Burritoboy’s Comments (group member since Sep 18, 2021)

Burritoboy’s comments from the Reading with Comrades group.

Well, somebody's excited at the prospect of an online fight! :)

We all need to acknowledge just how messy the shared history of the Left broadly conceived is. There's just a lot of water under that bridge, and it doesn't move any of us forward not to look at the entirety of that history with open eyes. Not with all the goods and all the bads each of our little subgroupings have managed to do over time. Most of the bads have been directed at each other rather than the common enemies, and often neglecting the large areas of commonality that we could have built upon. None of our traditions or histories are perfect, and almost none have come through time unstained. Let's remember Fisher's Vampire Castle and all that.

I tend to read very little long-form fiction prose, for a lot of good and a lot of bad reasons. For 2021, I only finished Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and John Langan's House of Windows. Now that I think about it, both are about the horror of war, though Mailer's is probably the existentialist Hemingway-esque novel par excellence about WWII and Langan's book has been marketed more as a genre horror novel.

I've been struggling to finish Edith Wharton's House of Mirth for roughly two years now, so there's that.......

I started it, and am about 50 pages in. I'm probably not the right audience, but if I'm going to read surreal / symbolic prose, I'm going to need more ....well, action, for lack of a better word, to make this work well for me. But, let's see how it plays out beyond this point!

If you guys want and are willing to nail down a time, I'm happy for DSA SF (Democratic Socialists of America, San Francisco Chapter) set up a zoom meeting to discuss in a few weeks or sometime in January. It's hard to get a good time, as we're so spread out across the world.

John,

I'm just not sure about that format. It might be plausible if we were all very advanced and all knew a lot about a particular subject, and then the discussion could be useful, i.e. Participant A: "[XYZ] argues [123] on the topic."

Participant B: "[MNO] thinks there is problem [efg] with [XYZ]'s methodology."

Participant C: [PQR] thinks both [XYZ] and [MNO] are out to lunch.....

etc.

but I don't think we are there yet, and it will take quite a bit of work to get there. It's not impossible, and surely a worthy goal over the very long term, but we shouldn't underestimate what it will take to do it.

Tuesday, November 16th at 6:30pm, the 21st Century Socialism Reading Group continues its exploration of Erik Olin Wright's seminal book, Envisioning Real Utopias. We explore Chapters 8-12, the heart of how Wright structures his envisioned transformation. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83192216050...

Contact Alex Gorelik if you need more details at alexander.gorelik@gmail.com

John wrote: "Sounds like an excellent idea - and an opportunity for more people to participate. Any thoughts on what book(s) your group is considering?"

We are in a bit of a fallow zone. We read most of Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias, but it really didn't catch on. My personal thought is one or another book by David Graeber, but we're wide open at this point.

We at DSA SF have a reading group that would be open to doing a book with you all, assuming we can all agree on a title. We would probably meet twice (virtually - on Zoom) in November.

I haven't read it, but I heard an interview with the author and it sounded very apropos:

Benjamin T Smith's The Dope

Burritoboy wrote: "John wrote: "The only book of Wright's which I've read so far is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, which I loved; so I'll have to try [book:Envisioning Real U..."

We actually will be re-reading Chapters 6 and 7 on October 19th.

Burritoboy wrote: "John wrote: "The only book of Wright's which I've read so far is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, which I loved; so I'll have to try [book:Envisioning Real U..."

We actually will be re-reading Chapters 6 and 7 on October 19th.

John wrote: "The only book of Wright's which I've read so far is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, which I loved; so I'll have to try [book:Envisioning Real Utopias|705848..."


We read How to be an Anti-Capitalist a year ago. I'm ambivalent about that book: it seems to me to be much less substantive than Envisioning Real Utopias. Wright's practical policy suggestions to me do not seem very exciting - and How to be an Anticapitalist is generally much more "practical" than Envisioning Real Utopias. When he's more on his native ground of sociology, his work (again, to me) is much more innovative.

John wrote: "The only book of Wright's which I've read so far is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, which I loved; so I'll have to try [book:Envisioning Real Utopias|705848..."

We'll probably read chapters 8 and 9 in a session on Oct 19th, 2021. Love to see you there!

DSA SF is reading Erik Olin Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias

Envisioning Real Utopias

We have several long-running reading groups, one of which focuses on current socialist books. We've been having a good run reading this one. Envisioning Real Utopias is one of the few books I've seen that systematically analyzes what a transformative socialist political effort might look like.

We have meetings by Zoom, usually every two weeks. For our next session, we're reading chapters 6 and 7. The next meeting is October 5th at 6:30pm-8pm.

Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83957465708

Hope you can make it - don't worry whether you're a DSA member or not, everyone is very welcome!

lindsi wrote: "Alex we gotta talk! I do polied for Atlanta DSA!"

Very happy to talk whenever works for you. Can you message me with your email, and we will take it from there?

Hey everyone! I'm Alex, he/him. I'm 48 (it makes me feel very old just typing that) and a retired investment banker living south of San Francisco. I'm chair of the Education Committee of San Francisco DSA.

If I had to try to characterize my politics, I would probably say I'm mostly inspired by medieval and Renaissance civic humanism. The book I've probably re-read the most times is Plato's Republic, but on balance I would most likely say my favorites are Plato's shorter dialogues such as the First Alcibiades, Laches or Rival Lovers.

John wrote: "Hi guys, this is my first time writing here so I'm not sure if this is the right sort of question but I'm looking for some suggestions. I'm currently reading Zinn's People's History and while it pr..."

John,

Don't know if you're still interested, but two works very apropos to your question are David F. Noble's America by Design and Forces of Production.