Politics/economics starter pack

People are listing a lot of works of political philosophy which are definitely worth reading, but if you're crunched for time you honestly don't need to read shit like Aristotle to get a general grasp of politics. The fukuyama books are a good starting point. Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail provides a decent overview of how political institutions contribute to economic development. Also don't read Rand it's not worth the time

How rich countries became rich and why poor countries stay poor. - Erik Reinert.

I've recently finished Origins of Political Order by Fukuyama and I'm convinced he isn't a dumbass

I need to read the end of history, he seems to still be defending it somewhat in video lectures(although with modifications because of this new research in his own words).

>No mention of Thucydides.
Shit thread.

You got schooled in a political discussion and your first inclination was to turn to ... a jap lackey of neocon jews? That would have been understandable a decade ago but it seems rather odd today. If you want a foundational understanding of the people whose interests your political system revolves around and serves your entry-level book should be the Israeli Lobby by Mersheimer and Walt. If you don't understand the ABCs of cui bono don't waste your time with the rest. Learn about how your nation's elite are jews and realize that your political system serves their interests above all others and the rest will follow, including a more refined set of ideals.

...

>On Politics: A History of Political Thought From Herodotus to the Present by Alan Ryan (Read this and you won't need to read all of the shit pre-1800)
Although this guy won't like it, nor most of these:
>The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, And the Radical Remaking of Economics
>Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown by Leszek Kołakowski
>The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
>Political Economy: An Introductory Text by Phelps, Edmund S.
>Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
>Carl Menger, Bastiat, Bertrand de Jouvenel
>The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage
>The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers
>Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
>The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
>The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
>The Theory of Social Democracy
>The Quest for Cosmic Justice
>The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
>Areopagitica
>Thomas Paine
>Max Weber, specifically: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
>Carl Schmitt
>Schumpeter
>Mises
>Alain de Benoist
>John Stuart Mill

>The Ethics of Liberty
>The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo
>Ancient Complex Societies
>World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History
>Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History
>Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre
>The Judgment of the Nations
>The Ancient Economy
>The Cunning Of Unreason
>Contemporary Political Philosophy
>Tax Progressivity and Income Inequality
>In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance
>The Positive Theory of Capital
>Defending The Undefendable
>Pluralism
>War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
>The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
>Shakedown Socialism: Unions, Pitchforks, Collective Greed, The Fallacy of Economic Equality, and other Optical Illusions of "Redistributive Justice"
>Death by Government
>Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction
>Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left
>The Collapse of Complex Societies
>The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

cool. I'll look into that too.
Sweet!
>>>>
That's a lot of books.On Politics sounds good though

Pick and choose.
I read these for fun.

Oh, why not read:
>Fire in the Minds of Men
>The Menace of the Herd: Or, Procrustes at Large
>On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
>Parallel Lives
>Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism
>After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
>The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000
>The Myth of Primitivism

I dunno; let someone refine and filter these lists.

On Politics, Main Currents of Marxism, and, Political Economy: An Introductory Text.
Are the ones you should probably read. There might be better books than the one by Edmund S Phelps. But that's the one I've read.

Cheers. I'll look into it, thanks.

Fukuyama is a decent introduction to the matter. But keep in mind most scholars do not regard him as an up to date source and some even disregard its work.

Ideas have Consequences by Richard Weaver.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

Plato's republic.

Discipline and Punish by Foucalt.

That should get you somewhere.

Every book by Ann Coulter. Thatll give you some ammo.

>>Fire in the Minds of Men

>>Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism

I read a bit of these two. Very interesting stuff.

to all of you who has read a bunch of political literature - how do you approach politics where you live? Do you feel you can navigate the political landscape, do you understand what's happening and why? What kind of perspective do you have on shifts in political discourse, like how Europe and the US are embracing nationalism?

It boils down to the JQ. Once you understand how jewish influence shapes sociopolitical events, you will gain jedi powers for breaking this stuff down. Jewish internationalists are attempting to turn white nations into multicultural free trade zones; it is a natural and healthy reaction for whites to band together in the face of that to protect their identity and territory.

I'm going to give some of my money that I intended to buy christmas presents with (to give to my white family, supporting white local businesses, supporting christian traditions) and instead give it to charities helping refugees, preferrably leftist charities with open border policies. I'll give away at least half of my budget that I intended to spend on christmas presents, and I'll do it tomorrow, just to make you happy. I'm doing it all for you buddy. That's my christmas present to you, take care and enjoy the fact that you inspired me to give to charities!

This is par for the course white virtue-signaling, not impressed. You have been told your whole life that your own group is bad and the reason for others' misfortune, and a moral system has been raised wherein you are seen as righteous for assisting out-groups over your own. I wouldn't expect you to behave otherwise until you are actually able to grasp why you are acting in such a way.

