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Home | The Socialist 6 December 2003 | Subscribe | News Join the Socialist Party | Donate | Bookshop Books for socialistsThe Big Red ReadBBC's The Big Read has created great interest among the population. A step back from the 'dumbing down' of television, it has provoked much discussion, putting the lie to the theory that people are only interested in soap operas, 'reality TV' and gameshows.But the top 100, whilst containing novels by all the classic authors, is thin on the ground when it comes to books about the working class and their struggles.DAVE GORTON takes a personal look at this rich vein of literature and suggests some titles for socialist readers this festive season.Click here to buy from the Socialist Party's online bookshop Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird was the first 'great' novel I read. Set in the 1930s deep south of the USA and written from the perspective of a child, its anti-racism had a profound effect on me, as a young teenager in an almost exclusively white community. Although not written with any great class perspective, the abhorrence by the book's chief family of their neighbours' overt racism, echoed my own political awakening as the National Front were gaining popularity and votes in the West Midlands where I lived. Another book in the BBC's top 21 deserves its mantle of greatness - Catch 22, by Joseph Heller. There were dozens of anti-war novels written in the 20th century but not many that went further than just a moral message of 'war is wrong/futile'. Catch 22 in a 'tragic-comic' way highlights the role of capitalism in war, the profits to be made whilst millions suffer, and the fact that ordinary, enlisted servicemen and women are in the front line while the tops (the rich) give orders from the comfort and relative safety of their respective bunkers.
But the Vietnam War has spawned some excellent novels, none more so than from Tim O'Brien. His The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato deserve far more attention in literary circles. They capture the horror, the obscenities and the humiliation of the war. The latter deals with some of the almost 20% of US troops who were reported AWOL by 1971. One reviewer was so impressed to state: "to call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby Dick a novel about whales". By 1972, a quarter of US troops had become heroin addicts, a subject taken up by Robert O'Connor in Buffalo Soldiers, though the story takes place in Germany. O'Connor's debut novel also spotlights ferocious (racist) violence within US army barracks. James Ellroy is a renowned crime/thriller writer, a genre that doesn't normally hold much attraction for me. But The Cold Six Thousand, dealing with the Kennedy assassination and the US intervention into Cuba and Vietnam, and most importantly, the CIA involvement in all three, is a stunning book. It is classed as fiction but it brings candidly to life all the suspicions and mistrust of workers worldwide about the role of successive US governments and the capitalist forces behind them. Alongside the 20th century's wars were the great movements of workers - the revolutions. Where better to start than the Russian Revolution. Ten Days That Shook The World by the American journalist John Reed has been a 'must read' for socialists since its first issue in 1919. It is a first-hand account of the October 1917 revolution that overthrew Czarism in Russia and established the first workers' government in history. It is a masterpiece of reporting that keeps you gripped as if it were a thriller with its outcome unknown till the last page. Of course, if it's the definitive account of the Russian Revolution you want to read there can only be Leon Trotsky's The History of the Russian Revolution, to my mind the greatest book ever written. In his preface, explaining the use of the 'old' calendar thirteen days behind, Trotsky says: "The reader will be kind enough to remember that before overthrowing the Byzantine calendar, the revolution had to overthrow the institutions that clung to it". What follows is the most comprehensive book, written by one of its chief protagonists, of the most important year in the history of humankind. The inability of the Russian Revolution alone to herald the dawn of a new socialist era worldwide lay in the failure of the organised parties of the working classes to seize power when the opportunities arose in the more developed capitalist countries in the first three decades of the 20th century. The socialist revolution cannot thrive in one country alone. The German workers heroically tried to throw off the yoke of capitalism but were repeatedly let down by their social democrat leaders. Alfred Doblin's November 1918: A German Revolution is a monumental trilogy novel depicting the betrayal of the German working classes and the lives, struggles and ultimately, murders, of the two great German revolutionary leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. By the time of the Spanish Revolution in the 1930s, Stalin had concentrated power in Russia to a bureaucratic elite. In Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, Felix Morrow not only documents the struggle and sacrifices of Spanish workers but puts the blame four-square on the shoulders of Stalin for their defeat and the victory of Franco's fascist forces. Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls is a renowned novel about the Spanish Civil War and an excellent read. His hero, Maria, was partly based on Martha Gellhorn, his wife for a short period, and a well-known writer in her own right. The best introduction to Martha's work is probably The View From The Ground, a collection of journalism published in 1988. Twenty years after Spain, Hungary's workers rose in opposition to the Stalinist regime of Rakosi. As statues of Stalin were toppled in Budapest's streets and the workers strove to seize power, Soviet tanks pulverised the revolutionary movement into submission. At least 20,000 Hungarians died in the uprising. Peter Fryer was at the outset a member of the British Communist Party and a reporter for its paper, the Daily Worker. When he filed copy about the real events it was not printed and he was expelled from the CP, who remained rigidly loyal to Stalin's murderous regime. His Hungarian Tragedy caused many other British 'communists' to quit the party. As Fryer stated: "Here was history being made in a way that none of us had foreseen. Our preconceived theories were shattered overnight." Socialists, of course, are involved at every level of working-class struggle, not just (inter)national revolutionary movements.
