A View Into My Library
What do you do when you go around other people’s houses for the first time?
It’s always an opportunity to get an insight into who they are, what moves them, what they are all about. I think of myself as a people person, I’m interested in people and I’m not just being nosy when I mooch around their homes taking it in. I want to get to know them. For me, the three best ways of doing that are to make a beeline for their music collection, DVDs and book shelf. All three have been ravaged by digitisation but you can still find people that have kept their vinyl and CDs and e-readers have not succeeded in replacing physical books in many people's collections. If I’m expecting people to read my musings on the world, it is only fair that I give a bit of background as to how I see it and I can think of few better ways of doing so than by sharing some of the books which have shaped my reality tunnel. So here, in no particular order, are some of the big influences from my library.
Cosmic Trigger - Final secret of the Illuminati
Robert Anton Wilson
I was wondering whether to add this one because the subtitle may put people off. However, it really did have a big impact on me and I don’t think I would be where I am today in my worldview if I had not read it. I was quite closed minded before I read this and it cracked my head wide open; not literally of course, that’d be hideous (apologies to Alan Partridge). My whole sense of reality flipped. I was studying contemporary social thought at the time so French philosophers, Frankfurt School critical theorists and others academics were also challenging my cosy conservatism but I rejected them, largely because they seemed pretentious and up themselves, with their ivory towers vocab that seemed designed to turn off the plebs. It was the wit of Wilson’s discordianism that, well, struck a chord. We need the open mindedness and attitude to accept that we don’t have it all figured out that this book nurtures. Look at the one star reviews on Amazon UK. I rest my case.
Small is Beautiful
E F Schumacher
I have only recently read this classic but it really inspired me and I feel it is if anything more relevant now than ever. As someone who rejects both capitalist economics and big state centralisation, this book charts a way out of our predicament that seems more rooted in humanity, morality and balance. I think there is something in it for people across the political spectrum.
Super Imperialism - The economic strategy of American empire
Michael Hudson
This, along with another of his books, Killing the Host, gave me a real insight into the role of economics in global power politics and of the way the rentier elements of the economy have taken control and parasitised the productive parts. The end result is a globe spanning empire, centred on the USA but of unwilling to act in the interests of the people of the USA, using its control of the levers of the world economy to extract value from its producers and funnel it to the super wealthy, who use their wealth and influence to subvert democracy and dominate political decision making.
Democracy Incorporated - Managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism Sheldon Wolin, Joe Barnett et al.
I don’t often read books twice from cover to cover, but I recently had to reread this; it really does make a persuasive case that we no longer live in a genuine democracy. Transformative change has taken place but the forms and institutions of democracy remain, leaving the impression that it is still functioning, when it is in fact a zombie politics. Think of the NHS since market ‘reforms’ and you’ll get the idea of how, under the surface, it has been hollowed out. Though written following the Bush jr presidency, subsequent events have accelerated the trends he identified, with Covid and the Ukraine War enabling further corporate undermining of democracy and the rule of law based on foundational equality.
Democracy in Chains - The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America
Nancy MacLean
As with some other books on this list, this outlines ways in which the super wealthy use that wealth to shape political outcomes to their favour, controlling the narrative through the funding of think tanks, media, academia and increasingly judicial education programs. Though focused on the Republican’s machinations, the essential point for me is that regardless of the party, you can’t have a functioning democracy where you have such inequalities of wealth and the opportunity to use that wealth to shape political outcomes.
The Great Transformation -The political and economic origins of our time
Karl Polanyi
This was probably the first book that got me challenging the idea that markets and states were at odds with each other. Polanyi makes clear the role of states in imposing markets on society, in undermining community and society, traditions and cultures of reciprocity. The sort of social engineering that is often seen as a hallmark of the left. Though the state has, since the rise of social democracy, been portrayed as an ally of the left, it has throughout its history been the handmaiden of capital, creating and shaping institutions to advance its interests. Polanyi also makes clear, however, that this market state link up is no ally of conservatism, causing massive social upheaval, breaking down communal bonds and destroying the security and stability and emotional sense of collective identity that humans require.
The Management of Savagery - How America’s national security state fueled the rise of Al Queda, Isis and Donald Trump
Max Blumenthal, David de Vries et al.
If you have even seen the Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch in which two members of the SS start to question whether they are in fact the bad guys, then you will get the thrust of this book. For so long we have been bombarded with a permanent bullshit blizzard so comprehensive and relentless that it can be hard to comprehend just how malevolent our role in world affairs has been. If you read this and the UK equivalent, Mark Curtis’ Secret Affairs, you will never be able to take the UK and US establishment’s moral grandstanding seriously again.
How will Capitalism end? Essays on a failing system
Wolfgang Streeck
Streek highlights the dilemma of a time in which it is easier to envisage the end of humanity than the end of capitalism, though the former is likely to occur if we can’t bring about the latter. He is particularly strong on challenging the notion, popular in US politics in particular, that democracy and so called ‘free markets’ are somehow symbiotic. He demonstrates that unchecked capitalism is in fact having an incredibly corrosive effect on democracy and will continue to do so on the globalising West’s current trajectory.
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
Ha Joon Chang
Though this is not an anti capitalist book, it does illustrate the fallacy of those who talk about capitalism as if it is synonymous with free markets. Capitalism has many forms and even those that emphasise their free market, anti state credentials are happy to use the state when it suits them to, say, enforce patent law when a country in the global south wishes to produce cheap and effective life saving drugs. Good to have to hand to refute the hoary old chestnuts put forth by the likes of Kate Andrrews during her regular slots on Question Time.
Doughnut Economics - 7 ways to think like a 21st Century economist
Kate Raworth
A book about economics that focuses on what it should be for rather than how we can best increase GDP. If the Great Transformation outlined how economics became disembedded from society and reversed the relationship between the two, this is a call to get our priorities right once again and make our economic systems serve humanity and the earth we depend on rather than short term balance sheets.
Guardians of Power - The myth of the liberal media
David Edwards and David Cromwell
If any one book opened my mind to just how much we are constantly being propagandised by mainstream media in the West it was this one. Largely building on Herman and Chomsky’s classic work ‘Manufacturing Consent’ they destroy the pretensions of papers like the Guardian to being progressive. The BBC too is unmasked as the state broadcaster it really is, like the Guardian, constantly shilling for the foreign policy establishment and funnelling viewers towards two flavours of neoliberalism.
Stalin and the Scientists - A history of triumph and tragedy 1905 -1953
Simon Ings
I read this book a year or two before Covid swept the globe and felt a sense of unease as I recalled its key lesson while we were exhorted to ‘follow the science’. If any event underlined the importance of a knowledge and understanding of humanities and social science when considering Science, it is the one which we still haven’t passed through yet. Science is a human activity, it exists as part of a social fabric, it is not immaculate and olympian, but is prone to being steered in directions which benefit dominant interests in that society. Appeals to authority are based on a logical fallacy and the best science is that which is open to challenge, indeed, the best science is that which welcomes such challenges.
Debt - The first 5000 years
David Graeber
An absolutely fascinating book. Delves deep into the social, moral, historical and philosophical questions behind the concept of debt based economic systems. Also lays bare the links between violence and our economic system. You will never see economics and society in quite the same way again. I heard David give a talk at the anarchist book fair in London and have devoured everything I can get my hands on that he wrote since. An endlessly thought provoking and humorous writer, who is very much missed.