(Part 3) Best products from r/socialism

I suspect these have been mentioned in prior threads here and at /r/anarchism but here are some I believe to be "good" scholarship.

Avrich's academic study. Avrich was a respected historian. Unfortunately there is copyright getting in the way of a direct link to the text, but it may be accessible somewhere online.
https://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1921-Princeton-Legacy-Library/dp/069100868X

Avrich goes through the various allegations that bourgeois sources influenced or financed Kronstadt.

The articles by Ted Grant etc in part refer to documents released since Avrich's book. I'm not an expert on this, but imho the article by Grant (discussed above) is not convincing at all, and merely tries to shore up Trotsky's reputation.

For a source-based rebuttal of Grant and other recent Trotskyist takes on Kronstadt, see the Anarchist Faq. I realize that for many people the Anarchist Faq comes off as extremely sectarian, but imho (as a non-anarchist who agrees with Trotskyists more than anarchists on some issues) the AnFaq editorial collective's scholarship is very good and the editors possess admirable intellectual integrity. Even if I don't necessarily agree with their conclusions or emphasis or even logic, I would argue the AnFaq hardly ever misrepresents facts.

http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQAppendix42

You want to read the whole thing, but see in particular sections 12-14, which deal directly with contemporary Trotskyists claims.

How do you know for sure who is telling the truth? Questions like this are why the discipline of history exists and why there are professional historians. To discover the truth, one must do as they do. Investigate the sources that AnFaq is citing and judge for yourself whether they are trustworthy, honest, and/or credible.

It wouldn't be without precedence in the US. In the early 1900's the Socialist Party of America had a decent level of success at running for local and state offices. From James Weinstein's The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left:
>Within ten years of the party's founding, more than 100,000 memebers were paying dues each month, and there were probably an equal number of sporadic adherents. By 1912, when Debs received 900,000 votes for President, Victor Berger had been elected to Congress from Milwuakee, seventy-four municipalities throughout the country elected Socialist mayors, and 340 cities and towns had elected more than 1,200 lesser socialist officials.

They also elected two men to the US House of Representatives. The Socialist Party of America was a pretty big tent with lots of different tendencies. One of the most successful was Victor Berger. He was elected mayor of Milwaukee and to the House of Representatives. He espoused what was called, initially by his critics, "Sewer Socialism." Emil Seidel, the first Socialist mayor elected in the US described it this way:
>We wanted our workers to have pure air, we wanted them to have sunshine, we wanted planned homes, we wanted them to have living wages, we wanted recreation for young and old, we wanted vocational education, we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness. And we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that; playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all.

So at a local level we wouldn't be able to overturn the means of production (duh). But we could focus on concrete policies that make the lives of the working class better. What those policies are would depend on the city in question and its deficiencies.

I'm impressed that you were allowed to have such a club at your daughters school, that's very unusual imho.

As for role playing, you could use the money game from "Rugged Trousered Philantropists"...

> 'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'

> Owen opened his dinner basket and took from it two slices of bread but as these were not sufficient, he requested that anyone who had some bread left would give it to him. They gave him several pieces, which he placed in a heap on a clean piece of paper, and, having borrowed the pocket knives they used to cut and eat their dinners with from Easton, Harlow and Philpot, he addressed them as follows:

> 'These pieces of bread represent the raw materials which exist naturally in and on the earth for the use of mankind; they were not made by any human being, but were created by the Great Spirit for the benefit and sustenance of all, the same as were the air and the light of the sun.'

> 'You're about as fair-speakin' a man as I've met for some time,' said Harlow, winking at the others.

> 'Yes, mate,' said Philpot. 'Anyone would agree to that much! It's as clear as mud.'

> 'Now,' continued Owen, 'I am a capitalist; or, rather, I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present argument how I obtained possession of them, or whether I have any real right to them; the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the Landlord and Capitalist class. I am that class: all these raw materials belong to me.'

> 'Good enough!' agreed Philpot.

