Revolutionary Reading List
A [non-exhaustive] list of further readings, split up by topic.
(Note: This is a living page, and will be updated over time with additional readings and topics!)
PALESTINE
The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon
Classic anti-colonial piece that explores the physical and mental violence of colonialism, and why revolution is necessary; great starter piece for understanding settler colonialism as we see in Palestine.
A Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine - Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
A primary revolutionary source that gives a Marxist perspective on both allies and enemies to revolutionary struggle in Palestine, the need for collective struggle, and the strategies to achieve it; good for furthering understanding of the dynamics of revolution and what it should/could look like.
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Sara Roy
Specifically outlines the "extreme, almost impenetrable" complexities of the history and present conditions of imperial control in the Gaza Strip, mostly in an economic context, and further highlights the necessity of radical action to achieve solidarity in Palestine.
Control Food Control People - Rami Zurayk & Anne Gough
Examines food production in the Gaza Strip, and uses this information to show how food insecurity is a purposeful strategy of the imperialist forces in Palestine. Highlights how restricting access to food is a key tool of colonizers.
Perfect Victims - Mohammed el-Kurd
Deeply passionate and confrontational piece that exposes how Western society forces Palestinians into an impossible place: be docile to your oppressors and earn our sympathy; fight your oppressors and earn our scorn.
AMERICAN POLICING AND MASS INCARCERATION
Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Y. Davis
A classic text arguing for prison abolition and outlining how prisons function to uphold racial capitalism. A clear and concise introduction to abolitionist politics.
The End of Policing - Alex Vitale
Accessible and sharply argued. Shows how police are designed to manage poverty and protect property, not to keep people safe. Aimed at dismantling reformist illusions.
We Do This 'Til We Free Us - Mariame Kaba
A practical series of essays, interviews, and organizing insights. Grounded in abolitionist feminism and community-based resistance. Extremely useful for building an organizing vision.
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California - Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Explains California's massive prison boom as a response to economic crisis, not rising crime. Gilmore shows how surplus labor, land, and capital were funneled into prison expansion to manage the fallout of racial capitalism.
Blood in my Eye - George L. Jackson
Collected writings by a revolutionary imprisoned by the state. Deeply Marxist, anti-imperialist, and infused with the rage and clarity of a man who saw the U.S. prison system as a fascist instrument of class war.
If They Come In The Morning... Voices of Resistance - Angela Y. Davis
Published while Davis was facing trial herself, this powerful collection brings together writings from Black revolutionaries and political prisoners confronting the U.S. carceral state. A searing indictment of prisons as tools of repression, and a call to collective defense and struggle.
Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime - Dylan Rodríguez
A heavier academic text analyzing how the prison regime functions to crush radical movements and quell dissent. Dense but valuable for serious study.
US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA
The Dialectics of Dependency - Ruy Mauro Marini
Considered one of the most important intellectuals in Latin American social thought, Marini demonstrates that underdevelopment and development are the result of relations between economies in the world market, and the class relations they engender.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution - C.L.R. James
The Black Jacobins analyzes the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe.
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent - Eduardo Galeano
This classic sets the standard for historical scholarship on Latin America. Rather than charting the continent according to more traditional geographic or chronological delineations, Galeano tells the story of Latin America by uncovering the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.
José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology - Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker
José Carlos Mariátegui is one of Latin America’s most profound but overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin America.
Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism - Martín Arboleda
Through an exploration of the ways in which mines in the Atacama Desert of Chile have become intermingled with an expanding constellation of megacities, ports, banks, and factories across East Asia, the book rethinks uneven geographical development in the era of supply chain capitalism.
Power and Resistance: US Imperialism in Latin America - James Petras & Henry Veltmeyer
This book concerns the form taken today by US imperialism in Latin-America, analyzing the projection of US state power as a means of both advancing the economic interests of US capital in the region and maintaining its hegemony over the world capitalist system.
Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class - Justin Akers Chacón
Radicals in the Barrio uncovers a long and rich history of political radicalism within the Mexican and Chicano working class in the United States.
The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America - Stephen G. Rabe
Rabe he takes a look at Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala and argues that the sense of accomplishment that occurred at the end of the Cold War came at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Latin American lives.
PRIDE
Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come - Leslie Feinberg
This pamphlet is an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed name. We are talking here about people who defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender. Gender: self-expression, not anatomy.
Towards a Gay Communism: Elements of a Homosexual Critique - Mario Mieli
This book details the way in which the liberation of homosexual desire requires the emancipation of sexuality from both patriarchal sex roles and capital. It’s an essential reading for all who seek to understand the true meaning of sexual liberation under capitalism today.
Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism - Peter Drucker
“This book shows how the successive 'same-sex formations' of the past century and a half have led both to the emergence of today's 'homonormativity' and 'homonationalism' and to ongoing queer resistance” (Haymarket Books).
Transgender Marxism - Elle O'Rourke and Jules Joanne Gleeson
Reflecting on the relations between gender and labor, these essays reveal the structure of antagonisms faced by gender non-conforming people within society.
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Sa’ed Atshan
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia. Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis.
Honorable Mentions
The Spiral Path - David Fernbach
Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation - Sherry Wolf
Gay Liberation in the Eighties - Jamie Gough and Mike MacNair
LABOR
Strike! - Jeremy Brechner
Strike! narrates the dramatic story of repeated, massive, and sometimes violent revolts by ordinary working people in America and tells this exciting hidden history from the point of view of the rank-and-file workers who lived it.
Teamster Rebellion - Farrell Dobs
This is the story of the strikes and union organizing drive the men and women of Teamsters Local 574 carried out in Minnesota in 1934, paving the way for the continent-wide rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a fighting social movement.
A History of America in Ten Strikes - Erik Loomis
This book challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. Labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers' strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about.
Labor’s Untold Story - Richard O. Boyer
“Labor’s Untold Story is a history of the U.S. labor movement from the Civil War through the Eisenhower Administration. Widely regarded as a classic study since it was first published in 1955, the book documents labor-management conflict from the workers’ perspective” (Labor’s Bookstore).
From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend - Priscilla Murolo
Hailed as the first comprehensive look at American history through the prism of working people, this book "[puts] a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor" (Library Journal).
Honorable Mentions
American Labor Struggles - Samuel Yellen
The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker - Theresa S. Malkiel
Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests - Erik Loomis
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution - Dan Georgakas, Marvin Surkin, Manning Marable