read some Marx, and I liked it…
September 9, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Eric Kirk
That’s hilarious!
September 9, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Tom Sebourn
Nick, social democracies like those in the Nordic influence seem to promote life and nurture it. As in social verses anti social. Economically, they are doing better than most of the world.
If it’s every man for himself (or woman) ,then only the rich will be able to live an abundant life. They will be able to do it on the backs of the working poor. Have you never heard of the commons?
How much should you be charged for the air you breathe and the rain that waters your thirst and gardens? Who should own that?
When ever I think that I am a bit over the top, you show up and make me feel like a centrist.
Thank you…I think.
September 9, 2010 at 10:29 pm
suzy blah blah
11Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
Fear of the insane justice served out by a mad God who gave Ananias and Sapphire capital punishment instead of the more befitting three years probation with terms of making restitution for the money held back, and 5days community service for lying to God.
September 10, 2010 at 8:53 am
Eric Kirk
suzy – it does seem almost Stalinist.
Conservatives rationalize the passage to say it was about the lying not about the holding back. But if the holding back wasn’t the issue, what was the motive for lying?
September 10, 2010 at 10:28 am
longwind
Paul was a Stalinist for sure. His Acts are a great read as perhaps the first eyewitness account of a failed socialist utopia. What do you do the day after Spirit moves you? If you’re Paul, you go back to bagging on gays and mouthy wives. Stick with the Gospels, kids.
Now, Jesus wasn’t an ideologue, no more socialist than free market. He just said that the accumulation of capital was bad for the spirit, because “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” So store up heavenly goods that won’t get robbed or rotted.
So: if your heart’s with your money, you won’t feel your way into the Kingdom of God. If people did this, Europe’s Christian Democrats would act like Social Democrats, and Marxism would be unnecessary. But something’s lost in the translation. . .
September 10, 2010 at 10:49 am
suzy blah blah
Conservatives rationalize the passage to say it was about the lying
I am not agreeing with them. But the Suzy analysis might say something like –the act of lying to “God”, (if God is interpreted as being the deep core of the “real you”), could be said to bring about a “spiritual death”. EG, it is a spiritual death to put on a facade and be phony instead of being authentic.
September 10, 2010 at 9:56 pm
moviedad
Wasn’t the whole point that he had a “personal” relationship with God? he thought (prayed?) about what to do; changed his mind. Changed it again, finally deciding to give it up. All this on his own. He was not a dedicated follower. He did not cede all authority to the Disciples. When I think of some of the anecdotes described in “Acts” I can’t but think: What would Jesus do; waste him?
September 11, 2010 at 8:30 am
suzy blah blah
What would Jesus do; waste him?
Same difference because –”I and my Father are one”. A favorite trick of theirs is the good-cop bad-cop deal. Jesus promotes peace while his father does the dirty work, like striking thieves down dead etc. He committed genocide via flood, He even murdered his own son! It’s a schizophrenic pathological religion with an evil “Father” running the show.
September 11, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Eric Kirk
Jesus never struck anyone down in the Gospels, although in the Gospel of Thomas outside the Bible some kids through rocks at him and they dropped dead. He did kill a plant at one point.
September 11, 2010 at 4:47 pm
suzy blah blah
That’s a great one. I never heard about the LORD and the rock throwers before. Sometimes I feel like doing that myself, LOL! But there you go, the other side of the schizophrenia appears. Jesus loves the little children… except when he gets pissed off. But my point was that they are in cahoots, Jesus and Jehovah. Even more than that –they are “one”. So I was saying that Jesus plays the role of the good cop, to butter up the persons “arrested” by Christianity into being blissfully cooperative, and Jehovah the bad cop to scare the shit out of them about what might happen if they don’t play along and follow the rules. Get me outa there.
Personally my interpretation is that the whole bible can be seen as a sort of myth, and that an instance of something happening which is as out of the ordinary as somebody being struck down dead on the spot can be understood as symbolic. Who would believe that Ananias’ death from being struck down dead by Jehovah for theft is historical? Or believe a thousand other things in both the OT and NT in that way. Symbolic, as in the idea about being authentic that I outlined above. If one is holding back a portion of their whole self and not integrating it into their life somehow, then the thing might have to be dealt with.
I see them as a valuable group of myths about life’s challenges and confrontations which are presented as historical realism. But that is straying far from socialism and sharing stuff around, etc.
September 11, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Anonymous
The kid didn’t throw rocks but “dashed at his shoulder.”
I. I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus:
II. 1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone. 2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.
3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day. 4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping. 5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.
III. 1 But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. 2 And when Jesus saw what was done, he was wroth and said unto him: O evil, ungodly, and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters do thee? behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit. 3 And straightway that lad withered up wholly, but Jesus departed and went unto Joseph’s house. But the parents of him that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him ‘for that thou hast such a child which doeth such deeds.’
IV. 1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.
V. 1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness. 2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore. 3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not.
September 11, 2010 at 9:30 pm
moviedad
Ah the Apocrypha. When ordinary miracles just don’t cut it. I don’t believe in believers outside of the transcendent experience. Once there is that experience, one begins the search for “reality.” In socialism the reality is that we are all in it together; and so we are. I think capitalism is like living a lie, because it pretends that there is independence between members of the human tribe.
Sister Suzy, have you checked out “backtype.com”? I was able to see every post of mine going back 88 weeks. I had no idea. There was some “cringing” but at least I’m consistent. I am amazed that with one click, every word that I have uttered on this and other blogs, was instantly available.
Erik (or Mr. Kirk, since we’ve never met.) are you aware of the court ruling on internet anonymity in today’s paper? It seems the policy is that if you are on AT&T’s wire/site/server. They own whatever you’ve put there, like your name, your address, your words. I’m glad I gave up on the illusion of anonymity at the outset. I haven’t been “Talk-Radio-ed” yet. But it bothers me that a person cannot be anonymous if they feel they need to be.
Back to socialism. isn’t it so sad that there is absolutely no understanding of modern socialist democracies in our society? It’s always about Soviet Russia, or Communist China.
September 12, 2010 at 8:01 am
suzy blah blah
Sister Suzy, have you checked out “backtype.com”
No I havn’t checked it out Brotherdad. I sorta live strictly by the words of the prophet, “Don’t turn into a pillar of salt”.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-transcending salt and pepper –NOW!
s
September 12, 2010 at 9:04 am
Mitch
Eric,
To speak of socialism (as opposed to charity) in a 2,000 year old pre-capitalist society is not going to get anybody anywhere. But the historical Jesus was explicit, as quoted in three seperate gospels, that a camel will find it easier to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man will enter the kingdom of God. And Jesus had his disciples abandon their private property to become fishers of men.
So it seems pretty safe to say that Jesus would not have been a big supporter of a financial system driven by the motive of personal profit, and would instead have supported a system whose goal was to help the weakest members of society.
And, of course, not just Jesus. I think the founding documents of just about any religion you can think of consider the hoarding of personal property to be shameful, and honor self-sacrifice, especially in support of the poor, the sick, and the weak. Sadly, the hierarchies that often form around the founding documents often behave in ways completely at odds with the documents they supposedly preach.
September 12, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Anonymous
“5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. ”
Just the editors of this myth just glossed over the blow to the head.
January 24, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Eric Kirk
Somehow I missed your post the first time Mitch. In any case, Jesus did address class issues to be sure, and spent most of his time with the poor. But that doesn’t make him a socialist any more than Mother Theresa.