> 'Now you three represent the Working class: you have nothing--and for my part, although I have all these raw materials, they are of no use to me--what I need is--the things that can be made out of these raw materials by Work: but as I am too lazy to work myself, I have invented the Money Trick to make you work FOR me. But first I must explain that I possess something else beside the raw materials. These three knives represent--all the machinery of production; the factories, tools, railways, and so forth, without which the necessaries of life cannot be produced in abundance. And these three coins'--taking three halfpennies from his pocket--'represent my Money Capital.'

> 'But before we go any further,' said Owen, interrupting himself, 'it is most important that you remember that I am not supposed to be merely "a" capitalist. I represent the whole Capitalist Class. You are not supposed to be just three workers--you represent the whole Working Class.'

> 'All right, all right,' said Crass, impatiently, 'we all understand that. Git on with it.'

> Owen proceeded to cut up one of the slices of bread into a number of little square blocks.

> 'These represent the things which are produced by labour, aided by machinery, from the raw materials. We will suppose that three of these blocks represent--a week's work. We will suppose that a week's work is worth--one pound: and we will suppose that each of these ha'pennies is a sovereign. We'd be able to do the trick better if we had real sovereigns, but I forgot to bring any with me.'

> 'I'd lend you some,' said Philpot, regretfully, 'but I left me purse on our grand pianner.'

> As by a strange coincidence nobody happened to have any gold with them, it was decided to make shift with the halfpence.

> 'Now this is the way the trick works--'

> 'Before you goes on with it,' interrupted Philpot, apprehensively, 'don't you think we'd better 'ave someone to keep watch at the gate in case a Slop comes along? We don't want to get runned in, you know.'

> 'I don't think there's any need for that,' replied Owen, 'there's only one slop who'd interfere with us for playing this game, and that's Police Constable Socialism.'

> 'Never mind about Socialism,' said Crass, irritably. 'Get along with the bloody trick.'

> Owen now addressed himself to the working classes as represented by Philpot, Harlow and Easton.

> 'You say that you are all in need of employment, and as I am the kind-hearted capitalist class I am going to invest all my money in various industries, so as to give you Plenty of Work. I shall pay each of you one pound per week, and a week's work is--you must each produce three of these square blocks. For doing this work you will each receive your wages; the money will be your own, to do as you like with, and the things you produce will of course be mine, to do as I like with. You will each take one of these machines and as soon as you have done a week's work, you shall have your money.'

> The Working Classes accordingly set to work, and the Capitalist class sat down and watched them. As soon as they had finished, they passed the nine little blocks to Owen, who placed them on a piece of paper by his side and paid the workers their wages.

> 'These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can't live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is--one pound each.'

> As the working classes were in need of the necessaries of life and as they could not eat, drink or wear the useless money, they were compelled to agree to the kind Capitalist's terms. They each bought back and at once consumed one-third of the produce of their labour. The capitalist class also devoured two of the square blocks, and so the net result of the week's work was that the kind capitalist had consumed two pounds worth of the things produced by the labour of the others, and reckoning the squares at their market value of one pound each, he had more than doubled his capital, for he still possessed the three pounds in money and in addition four pounds worth of goods. As for the working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the pound's worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they were again in precisely the same condition as when they started work--they had nothing.

> This process was repeated several times: for each week's work the producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as any one of them and his pile of wealth continually increased. In a little while--reckoning the little squares at their market value of one pound each--he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were still tearing into their work as if their lives depended upon it.

> After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their merriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound's worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools--the Machinery of Production--the knives away from them, and informed them that as owing to Over Production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works.

> 'Well, and wot the bloody 'ell are we to do now?' demanded Philpot.

> 'That's not my business,' replied the kind-hearted capitalist. 'I've paid you your wages, and provided you with Plenty of Work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at present. Come round again in a few months' time and I'll see what I can do for you.'

> 'But what about the necessaries of life?' demanded Harlow. 'We must have something to eat.'

> 'Of course you must,' replied the capitalist, affably; 'and I shall be very pleased to sell you some.'

> 'But we ain't got no bloody money!'

> 'Well, you can't expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn't work for me for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!'

