I hate to be rude to these people, but you start talking about Actually Existing Socialist Countries and all of sudden you feel like you’re talking to a libertarian who hates prisons. And I’m like have you read any of these… and its like nah.
That’s why I often don’t really suggest Naomi Klein and Bullshit Jobs because they are great points of entryism, but they just give permission for westerners to still have no historical understanding of the world around them. Spouting off about Totalitarianism.
Yeah I don’t need to [edit] (keep) reading her work, but the suggestion comes from the same place as any point of entryism and at the very least its not very reactionary. I guess I just see the role of westerners is to support AES countries and to reject imperialist rhetoric rather than to first understand how their position in this system is also fucked and I guess one could do both at the same time, but if I have a place to start its the former.
That’s not what entryism means, but it’s similar in its pathological aversion to confrontation. Why not just suggest Parenti? He’s got some nice, accessible polemics, and also a lot of his material is in talks, so you’re more likely to get a young person to engage with it (though I guess you didn’t mention the demo).
Are you going to get killed or fired if the person you are talking to discovers you to be a communist? If not, then hiding it is probably counter-productive if you’re still advocating for your positions. You don’t need to shout in people’s faces demanding that they acknowledge the efficacy of Mao’s land reform, but actively hiding behind lib academics is just silly.
You can glean useful information from books that aren’t explicitly communist too.
If your goal is to convince someone of communism, books by “left” libs written against rightists that are selected partly on the basis that recommending a communist would be scary is hamstringing yourself. The scope of discussion, and especially of positive alternatives, will be very limited and it’s also just kind of dishonest in this context. If the pitch was “I’m a communist but I think this lib academic has useful things to say about some given subject” I would not be objecting because I think that’s true of basically every subject.
Parenti is always great, I also like suggesting Kwame Ture.
I generally agree with your perspective here, but not reading an author you reference in a post lambasting people who won’t read theory is a choice.
I mean if I lambasted Orwell while complaining that I don’t read enough Fanon, I don’t see any hypocrisy there, just a comparison between worthwhile and not worthwhile
Yeah, that’s fair. As long as you have read some Fanon that stands. Only so many hours in a day after all.
I have read. I don’t actively read. Its not like the latest Klein work comes out and I’m like I have to get that one.
Ah ok. That makes more sense. Once you get Klein’s perspective, there’s not much more to be gleaned from subsequent works. I would hate to think I’d based my opinion of Graeber solely on Bullshit Jobs and wrote off Debt though which I found worth the effort even if it’s entryism.
Admittedly have not read debt.