Decided for my next few books I'm going to read some classics that I've never gotten to previously. I'm starting with Grapes of Wrath. Enjoying it so far.

Grapes of Wrath has some of the most monumentally moving and powerful passages of writing that I've ever read.
I can't say I enjoyed it, but I feel the intent was to make it an onerous, demoralising and often desperate read.
Searching for a light that was never there.

Burnwinter wrote:

Sounds like a fascinating book, to be honest. 

This brings us back to the question of intention. In my 1994 book Stalin’s Peasants, I argued that what Stalin wanted was not to kill millions (a course with obvious economic disadvantages) but rather to get as much grain out of them as possible – the problem being that nobody knew how much it was possible to get without starving them to death and ruining the next harvest. But that was an argument about the Soviet Union as a whole.

I am not a defender of Stalin, but I think the "body count theory of ideological success" has a lot of problems. Assessing the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union and China during the 20th century against the records of European nations and the US in the same period erases most of the history of European colonial expansion. How does this approach reckon with the effects of the systematic underdevelopment of India, the opium wars, the dispossession and genocides of Africa, Canada and Australia, and so on? 

The history of the world is one in which every nation has committed atrocities—some domestic, some foreign—during its period of industrialisation. Western intellectuals have found a way of talking about history that attributes these atrocities ideologically, instead of to the fact of economic transformation and its brutal social and political upheavals. But the sums don't add up. 

It's also hard to accept any argument about the superiority of industrial capitalism when the best science we have is predicting anthropogenic climate change poses an existential threat to a huge proportion of human civilisation. 

I'm interested in reading Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder at the moment, have you checked that out?

I'm glad you are not defending Stalin since he is probably the worst human being in history, along with Arsene Wenger. But what do colonialism and all the things you mention in the first paragraph above have to do with Stalin? Do you mean to attribute colonialist casualties from 1600-1950 to capitalism in order to win the numbers game? That's fine with me but keep in mind that colonialism was state sponsored exploitation based on trade monopolies. It had very little to do with free markets are everything to do with creating trade monopolies for specific products at gun point and then ruthlessly exploiting those to make as much money as possible for the state and selected shareholders. Such a system does not, I would say, square very well with free market capitalism.

I think the Holodomor can definitely be attributed ideologically. Applebaum makes a fairly convincing case that many measures could be taken to prevent the famine or least strongly mitigate its effects, but the Soviet leadership deliberated continued grain exports outside the USSR for propaganda purposes and basically let the peasant population starve because they had resisted collectivisation, the holy grail of the workers' paradise. The tragic thing is that individual farmers in the Ukraine produced massive amounts of grain before the revolution, but had zero incentive and means to do so once they were forced to sell all harvests to the state and transfer their assets to collective farms. A fairly classic clash between individual and collective exploitation, where the latter failed spectacularly.

Apart from this economic insanity, the problem with communism and similar ideologies is that it has a strong moral component, i.e. it is an idea with good guys (workers) and bad guys (rich people, or in the Soviet sense, everyone who is not a worker). Socialists still think this way today. This moral component always leads to abuse, as every single communist country has shown, because the bad guys must be purged or turned into good guys for the idea to work. Capitalism lacks this component and is to a large extent amoral, which is why it works better as an economic model and why it has a proven record of lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. That is not to say it doesn't have flaws and cannot lead to horrible outcomes left unchecked, like seen in the insane and until recently health care free USA.

I haven't read Bloodlands but it sounds interesting, will definitely check it out.

Gurgen wrote:

It had very little to do with free markets are everything to do with creating trade monopolies for specific products at gun point and then ruthlessly exploiting those to make as much money as possible for the state and selected shareholders. Such a system does not, I would say, square very well with free market capitalism.

It does if you include the aspects of politics and violence that arid, idealised market economics disingenuously leaves out. 

Apart from this economic insanity, the problem with communism and similar ideologies is that it has a strong moral component, i.e. it is an idea with good guys (workers) and bad guys (rich people, or in the Soviet sense, everyone who is not a worker). Socialists still think this way today.

I feel like you're a little short on your understanding of Marx, to be honest. 

Marx was a "good capitalist" in the sense that he was a huge admirer of Smith, and his analysis in Capital actually relies on a simplistically perfect function of the labour market to a great degree in its analysis. He wrote a lot of that work in the context of 19th century Manchester, where his analysis was more accurate than it would later prove to be in other contexts—including revolutionary Russia, for example.

In Capital, Marx talks with some irony about the "double freedom" in which a waged worker is free to sell their labour to whoever will buy it, but is also free of any other goods to sell. Marx believed in a "class consciousness" that would be created by the shared economic position of proletarian workers. Basically, as their economic status became more and more similar and interchangeable, he theorised that their material interests would also coincide more and more.

This he believed would place them in a position of powerful political solidarity which would eventually lead to a crisis and revolution.

You will note that there is no assignment of moral virtue in this analysis, no goodies and baddies. It's basically workers being selfish in a system whose economic dynamics has led to the concentration of private property with a small, and equally selfish bourgeois capitalist class. As with Smith's capitalism, each actor in Marx's analysis acts in their "enlightened self-interest". Where Marx departs from Smith is in his deep interest in history, tendencies, instability and crisis. And as history subsequently showed, his insights were deep, if incomplete. 

