The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Rather than a novel, this reads like a long notebook of anecdotes lumped together. There are different parts of the author's life that are explored. She is communist during the time of the red scare. That provides a big part of her identity. However, she is losing faith in it. The bad actions of people like Stalin as well as some of the drivel that gets published have caused issues. She also explores her sex life. There seems to be many cases of having affairs with sexually frustrated married men. What is the place of women in the world and. how can she live an appropriately fulfilling life? The life of a novelist ties much of this together. Her novel explores areas that are verboten. Her status as a communist also makes it challenging. The book goes on and on and seems to repeat the same things told from a somewhat different angle.

The Important Trial of Thomas Spence

The Important Trial of Thomas Spence by Thomas Spence

Thomas Spence was tried and convicted for publishing "revolutionary" texts. Today, we would hardly bat an eye at most of his concepts. He supported divorce (as a way in making marriage better.) He also advocated land reform. He would have local government units own the land. The revenue of the units would be from the rent paid by those who worked the land. The book includes his complete constitution. It included a form of representation as well as speech protection and law enforcement. His radical texts were too much for 200 years ago. Today, the work can be found on Marxist web sites. Conditions have changed today. However, if you consider the rents to be "property tax", it is not too far from what we have today. (Though without restrictions on multiple ownership.)

Escape from Earth

Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket by Fraser MacDonald

Frank Malina was integral to research in rocketry. He also sympathized with the communists. This lead to all sorts of problems, including his contributions being overlooked. The book covers the work in the Jet Propulsion Lab, founding of Aerojet and the red scare McCarthyism. Many of the researchers were blacklisted due to perceived association with the communists. There was also a Chinese researcher who was caught in a weird state of limbo, being chased out, but not permitted to leave. The first part of the book focuses on the "boys club" of rocket research in Pasadena, while the second part is more tied to the communist hunt. It is also interesting to read about how the author stumbled on to this topic after finding an area that was forbidden from entry. 

The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz

Frantz Fanon was a black, Marxist, French West Indian psychiatrist who became involved with the freedom movements in Algeria. He wrote some influential books, notable  Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. He explored the poor position of the dark-skinned and colonized. Both the colonized and the colonizers contributed to the negative worldview of lower-class citizens of the colony. He at first adopted a "universal French" worldview, but later shifted to side more strongly with the oppressed. He became involved with the independence movement in Algeria, despite being an outsider. He passed away at a long age while trying to get leukemia treatment in America.  (There was suspicion of mistreatment. However, the CIA had wanted to support him as an allie, so it could have been plain old bureaucracy.) 

The book adopts a distant tone. It feels the author has respect for him, but is looking at him as a figure from a great distance. It feels that too much time is spent discussing his works, and not enough is spent on his life.

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is a really long book. Over 60 hours of audiobook. Luckily, you can listen at 3 times speed. Still, it is long.

The book takes place primarily in an industrialized, fictionalized version of the United States. There are a large number of companies competing against each other in various industries. Some companies have faltered, while others have grown. The "losers" have worked with the government to help protect their interests. Regulations and cartels are meant to prevent some companies from getting too big and ensuring that everyone has equal opportunity. There are even some individual factories that attempt pure "communism", with everyone getting paid what they need. Alas, this regulation just makes things worse. Companies find it is easier to get cozy with regulators than to provide viable goods and services. Colorado proves to be the exception, with businesses flocking there. However, the regulators put an end to that with taxes and regulation. Eventually, regulation gets out of hand, with companies "frozen" at their current levels and guaranteeing everyone jobs. There is little incentive to work. The only real responsibility people have is ensuring that they can't be blamed if something bad happens. The country is falling apart.

The heroes of the book are industrial magnates. Dagny Taggart knows how to run a railroad. Henry Reardon has created stronger, lighter steel alloy. Neither try to curry favor with politicians and are greatly persecuted. There are many others. Through the first two "books" of this book, characters often ask "Who is John Galt?" In the third book, we finally meet him.

The first two books present an indictment of the lazy "rent seekers" People that innovate and work hard help to improve the world. There are many lower-level employees that do the best they can at their jobs. There are also many others that are just collecting a paycheck. At the top, there are plenty of company leaders that do all they can to avoid blame rather than make difficult decisions. Communism in deed (if not name) is condemned due to the corruption it engenders. Sure, there are parts that sound good. However, in practice, it is a system that is easily manipulated by corrupt rulers. Corruption brings down almost all of society.  A leftist reading of the book could easily read this as an example of a failed implementation of a system. (You could even argue it is a failure of fascism, as the "oligarchs" of industry are in cahoots with the government.) The "corrupt" bureaucrats are very similar to what we often see in society today. Seattle Public Schools seems to be the perfect epitome of the corruption in the book. The leadership does a great job of "saying nothing". There never seems to be somebody that takes responsibility for anything challenging. If things do get difficult, they just through out the word "equity" to try to bring down any opposing argument.

