Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings

Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings

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In the uprisings of the Arab world, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the European revolutions of 1848. In both cases, the object was to overthrow despotic regimes maintained by the great powers—regimes designed to impose the will of financial oligarchies. Both events occurred after what was commonly thought to be the end of a revolutionary epoch: in 1815, the final defeat of Napoleon; and in 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union. But the revolutions of 1848 proclaimed for a century and a half the return of revolutionary thought and action. Likewise, the uprisings underway today herald a worldwide resurgence in the liberating force of the masses—despite the attempts of the ‘international community’ to neutralize its power.

Badiou’s book salutes this reawakening of history, weaving examples from the Arab Spring and elsewhere into a global analysis of the return of emancipatory universalism.

Minutes of the Congress of the Peoples of the East Baku (September 1920)

"The Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku in September, 1920 holds a special place in the history of the Communist movement. It was the first attempt to appeal to the exploited and oppressed peoples in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to carry forward their revolutionary struggles under the banner of Marxism and with the support of the workers in Russia and the advanced countries of the world." 

--Tom Kemp, Forward to the Congress of the Peoples of the East-Baku (1920)

Available in marxists.org 

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Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction

Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction

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Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. He sees him as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist. In plain English, he explains alienation, historical materialism, the economic theory of Capital, and Marx's ideas of communism, and concludes with an assessment of Marx's legacy.

The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition

The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition
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This revised and enlarged edition of the leading anthology provides the essential writings of Marx and Engels'€”those works necessary for an introduction to Marxist thought and ideology.
Features Selections from the Grundrisse, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Alienation and Social Classes, Theses on Feuerbach, The Civil War in France, On Imperialism in India, On Social Relations in Russia, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, and much more.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Theory of Revolution

Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Theory of Revolution
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In this important and wide-ranging critique of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) Raya Dunayevskaya examines the life, political thought, and action of one of the most critical revolutionary figures of our time. Dunayevskaya sheds new light on the questions of socialist democracy after the revolution, disclosing both the unprobed feminist dimension of Rosa Luxemburg and the previously unrecognized new moments in Marx’s last decade concerning the role of women and the peasantry. As the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States, Dunayevskaya (1910-87) was an internationally respected writer, philosopher, and revolutionary. This new and expanded edition includes two previously unpublished articles by Dunayevskaya, including her “Challenge to all Post-Marx Marxists.”
More Dunayevskaya:

From Philosophy and Revolution - Chapter 3: The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic Ambivalence of Lenin
From Philosophy and Revolution - Chapter 6: Jean-Paul Sartre, Outsider Looking In (A brilliant rebuttal denouncing Sartre’s attempt to reconcile Existentialism with Marxism)

Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht

Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht

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A collection of Benjamin's writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor, Bertolt Brecht. It includes his analyses of Brecht's "epic theatre", an essay called "The Author as Producer" and diary extracts that recount their conversations on aesthetics and politics. 

Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009)

Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009)

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From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.Billions of dollars have been hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis? In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

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Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness.  This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was sixty years ago, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come. 

Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital

Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital

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Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism

Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism

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Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness

Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness

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Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Communism

Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Communism

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Felix Dzerzhinsky: A Biography

Felix Dzerzhinsky: A Biography

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V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution

V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution
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Definitely read his review on Jacobin Magazine before reading this!
Excellent Marxist critique of postcolonial theory and the Subaltern Studies!
In addition, read Chibber’s marvelous essay “On The Decline Of Class Analysis In South Asian Studies”
In addition, read Terry Eagleton’s outstanding critique of Spivak’s ‘post-colonial reason’ here.

A provocative intellectual assault on the Subalternists’ foundational work.
Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment.
In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber shows that its foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. He demonstrates that it is possible to affirm a universalizing theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism.
Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a historical milestone in contemporary social theory.