However, a similar analysis of shared material interests does produce a compelling characterisation of the way the trade union movement would secure political concessions for workers in 19th and 20th century industrialising economies.

Anyway, although Marx's efforts in Capital Volume I were arguably simplistic and are now proven to be flawed, Marxism and indeed almost all post-Marxian materialist political economy definitely doesn't work the way that you think, relying on human goodness or morality. The opposite in fact, Marx and Marxists typically despise what they identify as bourgeois moral categories. 

In relation to Stalin, if you're going to say that the period of European colonial expansion and industrialisation, which often saw the stupid and unfettered implementation of policy based on the premises of then nascent free market capitalism has nothing to do with market ideology, I'll happily disclaim Stalin for my side of this debate, and rightly so.

The notion that communism/Marxism is an inherently moralistic ideology and "free markets" are based on some kind of objective logic is the most idiotic thing I could ever dream of thinking of. All free marketers care about is the morality of personal freedom and a demented sense of "fairness" that has absolutely zero basis in any measurable reality. Life isn't fair, get over it. The markets never were, and never will be free. Ever. Just give it up already. If you have half a brain, you'll immediately see that you can use it to make the world a better place instead of just obsessing over yourself like a spoiled child.

Stalin was no Marxist. Even the idea of Marxist-Leninim makes no sense, Lenin and co clearly departed from Marx. Anyway, we need to push beyond Marx, but not into some kind of accelerationist, ultra-capitalist, technocratic nightmare. Enlightened self-interest is a ridiculous idea as well. How about just enlightened interest? The economy is made up, we can make it whatever we want, it doesn't make itself ffs. We can either take care of each other and the planet, or not. Those are the real choices, the rest is fluffy bullshit used to rationalize incorrigible selfishness, laziness, and the bitter disdain we seem to have for each other.

Gurgen wrote:

Apart from this economic insanity, the problem with communism and similar ideologies is that it has a strong moral component, i.e. it is an idea with good guys (workers) and bad guys (rich people, or in the Soviet sense, everyone who is not a worker). Socialists still think this way today. This moral component always leads to abuse, as every single communist country has shown, because the bad guys must be purged or turned into good guys for the idea to work. Capitalism lacks this component and is to a large extent amoral, which is why it works better as an economic model and why it has a proven record of lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. That is not to say it doesn't have flaws and cannot lead to horrible outcomes left unchecked, like seen in the insane and until recently health care free USA.

Burnsy was far too easy on you. This is such a stupid, stupid thing to think or say. All you free marketers care about is moralising about your freedom, property, and some notion of fairness that never plays out in any objective, measurable reality. Life isn't fair, deal with it. The markets will never, ever be free. Ever. Get over it. Capitalism (which isn't really a system at all, btw, just a straight-up moral ideology) has created billions of poor, disenfranchised, sick, tortured, and dead people. Billions. Billions and billions. And billions. Maybe, if you used even half of your brain, you could see that you can make the world a better place instead of justifying your own lack of compassion with so-called realism. Maybe you might realize that the economy doesn't make itself, that we make it, and we can make it whatever we want. The only real issues are whether or not we want to take care of each other and our planet, the rest is fluff, bullshit used to rationalize a life of bitter selfishness and abject laziness.

I see nothing in that post that shows anything but contempt and anger towards another poster.
It's abusive and insulting.
From a poster assuming a position of moral superiority, urging compassion and understanding towards others, that is pretty rich.

Thanks for proving my point Coombs

Burnwinter wrote:

Gurgen wrote:

It had very little to do with free markets are everything to do with creating trade monopolies for specific products at gun point and then ruthlessly exploiting those to make as much money as possible for the state and selected shareholders. Such a system does not, I would say, square very well with free market capitalism.

It does if you include the aspects of politics and violence that arid, idealised market economics disingenuously leaves out. 

Apart from this economic insanity, the problem with communism and similar ideologies is that it has a strong moral component, i.e. it is an idea with good guys (workers) and bad guys (rich people, or in the Soviet sense, everyone who is not a worker). Socialists still think this way today.

I feel like you're a little short on your understanding of Marx, to be honest. 

Thanks I'm quite familiar with his ideas, all of my relatives had to take at least 10 different classes on Marx in the ole Soviet Union, which is incidentally the country I was born in.

What you describe is not wrong, but the point is that thinking the idea of class struggle through inevitably leads to a division of mankind in good and bad guys - the oppressor and the oppressed. "Bourgeoisie" is obviously a dirty word and "proletariat" is obviously a good word in Marx' vocabulary. Capitalists are described as "blood suckers", capital as "cancer", etc. (I could go on and on but the sun is shining and I feel somewhat dirty on wasting my time on that angry drunk.) There is a moral message in there whatever way you try to spin it. Many scholars have written about this (sometimes implicit) message, which was made more explicit by his disciples later. Apart from that, communism is obviously not just Marx. Every single application of the communist idea on any scale shows the dynamic I describe, which can also be found in angry moral high ground rants by individual socialists like Coombs here. I suppose you will argue that all those evils were simply misapplications of the great Marx' ideas. Ideas which somehow always lead to horrors must be pretty shit to begin with though.

