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A review by gabsalott13
Socialism 101: From the Bolsheviks and Karl Marx to Universal Healthcare and the Democratic Socialists, Everything You Need to Know a by Kathleen Sears
2.0
I would like to start this review with a visual summary (meme is linked to my Dropbox, because I can't figure out how to image hyperlink!)
I was not expecting this book to cover EVERYTHING (as noted, it is a crash course.) It was very helpful in summarizing some of the high-level theorists and principles of communism, democratic socialism, anarchism, and green socialism. I thought the history was well-paced until the last 50 pages. And, I definitely learned a bunch about Europe.
The main problem: coverage of everywhere else on the globe!!! This begins in the first section: Kathleen Sears begins the "origins of socialist thought" with Thomas More's socialist utopia, and brings no discussion of the natural practice of collective and cooperative societies that can be seen in many Indigenous communities.
There is a hasty section on "socialism in the developing world", but it didn't mention figures like Thomas Sankara, and did not discuss third worldism as a major part of the "third way" between the US and USSR. I was also hoping to learn more about more recent practices of socialism in Latin America (such as the origins of the solidarity economy), but it seems the crash course ran out of time for this--after all, they had to have significant sections on Reagan and Thatcher!
One last complaint about that developing world section: Kathleen Sears spends a confounding amount of time talking about "Zionist forms of socialism", but there is no mention of the Palestine Communist Party, which was a socialist group resisting the occupation of their homeland. Sears' coverage of the "cooperative settlements" of kibbutzes seems in direct opposition to the National Charter of Arab socialism she mentions two pages down, which calls for an end to imperialism, amongst other systems of racial capitalism.
I am not saying this wasn't helpful, but I think it could've been much more so. In 2021, I am looking forward to working my way through the Black Socialists of America reading guide, which I'm sure will fill in many of these gaps.
I was not expecting this book to cover EVERYTHING (as noted, it is a crash course.) It was very helpful in summarizing some of the high-level theorists and principles of communism, democratic socialism, anarchism, and green socialism. I thought the history was well-paced until the last 50 pages. And, I definitely learned a bunch about Europe.
The main problem: coverage of everywhere else on the globe!!! This begins in the first section: Kathleen Sears begins the "origins of socialist thought" with Thomas More's socialist utopia, and brings no discussion of the natural practice of collective and cooperative societies that can be seen in many Indigenous communities.
There is a hasty section on "socialism in the developing world", but it didn't mention figures like Thomas Sankara, and did not discuss third worldism as a major part of the "third way" between the US and USSR. I was also hoping to learn more about more recent practices of socialism in Latin America (such as the origins of the solidarity economy), but it seems the crash course ran out of time for this--after all, they had to have significant sections on Reagan and Thatcher!
One last complaint about that developing world section: Kathleen Sears spends a confounding amount of time talking about "Zionist forms of socialism", but there is no mention of the Palestine Communist Party, which was a socialist group resisting the occupation of their homeland. Sears' coverage of the "cooperative settlements" of kibbutzes seems in direct opposition to the National Charter of Arab socialism she mentions two pages down, which calls for an end to imperialism, amongst other systems of racial capitalism.
I am not saying this wasn't helpful, but I think it could've been much more so. In 2021, I am looking forward to working my way through the Black Socialists of America reading guide, which I'm sure will fill in many of these gaps.