User Profile

Bursts__

Bursts__@wyrmsign.org

Joined 2 years ago

A bloke excited to read more, hoping this will inspire better note taking and engagement with the texts. I apparently start most posts with something akin to "This book..."

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Bursts__'s books

To Read

Currently Reading

Tom Wetzel: Overcoming Capitalism (2022, AK Press) 5 stars

The book is a twenty-first century reworking of the approach to unionism. The United States …

I've earlier tried a stab a this book, but only got 45 pages in. There's a lot to fit in a 391pp paperback on anarcho-syndicalist perspectives on modern capitalism, class composition, organizing methods, the pitfalls of Leninism and such. I'm about 55 pages in and making a go at it. So far, I've really appreciated Wetzel's compact style: not a lot of flourish, a few examples to illustrate a point. From an interview on Coffee With Comrades, I got that Wetzel's been working on this book off and on for decades, so it shows a lot of thought, revision and concision in the layout and arguments. And I find the introduction of jargon to be minimal and clear when it does show up, a useful thing when introducing someone to a topic and leading them down a string of arguments to the conclusion you hope them to agree with. It …

Anderson, William C., Zoé Samudzi, Mariame Kaba: As Black as Resistance (Paperback, 2018, AK Press) 5 stars

Overall, I really appreciate this read. The authors did a really good job at historical sweeps to make points about the desubjectification of Blackness to the modern State form in the USA & West, with lots of examples to ground it. As noted in my other note on the book, in the time before and since this publication, I've read other pieces that make similar points as was in the air when this was written, but the authors obviously put a lot of work into creating an approachable work with greats turns of phrase and at an easy-to-digest length. It's a great starting point with lots of exciting works cited. Much respect to the authors and their traditions.

Kelly Lytle Hernández: Bad Mexicans - Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (2022, Norton & Company Limited, W. W.) No rating

This book was quite entertaining and really brought together the racial animus of Anglo settlers on the Mexican border, the history of the Mexican political development, US impositions, struggles against primitive accumulation of Indigenous lands and bodies, rebellion against the Diaz regime and particularly the Flores Magón brothers' organizing with the PLM to tell a good story. Dr. Lytle Hernandez does not appear to have a sympathetic view of anarchists from the description of Ricardo (I don't say that because of criticisms of his relationships or petty, written attacks by him, anarchists shouldn't have idols, but because his anarchist views didn't appear weighed in the book). Also, the book felt a little like it was quickly tied together like the publishing schedule forced her pen a bit. But the insights into US manipulation of the political landscape in Mexico, the legal wrangling in the USA against RFM & the Junta, …

Dennis King: Lyndon LaRouche and the new American fascism (1989) 5 stars

This book was a FUCKING trip! Dennis King did great research and exhaustively covered LaRouche's upbringing, his shifts from conservative Quaker to Trotskyist with the SWP, to the: creation of an anti-Semitic cult building dual power intelligence services, attempts to defend aging nazi war criminals, promoted science & scifi around directed-energy weapons, links to mafia-adjacent Teamster bosses, scammed conservative elders out of millions of dollars, ran politicians as Democrats and himself as president 8 times, had connections to the Reagan admin, and even bullied Roy Cohn into a corner. And this was just the up until 1988 when the book was published and LaRouche went to prison! He got out after like 5 years and his international structures continued to function to various degrees, with chapters in Germany, Sweden, Mexico and other places. What a ride! LaRouche died in 2019, but his widow (Helga) and others continue organizations like The …

started reading As Black as Resistance by Anderson, William C.

Anderson, William C., Zoé Samudzi, Mariame Kaba: As Black as Resistance (Paperback, 2018, AK Press) 5 stars

I'm excited to finally be getting to this book, it's been sitting on my shelf for a few years now. The arguments are familiar from other, contemporary books I've read, whether it be "Dixie Be Damned", "Burn Down The American Plantation", essays digesting Frank B. Wilderson III's Afropessimism or other media I find referenced in these pages, but the footnotes are giving me a steadily expanding list of titles i want to check out. I'm excited to hop over, soon, to "The Nation On o Map" by W.C. Anderson.