Gurgen you are putting some serious gloss on capitalism. I can't take your post seriously when you desribe it as largely amoral. Private ownership, deserving/undeserving poor, 'welfare dependency', individualism, self realiance etc all highly moralistic principles/concepts which are central to capitalism and espoused by proponents of capitalism.
And I'd add that ills such as war, imperialism, mass poverty, growing inequality, destructive consumerist culture, ecological destruction etc all deserve some consideration if you want to consider pros and cons in any half meaningful way.

Like I said Gurgen, you're insisting on attributing to me motives and sentiments that I simply don't possess, and I don't think you understand Marxism terribly well.

You're right there's a layer of value judgements on top of the materialist analysis I describe, but as Daz has pointed out capitalism has its own layer of moralising ideological production as exemplified by phrases like "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" or "the poor will always be with us."

At the end of the day Marx's reasoning is based on everyone in the economy acting on their own interests. It's not important if capitalists are good or bad people.

Anyway, you really seem to want to describe me as a monster and a supporter of Stalin, that is a pretty long way from the truth and I think maybe you ought to take the foot off the pedal a bit.

No I don't think you're a monster or supported of Stalin at all. Just slightly condescending in everything you post but no-one's perfect

I don't think I'm any more condescending than you are! No harm done anyway.

I'm aware of your personal history, also my partner these days is Polish and her parents escaped the tail end of Soviet rule etc etc. I've heard my fair share of stories.

I don't hold any rosy-eyed views about Stalin or the USSR, I just look at the way we run the world currently and it's evident we are headed for deeper and deeper crises, so something's got to give.

So, anyway. I'm listening to True Girt, the second in a light hearted history of Australia - think Horrible Histories for adults. Despite the humour and light tone the book is currently dealing with the genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines, as well as excoriating Keith Windschuttle, a terrible "historian" who claimed Australia was peacefully settled with only "a few" Aborigines being killed by white settlers.

The book also gives some time to Jorgen Jorgensen, a Danish man who sailed to Iceland in 1809, declared Iceland's independence from Denmark and set himself up as leader of the new independent government. The British navy turned up and stopped that little lark. Jorgensen spent time in Newgate prison, was transported to Tasmania, worked on the Black Line rounding up Aborigines and ended his days in Hobart writing many articles for a range of publications.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jorgenson-jorgen-2282

Anybody read Born A Crime by trevor noah? No likey celeb authors but it's popping up at the top of so many best selling lists.

Falling From Horses by Molly Gloss. Excellent, recommended for all you film buffs.

Picked up two interesting books by black female authors, both of whom I met at a recent book fair. The first is What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons, an Assistant Professor at Occidental. It's a series of vignettes that revolves around the trauma of her mother's death from cancer while the author was in college and how her life and family collapsed around this event. Also details her struggles with identity - being an other - biracial, international, never really being rooted. She writes really well in bursts, so the novel is uneven, but thoughtprovoking.

I've since started reading Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo. I'm early in the book which covers the tragedy of being a barren woman in Nigerian society. The writing is simply on another level. You can see the fruits of a very different writing process from the above book (which was written in a sprint), versus this one which is dense and very beautiful. Very enjoyable so far.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

it is almost the end of august and ive only read 11 books so far this year. fucking embarrassing.

this was almost 2 years ago. i really havent been reading as much i want to, but i am working to remedy that. since my last post, here a few of the books ive read that i would recommend

Jonathan Abrams - All The Pieces Matter

if you liked the wire, its a fantastic read.

Sheelah Kolhatkar - Black Edge

really interesting look inside wall street insider trading. cohen is a really unique person (and the inspiration for the show billions, if you are into that sort of thing)

Chuck Klosterman - X

not everyone loves his writing style, i enjoy his non-fiction. this was a good read.

Jennifer Armstrong - Seinfeldia

seinfeld is one of my 5 favorite tv shows. i really enjoyed re-living it through this book.

Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Gene

one of the best books ive read in the last few years. his previous work (the emperor of all maladies) was even better, but the gene was fantastic.

Sam Quinones - Dreamland

a pretty sobering look at the opioid/heroin epidemic in the US

and i am currently finishing this one:

Garrett Graff - Raven Rock

i am fascinated by underground bunkers/cities and this book has been really eye opening.

next up:

John Carreyrou - Bad Blood

cant wait for this one

12 rules, Jordan Peterson. A good read. A bit heavy on the religious analogies, but I like how he distill vague "common sense" into simple and concrete phrases.

What is mathematics, Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins. Very good book on basic mathematics. Provides a good overview, and explains the key concepts nicely.

The blank slate, Steven Pinker. I like Pinker, and he brings up some good points, but his writing is tedious as hell. After the first few chapters, the book becomes a bore.

Next up is Skin in the game, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.