The struggle in Liverpool echoed those of 60 years previously in the London borough of Poplar. Noreen Branson, who died earlier this year, documents the struggles against poverty in the early years of the Labour Party in Poplarism 1919-1925, including mass strikes on the docks. A decade previously in the immediate run-up to the first world war, Dublin was in the middle of a massive struggle between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. The employers set out to break the strength of the unions in 1913 with a mass lockout, brilliantly portrayed in James Plunkett (Kelly)'s novel Strumpet City. The hunger and deprivation of the time is keenly felt but Plunkett, another 2003 casualty, adds a solid dose of socialism, something which readers of Frank McCourt in more recent times will not find. Plunkett was an admirer of the Irish revolutionary leader, James Connolly, executed by the British after the unsuccessful Easter Uprising of 1916. This period of Irish history has given birth to untold tomes from all different political perspectives. One of the most accessible, though, is maybe surprisingly a novel. Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry is not meant to be a blow by blow account of the times. It is written in Doyle's inimitable style - immense, serious subjects liberally dotted with farcical events and characters - but it will give newcomers to this part of Irish history a yearning for more. Irish emigres to the USA helped form the backbone of the giant American working class along with counterparts from the rest of Europe, Africa (often via the West Indies) and Latin America. The real dawn of the world's now most powerful nation is catalogued in countless novels - Upton Sinclair's and John Dos Passos' immediately spring to mind. In the 1930s, the struggles of the Minneapolis teamsters were documented by Farrell Dobbs in a four-volume collection. Fortunately, the most logical starting point, the first volume Teamster Rebellion, is also generally known as being the 'best'. (Read the funeral oration in the chapter entitled Bloody Friday.) Novels about trade union and workers' struggles throughout the world are an indispensable plank of literature and it is the capitalists' fear of workers learning from their past that has caused so many to be out of print or nigh on impossible to find in anything but the most well-stocked bookshops. How many Welsh youth will grow up without reading Gwyn Thomas' Sorrow For Thy Sons or All Things Betray Thee? These are excellent accounts of some of the most turbulent years in Welsh working class history. Is Ralph de Boissiere's story of the rise of trade unionism and socialism in Trinidad in the 1930s, Crown Jewel, on any reading lists? Because of Emile Zola's reputation as a classic writer, Germinal is harder to 'suppress'. But the highly emotive narrative of Etienne Lantier's trials and tribulations in the French coalfields during the mid-1800s is probably better known for Gerard Depardieu's portrayal in the film of the same name. You won't find what many readers of this paper will call the greatest 'novel' ever written, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, on any school curriculum. Recently, on these pages, Roy Farrar reviewed Robert Tressell's masterpiece and there is little more I can add. But I recall a dispute between telephone engineers and BT, where as part of the union's propaganda campaign, one leading activist was 'sent away to re-read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' and reproduce the quotes that succinctly spell out in easy to understand phrases the real workings of capitalism and the basis of Marxist economics. These duly appeared on leaflets circulated to CWU members - there can be no greater testimony to the standing of a novel than direct lifts from the text being used on union propaganda 80 years after they were written! In an article of this length, I have really been unable to do little more than scratch the surface whilst suggesting reading material for both long-standing and newer readers of the socialist. I have not covered literature from the majority of the world; writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have no more space to do anything other than namecheck John Steinbeck, Jack London, James Kelman. My list is also woefully male-dominated. Hopefully, I will return to the subject in a later edition and correct some of these oversights. Finally, there's bound to be those, who after a year of political campaigning fancy losing themselves in a book that doesn't hold any great message, doesn't necessarily depict daily struggles of life; a book to escape into. Well... try these, all from the last few years: Don de Lillo's Underworld, Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography, Jason Webster's Duende, Dava Sobel's Longitude or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Trust me!
