Fredy Perlman Archive
Written: 1961.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
I apologize for the European bias of my bibliography. I understand there are old traditions of profound explorations of democratic polities in Indonesia, India, China, and doubtless elsewhere. I regret not having read the works, and hope that my sketchy expression of the democratic polity is not altogether incompatible with what is best in those traditions.
My articulation of the democratic ideal into four parts, which I have termed social justice, education, communication, participation, can obviously take as many forms as there are men who will undertake the study. Lest some unimaginative reader misunderstand me, it has not been my intention to erect walls, but to open doors. The four principles I have examined do not describe the final shape of a democratic society but the conditions for a democratic experiment. There could be no “final shape” to such an experiment, since these are conditions for each to develop according to his genius and his capabilities. The very uniformity one finds on a trip across the United States—uniform architecture, uniform ideas, uniform hopes—belies the existence of democracy on any part of this vast continent. I have tried to list four conditions which would describe the antithesis of uniformity, mediocrity, and centralization. The threat of uniformity comes from fascism, which openly proclaims uniformity and regimentation as its ideal; from capitalism, which has erected market architecture, market relations, and market mentalities wherever in the world it has penetrated; from a “transitional socialism” in which the “transition” is entrenched as a centralized state and the socialism is forgotten. Looking at the societies of today, I can distinguish more or less misery and suffering, more or less hope and promise; I cannot, here and now, make out a society I would call democratic: i.e., one which gives full play to the creative potentialities of the human being.
I list below some books that cast light on one or another aspect of democracy. These books are merely the dampened sands on the beach I happen to have visited: I have not even begun to explore the vast ocean. But I hope that the storm of rockets and bomb-threats subsides, and that men have the patience and time to begin the exploration.
Georg Biichner, Danton’s Death. (183 5) An extremely powerful, unjustly neglected great play, in which the struggle that defeated the French Revolution, dramatically symbolized in the clash between Danton and Robespierre, is profoundly examined.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo: Don Quixote de la Mancha.
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Freedom and Culture. Dewev assigns a crucial role to education for the attainment of the creative individuals and the experimental social context indispensable to democracy.
Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine. An exciting and important novel on some of the forces that led to the American revolution.
Thomas Jefferson on Democracy. (Edited by Saul K Padover.) A collection of writings by the “Father of American Democracy.”
Peter Kropotkin, Ethics. The anarchist Kropotkin was perhaps the only radical Marxist who recognized that capitalism cannot be effectively destroyed, nor socialist democracy ushered in, until the capitalist medium of repression, the State, is totally abolished.
Leo Lowenthal, Literature and the Image of Man. Lucid analysis of reflections in literature on the golden age and the gradual development of capitalism after the disintegration of European feudalism.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government (1690).
Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. (Translation by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils.) A scholarly history and sociological analysis of the role of utopia in Western political thought.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. (1859) Still the best defense of untrammeled communication.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government. (1861) Mill, himself a member of the privileged class, is here more worried about the repression of the few by the many, than about manipulation of the many by the few.
Thomas More, Utopia, (first published in 1516).
Plato, Dialogues. Though Plato’s ideal “republic” is not a democracy, he nevertheless examines profoundly the meaning of education, of communication, of justice.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Causes of Inequality Among Men. (1754)
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract. (1762) The proclamation of the incompatibility between freedom and privilege. Unfortunately, Rousseau is not a logical thinker, and as a result his work contains the entire spectrum of eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century political ideas.
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 1955. A monumental study of political thought from early Greece to twentieth century Europe and America.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Die Rauber (The Robbers) (1791) and William Tell (1804).
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills). Examination of the responsibility of the polititian.
Wilfred Wellock, Gandhi as a Social Revolutionary. Gandhian democracy in theory and practice.
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study In the Writing and Actrng of History. In places marred by a provincial outlook, Wilson’s book is by and large a sympathetic historical study of democrats and socialists from Vico to Lenin.
