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Modern History and Revolution
CHINA, JAPAN, THIRD WORLD
Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution
[1938]
Superb account of the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927 and its betrayal by
the Stalinist Comintern.
Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949
[1967]
A good general overview.
Simon Leys, The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution
[1971]
By far the best book about the so-called “Cultural Revolution.”
Leys has written several other books on China. All are good.
Some are
translated, some are available only in French.
[Situationist
article on the Chinese Cultural Revolution]
Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven
[1972]
A lively first-hand account of the Cultural Revolution by a young
participant.
70s (ed.), The Revolution Is Dead, Long Live the Revolution!
[1976]
A collection of
articles about the Cultural Revolution from diverse radical viewpoints, edited
by a Hong Kong anarchist group. See A Radical Group in Hong
Kong for critiques of some of the articles.
* * *
Jon Livingston et al. (ed.), Imperial Japan: 1800–1945; Postwar Japan
[1973]
Two-volume documentary history of modern Japan.
Edwin Reischauer, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity
[1988]
A general examination of modern Japanese culture and society.
* * *
Most of the books I’ve read on Third World struggles were marred by
the Maoist or Guevarist types of Stalinist nationalism that were prevalent until
recent years. The following are among the few exceptions.
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
[1938]
A comprehensive history of the only slave rebellion in history that succeeded
— that of the Haitian blacks during the French Revolution.
Some of James’s other early works are also of interest, but in his later
years his tendentiousness became increasingly lame as he struggled to maintain
the illusion of a “pan-African revolt” and to defend Third World dictators
such as Nkrumah.
John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution
[1968]
On the peasant anarchist leader and the revolution of 1910-1920.
Louis Fischer (ed.), The Essential Gandhi
[1962]
Selections from the autobiography and other writings of this important
figure, whose ideas and actions ranged from the admirable to the ludicrous.
If you prefer a briefer overview, see George Woodcock’s Mohandas Gandhi.
Ngo Van, Au pays de la cloche fêlée [2000]
A moving autobiography by a Vietnamese Trotskyist revolutionary, who escaped
to France as Ho Chi Minh’s Stalinists were killing off all the Trotskyists in
the aftermath of World War II.
As a factory worker in France, Van was exposed to radical
critiques of Trotskyism and became a libertarian ultraleftist. His later years
were largely devoted to researching his two-volume political
chronicle: Vietnam 1920-1945: révolution
et contre-révolution sous la domination
coloniale and Le joueur de flûte et L’Oncle Hô: Vietnam 1945-2005. The
second volume of his autobiography, Au pays d’Héloïse,
unfinished when he died in 2005
at the age of 92, includes a variety of documents and photos as well as
reproductions of several of his lovely paintings.
An English translation of the autobiography is
forthcoming (I’m one of the co-translators).
[Situationist
article on the Vietnam and Arab-Israel wars]
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
[1961]
Fanon’s political conclusions are dubious, but his work provides some
penetrating psychological insights into the rage and violence of Third World
struggles against colonialism.
[Situationist
article on Third World struggles]
Ian Clegg, Workers’ Self-Management in Algeria
[1971]
Examination of workers’ self-management efforts during the period between the
liberation from France (1962) and Boumédienne’s coup d’État
(1965).
[Situationist
article on Algeria]
Section from Gateway to the Vast Realms: Recommended
Readings from Literature to Revolution, by Ken Knabb (2004).
No copyright.
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