In the third book, we are introduced to John Galt's mountain utopia. Here all of the most creative leaders are living in peace and harmony. They can be greedy, yet still willing to do menial jobs to build up their local community. The titans of industry decamp to the wilderness to become hippies. 

The book then proceeds to really go off the deep end. Everything is falling apart in society. However, the government does manage to build a highly destructive "Sound bomb." (This will eventually destroy the one railway bridge across the Mississippi.) The South American governments attempt to nationalize a copper mining multinational. However, right before the takeover is announced, all the mines and equipment are destroyed and all money is gone from all accounts. (But not until after all workers have been paid.) Things are looking really bad. To reassure the population a big speech is announced. However, right before the speech is to take place, John Galt takes over the airwaves and gives a three hour speech on the Ayn Rand's objectivism philosophy and the "leader strike". (This actually lasts three hours in the regular speed audiobook!) The speech blathers on and on and on. After the speech, the nation further falls apart. The government tries to track down Galt and get him to "fix" the economy. His suggestion is to back off. They won't do that. The nation further disintegrates. Galt's friends stage a commando raid to rescue him and go off to their Utopia.

Atlas Shrugged has some good ideas. It also has a lot of long-winded nonsense. Rand's philosophy seems to be taken up by libertarian leaders of industry. Yet John Galt spends most of his time as a regular laborer. He works hard at what he does, and doesn't aspire for more. Like in the Fountainhead, Rand shows respect for people that are willing to put their entire mind and effort into manual labor. The industry leaders that focus on providing a valuable service for people and the economy are also respected. The "greedy" bureaucrats that merely want to maximize profitability are pilorried.

 The philosophy from the characters can be summed up as: "Work hard. Be true to yourself. Do what you feel is best. Don't try to dictate what other people should do." As part of this, you should seek out more knowledge to better understand what is best and be willing to change. Just because everyone else thinks it is right does not mean it is so. The book is very critical of both big companies and big government. Both are a drain on the economy when they focus on bureaucracy and status quo rather than societal improvements. Rand also has an interesting take on morality and religion. Characters engage in multiple marriages and affairs. Many will retain a marriage while knowing an affair is happening. Others use it as a means to stop. Religion seems to be a non-entity in her works. Both morality and religion are 'non-entities' in a world where people are focussing on their own personal gain. 

Take out the third book and the philosophy that is indirectly expressed is fairly convincing. There is a strong condemnations of those that "mooch" on others. People can fall into systems because they expect to receive excess benefit. However, they don't realize that they could also be the one sacrificing their excess. The third book tries to drill home this and many other points. It reaches too far and adds too much to be believable. The in your face philosophising brings it down even further. The novel that starts out with a bunch of autistic industrial leaders ends with unbelievable superheroes living happily ever after. 

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System - Revised and Updated

Stuffed and Starved is foremost an activist book that seeks to improve the condition of the participants in the global food chain. The food chain has a large number of producers and large number of consumers. However, the bottleneck is the small number of big companies in the middle. Food processing and food retailing are dominated by a few very large companies. Often most of the money spent on food goes to these middlemen. These companies have also helped to encourage monoculture in the name of efficiency.

The author spends a significant amount of time detailing the suicide epidemic among farmers. They are stuck in a spiral of debt to increase yield. This can be followed by a quest for even more production even as prices decline. He also covers small scale "communes" that seek to have more control of the system itself. He advocates a food system where there is more local production and more of the money goes back to the farmers. However, he does give acknowledgement to the challenges. Many of the poorest consumers are living in food desserts where there are few options for quality food. What remains is usually the most shelf-stable, calorie-dense junk food. They would like to have more food options.

Globalization has also played a role in the food industry. After World War II, the United States fed much of the world. The country provided "food aid" dominated by the primary agricultural products (soybeans, corn and wheat.) This encouraged these people to adopt the cheap American staples (such as bread) over local foods. As food aid dropped, there was still demand for the American foods. In Mexico, the US won on price. The subsidized factory-farmed corn was much cheaper to produce than the small scale corn production in Mexico. This hurt the local farmers, even while the cost of tortillas did not significantly fall for most consumers. 