There is a vast literature on the growth of capitalism, much of it constituting mere footnotes to the pioneering work done by Marx and Engels, much of it containing a great deal of new insight and fact. I cannot here list even a fraction of the books which touch on or cover this topic, and can merely suggest that the reader unfamiliar with the subject matter pursue the footnotes and bibliographies ofthe boob I do list, and thus construct for himself a more thorough bibliography. If I omit important works from the list, this does not mean I do not consider them important; it may merely mean I have not read them. This list is merely meant to be suggestive: readers familiar with the topic will probably not find it useful.
The following books give original interpretations of the capitalism in the context of West European and North American history.
Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth. A brilliant analysis of the ramifications of world capitalism in the middle of the twentieth century. Baran’s “morphology of backwardness” lucidly unmasks the persistence of economic colonialism under various changed labels, and clearly lists the requisites for economic development for the “underdeveloped” part of the world.
Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. First published in 1913.
Charles A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. First published in 1915.
Nicholas Berdyaev, The Meaning of History. (1920–22) An attempt to interpret the transition from feudalism to capitalism in terms of the medieval divorce of man from nature.
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo.
Erich Fromm, The Sane Society. Treats the psychological condition of man in capitalist society.
Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art. A monumental work which tells the history of Western art within the context of changing social, political and economic institutions.
Leo Huberman, Man’s Worldly Goods.
Erich Kahler, Man the Measure. Full of profound historical insights, but Kahler’s attempt to show man’s “transcendence” from one level to another is not altogether convincing, since at the end man has “transcended” into imbecility and barbarism, as Kahler himself is well aware.
Leo Lowenthal, Literature and the Image of Man.
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks. The entire spectrum of capitalist history, as reflected in the story of one German family, is sympathetically, though ironically, presented in this early masterpiece of the greatest European novelist of the twentieth century.
Karl Marx, Das Kapital. The first, and still by far the most profound, systematic analysis of capitalism.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto. Primarily designed as a program for revolutionaries, this pamphlet nevertheless contains an excellent summary analysis of nineteenth century capitalism.
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, The Culture of Cities, The Condition of Man. A brilliant trilogy whose scope and depth vividly demonstrate that one man is still capable of informing himself on every important aspect of the world in which he lives.
Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man. This small book is a concise and suggestive history of humanity, as well as a summary of Mumford’s major historical insights.
John Herman Randall, Jr., Making of the Modem Mind. A history of the transition from feudalism to capitalism as reflected in philosophical and political ideas. Randall relates the ideas to the age and its problems, and also explores the implications of the ideas on dieir own terms. Contains comprehensive bibliographies of each period.
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, especially chapters 28 to 34, which tell the history of political theories from Rousseau to Marx.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.
R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. A concise and brilliant history of the role of religious belief and dogma in the transition from Western European feudalism to capitalism.
John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, An Inquiry Into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States. First published in Fredericksburg, Va., in 1814.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Bminess Enterprise and The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen systematically unveils the central institutions of capitalist society with sustained irony and biting satire.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” which is chapter 7 in From Max Weber: Essays In Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills.
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. A concise history of the concepts which guide the American government in its relations with the rest of the world.
Once again I wish to point out that the books listed here do not comprise a complete reading list; they are merely examples. This bibliography is not intended for the student of human affairs, who is doubtless well aware that the specimen I list are a mere taste of the vast literature available. This bibliography should, rather, unmask the willful and self-inflicted character of the ignorance of the specialist, whether his “field” is poetry or pathology—an ignorance he invokes with the words “Where should I find these things out?” whenever his stereotyped “opinions” are challenged. The question, together with the attitude of sad helplessness with which it is asked, imply that only the chosen fewr, after a rigorous and mysterious initiation, are capable of understanding the truly gargantuan problems of our distressingly difficult age. This obscurantist attitude is an attempt to escape the responsibility to form one’s own judgment, and an effort to justify blind conformism to the views of the “respectable.” The books I list here, however, are not only a small fraction of illuminating available books on human affairs; most of them are readily available in all libraries and bookstores. And no special initiation is required for an intelligent reading of these books, except that which is given in the first years of elementary school, namely the initiation into literacy.
