Socialist Resources

I just bought Richard Wolff's Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism today and am half way through. It's an extremely easy read and it lays down the causes of the 2007/2008 crisis, it's continuation, and the reactions to it. It has been excellent so far and I am confident that it will continue to be so. Doctor Wolff does not go into strenuous details in this book and does not pretend to, if anything it is an introduction and does not claim to be more, and on that basis I judge it.

Arab Spring, Libyan Winter by Vijay Prashad has helped me to understand not just the events of the last year, but those of nearly the last century of middle eastern politics and economics. It is well documented and sourced with a swath of differing perspectives from both protesters and state officials. One thing some - but not I - may have a problem with is the heavy use of cables from wikileaks. All in all, I heavily recommend this book to anyone who wishes to attain a comprehensive knowledge of the Middle East.

PS: It is published by an organisation of anarchists who democratically and collectively run and own the business. Supporting them is just an added benefit.

Celtiberian wrote:Beware of the books written about the Soviet Union. Mainstream Soviet historians like Richard Pipes, Robert Service, et al. are anti-communist partisans who write from a very biased perspective. A few decent works on the subject are:

Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Keeran & Kenny

Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat: Factors Contributing to the Dismantling of the Socialist State in the Soviet Union by Bahman Azad

Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution by Robert C. Allen
*A very important historical analysis of the Soviet economy*

The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb has written superlative analyses of the history of the Soviet economy, including Russian Economic Development Since the Revolution and Soviet Economic Development Since 1917.

David Graeber's "Debt: the first 5000 years"

M. Kalecki's "Political Aspects of Full Employment"

Ian Steedman's "Socialism and Marginalism 1850-1920"

Steve Keen's "Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor dethroned" is an excellent empirical, post-keynesian assault on mainstream economics that builds on the tradition of Marx, Keynes, and Sraffa. Post-Keynesian economics provides a viable way to think about modern economics from a leftist viewpoint, incorporating many insights from Neo-Marxist economists into sophisticated non-linear dynamical mathematical models of the economy.

Steve Keen's "The Dynamics of the Monetary Circuit"

Randall Wray's "The Neo-Chartalist Approach to Money"

Forum members may find the arguments presented in this essay "On the Myth of Cultural Marxism" useful when debating reactionaries.