>t. 57% amerimutt

Read this user. Rather short but comprehensive.

There are three big names in economics:

Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"
Summary: The wealthy people make a country great.

Karl Marx, "Das Kapital"
Summary: The working-class make a country great.

Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money"
Summary: The middle-class make a country great.

Keynes was right, of course.

they were all right, faggot. Marx esp.

ask: cui bono?

keynesism allows the controllers of a democracy to run up huge debts for immediate benefits for themselves that people later (not themselves) will have to pay

marxism allows a group to overthrow another group and take power

adam smith just talked about a supply/demand curve that is inescapable. literally just reporting the data of what was observable in nature.

takeoverworld.info/Grand_Chessboard.pdf

Some of these books are more to the point than others, and some make more profound points than others.

There are some you can throw out like On War. It's a good book, but its like 600 pages of describing why it doesn't make sense to attack across a river. However it makes good points like "war is a continuation of politics." Most of this is contained in the first chapters.

I've read Machiavelli, and he makes some decent points. It's a really short book; you could read it in a day if you really tried. It's also somewhat easy to read since he teaches with examples instead of necessarily abstract theory.

Hobbes's Leviathan is a masterpiece of political theory. You can't ignore it, even if you disagree with it.

I have never read Locke's Two Treatises on Government, but if you want to understand the ideals upon which the U.S. Government was founded you have to read it.

If you want to understand how to be a faggot, just throw out everything except for Rousseau.

there is very little you can disagree ith hobbes on unless the person happens to be an idiot

locke and rouasseau are fags that lived in essentially their mother's basements and complained that life isnt fair

for politics I find reading biographies on figures like kolgomorov, napoleon, deng, tend to get to the heart of modern politics much faster than reading gay faggots from geneva that desperately try to hide their aims

Scrap Fukuyama.

You should read Thomas Sowell, Thomas Carlyle, Ludwig von Mises, Hans-Herman Hoppe, Erik von K-L, Mencius Moldbug, Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, and Nick Land.

You're right. It's usually politicians who have an understanding of politics. Occasionally you do see someone like Socrates or Hegel, who's students or schools of thought go on to create their own forms of government, to varying degrees of success.

>the eternal libertarian strikes again

I'd have him read Hive Mind and Richard Lynn's works.

Just read Capital (all three volumes) and Althusser. You'll know where to move from there.

Ignore this grade-schooler.

>getting meme'd into Fukuyama
He's okay, but he's nothing spectacular. For the modern liberal outlook he should be fine. Zizek, Chomsky, Arendt, for some disparate modern views. For historical perspectives unironically buy this: broadviewpress.com/product/the-broadview-anthology-of-social-and-political-thought/

I think I just vomited in my mouth

choke on it bourgeois

>economics

>no Mises

>no Manger

>no Eugen Böhm von Bawerk

>Keynes was right

>"Dude, scooping a bucket of water out of a lake and throwing it back in somewhere else makes the lake bigger lmao"

>grade-schooler

>says the Marxist

Bitch please.

if you think capital is about the class struggle, dunno what to do with you. It's most important lessons are on the nature of the commodity and of the contradiction between production and relations of production. Re-read it.

Smith was reporting *interpretations* of what was observable in *society*. To call 18th century Western European states 'Nature' is outlandish. He did, however, do okay in laying out the ideology of early capitalism. But that's in no way nature.

>arguing with academics on a graphic novel forum

DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY CLASS!?

embarassing lmbo

>arguing with a stupid fucking nigger

socrates is a very rare figure in human history.

most philosophers are gay nerds fighting on orldstar tier

no reason to read thomas s. he is literally an affirmative action case.

I like the rest. mises is kind of gay, but eh.

>gay nerds fighting

the northern european frame for trade has become the defacto malthusian environment

clearly people that have trouble reading cannot into markets

I'd like to hear a good reason that invalidates the rule of markets. there is no method to increase the productivity of africans or goats other than slavery

goats don't invalidate markets

oh yeah, so you haven't read Capital then. Probably shouldn't critique works you'd struggle to read a paragraph of, then. Also, sounds like some personal issues with that racist angst. Trouble making friends irl, too?

>no reason to read thomas s. he is literally an affirmative action case.

