nb_leftist's reviews
371 reviews

Wages for Students by

hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

I picked this up from an anarchist bookstore in Buffalo, NY called Burning Books. I’d never heard of anything like this and I was thinking more and more about students’ situation in college and university, how we always getting fucked up, how a lot of students only go to college to get the degree (so they can then work a better job). Found this and wasn’t particularly on my (reading) shortlist but here we are.

It brought a lot of points I’d never thought about before. I’d already had thoughts ab education being a disciplining apparatus from “Discipline and Punish” by Foucault and some other anti-Ed stuff I’ve read, but none had a real political way forward. A lack of direction led me to disconnecting it from my material circumstances and mostly forgetting about it. This pamphlet put it together for me, students should get wages (whether through the form of paychecks or through financial aid/subsistence checks). It also provides a good history of the movement behind this, how the Wages for Students movement was a counterpart/inspired by the Wages for Housework movement, which I already find to be compelling.

The pamphlet includes an introduction, the pamphlet itself from 1975, and an interview with Silvia Federici and some other involved with the Wages for Housework and/or Wages for Students movements from 2013. It’s def worth a read and does a good job of situating the pamphlet from 1975 in our current time, which has only gotten worse since 2013.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Another one I’ve had on my list for a while (years) and finally decided to pick it up. There’s something about books that look big that scare me. Anyways, this books crazy good. The info’s horrifying and I wish I’d read it sooner cause I just wrote an essay on punitive justice in film. I highly recommend it as an intro text.

Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

I thought it was going to focus more on the philosophy and what parts of enlightenment philosophy the pirates and indigenous peoples of Madagascar practiced, instead it focused more on providing examples of how these groups were part of the development of enlightenment thinking. It was still interesting but not particularly what I was expecting.

Anarchism: Arguments For and Against by Albert Meltzer

hopeful informative fast-paced

3.5

Lots of broad information, reads quick, and isn’t too complicated. Some of the language and references at the beginning are a little confusing for someone without prior knowledge but I’d rec it to someone who is interested in a broad intro to anarchism.

Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging by Jodi Dean

informative reflective medium-paced

0.25

I hated this book. It is genuinely cult shit. Tf you mean comrades are “fungible”. Tf you mean comrades would rather die than lose their status as comrades. Genuinely can’t see how this doesn’t raise any red flags.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Masterpiece. I’m so glad I finally picked this one up. I’ve had it for a while but was scared to have to read through chapters topping 60 pages long. Funnily enough, I couldn’t put it down. The translator does a good job as describing Wretched of the Earth as “a man dictating his text with the knowledge that he has little time left to live and desperate to put his thoughts, every single one of them, down on paper.”

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

Anzaldúa writes everything like it’s poetry. Glad I finally picked this one up.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely worth reading. It’s an introduction so don’t be expecting the most “theoretically heavy” stuff, but it brings so much to think about. My favorite is the one by Leah Lakshmi and the one “Love means never needing to say… anything”

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.25

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

One of the foundational texts of anarchist communism or anarcho-communism. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a required read, much better contemporary stuff but if you wanna see the genealogy of it, it’s worth checking out. 

A lot of what he writes about relies on prometheanism, an ideology which prioritizes human needs over that of the ecosystem or other life. I’m not a fan of that but it was a prevailing idea at the time so it’s not necessarily something I can fault him for. On a more positive note, his observations on capitalism’s necessity for poverty and the resulting globalism (which he calls decentralization of production) are really cool to see. To counter globalism, he calls for higher amounts of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and—interestingly enough—urban agriculture. A lot of what Grace Lee Boggs calls for in “The Next American Revolution” is very similar and it’s cool to see that connection.

Getto Warszawskie by Anka Grupińska

informative sad fast-paced

2.0

I wish there was more here. I knew it was mostly photographs of the ghetto and the uprising, but I wish there was more info on how it happened, how they moved, etc. The photograph selection is good though, I might do a piece comparing these photos with the videos we are seeing from occupied Palestine.