THe Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th century

what is 'Democracy and Education'?

John Dewey.

I was going to say RTFA, but I won't cos it's shit.

Ha ha so did I. The list turned out to be more amusing and depressing than that though.

...portraying capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.

Uh, guys - have you not noticed that THIS IS TRUE?

And no, the Communist Manifesto is not based on hate, although it does advocate armed struggle. What people fail to realise is that class war is not about the individuals in each class, it is about the structure of the class system - the death of the system does not have to mean the death of the individuals in the ruling class.

Many xposts.

Readers of Human Events Online: "Where do I sign???"

Also, and I normally hate this position but wow is it appropriate (even if said book falls outside of the baseline parameter of the list in that it was written before the 19th century), THE BIBLE.

I absolutely cannot figure out the purpose of this sentence. It's not saying anything, in fact it's just filling space before we get to the #1 book (which is The Communist etc.). If it's a sneer, what exactly is it sneering at?

So does that make it a good thing, or a bad thing?

Discuss.

(Haha it should be no surprise that I have issues with Nietzche being on this list.)

the honorable mentions are pretty hilarious too. "origin of species"...

m.

the conservative platform?

(sorry Dan (& others))

Any version of this list which doesn't include Infinite Jest/Gravity's Rainbow is necessarily useless.

Horrors.

Paulo Coelho

The Dice Man

erm erm erm

JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL

Real actual most harmful book of the last 5 years = "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Left Behind, obv.
Chicken Soup for the Soul
The Da Vinci Code (it's probably not old enough)
The Wheel Of Time Vol.1

The Wheel Of Time Vol.1

Actually swap this for The Belgariad Vol.1 kthxs

Harmful, feh. Are they SCARED of the moral implications of the word "evil"? Do their metaphysics not allow for such a thing?

The stuff towards the very end of GR about drinking the blood of one's friends have made a few Pynchonians wonder, though.

I'm sure their argument would be that the oppressiveness of government interference, starting but hardly ending with safety regulations, have STIFLED the innovative gestalt of capitalism, thereby preventing all manner of economic and technological developments that, in the long run, would end up saving more lives and adding more to human happiness than seatbelts ever could.

That's right, people, IT'S FDR's fault that we have a huge deficit right now. You heard it hear first.

DO IT.

Yeah, I gotta give them credit for pretty much sticking with the books that are philosophically strong/intriguing/innovative enough to, you know, actually worry about if you are of the neo-conservative bent.

http://www.uuforum.org/deficit.htm

I shouldn't be so appalled, I have (inexplicably) spent enough time wandering through the free republic to recongnize this stuff as widespread among the (far) right.

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), June 1st, 2005.

but those pesky regulations interfere with THE FREE MARKET!

There were at least a couple of mentions of The Bell Curve on this thread.

For one thing, the main reason that Margaret Mead was sent off to research and write CoAiS was that her teacher, Franz Boas, was trying hard to find as much evidence as possible that nurture is more important than nature; conservatives tend not to like that idea very much.

For another, it was later blamed for triggering off a whole lot of sexual liberalisation, in that it was one of the first things to say to Americans: "look, people can be entirely happy without being uptight, sexually repressed virgins-before-marriage".

(I remember researching this for a seminar at university and coming up with a great quotation from the 1910s or 20s, which went something like "unless we introduce sterilisation of the mentally infirm, America will become a nation of imbeciles!" When it came to the seminar itself, I read the quote out, paused a beat, and said: "That worked well, then")

the most humorous put-down, by far, is how the wingnuts slime keynes' general theory:

Keynes was a member of the British elite--educated at Eton and Cambridge--who as a liberal Cambridge economics professor wrote General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in the midst of the Great Depression. The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.

if you can repress a smirky snicker, then you are a better person than i am.

(i am surprised that they forgot to mention that Keynes was also a homo -- a BIG oversight from this bunch.)

so did the wingnuts' beloved ayn rand (in fact, her "philosophy" is nothing but dumbed-down nietzsche).

Candidates from this thread already (?): Richard Hernnstein and Oswald Spengler.

A-Y-N R-A-N-D

(the game plan for how wingnut bushco judges would turn back the New Deal)

I'm saying they're not on the list. Whatever the reason they're not, the fact remains that they are not. So the mirror-image list would have to not have Ann Coulter.

Yeah, I guess the underlying point of my question was to consider whether or not some books might be double-dips, and whether or not those books are included in totemistic fashion: to validate the inclusion of the books around them.

Rand is not dumbed down Nietzsche; the respectable Ayn Rand is Robert Nozick

Yes. I guess this is where I say "ILX neo-cons to thread."

And this is where crickets chirp.