Nigger WAT? He's one of the few libertarians that doesn't go full retard on immigration.

that doesnt take a genius

I read it. it is starve your people 101. move to vene. if you like communism so much you faggot

stick to capitalism, boy. it's more your speed.

tell me the labor theory value solution to the traveling salesman problem

ask Ricardo. Marx wasn't a labor theorist, as the first section of Capital makes abundantly clear. Labor value (socially necessary labor time) only forms the absolute minimum of valuation. Fetishism is the belief that the commodity has a rational concept to determine its value-- such as labor theory, supply-demand, use-value, etc.--, when in reality the commodity is determined completely by exchange value, which is arbitrary. Assuming LTV is fetishism, which Marx opposes.

so the basis of your economic system cant solve economic problems, and you dont have a response, and to give a coherent response you'll need to discard the basis of your economic system

interdasting

Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki

So most mainstream libertarians are literally retarded?

depends

the unspoken bugaboo for most libertarians is that crime such as being accessory to murder should be immediately punished by death for all involved parties, involved parties in this case include the person that let him into the country, and gave him food stamps

of course, this solves the immigration problem

If you honestly read my comment and that's your actual response, again: it looks like Marxian economics are a bit over your head. stick with capitalism, it won't require thought.

if you are using price curves you are using capitalism as described by smith

if you believe in the confiscation of production so that the state sets allocation and or prices, you dony believe in price components of value

so answer my question you stupid faggy sociology undergrad

the book you reccomended is called capital. dorles it describe how to even allocate capital?

Wouldn't Burnham's Machiavellians give you a good primer on almost all those texts

Seems like you recognize the importance of the markets, but all the market socialist theories rest on logical fallacies.

Throw some Mises in there at least, I think the holistic approach engenders criticisms for all those macroeconomic theories

this is a charteable thread, I'd do it myself had not photoshop cucked me

Or you could just be a disgusting fascist prick.

>Keynes was right, of course.
Except he wasn't, which is why people have started to reject him over the past 30-40 years now.

Idiot.

The Road to Serfdom by Hayek.

I can make this happen
t. OP

jesus christ how do I sort all this

by time.
start with the greeks first

Marx, then Marxists. Read economists before if you're interested in the tradition Marx used. Don't bother with libertarian garbage.

>t someone who studies economic theory

>Don't bother which made America great from 1600 to 1945, but focus on a system of failure.
ok lo

I was planning to make a chart or something, I want to sort everything alphabetically or whatever

Marxism wants you to focus on material reality, goof. America was powerful because of geography, resources, and exploited labor. It's not hard to have a good economy when everything is set up for you.

I'd recommend making an independent wing for Marxian theories. I can rec some texts, if you're interested.

just read about political topics that interest you. you'll give up halfway into any Fukuyama book if you aren't genuinely interested in it. His works are dense and can be very dry.

what were you guys debating? there are any number of utopian authors out there eager to share with you the "perfect" way to organize society. it's better if you start from real world topics and look into how things got to where they are now. the real world has a habit of shitting on people's utopian visions.
"libertarian garbage" is useful for understanding the dynamics of the modern neoliberal globalist order.

If you want some insight in all the political madness and the far Left groups today, I strongly recommend Days of Rage, its interesting and even darkly comical at some points

that'd probably be best. I don't know anything about them though so I don't know which ones to put there. Oh well.

Migration politics. Sweden has had a big influx of refugees from the syrian war because the rest of Europe are shitty at accepting people seeking asylum. Thus two years ago, political discourse swung around when mainstream parties went with the route of the political outcasts (a nationalist parties with nazi roots) - closing the borders.
I argued against the thesis that the nationalists were right all along, because even if the asylum system (with houses for refugees waiting on asylum decision are filled up) is challenged and might need a break right now the general premise of the nationalists was always another one than the one that mainstream parties are accepting now. The nationalists wanted to get rid of immigrants (and force them to move back) because they are immigrants, the rest of us are saying that the system is heavily loaded right now. Thus the nationalists weren't right all along

Good point about how to approach reading about politics, it sounds reasonable.

I agree about it being good to understand neo-lib. It's just really shallow and doesn't require reading much beyond a few canon texts.

the nationalists are largely right though. people aren't interchangeable cogs in an economy. for the concept of a "nation" to mean anything, the people who belong to it (and thus have sovereignty over their own nation) have to be clearly defined. Traditionally, this is done along ethnic lines. Multiculturalism is the idea that anyone can take part in this, regardless of how foreign and alien their culture is. obviously, this has many negative effects on social cohesion and the identity of the native group.

the system being overloaded for the sake of foreign nationals (not to mention the problems they bring, such as islamic terrorism) is just salt in the wound of a fundamental impulse against invasion (which the nationalists embrace and are very direct about).

the modern political order tries its hardest to sidestep the topic of sovereignty and what exactly a "nation" is via orwellian language policing, and this leads to radicalization of otherwise normal people. basically, healthy self-preservation has been stigmatized, and people's concerns are festering into resentment toward the foreigners and the elites that coddle them.

you really won't find any literature that rebuts the nationalists' arguments other than creepy Borg-like arguments of the "inevitability" of the dissolution of European sovereignty, which only validates the nationalists image of themselves as victimized by a cold, detached elite with no loyalty to their people.

seconding kymlicka

>for the concept of a "nation" to mean anything, the people who belong to it have to be clearly defined
Why would they have to? And even if they had to, why does the concept of a nation have to mean anything? The US seems to get by just fine without having an ethnically homogenous population, they are the most powerful economy in the world

>many negative effects on social cohesion and the identity of the native group
>social cohesion and collective identity can't exist between two people sharing different ethnic identities

>the problems they bring
they're not a pack of dogs carrying lice, they're people. They have the right to seek asylum

>sovereignty
globalization happened, nations can't hide in a corner anymore

>healthy self-preservation has been stigmatized
this conclusion stems out of faulty premises and you know it

>the rest of us
(((Us))) us, or are you just a really dumb guy? You sound like the latter.