> The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted Capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threatened to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted Capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast.

> 'Of course,' continued the kind-hearted capitalist, 'if it were not for foreign competition I should be able to sell these things that you have made, and then I should be able to give you Plenty of Work again: but until I have sold them to somebody or other, or until I have used them myself, you will have to remain idle.'

> 'Well, this takes the bloody biskit, don't it?' said Harlow.

> 'The only thing as I can see for it,' said Philpot mournfully, 'is to 'ave a unemployed procession.'

Rugged Trousered Philantropists Chapter 21.

You could also look for a "socialized" copy of this book: The Classes They Remember: Using Role-Plays to Bring Social Studies and English to Life

Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy

★★★★★ - Awesome!

It's a very general overview of Chinese philosophy, starting with Confucius and working its way to modern day interpretations.

One thing that really struck me was Confucius' idea of "revivalistic traditionalism".

>Revivalism is a movement to effect positive social change in the present by rediscovering the deep meaning of the texts, practices, and values of the past. Many of the great progressive social movements of history have been revivalistic, including the American civil rights movement. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. called on Americans to actually live up to the principles of freedom, equality, and human dignity central to the Christian tradition and to Western democratic thought rather than merely pay lip service to them...

Honestly, I thought that would be a really valuable thing to have as socialists/anarchists. One of the most common critiques of the Left in general is our dedication to the examination of situations 100+ years ago to look for insights into the modern day. Well, rather than doing that, we can take from Marx whatever is valuable, we can take from the classical liberal philosophers whatever we find valuable there, we can take from the ancient Greek philosophers, etc...

The point is we have a lot of material to help us build our ideal world that doesn't necessarily have to be on the foundation that Marx laid down...or Kropotkin, in my case as an anarchist. That material was developed over literally thousands of years from the ideas of Confucius and the Greek philosophers to today. There are insights in there to inform today and I think we're doing a disservice to ourselves by focusing so much on Marx.

That's called "biotruths", friend, and those are fairly strongly debunked by science. A decent basis in psychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences will lead you to notice that nearly all differences in men and women are based in social conditions and the society they are raised in than based on physical differences or hormones. Men are not naturally prone to violence, this is based upon cultural assumptions of gender normatives which forces the penchant for violence upon the child, regardless of the personal family environment of the child.

Remember that there are far greater differences between individuals within a single gender than there are between individuals in separate genders. A good way of thinking of this is to imagine that we have put numerical differences upon the traits and men score around 1 - 85 and women score around 15 - 100. Sure, there are differences, but there's so much variety within the genders that the differences are basically irrelevant. Most people are a smattering of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

You should engage the social sciences, friend. There's a lot of interesting and exciting data coming out of the field of gender studies!

Suggested Reading:

Hyde (2009) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Cordelia Fine (2011) Delusions of Gender

Peterson and Hyde (1997 - 2007) A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality

Article: There really is no difference in men and women's math abilities

Article: Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

EDIT: A good place to learn and discuss Trans issues is /r/SRSDiscussion. There's a large variety of different users on there with deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I highly suggest you post any questions you have regarding Trans issues there with them. If you think that "some kind of cis-sexism may be based in biological reality, not culture", then I'm sorry friend, but you have very little understanding of what Cissexism is and have a lot to learn about gender. Start there and read more into the topic. It's a fascinating topic. I think you'll enjoy it!

Ha xD Fair dues. The Hobbit is, after all, a children's bedtime story. Tolkien made it up for his grandkids after all. As for LotR, it's a slog. It's nowhere near as fast-paced, thrilling or attention-grabbing as more modern fantasy. Little childish things creep up on you like Tom Bombadil and so on, but the one thing I respect about Tolkien is that, despite many biblical metaphors laced throughout, he never establishes a cosmology or pantheon that has any of the characters praying to gods. He doesn't hit you over the head with religion the way his best mate and contemporary C.S. Lewis did. Nor does he talk down to children with his narrative.

