Socialist Book Club

[Az]

Mao had very strong totalitarianist leanings. Much more so than Stalin, even. Stalin committed the atrocities he did commit because of his Mental sickness.

Mao, wasn't deranged as Stalin was.

[DuncanK]

I would be interested in reading J.S. Mills also. I have another suggestion, a shorter work by Adam Smith called Theory of Moral Sentiments. This is a discussion of enlightenment ethics. I think we should start before scientific socialism so that we can get a perspective of the context that these ideas were developed in.

[Buck Birdseed]

If we're gonna keep moving back in time, I change my vote to Machiavelli's Discourses, or possibly something prehistorical.

Come on people can't we read contemporary books from a contemporary perspective dealing with contemporary issues?

[Gangerolf]

True, most of the quotes in the little red book are not very clear.

After the book became alpha and omega the party could get away with atrocities by simply quote from the book.

[monkspider]

Do we have enough nominations to hold a vote?

[DinoDoc]

Dicatorship vs Democracy by Trotsky
Just because I like needling che with it.

[monkspider]

So far I see
Engels'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Hardt, Negri: Empire
Guevara: Motorcycle Diaries
Goldman: Living My Life
London: Iron Heel
Wainwright: Arguements for a New Left
Mao Tse-Tung- Quotations of Chairman Mao Tsetung (Mao's Little Red Book)
Smith- Theory of Moral Sentiments
Trotsky - Dictatorship vs. Democracy

[JohnT]

Sounds like enough books to vote on to me.

Btw, I'm not participating but I would like to make a suggestion that y'all ought to take seriously (and is going to piss off jon miller, btw, but I can't help that): you really should only nominate books that you've read.

You can vote for any book that you like, but in all fairness to the club, nominating books w/o determining whether they are worth discussing is a sure-fire method to picking crappy books with no conversational value.

[monkspider]

For fear of getting more nominations then we can handle, in Che's absence, I will stop accepting nominations in fifteen minutes and start a poll thread that will determine the recemended reading material.

[monkspider]

thanks for the wise words John.

[JohnT]

By the way, since Che mentioned it in the first post in this thread, the Foundation discussion thread is up 'n running.

[DuncanK]

I think Che should choose 3 or 4 of those for vote. That would be easiest.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by monkspider
thanks for the wise words John.

You're welcome.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by DuncanK
I think Che should choose 3 or 4 of those for vote. That would be easiest.

Best way to do it is to get as many nominations as you can (1 per person, please!) and then start a poll thread that allows multiple choice. Ask the voters to limit themselves to three choices and then wait and see how it comes out.

[DuncanK]

Yeah, ok. Good idea John