Specialists may be shocked to find, on one and the same reading list, books by poets and psychologists, philosophers and economists. That’s a problem the specialists will have to resolve. I have worked under the assumption that specialism is a species of ignorance, and that the entire corpus of human knowledge is the legitimate “field” of human concern. These assumptions have been made in all parts of the world for centuries, and they have not, to my knowledge, been disproved. 1’he “insect that has somehow contrived to mock humanity” has not yet convincingly shown that his “incredible exaggeration of some particular feature” is either beneficial to humanity or desired by men.
American Friends Service Committee, Speak Truth to Power. “A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.”
Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. A nihilistic masterpiece.
J.D. Bernal, World Without War. An excellent book which describes vividly the benefits which all humanity could derive from a cessation of the war economy.
Albert Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule. Description of an attempt by pacifists to resist the lunatic preparations for annihilation by sailing into the atomic testing area.
Bertolt Brecht, Threepenny Opera.
Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man’s Future. Examines the consequences of the waste of natural resources, and presents thesis that, should the world economy be disrupted by another war, man will not again be able to reconstruct technology, and thus will never again be able to maintain the large number of people, or the concentration of nonagricultural populations in cities, that are possible today.
Harrison Brown, James Real, Community of Fear. The destructive capacities of nuclear weapons. Indispensable reading, especially for “optimists” and for “shelter” addicts.
Albert Camus, The Stranger and The Plague. Two brilliant novels on the predicament of twentieth century European man, the first depicting the nihilism, the second the transcendence of nihilism through continuing involvement without belief or hope.
Albert Camus, The Rebel. A history of rebellion, as well as a presentation of Camus’ view that rebellion betrays itself when it negates human life and turns to violence. This is not Camus’ last position; before his death by automobile he seems to have rejected rebellion altogether. (See, for example, the later essays in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.)
Josue de Castro, The Geography of Hunger. Unforgettable description of the misery, the hunger, the suffering and disease, that are a direct consequence of monoculture, plantations, one-crop economies—in short, of western colonial capitalism.
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie. American epic of the unsuccessful capitalist.
Theodore Dreiser, The Financier.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’, Notes from the Underground.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. This novel on the “American dream” and on the content of American “culture,” gives part of the answer to the question “What do the rich do with their money?”
Waldo Frank, The Rediscovery of the Man. A reevaluation of Western history.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, Man For Himself The Sane Society. A trilogy that develops a comprehensive view of the psychological consequences of life in capitalist society.
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd.
Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society. A history and critique of the social ideas and philosophies of Europe from the 1890s.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Kenneth Ingram, History of the Cold War. A British view of the Cold War which controverts most of the dogmas pushed on Americans by their “avenues of truth.”
Paul Johnson, “The Plundered Continent,” New Statement (London), September 17, 1960. A brief description of North American colonialism in South America; a masterpiece of social analysis.
James Joyce, Ulysses. The grand entrance of nihilism into twentieth century literature.
Robert Jungk, Tomorrow is Already Here.
Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns. A history of the making of the atomic bomb and the subsequent efforts of the initiating scientists to unmake their Great Gift to Humanity.
Franz Kafka, Amerika, The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis. Each a masterpiece of “truer than history” fiction. The situations which reduce the human being to a trapped insect, to a cipher, belie the propaganda about Human Dignity sold to the consumers of western “civilization.”
Eric Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss. Critical evaluation of the intellectual and literary content of twentieth century Europe and America.
Albert E. Kahn, The Game of Death: Effects of the Cold War on Our Children.
Harold P. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War. Vividly analyzes the manipulation of communication during World War I.
Liberation magazine. A pacifist monthly that generally contains thoughtful and timely articles on world affairs.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Set in a sanatorium, this brilliant novel depicts in the form of loose allegory the wave of nihilism and unleashed violence sweeping across Europe early in the twentieth century.