If you want to have a laugh, I recommend Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster. There is—I shit you not—a Marxist Dragon. Yes you read that right. A friggin' fire-breathing, scaley, talking, dragon named Falameezar. Who wants to end capitalism, burn bourgeois bastards into crispy shishkebabs and bring about the Revolution. He's a friend of the protagonist and not a vilain, what's more xD

It's hilarious and kickass simultaneously.

• Jane McAlevey, the single most brilliant, provocative (in a great way), and incisive thinker and organizer on unions in the US. Wrote "No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.". She makes excellent critiques of the fastfood strikes: fastfood organizing under the auspices of SEUI and AFL-CIO are often Public-Relations stunts that do not empower workers to take matters into their own hands, etc. She explains it far better than I can- listen to her interview on Behind the News with Doug Henwood (an excellent podcast for socialists btw).
  
  
• Cinzia Arruzza, organizer of May Day and International Working Women's Day actions in NYC, guest on Behind the News.
  
  
• Sam Miller, more of a Leninist, writes for Jacobinmag, has this excellent piece with Harrison Fluss on The Legacy of Eleanor Marx and her own piece on women in the alt-right: Lipstick Fascism
  
  
• Liza Featherstone, social-democratic writer for The Nation. She has a great socialist advice column. Here's an example, " Asking for a Friend: Is It Me or Is It Capitalism?:  In the first installment of our new advice column, Liza answers readers’ questions about depression and the ethics of cleaning apps." She also edited the compilation of essays "False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton" which also features Yasmin Nair and Belen Fernandez, mentioned below.
  
  
• Silvia Federici, Marxist Feminist, wrote the brilliant Caliban and the Witch, which you can read in full via Libcom and because she anti-copyrighted it. I have the paper edition, it'll radically change your understanding of the Witch Trials, medieval era, and the beginnings of capitalism or proto-capitalism. She really makes primitive accumulation so much more meaningful and consequential.
  
  
• Jodi Dean, writer of many books including The Communist Horizon, which I've read and is an excellent psychological analysis of Communist desire and organizational structure.
  
  
• Yasmin Nair, critic of bourgeois gay marriage equality, writer in Chicago.
  
  
• Belen Fernandez, wrote an excellent takedown of Thomas Ferguson and his neoliberalism, The Imperial Messenger. A delight to read.
  
  
• Melissa Gira Grant, frequent writer on sex work for Jacobin, critic of liberal anti-sex-worker do-gooders, wrote *Playing the W**e: The Work of Sex Work.

> lmao are you telling me what I don't understand?

Yeah, basically, that's what I'm doing. :) As evidenced by your statements such as:

> incentive is needed to drive people to go to work

The incentive for people to work, across all modes of production, is to survive and make better lives for ourselves and our communities.

> If we lived in a socialist paradise where everyone will work for the same profits then there is no incentive to work.

Under socialism, everyone has direct control over all of the value that they create with their labour. Your scenario "where everybody will work for the same profits" isn't even coherent.

> If lazy bob over there earns as much money as I do then I would have no reason to work and the result is chaos.

Lazy Bob gets as much value as the labour he puts in. Of course, I advocate some baseline coverage of good and services for all people, but that doesn't mean people can't earn varying amounts of "money" (if you will) under socialism.

> The invisible hand of the market is also the defining basis of capitalism, markets determine everything and there is an equilibrium to everything. Sellers and buyers must agree to a price in order to allow the passage of the good.

Okay, sorry, but this is the point where I'm starting to think you're trolling.

> In socialism there is a state run apparatus for this

A state apparatus isn't a necessary part of socialism. Plenty of socialists think it is possible to abolish private property and the state in one swoop.

> However, this process is not efficient and often leads to shortages.

You didn't even provide a process to critique...

If you'd like a good overall (and sever) critique of orthodox economics, I'd recommend this book.

There are a couple of good textbooks I am aware of:

The links to Gouverneur's textbook are here

You may also want to check out Wolff's own textbook authored with Stephen Resnick, entitled Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. (If you want to have a look through it I'm pretty sure the pdf is on Scribd.com) Apparently he is a publishing an updated edition sometime this year, but I am yet to see any details of that happening.