A selection from the titles still in print. All paperback unless stated differently.The following can be bought online from our bookshop To Kill A Mockingbird £5.99 or £9.99 hardback Catch 22 £7.99 The Things They Carried £7.99 The Cold Six Thousand £7.99 or £16.99 hardback Ten Days That Shook The World £8.99 History of The Russian Revolution £23.50 Revolution and Counter Revolution In Spain £12.95 Liverpool: A City That Dared To Fight £6.95 or £14.95 hardback A Star Called Henry £6.99 Germinal £6.99 Ragged Trousered Philanthropists £9.99 Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude £5.99, Love in the Time of Cholera £6.99, Innocent Erendira £6.99. John Steinbeck: East of Eden £8.99, The Wayward Bus £9.99, Tortilla Flat £7.99, Sweet Thursday £7.99, The Pearl £4.99, The Red Pony £5.99, The Long Valley £8.99, Of Mice and Men £6.99, Cannery Row £7.99. Jack London: The Iron Heel £6.99, Star Rover £8.99, The Cruise of the Snark £9.95, Martin Eden £8.99, John Barleycorn £6.99. Peter Ackroyd's London:The Biography £12.99, Jason Webster's Duende £7.99, Dava Sobel's Longitude £6.99, Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things £7.99. Special offers to readers of the socialist Heart of Spain, Robert Capa's Photographs of the Spanish Civil War. 200 pages of the celebrated photo-journalist's epic pictures with essays by Juan P.Fusi Aizpurua, Richard Whelan and Catherine Coleman and dedications. This nicely bound large-format hardback with great dust cover would make a great present. It is offered to readers at half its original price of £31.50. Send £16.50, plus postage of £4.50. Spain Betrayed, The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. Edited by Radosh,Habeck and Sevostianov. "Presenting a fascinating and original collection of secret Soviet documents that confirm irrefutably the view that Stalin undermined the Spanish Republic for his own purposes". A 535-page hardback at less than half the original price of £27.50. Send £10.50, plus postage of £3.50. Other bargains(Not yet available online unless stated) The Chartist Legacy (Eleven Essays edited by Asa Briggs) paperback was £14.99 now £6 The Peasant War in Germany by Engels. Hardback was £6 now £3.50 Jack London a Life by Alex Kershaw. Paperback was £9 now £4 Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma by AY Badayev. Paperback £5.95 now £3.75 Three Socialist Party books, now only £2.50 each, including postage. £6.50 for all three. (Offer by post only. Available online but not at special offer price) 1. Global Warning: Socialism and the Environment by Martin Cock and Bill Hopwood. 2. Reclaim The Game:10 Seasons of the Premier League Swindle by John Reid. 3. Global Turmoil: Capitalist Crisis-A Socialist Alternative, CWI Resolutions and Documents. Other recommended paperbacksLeon Trotsky on Britain £17.45. USA by John Dos Passos £14.99. World Revolution 1917-1936 by CLR James £22.00. The Portable Karl Marx edited by Eugene Kamenka £9.99. Lenin and the Revolutionary Party by Paul Le Blanc £26.00. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell £3.99. Spartacus by Lewis Grassic Gibbon £6.99. Karl Marx by Francis Wheen £8.99. (Buy online here) Buying by post: POSTAGE please add 10% except where it's indicated that it is included. Get your orders in quickly to avoid the Christmas rush. GIFT WRAPPING All offers or any other titles can be gift-wrapped on request, with a card bearing your message. All for an extra £2.50. We can send direct to your family and friends. Please send clear instructions with your order. Make cheques etc payable to: Socialist Books and send to: PO Box 24697, London, E11 1YD For credit or debit card orders phone 020 8988 8789, fax: 020 8988 8787 email: bookshop@socialistparty.org.uk Online bookshop www.socialistparty.org.uk/books/ Empire DefeatedVietnam War - the lessons for today, by Peter Taaffe 120 pages, price £5.99 paperback. Special offer to readers of the socialist: £4.99+50p postage and packing. Book launch meetings:Socialist Party General Secretary, Peter Taaffe, will be speaking on his new book and signing copies afterwards.
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With the occupation of Iraq has come a heightened interest
in the Vietnam War, not least for socialist readers with the release of Peter
Taaffe's new book. Peter never intended his book to be more than an overview of
the war with a Marxist analysis, something lacking from probably the best
'in-depth' book - Michael Maclear's Vietnam : The Ten Thousand Day War.
In the 1980s, Socialist Party members (at the time
supporters of Militant) led the struggle of Liverpool City council against the
Thatcher government. Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn's Liverpool: A City That
Dared to Fight is an indispensable account of that period and one which every
new member of the Socialist Party should read.