Agriculture giants also provide seed, fertilizer and pesticides. Genetically engineered crops have built in resistance to pesticides or pests. However, they are also costly and must be purchased yearly. The companies encourage the use of their products rather than focusing on soil fertility. This may provide short term gains, but also creates a dependence with some long-term negative impacts.

Farm workers are also some of the lowest paid workers. Most of the major fruit and vegetable crops in the US are picked by low wage migrant workers. However, the crops go through multiple layers of middlemen before they make it to consumers. More direct farm to consumer produce can help, but it is challenging. The author proposes activism and high wages for all. But will it scale? Are people ready to pay more for a more diverse, yet limited supply of food?

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

Slavoj Žižek explores the "current events" of 2011 from the Marxist perspective. He has ample criticism and compliments for all sides. There were some protests that were just violence without any particular result desired. Some had concrete goals in mind, but were just advocating changes within the current capitalistic system. He would like to see a full on quest for communism. However, even here he has concerns. Marx was very much a student of the industrial age and thus is very biased towards that way of development. That age is long since passed. A new arising of communism will be different. There may be things that look frivolous today, but in the future will be key events that lead to the new world order. 

He focuses on events such as the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring and brings in other less well known uprisings. The discussion is layered with pop culture and literature. He praises "timeless" creations that still work in new places and time (such as Romeo and Juliet set in modern Venice Beach.) He manages to tie Ayn Rand and Lion King together. The circle of life is great if you are a lion. There are a lot of interesting ideas in the book. There are some significant structural problems with our capitalistic society today. The past attempts at communism have also had their shortcomings. Would the dialectic lead us to something totally different?

Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor

In Operation Snow, John Kostner postulates that Harry Dexter White was a Soviet sympathizer that used his influence in FDR's cabinet to trigger Pearl Harbor and the US entry into World War II. The book presents a riveting history of the lead up to Pearl Harbor and the final Allied victory and partitioning of Germany. He tries to read a conspiracy among communist "fellow travelers" to steer the US involvement in a way that will most benefit the Soviets. However, his narrative describes a number of strong personalities with different personal motives. White may or may not have been a communist mole. However, he alone could not have led the US to enter the war via Pearl Harbor. There were a number of other people that actively desired US entry into the war. They would sit on key bits of intelligence, while trying to steer foreign policy in a certain direction. There were also a number of players that simply did not understand the culture and politics of other countries and were expecting different outcomes.
The author also had a fairly pro-Japanese viewpoint. Japan had just wanted peace with Europe. They were originally set to meet with Germany and England. However, the minister thought Germany was sufficient, and thus ended up with the Axis. Japan was "forced" to bomb Pearl Harbor due to the very strict demands the American's were placing on them as part of negotiations. The author also believes the Japanese destruction in Nanking was just that of a few enlisted men taking undue advantage of the spoils of war and that the Chinese overstated things for their own benefit.
To the author's credit, he does present a fairly detailed account of the facts, even if they do contradict his primary thesis. The book is well written, even if it doesn't help win the reader over to the author's point of view.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

North Korea really is in its own little world. It is surrounded by two booming economies, yet it lives on as a totalitarian Stalinist police state. Wrongs against the state are punished to the third generation. Thus we get the experiences of people that are born in prison camps. Despite never having committed a wrong, they live their entire lives in a camp. Their parents may also have been innocent, with their only crime being having a relative that did something offensive to the state.

Shin Dong-hyuk grew up in one of these camps. His parents were allowed the privilege of marrying and having a child. He did not know anything outside of the camp. He witnessed the execution of his mother and brother. He barely knew what life was like outside of the camp. Hearing tales of meat and good food from a fellow prisoner whetted his appetite for escape. (Life in North Korea was glamorous compared to what he knew in the camp.) When he befriended another prisoner who had lived in China, they plotted an escape. Alas, his friend was killed on the electric fence, but he made it out alive. He wandered around North Korea for a while until he escaped into China, and then with the help of a journalist he ran into made it to the South Korean embassy and into South Korea and then the United States. Once he made it to South Korea, he became part of a support network of people that have been eager to help him (and use him to further the anti-North Korea cause.) He has had trouble adapting to the new life and reconciling his past behavior.

Escape from Camp 14 was told by the escapee through an American writer. Due to the dearth of information available about North Korea, it is very difficult to verify much of the story. (However, the author states that some google map imagery meshes with the locations in the story.) The story does seem convincing enough. It is eye-opening to realize that the concentration camps and their de-humanizing conditions still exist.