Books I read in 2023

Hi all. It’s been a while. I’ve been very busy recently so hadn’t gotten the time to update this blog.

In any case, this is going over the series of books I managed to complete last year. I’ve read 25 in all, and they probably average around 200 pages or so. I won’t actually review all of them in detail, but I will comment on the ones that have been more grabbing to me.

• The Labour Party’s Political Thought: Third Edition – Geoffrey Foote
• Socialism Betrayed – Roger Keeran, Michael Kenny
• New Labour Policy, Industrial Relations and the Trade Unions – Steve Coulter
• The Lost World of British Communism – Raphael Samuel
• Defeat From The Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock’s Labour Party – Richard Hefferman & Mike Marcusee
• A People’s History of Iraq – Ilario Salucci
• Four Futures – Peter Frase
• The End of Parliamentary Socialism – Leo Panitch & Colin Leys
• State and Revolution – Vladimir Lenin
• Neoliberalism – Damien Cahill & Martijn Konings
• Discourse on Colonialism – Aime Cesaire
• The Right of Nations to Self-Determination – Vladimir Lenin
• Blackshirts & Reds – Michael Parenti
• The Human Rights Manifesto – Julie Wark
• Smashing the Iron Rice Pot: Workers and Unions in China’s Market Socialism – Leung Wing-yue
• Dialectical Method of Marx and Engels – Geo Jomaria
• Washington Bullets – Vijay Prashad
• Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession – Andrew Cockburn, Patrick Cockburn
• China, the USA and Capitalism’s Last Crusade – William Briggs
• BrexLit: The Problem of Englishness in Pre- and Post-Brexit Referendum Literature – Dulcie Everitt
• Introducing Hegel: A Graphic Guide – Lloyd Spencer
• Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain – Owen Hopkins
• Conversations With Allende – Regis Debray

Naturally, Cesaire is most relevant to us who are conscious of current affairs as the frontierism and colonial violence of Europe continues to plague Western Asia. Israel serves as the final frontier of Western colonialism: the final outpost of Western civilisation against ‘savage oriental hordes’ in ‘the Arabs’. The violence we see today is a testament to the violent logic of settler colonialism in the modern age, as well as exposes the cynical calculus of the ‘democratic’ West.