Review

“With its focus on cultural identities and mixtures, postcolonial theory ignored the larger context of capitalist relations and thus limited its scope to Western academia where it excelled in the game of growing and profiting from the liberal guilt feeling. Chibber’s book simply sets the record straight, bringing postcolonialism down from cultural heights to where it belongs, into the very heart of global capitalist processes. The book we were all waiting for, a burst of fresh air dispelling the stale aroma of pseudo-radical academic establishment.” (Slavoj Žižek) “In this scrupulous and perceptive analysis, Vivek Chibber successfully shows that the ‘universalizing categories of Enlightenment thought’ emerge unscathed from the criticisms of postcolonial theorists. He shows further that—perhaps ironically—Subaltern Studies greatly underestimates the role of subaltern agency in bringing about the transformations that they attribute to the European bourgeoisie. Chibber’s analysis also provides a very valuable account of the actual historical sociology of modern European development, of Indian peasant mobilization and activism, and much else. It is a very significant contribution.” (Noam Chomsky )
“In this outstanding work—a model of clarity in its architecture and argumentation—key theorists of the ‘Subaltern’ and of postcoloniality have met their most formidable interlocutor and critic yet. Chibber’s critique of postcolonial theory and the historical sociological studies associated with it is, at the same time, a vigorous and welcome defense of the enduring value of certain Enlightenment universals as an analytical framework to both understand and radically change the world we live in” (Achin Vanaik )
“Vivek Chibber has written a stunning critique of postcolonial theory as represented by the Subaltern Studies school. While eschewing all polemics, he shows that their project is undermined by their paradoxical acceptance of an essentially liberal-Whig interpretation of the bourgeois revolutions and capitalist development in the West, which provides the foundation for their fundamental assertion of the difference of the East. Through a series of painstaking empirical and conceptual studies Chibber proceeds to overturn the central pillars of the Subalternists’ framework, while sustaining the credibility of Enlightenment theories. It is a bravura performance that cannot help but shake up our intellectual and political landscape.” (Robert Brenner )
“Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital is a must-read book for students of comparative politics and social theory. Vivek Chibber presents a forceful challenge to the Subaltern Studies school and to postcolonial theory more broadly. Arguing with great clarity, Chibber raises fundamental objections to their ideas about capitalism, power, and agency, and presents an alternative account of these ideas. Most fundamentally, he rejects the fundamental division between ‘East and West’ associated with postcolonial theory and defends the ‘universalizing categories of Enlightenment thought.’ This is a major contribution that is bound to reshape debate on these important issues.” (Joshua Cohen )
“In this book, Vivek Chibber has carried out a thoroughgoing dissection of Subaltern Studies. Like a highly skilled anatomist, he lays bare the skeleton, the nervous system, the arteries and veins of this school … In the process the reader is also exposed to the nitty-gritty of a materialist historiography.” (Amiya Kumar Bagchi )

About the Author

Vivek Chibber is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University. He has contributed to, among others, the Socialist Register, American Journal of Sociology, Boston Review and New Left Review. His book Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India won the 2005 Barrington Moore Book Award and was one of Choice‘s Outstanding Academic Titles of 2004.

Ultimate ‘Reading Capital’ Post
Reading Capital by Louis Althusser:

Read Online // Download PDF // Download Kindle pack

Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver:

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Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One by Fredric Jameson:

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Companion to Marx’s Capital by David Harvey:

Download PDF // Video Lectures // For Kindle (.mobi)

Marx’s Capital, Philosophy and Political Economy by Geoff Pilling:

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“To understand Capital, and therefore its first volume, it is necessary to take up ‘proletarian class positions’, i.e. to adopt the only viewpoint which makes visible the reality of the exploitation of wage labour power, which constitutes the whole of capitalism.
This is, proportionately speaking, on condition that they struggle against the influence of the burden of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology that they carry, relatively easy for workers. As ‘by nature’ they have a ‘class instinct’ formed by the harsh school of daily exploitation, all they need is a supplementary political and theoretical education in order to understand objectively what they feel subjectively, instinctively. Capital gives them this supplementary theoretical education in the form of objective explanations and proofs, which helps them to move from a proletarian class instinct to an (objective) proletarian class position.” (L. A.) (x)

Introduction to this blog

Ebookcollective was a tumblr blog that was designated to distribute free leftist-related ebooks to educate the left in regards to theory. In many cases, the blog ended up helping lower-middle class students, who couldn't afford to buy these books or were afraid of possible malware or viruses when trying to find the book. It was also an intellectual center, a center where people learned about theory and were introduced with books that might enlighten them. Overall, it was a collective area and an example of socialist theory in work. Yes, it might be the internet, but the website was an example of socialism in work—with the end of privatization of leftist literature and a path towards creating class-conscious workers. With the fact that the capitalist atmosphere dominates the Tumblr site and the corporate minds behind the staff, it was deleted for “copyright infringement”, even though most of the published texts were hundred years old (which allows the text to be distributed publicly).

