This list, drawn up by conservatives, of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries has been making the rounds in the blogosphere and I figured I wanted to have some fun with it here at dKos.
First, here is the list (books I've read are in
bold):
They list these as the top ten:
1) The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Frederich Engels
- Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler
- Quotations from Chairman Mao - Mao Zendong
- The Kinsey Report - Alfred Kinsey
- Democracy and Education - John Dewey
6) Das Kapital - Karl Marx
7) The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
8) The Course of Positive Philosophy - Auguste Comte
9) Beyond Good and Evil - Fredrich Nietzsche
10) General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - John Maynard Keynes
Honorable Mentions:
The Population Bomb - Paul Ehrlich
What Is To Be Done - V.I. Lenin
Authoritarian Personality - Theodor Adorno
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill
Beyond Freedom and Dignity - B.F. Skinner
Reflections on Violence- Georges Sorel
The Promise of American Life - Herbert Croly
The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
Madness and Civilization- Michel Foucault
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization - Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Coming of Age in Samoa - Margaret Mead
Unsafe at Any Speed - Ralph Nader
Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
Prison Notebooks - Antonio Gramsci
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon
Introduction to Psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud
The Greening of America - Charles Reich
The Limits to Growth - Club of Rome
Descent of Man - Charles Darwin
How about it kossaks? Which have you read?
Of course, looking at this list, I find it difficult not to comment on the level of idiocy and redundancy present in it.
I mean, really, putting the Manifesto and Mao's Quotations into the top ten but leaving out What is to be Done?? Considering that the real implementations of "communism" or "communist revolution" were all based on Lenin's argument on how to bring about the revolution in What is to be Done? including the U.S.S.R., China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc., this suggests clearly to me that the conservatives on the panel haven't actually read or understood these books.
Hell, all you have to do is compare the Manifesto and Kapital to What is to be Done? and you'll see rather clearly that almost all of the evil done in Marx's name was actually Lenin's idea.
Also, including The Feminine Mystique in the top ten, but not the book that inspired it and that essentially inspired the whole second wave--that is, of course, The Second Sex is asinine. The Second Sex was a far more radical work with far more dangerous implications for the status quo. Hell, for that matter, why not include possibly the single most radical feminist work ever written? Especially since it ties in nicely with the Marx obsession? Of course I'm referring to The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. Given that she used historical materialism as her premise to create a dialectic analysis of gender in a parallel to Marx's use of it to examine class, you would think that they might have focused on that one as well?
Another thing, I'm stunned at the inclusion of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. It is hardly as if they have been as widely read, even on the left, hell even among leftist radicals that they should inherently make the list! I'm surprised the commentors even knew about it. Okay, well, not really. Actually I think this sort of confirms my belief that the radical right in the U.S. really did steal Gramsci's idea of a War of Position (aka War of Ideology) for their own ends.
Humorously, they also included Beyond Good and Evil a.k.a neo-con philosophy 101. Hell, the neo-con's haven't even bothered to hide their acceptance of will to power as the driving force of their movement.
Finally, the inclusion of Keynes seminal work on this list betrays a level of idiocy that is scarcely believable. It is simply ideology war without substance because no matter what people spout, when it comes down to it everyone is still a Keynesian. Not to mention that no serious economist would question Keynes importance for macro-economic theory, much of which is still used today.
So then, kossaks, what have you read and what do you think?