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Recent reading + some rants
Sep. 11th, 2019 06:53 pmA Summer in the Twenties by Peter Dickinson (1981)
My project of reading unread books in my bookcase is going well—this is number 22 this year. From what I remember, I obtained this book because I love Dickinson's YA fantasy books The Blue Hawk and The Ropemaker, and wanted to check out his adult fiction. Most of his adult books are mysteries, though, which is not in general my genre. So I ended up with this one, which is a novel about a young upper-class man in Britain in the 1920's whose father tells him to drive a train as a strike-breaker, so he does. Then he gets to know some working-class people and gets divided loyalties. There's also a love triangle. I really like Dickinson's prose and I did enjoy the book, though I might not keep it in my bookcase. Conclusion: I wish he'd written more YA fantasy.
Perspektiv för en ny vänster by Murray Bookchin (2003)
Essay collection in Swedish translation. I've never read Bookchin before, but my expectations were pretty much met. While broadly agreeing with him (capitalism sucks, we need to make an ecologically stable society with an appropriate level of technology, and we need decentralized and federated decision-making that everyone can be involved in), I also sometimes find him deeply annoying. The writing also reads as slightly clunky to me, but that could be the translation. Maybe I should try one of his other books as well, in the original this time.
Rant #1: I don't really care what name you use for decentralized and federated decision-making (Bookchin calls it both libertarian municipalism and communalism). But I don't see why he needs to spend so much time insisting that his model is something entirely new in the left and it is absolutely not anarchism, which he interprets as an extreme individualism that rejects all social institutions, including majority decision-making. I am pretty sure that is not what most people who have called themselves anarchists throughout history have meant by the term. Very often they have meant, you know, decentralized and federated decision-making. This interpretation leads Bookchin to claim, for example, that the FAI and the CNT in Spain were not actually allies, but were just confused about their goals! Whut. Another example: recently I watched a movie set among anarchist union organizers in Argentina in the early 1900's. At one point, one of them respected the majority decision to stay where they were, even though he believed they would die because of it (which they did). That is hardly someone who rejects majority decision-making. From what I've heard, Bookchin was annoyed by strains of more individualistic anarchists in the US who only use consensus decision-making, etc. But I don't see why he has to back-cast that to the large anarchist movements of the first half of the 20th century.
Rant #2: I am always suspicious when people make sweeping claims that Stone Age societies were egalitarian/hierarchical/misogynistic/matriarchal/whatever. Obviously there are some sweeping claims that are true, such as "they did not have cars", or "global population density was lower". But in general, this is a time period which is hundreds of thousands of years long, with societies living in many different environments. How can you claim that all these societies were egalitarian (or whatever)? More likely some of them were and some of them weren't, and they were or were not so in many different ways depending on time and place. I mean, these were people who were our intellectual equals, brain-wise. Why wouldn't their societies vary as our societies do today? I am not an archaeologist or anthropologist, though, so maybe I'm wrong. But if so, I want to know how you would know that.
Whenever people make sweeping claims like that I take it to be a claim about what they believe human nature to be like, or they do it to support their political ideology. Bookchin is not as guilty of it as some other people, but he does do it. Thus giving me the excuse for this rant.
My project of reading unread books in my bookcase is going well—this is number 22 this year. From what I remember, I obtained this book because I love Dickinson's YA fantasy books The Blue Hawk and The Ropemaker, and wanted to check out his adult fiction. Most of his adult books are mysteries, though, which is not in general my genre. So I ended up with this one, which is a novel about a young upper-class man in Britain in the 1920's whose father tells him to drive a train as a strike-breaker, so he does. Then he gets to know some working-class people and gets divided loyalties. There's also a love triangle. I really like Dickinson's prose and I did enjoy the book, though I might not keep it in my bookcase. Conclusion: I wish he'd written more YA fantasy.
Perspektiv för en ny vänster by Murray Bookchin (2003)
Essay collection in Swedish translation. I've never read Bookchin before, but my expectations were pretty much met. While broadly agreeing with him (capitalism sucks, we need to make an ecologically stable society with an appropriate level of technology, and we need decentralized and federated decision-making that everyone can be involved in), I also sometimes find him deeply annoying. The writing also reads as slightly clunky to me, but that could be the translation. Maybe I should try one of his other books as well, in the original this time.
Rant #1: I don't really care what name you use for decentralized and federated decision-making (Bookchin calls it both libertarian municipalism and communalism). But I don't see why he needs to spend so much time insisting that his model is something entirely new in the left and it is absolutely not anarchism, which he interprets as an extreme individualism that rejects all social institutions, including majority decision-making. I am pretty sure that is not what most people who have called themselves anarchists throughout history have meant by the term. Very often they have meant, you know, decentralized and federated decision-making. This interpretation leads Bookchin to claim, for example, that the FAI and the CNT in Spain were not actually allies, but were just confused about their goals! Whut. Another example: recently I watched a movie set among anarchist union organizers in Argentina in the early 1900's. At one point, one of them respected the majority decision to stay where they were, even though he believed they would die because of it (which they did). That is hardly someone who rejects majority decision-making. From what I've heard, Bookchin was annoyed by strains of more individualistic anarchists in the US who only use consensus decision-making, etc. But I don't see why he has to back-cast that to the large anarchist movements of the first half of the 20th century.
Rant #2: I am always suspicious when people make sweeping claims that Stone Age societies were egalitarian/hierarchical/misogynistic/matriarchal/whatever. Obviously there are some sweeping claims that are true, such as "they did not have cars", or "global population density was lower". But in general, this is a time period which is hundreds of thousands of years long, with societies living in many different environments. How can you claim that all these societies were egalitarian (or whatever)? More likely some of them were and some of them weren't, and they were or were not so in many different ways depending on time and place. I mean, these were people who were our intellectual equals, brain-wise. Why wouldn't their societies vary as our societies do today? I am not an archaeologist or anthropologist, though, so maybe I'm wrong. But if so, I want to know how you would know that.
Whenever people make sweeping claims like that I take it to be a claim about what they believe human nature to be like, or they do it to support their political ideology. Bookchin is not as guilty of it as some other people, but he does do it. Thus giving me the excuse for this rant.