Tumblr staff has a record of not responding to the harassment tumblr users received on a regular basis, but quickly responds to the interest of the corporate welfare or for the bourgeoisie’s interest. It’s logically simple because of their interest in capitalist accumulation.

Even if the founders of the blog were Leninists (Trotskyists), all ebooks—whether it be anarchist to Maoist were allowed. As the blog expanded, other leftists—who were Maoists, anarchists, etc., contributed to the blog. Even if we disagreed vastly with the theories, it was a collective site where people were given the option to uphold whatever they pleased.

But if the founders were Trotskyists, why would they give permission to uphold ebooks that were against the Leninist foundations? It’s not like the founders necessarily agreed with the theories, but rather they remembered what Lenin said in <i>What is to be Done?</i>, “Without any revolutionary theory, there cannot be any revolutionary practice”. Even as Bolshevik-Leninists, we must be enlightened and be well-versed in all theories, so that we can prove continuously for its erroneous mistakes—like what Marx, Engles, Lenin and Trotsky did. Lenin said famously in <em>The Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism</em>, “The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true”. Of course it is! However, as Marxists, we must prove that it is true, and why it is true with dialectical materialist analysis. We can’t arrogantly say that it is true without backing up with a materialist analysis. We wouldn’t be even considered Marxists, but a petty-bourgeois leftist who blabbers more than reads!

We want to create an anti-capitalist atmosphere by giving access to workers free ebooks. In reality, people can’t really afford to buy Das Kapital from their local bookstore or end up receiving a fine from the library for an overdue Das Kapital! We must understand that the bourgeoisie has privatized education as such that it’s only accessible for the bourgeoisie, which leaves the proletariat ignorant, hence adapting the philistine culture of capitalism. Not all workers were born with Engels’ Principles of Communism attached to their backs! Class-consciousness is not something tangible, where it can be inserted in one’s brain, but it’s a self-identity the proletariat must find—reading being one of the options.

This blog is not to create a reflection of the successful attempt to create a centralized location of leftist literature, but to further expand our blog. As of now, there is an Ebookcollective in Farsi and in Bengali—thanks to our Persian and Bengali comrades. By, allowing comrades to participate and contribute, regardless of the theory, is a step forward to a socialist revolution and democratic centralism in praxis.

As for many, Ebookcollective was an attempt in universaling free leftist literature—but don’t give up on the site yet! There are and will be several attempts in creating the new one. As of now, we have moved to blogspot, where we expect not to violate any bourgeois perspective of copyright infringement.

The neoliberal cult that has actively suppressed numerous of sites that have been dedicated to distributing media exemplifies the contradictions of capitalism. Of course, we Marxists are well-versed with the concept of M-C-M’ and how it is being applied to the printing/publishing press; we understand the whole vulgar concept that ‘the authors are workers—rather being mental workers than physical’. But then we must realize that authors are being extracted surplus value for the capitalists to accumulate capital. One of the absurdities of capitalism include the fact that not paying for the commodity (books) but rather than ‘stealing it online’ is a violation. What people neglect is that the writers are being paid less not because it’s free online, but the corporate profit over the surplus value produced in writing it. With the bourgeois democracy in taken, illegitimate laws are formed to defend the corporate—creating the allusion that it’s the author’s rights.

Nevertheless, our struggle to create a centralized location for leftist literature will continue and it will be always on the proletariat side!

If you are interested in contributing to the blog, please email us at <a href="mailto:ebookcollective@gmail.com">ebookcollective@gmail.com</a> as of now. We will soon find an option for open submission. Thank you.