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus. Based on the original German Faustbuch, this somber masterpiece symbolically represents the history of German nihilism and its final eruption into lunacy, as they are embodied in the composer Adrian Leverkiihn.
Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction.
C. Wright Mills. The Ponrer Elite. Undoubtedly the best analysis of mid-tw entieth century corporate capitalism.
C. W right Mills. iVhrte Collar. Sociological and psychological analysis of the roles and ways of life of the “new class” in capitalist society.
C. W right Mills, The Cause tfMHd War III. The war economy, the military posture of the government, and the abdication of responsibility by the public, the intellectuals, the scientists.
Monthly Rmr,~ magazine, “an independent socialist magazine.” In mv opinion the best commentary on contemporary history which differs from the official line of the American media of “communication.”
Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man, especially (with reference to this section) chapters 7 to 9, on “Post-Historic Man,” “World Culture,” and “Human Prospects.”
Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity.
Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities. (I had not, unfortunately, read this book before setting out.)
Gunnar Myrdal, Rich Lands and Poor.
The Nation magazine. A Liberal weekly which, despite its tide, makes consistent pleas for international cooperation and understanding in its editorials, and occasionally carries excellent analyzes of world events
New Left Review magazine. A British journal which voices the present young generation’s desire to stay alive and create a w’orld where participation, creativity and originality are possible to every man.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work from which twentieth century racism, barbarism, nihilism have taken many of their slogans, yet at the same time a w’ork in which a courageous it irresponsible thinker tries to transcend nihilism and barbarism.
Philip Noel-Baker, The Arms Race: A Program for World Disarmament.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West. An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding.
Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil. A fascinating and highly documerited analysis of the workings of the gigantic oil corporations, from their wells around the world to their “clean rest rooms” in the local gas stations.
George Orwell, 1984. A vision of the world after a few more decades ofthe regimentation, centralization, and military metaphysic ofthe present day.
Linus Pauling, No More War. A chilling, and it is hoped sobering, description of the effects of nuclear fallout and the destructive potentialities of nuclear weapons.
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Right You Are If You Think You Are. Moral relativism here makes its debut on the stage, and contributes to the making of some of nihilist Europe’s best drama.
John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making ofthe Modem Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age. Especially Book IV, on “Thought and Aspiration in the Last Hundred Years.”
David Riesman, Nathan Glaser, Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd. The different forms of resignation to the White Collar world.
Bertrand Russell, Co?nmon Sense and Nuclear Warfare.
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, chapter 3 5 on “Fascism and National Socialism.”
B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, especially the introduction entitled “Europe and Asia.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea and No Exit.
Frederick L. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man: An Inquiry into Power Politics and World Government.
Roderick Seidenberg, Posthistoric Man.
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle. The classic on the Civilizing and Humanizing mission of American capitalism.
Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. The greatest twentieth century American novel.
I.F. Stone’s Weekly. Newsletter of very high journalistic and intellectual quality, covering world events and presenting information that does not find its way into the big-circulation American press.
H.F. Stone, The Truman Era. Collection of Stone’s writings during the Truman administration, in which the origins of the Cold War are seen through an observer contemporary with the events it describes.
Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” (1849) One of the relevant answers to the question “What Should 1 Do?”
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, especially, in this context, Part 9, on the “Contacts Between Civilizations,” and Part 12, on “The Prospects of Western Civilization.” Toynbee brings his views of Western Civilization up to date in Volume 12 of the same work.
Alfred Weber, Farewell to European History. A reevaluation of European history in the light of the eruption of Nazism and the Nazi war. Weber’s guiding concepts are the loss of what he calls transcendence, and the growth of nihilism.
Simone Weil, “Reflections on War,” in Politics, February 1945; appeared originally in November 1933 issue of La Critique Sociale (Paris). John Taylor had observed that usurpers gain nothing from each other. Weil observes that armies gain nothing from each other. In both cases, the victims are always the same; they are the majorty of the people.
Richard Wright, A Report on the Bandung Conference.
Richard Wright, White Man, Listen!