Also, you've probably heard this many times before, but if you want to get into Marxian economics, I highly suggest you start out by purchasing a copy of Vol. 1 of Capital and going through it alongside David Harvey's lecture series which is also invaluable (everyone on /r/socialism probably knows Harvey but i'm not sure if they're all aware of his lectures). ALSO You would probably like to grab A Companion to Marx's Capital - It's probably the most recent and thorough introduction to capital you could ask for and goes great with the lectures if you want more detail.

While I'm on a role here, you would probably benefit from reading The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, Harvey has a great interpretation of the "GFC" and goes through a great overview of how capital works.

Other than that I highly suggest you watch Kapitalism101's bibliography videos here. I've found his knowledge and extensive bibliography of recommendations of Marxian economics books extremely invaluable.

Here's what I use for making my own comics/zines - it requires a bit of investment for tools, but once you're set up it's SUPER easy.

Scribus (open source) for layouts/typesettings

Adjustable length stapler

Paper slicer

If you make your booklets as a standard "fold in half and staple" type of book, then you won't even need the slicer, which can be a little pricey if you don't find it used. The hardest part is honestly just the setup to make sure that when you print and bind it, that the pages are all in the correct order. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions. Good luck!

I'm a liberal egalitarian. In response to a post someone had made in this subreddit as an introduction to Marxism, I wrote on DepthHub a criticism of socialism from a liberal perspective. I'll here reproduce that first post, but I also was replied to by the author of the post introducing Marxism, and wrote a reply to him in turn, which can be found in the DepthHub thread.

=

JasonMacker has written an excellent brief introduction to socialism. Since I don't see any critiques of socialism from a liberal perspective here, let me quickly outline a couple of points.

The most conceptually important target is the central idea of socialism: that the means of production ought to be socially owned. Now, there are basically two forms of social ownership. One of them is to have state ownership and a centralized system of central planning. The other, called "market socialism", is to have corporations compete in a decentralized market, but have those corporations be owned by the workers. The problem with the first is that it does a poor job of allocating resources compared to markets, i.e., it does a poor job of telling us who should get what. A good explanation of this problem can be found in the conclusion to The Rebel Sell by Potter and Heath:

>Suppose that one year, thanks to a fortuitous combination of rain and sun, the rubber farmers get a bumper crop. This means that there is more rubber available than usual. Who should get it? There are literally millions of different ways in which the rubber could be used. Should it be used for bike tires? Lacrosse balls? Waterproof boots? Gaskets? Cables? Shock absorbers? The most persuasive response would be to say that the rubber should go to whichever use is most urgent, or whoever needs it most. In other words, the rubber should be sent to where it will do the most good. Unfortunately, in a pluralistic society [i.e., one in which people do not agree on a single overarching conception of the good, which is the universal condition of modern nation-states], we lack any common measure of "the good." There is no fixed metric that will allow us to determine whether one person's desire to fix his bike tire is more or less important than some other person's desire to replace the washer in her faucet. The only way to approach the question is to ask how important it is to the person in question. And the only way to find out how important it is to that person is to ask how much he or she would be willing to give up in exchange for the rubber. In other words, we must ask how much that person would be willing to pay for it. (If there is no sacrifice involved, then we can be almost certain that the goods will be wasted, since individuals will ask for all sorts of things that they don't really need. Just look at the difference in the way people behave when they are charging things to an expense account rather than paying for them out of their own pocket.)

Okay, so what about having workers determine their working conditions by owning the means of production within their corporation? A question that anyone who advocates market socialism will have to answer is, why aren't corporations already worker-owned? There aren't legal obstacles to the formation of co-operatives in capitalist countries like Australia or the United States. In fact, in many jurisdictions, worker co-ops get huge tax advantages over shareholder-owned corporations. So what's preventing co-ops from being the dominant form of corporate organization?

