this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2023
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What are some leftist books you dislike but everyone else seems to love? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by DoubleShot@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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I have 2. The People's Republic of Walmart is one. Maybe I feel this way because I work in the industry and I'm a little familiar with central planning techniques... but I just thought it was all fluff with little substance. I felt like more than one chapter was just "Walmart and Amazon do central planning so it's possible" without getting into a lot of the details. Very little about the nuts and bolts of central planning. Throw in a good dose of anti-Stalinism when the man oversaw successful central planning... I just didn't get anything out of it. Might be OK if you want a real basic introduction behind the ideas of planning but honestly I bet like 95% of you already know more about it than you realize.

And I love Graeber but jeez, I couldn't even finish Bullshit Jobs. It felt like a good article that was blown out into a book. Maybe my expectations were too high but I felt like he spent way too many pages getting into minutiae about what is/isn't a bullshit job without actually making a broader point.

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[–] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Walmart is meh, as was "Fully automated luxury communism."

I'm going to start the struggle session and say Stalin and Lenin's work on Nationalism. Frankly I'm fully on Rosa's side there, excepting only anti-colonial struggles. Even there it's a dangerous game.

Furr's stuff, because he provides shitloads of sources but cherrypicks the fuck out of them even though I agree with like 70% of his conclusions.

Bookchin's "Post-scarcity anarchism" was inspirational to me 15 years ago but has faded as I've gone deeper into theory. It's still useful though. Marcos' stuff still slaps though, despite a superficial similarity.

"The Coming Insurrection." Blergh, so many missteps of the 90s are this book's fault.