this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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Oh, and for nonfiction I'd highly recommend some David Graeber, he's really great at soft-selling socialism. He tends to start from a neutral positionand assume the reader doesn't have our sensibilities, and holds them by the hand through a series of individually mild and well-cited statements and leaves them in an unambiguously radical place.
Bullshit Jobs is an easy read and much better than it sounds. Debt: The First 5000 Years is his masterpiece, but is a much more challenging read.
I came here to recommend Bullshit Jobs, Debt by contrast I found too sweeping / less convincing (and in any case a much bigger ask for the reader)
I felt like I already knew pretty much everything Bullshit Jobs was going to say before it said it. Debt had some new ideas for me. I think your background matters a lot.
Debt I think is good if you've already bought into being anticapitalist. That said, it did hit me harder having dropped acid and getting through the middle portion of the book
The book or the essay? I've heard the book version just feels drawn out but never got it myself, skipped straight to Debt
The essay is worthy on its own but the collected anecdotes and insights in the book are definitely worthwhile, especially for newcomers/non-leftists who may not have any opinions about say the history of economics but do almost certainly have some experience of a stupid or useless job. There's a tangible, easy to grasp contradiction in the alleged efficiency of our economic system vs the increased proliferation of these jobs that helps to keep the book persuasive from the jump. I think it's also helped by positing itself as "a theory" rather than a definitive history, something I had trouble swallowing w/r/t Debt.