The answer to this is complicated, but as it turns out, a big part of it is that worker co-ops don't work very well in many kinds of business. The main problem is corporate governance. When workers own the corporation, it's often very hard for them to agree on how great a share each of them should get of the revenues. This is because, in many corporations, people do very different jobs that require very different qualifications, and there's no straightforward way to say what level of wages properly compensates x years of experience, or a or b kinds of qualifications, or p or q amount of input. So the worker-owners face big internal political problems when they're doing very different kinds of work.

Evidence that this is an important reason for the relative lack of success of worker co-ops is that many of the most successful worker co-ops have extremely similar kinds of "input" from the workers. For instance, a co-op might be owned by dairy farmers, and each farmer gets paid proportionally to how much milk they contribute to the corporation. Since there's only a single kind of input the workers add (milk), the distribution of revenue is very straightforward. More information on this perspective on corporate ownership can be found in The Ownership of Enterprise by Hansmann.

Lastly, another problem with worker ownership is that it seems to have little to do with citizen welfare. Marxism doesn't have the same theoretical resources as liberalism to deal with cases where people are disadvantaged because they're excluded from working, rather than because they are working—for example, when women or children are not allowed to work in a country and, as a direct result of not being allowed to work, face crushing poverty and are barred from economic independence. Another point about the lack of a relationship between citizen welfare and one's status as a worker can be made about the concept of "alienation". Obviously, no one would prefer doing alienated labour to doing unalienated labour. But what if the comparison is between, say, ten hours of unalienated labour and six hours of alienated labour plus four hours of leisure? If a worker prefers the latter to the former, who are we to say that something is wrong with them? These and other criticisms can be found in the chapter on Marxism in Will Kymlicka's really, really excellent introduction to contemporary political philosophy.

So those are some criticisms of the socialist worldview. I hope this adds an extra dimension to the conversation.

Edit: I should add that not being socialist doesn't mean being inegalitarian. Liberals can still support strong investment in public goods and redistribution of income as means to achieve greater social welfare and equality.

There's a twitter called manwhohasitall.

It's kinda funny, but the same person wrote a book that is both cringy and hilarious: From Frazzled to Fabulous.

The author takes all of those tropes you see in articles geared towards women, and replace them with men.

>Need some me time? Get your wife to babysit! And if your wife is busy at work, then get your dad!

>Need some help around the house? Get your children involved! Children, especially boys, enjoy helping dad clean the house.

>Been out of work because you've been raising the kids? Don't worry, men! The skills you learn as a dad carry over into the work place! Or, if you don't have the confidence to get a job, become a dadpreneur! A little business on the side will help you balance being a dad and supporting your wife in her success.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but that's the same crap thrown towards women all the time.

I can't cite an exact source, but data scientist Seth Stephen-Davidowitz (author of Everybody Lies, one of my favorite books of 2017) has pointed out that the two most common Google searches coupled with "how to buy Bitcoin" are "how to get rich quickly" and "what is Bitcoin?." It seems to me that, while likely more valuable than a fiat currency inflated to serve special interests (rant, sorry), Bitcoin could have value as a market-determined currency like gold or silver, but not now. People are looking to get rich and that will cause it to crash.

Goddamn, this is just too good....hahaha

Side note, if anybody is interested in reading a thorough history of the CIA/Saudi/Pakistani jihad in Afghanistan, check out Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004) by Steve Coll. It is not a socialist or Marxist analysis, but it is an absolutely brilliant overview of the covert war and its connections with larger geopolitical changes, internal dynamics within the various governments and the logic and rationale that guided their actions, etc. It got widespread acclaim from a variety of different quarters, and won the Pulitzer Prize.

A book a week is a lot, wouldn't you want to slow down and be able to process the information/arguments better?

Here are some of my favorite books:

Black Liberation/Race

• Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983)
  
• Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990)
  
• Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013)
  
• Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times (2011)
  
• Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party (2009)
  
• Detroit: I Do Mind Dying--A Study in Urban Revolution (1975)
  
  Technology
  
  
• Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (2016)
  
• Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism (1999)
  
• Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex (2015)
  
• Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile (2011)
  
• Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation (1986)
  
  Middle East
  
  
• Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (2013)
  
• Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011)
  
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
  
• America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006)
  
• Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011)