I've just started Lin Yutang's translation of the Tao Te Ching. I downloaded a pdf version from the web. After each verse, he includes relevant verses from the Chuang Tzu, also known as the Zhuangzi. So far, it's been really interesting and helpful. The version of this translation included on the Terrebess website (ttps://terebess.hu/english/tao/yutang.html) does not include the Chuang Tzu verses.

After each verse, he includes relevant verses from the Chuang Tzu, also known as the Zhuangzi. So far, it's been really interesting and helpful. — T Clark

Wow! It sounds so interesting indeed. Tao Te Ching needs good interpretations so if you found good notes it can help to understand it better!

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More Japanese works:

Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫)
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成)
A Shameful Life: (Ningen Shikkaku) by Osamu Dazai (太宰 治)

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Just finished. A powerful book. In the last chapter, I forgot that I was reading for a time, I was so engrossed in the story.

It's an astonishing work.

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Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin

A small goldmine here for any inclined to mine.

http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/

Interesting. Thanks.

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber
by Anthony Giddens

The Mantle of Kendis-Dai (Starshield #1)
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Democracy for the Few, Michael Parenti
North, Céline

Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory by Enzo Traverso

!! I just picked up his new book on revolutions the other day.

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly

HTML and CSS. Ninth edition. Joe Casabona.

sounds good lemme know your thoughts — Maw

Finished both! So, the Mielants was not bad. Its big draw is that it's comparative across very different societies - Europe, China, India, and North Africa. Enormous undertaking, especially when packed into <180 pages. Essentially, it looks their various developmental paths in order to try and figure out why it was only in Europe that capitalism developed. His basic line is that it was only in Europe that merchants were able to gain access to state power, whereas in the other regions, the state managed to retain an autonomy from capital which prevented its proliferation. So he's (rightly) critical of the idea that the spread of markets naturally correlated with the rise of capitalism (like Wood), and he notes that it was a specifically political transformation. On the other hand, he's much more generous in locating the proliferation of capitalism in the late middle ages (~1500 or so), which is alot earlier than most commentators. The best parts of the book were his examinations of the non-European regions, especially North Africa, which I honestly have never given too much thought to. But his thesis about merchants and state-power is a bit broad-brush to me, and doesn't seem to pay enough attention to differentation of developmental paths within Europe itself.

Which, incidentally, is why I loved the Mooers book. If you've read both Davidson's How Revolutionary? and Wood's Origin, Mooers is like the perfect in-between and follow-up. Like Meilants, it's also comparative history, but intra-European: France, Germany, and England. And Mooers does this incredible juggling act where he tracks the interests of all sorts of actors within these states - peasants, bourgeoise, nobility, crown, wage-labour, bureaucracies, the state itself as an autonomous actor - and shows how they converge and diverge at various points, and give rise to different historical outcomes. Like Davidson, the subject of the book are the 'bourgeois revolutions' and their role in bringing capitalism about. Unlike Mielants, who basically pays zero attention to revolution, Mooers shows just how necessary the revolutions were in advancing the causes of capitalism, and equally as interestingly, shows how such revolutions can take place in different forms. I wish I had read this before I'd read Davidson, because it's just alot more compact and tight, and easier to track the stakes of the debates being discussed. Davidson was a bit sprawling, and because he juggles so many balls, there were times I didn't follow the significance of certain debates. After having read this I feel like I need to go back to Davidson at some point because I think I have a much firmer grasp on alot of the issues, especially the European ones. Helps that Mooers is also a Marxist, and again unlike Meilants, also engages (critically) with alot of the literature in that tradition. My biggest gripe is that I wish it had a chapter on Holland.

If you can, let me know how you find the Traverso book.

---

Anyway! Next up, and continuing the theme:

Henry Heller - The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective
Henry Heller - The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815
Henry Heller - The French Revolution and Historical Materialism: Selected Essays
Jean-Pierre Vernant - The Origins of Greek Thought

The Quintessence of Socialism
by Albert Schäffle

Collectivism at its finest......

If you can, let me know how you find the Traverso book — StreetlightX

I'm a bit mixed on it. The thesis wasn't as compact as, say, Dienstag's Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit; it bounces around a lot between history of left-wing political defeat, memory, the relationship, both personal and philosophical, between particular Western Marxists, imagery (movies, art), Bohemianism. And I would say that at least 25% of the material was very thinly connected to melancholia. Otherwise, some of the material was certainly interesting, but I was left wanted a lot more.

The Mooers book sounds great, I'll add it to my Verso cart.

The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
by David Graeber, David Wengrow

Just arrived - a nice set, although I wish it didn't have the Apple Tv logo on the covers. It's been forty years since I read the original trilogy. Really looking forward to this.....

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Joyce's Book of the Dark : Finnegans Wake
John Bishop

Strong start so far, different emphasis than my other books on FW.

James Joyce
Richard Ellman

'Read' it many years ago when too young (too much a Stephen then, not enough of a Poldy). Excellent and helpful for understanding the works.

March readings

• White Debt, Thomas Hardin
• A Paradise Built on Hell, Rebecca Solnit
• Ignorance and Imagination, Daniel Stoljar
• Europe and the People Without History,
Eric Wolf

Finished Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin. Continuing my voyage through feminist literature with The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf.

Just arrived - a nice set, although I wish it didn't have the Apple Tv logo on the covers. It's been forty years since I read the original trilogy. — Pantagruel

Like you, I've only read the original three books, but for me it was about 55 years ago. They meant a lot to me. I think the realization that there could be really, really big ideas was what fascinated me.

Yes, I'm getting a lot more from the books now, a lot of deep thoughts in there. My current reading focuses heavily on the social determinants of human thought, very much in tune with "psychohistory."

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone