Recently read Black Jacobins, extremely enjoyable account of bourgeois revolution and slave revolt in Haiti. Looking for more like that, Marxist accounts of the bourgeois revolutions and revolutionary periods of the 17th and 18th centuries. The English Republic, American Revolution, French Revolution, etc. Good general histories are okay but would really prefer Marxist ones.
Also general thread to discuss history books you're reading, what you recommend, underrated leftist histories that should have more attention paid to them, etc.
Pic related kills the ☭TANKIE☭. Finished reading it for a uni paper and it’s a pretty good account of how Hungary under Rakosi was an example of everything not to do when building socialism.
a bit off from the your time period, but didn't Marx describe the American Civil War as a 2nd American Revolution?
Adrian Morgan
A lot of leftists do. If you want an excellent history on the Marxist view of the development of the US you should read “Labour’s Untold Story”. It’s the ultimate wobblypill, but unfortunately it only covers the Civil War up to the end of WW2.
Carter Cooper
Got a PDF? Very interested but can't seem to find it online.
Tyler Long
Read How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions? by Neil Davidson. It's not as much an in-depth history of the revolutions as it is a thorough intellectual history of the theory of Bourgeois Revolution itself. It investigates the words of the bourgeois revolutionaries themselves, to Marx and Engels, to the Second, Third, and Fourth Internationals, to the cold war revisionist school and beyond. God tier Marxist historiography, I recommend everybody here read it. PDF attached.
The Oxford history of the French Revolution is easily the best book on the French revolution in France in terms of a general overview. It isnt written by MLs but the analysis is certainly very based in the real world. They even go in depth on different soil qualities in different regions and how this impacted social unrest, etc. Highly recommend if you want more on France
This sounds super interesting, particularly the privileged status of skilled laborers. I just read a history of Dunaújváros for a history course on life in the Eastern bloc, and the was a topic that I wanted to hear more about.
Sorry, I will list books that don't strictly deal with just revolutions. But they are crucial writings in understanding how the world is the way it is and how forces that tried to change it were dealt with. For Burgers the most basic and probably most important history book would be The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Another crucial one is Prisoners of the American Dream by Mike Davis. Y'all should also read everything by Zinn and Davis. Another important author is David F. Noble, who gives an excellent research and explanation of 20th century industrial development: America By Design; Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism and Forces of Production; A Social History of Industrial Automation (this one actually is about revolution - the revolution in production). Next on we have Staughton Lynd: Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution: Ten Essays 2nd Ed, Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below.
When you're done with all of the above then it's time to move broader, to check out the history of political thought that was able to give rise to events that the above authors researched. A good start is probably Ellen Meiksins Wood and her 3 part series (two written so far): Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages; Liberty & Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment.
And from here on just jump on to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kardelj, Pashunakis, Lukacs, Luxemburg and even the new guys Negri, Althusser, Balibar etc. Žižek is a bit of a meme, but some of his 90s work is still ok I guess.
I was talking about the 1956 Uprising in Hungary from which the term ☭TANKIE☭ comes. That book basically outlines how the Hungarian communists seized power despite having little support among the workers and peasants, implemented policies that lowered the standard of living, repressed all resistance, and generated mass resentment among the working class population, all of which led to the uprising. They tried to turn Hungary into a carbon copy of the USSR despite their material conditions being totally different, not suited to the heavy industrialization drives, large numbers of worker-peasants who were hurt by the collectivization, the fact that the Social Democratic Party had always been the main worker’s party, total disregard for the concerns of workers, etc.
Mason Parker
Sounds good. Do you have any recs for examples of socialist governance done right? Not snark, genuinely curious.
Robert Rodriguez
Nothing off the top of my head about socialism being done right specifically, but if you want a good defense of 20th century socialism then you should read Parenti’s “Blackshirts and Reds”.
Sebastian Stewart
The communists did what was right. They had to slap the living hell out of the citizens as the population was mostly fascists and supported alliance with zee Reich.
Remember: fuck Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, they were cesspools of fascism.
Check out Catherine Samary's Le communisme en mouvement. Everything about Yugoslavia from Ernest Mandel. Also this: marxists.org/subject/praxis/index.htm
Kevin Jones
Completely untrue. The population was forced into that alliance by their fascist government, a government which they helped overthrow after the Red Army moved into Hungary. The vast majority of the population in the period between 1945-1949 voted for either leftist or centrist parties, but the communists still remained a firm minority. When the uprising actually happened nearly all revolutionary worker's councils affirmed their support for socialism and a planned economy. This is just a laughably poor defense of a government that literally everybody (including the Soviets and Kadarists) agreed was pants-on-head retarded.