>They have the right to seek asylum

>keynesism allows the controllers of a democracy to run up huge debts
Hilarious!

>Globalization is ending sovereignty

U.S debt doesn't exactly matter as it is tied to dollar and to get dolla you need to trade assets/commodities to America p. much such as buy oil or arms.

as long as they are tied to OPEC or export oil themselves + have military = that debt chart is not what you think it is

>What is European Union.
Each European Union had to give up their sovereignty to European Union before they could be its members. EU's decrees and orders overrule nation's laws.

>why does the concept of a nation have to mean anything?
because a clear delineation between "us" and "them" is how we make sense of the world. the relationship doesn't always have to be hostile, but it helps to know who "us" is, it's a part of human nature and the world is way too massive and confusing to operate socially without a sense of belonging to some larger group. Universalism is a nice idea, but it's impractical and breeds confusion and identity issues when you try to apply it to the real world. If you really think the nation-state shouldn't exist, you're engaging in the utopian thinking I alluded to in my first post. humans are social creatures, not individuals floating in a sea of billions. though modernity does create the illusion that this is the case.

Lol

its not fine here. the police ignore shooting and rape reports

the problem ith multiculturalism is you plan to integrate then by teaching them "our" values. european values have been loose... FOREVER

the immigrants give political parties a reason to TELL you the meaning of "our" values and put you in prison if you disagree

if our nation can only NOT fall apart because of shared values, it is the END of free speech

if I disagree ith my caucasian or japanese neighbor, I can still have a beer and joke around.

if I disagree ith my muslim neighbor, he still is gonna vote to kill gay people

they only "share" the values the leftists TELL THEM and TELL YOU to share

>Reading Fukuyama "The 90s are the end of history, Neo-Liberalism is a good thing" Fukuyama unironically.
>Reading an Economics book written by the Austrian-school member unironically.
Dear God man. I don't know who recommended those books to you, but they are horribly ill-informed.

If you really want the basics:
For Economics, read the following list. The first two are absolute essentials, then if you want to be actually well-informed, rather than just literate, move on to the others.
>Ha Joon Chang - Economics the User's Guide
(Excellent introduction to the topic for beginners, covers every part of the Economy, and the field itself, but not in much detail)
>Donald J. Harreld - An Economic History of the World Since 1400
(Exactly what it says on the tin, starts with the end of feudalism, and covers everything since)
>Richard D. Wolff - Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, & Marxian
>Samuelson & Nordhaus - Economics
Go to textbook, used in most actual university courses, extremely pro-neo-classical, though, to the point that it doesn't even acknowledge other points of view exist)
>Steve Keen - Debunking Economics
(Debunks some of the biggest problems in Neo-Classical economics, but doesn't really give any alternatives)
>David Harvey - 17 Contradictions & The End of Capitalism
>Anwar Shaikh - Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises
>Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy
I admit to a pro-Marxist bias here, but tried to include some variety of opinion, since this is a starter list

Geo-Politics:
Tim Marshall - Prisoners of Geography

Political Philosophy:
Plato - Republic
Aristotle - Politics
Machievelli - The Prince
Hobbes - Leviathan
Locke - Two Treatises on Government
Rousseau - The Social Contract
Lenin - The State & Revolution
John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
Robert Nozick - Anarchy, State & Utopia
(Note, this is MASSIVELY Non-Exhaustive, but covering all of political philosophy would take over 200 books, and these nine are by far the most influential)

Military Science:
Clausewitz - On War
Chairman Mao - Red book of Guerrilla Warfare
Killcullen - Counterinsurgency

I can't really recommend any more than that, unless you specify which country's politics you're most interested in.

clever lie, there

the majority of u.s. spending deficit is cleverly not classed as technically debt or budget

the amount of total spending under obama is lly larger than all past presidents combined, you fucking liar

you should admit to a massive bias. no communist accurately describes communism

communism is better described by kolgomorov or the gulag archipelago

1)
>you should admit to a massive bias
>I admit to a pro-Marxist bias here
Congratulations, you can't fucking read.
2)
>Citing the Gulag Archipelago unironically, when its own author said he regarded it as an ahistorical collection of "camp folklore", and his wife said she's amazed that westerners treat it so seriously:
nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html