I don't believe there are harmful books. Only harmful readers.

x-post: The parallel text from Friedman would probably be Capitalism and Freedom.

probably not (although -- to give the devil his due -- i think that epstein is a good, clear writer [at least by the standards of legal academics]). it would inaccessible more b/c it presumes a knowledge of Commerce Clause and federalist jurisprudence that non-lawyers may not have.

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm saying that the books on this list aren't, in general, retarded. And I doubt that even the neo-cons would say they are. A liberal version of this list would be made up of non-retarded books that most liberals would loathe but grudgingly admit have some semblance of radical philosophical insight... which only makes them more incendiary.

I think Jetlag Willy's suggestions (with the caveat of not having read them) seem to approximate what I imagine from such a list.

That rules me out, alas. It sounds like an interesting bit of vanguard wingnuttery.

The problem with this generalisation is that it is so so so untrue. The neo-cons that actually, you know, DO stuff are usually really bright and well-read. It's just they've already decided what they think BEFORE they read something like, say, the Communist Manifesto. Furthermore, whenever those on the left start tossing out sneers like that (not saying you are, milo (or anyoneelse)) it only alienates the "proles" even more. The left ignores this at its peril.

...is it fair to say that all those books on the list are "modern" and that a big chunk of the books/monographs/parchments that influence conservative thought are older than the 19th century?

OTM. Cons seem to be too busy discrediting modern literature to come up with enough candidates for the mirror canon.

A good candidate: Natural Capitalism, by Amory Lovins (and others). Put out by the Rocky Mountain Institute (environmental think-tank), the book destroys the phony opposition between capitalism and environmentalism. It's really thought-provoking and, imho, required reading for anyone that gives a shit about the future of the environment.

...why is THIS on there? (I haven't read it, fwiw)

You know who put that there? Scientists. Scientists and activist judges. Wait, no, they just did the dinosaurs. My bad.

http://www.thismodernworld.org/blog/sticker.jpg

the same can be said about keynes and FDR -- they're the ones who saved america from going either fascist or communist.

I don't hate Hayek, Smith, or Friedman though. I don't agree some of the time but I don't hate them like I hate John A. Stormer's None Dare Call it Treason or The Truner Diaries or The Protocols of Zion.

Communist Mannifesto

it apparently is worse then the one below it, because communism killed more people then anythinf else, well the old trope is true, that would be the case if anyone bothered reading the fucking thing--reading it again, certain contemparary critics have noticed the explicit similarties b/w this text and adam smith--and consdering tht he was correct about the abuses of unfettered capitalism, im assuming its on the list becuase of residual guilt that victorian sweatshops

More Dangerous: Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations; any of Stalins foreign policy papers.

Mein Kampfh

If Hitler depended entirely on this book, it would not have gone very far, its a unreadable mess. (though no. 2 in Turkey right now. It is about his use of mass media, spectacle, and his genius at scape goating jews--he just finished the job western eeurope had been t rying to do for 1900 years.

More Dangerous: Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anything by Leni Refienstahl

Little Red Book

Actually this one is pretty fucking dangerous, might make it into my top ten, esp. for the excurtaingly stupid naievetee of post 68 radicals having it in every house in the west.

Kinseys Report on Human SExuality

The problem with Kinsey is that he spoke out of school--shit like this happened from the beginning of time, it will continue until the end of time. It happens in the wild, it happens in civilazation--people fuck goats, children, other humans; people rape and people kill. He had a v. explicit, almost priggish, sexual morality, concerned with consent---that is all we can do to control our urges, make sure it is done w. safe and sane consent--and it is better to be informed then not to be.

More Dangerous (well Raebalis comes to mind, but thats too early)--the fantagraphics collection of Tijunana Bible Reprints from the 1900s to the mid60s.

Dewys Democracy and Educaton

The most famous of a series of texts making education a series of social rather then pedalogical goals--actually encouraged open discourse, communication, intelligent and well constructed dissent and a certian pragmatism. All of the values the founding fathers had, w/o the nasty racism. the org is scared because it encouraged clinton.

More Dangerous--Summerhill, giving kids power and democracy on top of that, was read and written on from everyone in the time that clinton went to oxford--if you demand an american, go to margaret fuller or william james, they wil ltell you the same thing.

Das Kapital

see my entry on the communist manifesto.

More Dangerous: Edward Baines, The History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain--almost unread now, at the time of marx's printing, it was the best selling apologia for the free market, and has sections in favour of things like kiddie labour, gives a solid example of what marx was working against.

Femmine Mystique

she went a little heavy on the rhetoric, but she was still nice and from the suburbs, no danger of revoultion, no worry about anything but her sharp tounge--the list blames her for the end of the glorius housewife. They obv. havent read the real ball busters.

More Dangerous--Dworkin-Sexual Intercourse, Valerie Solonas--SCUM Manifesto, Ti Grace Atkinson, Angela Davis, Germaine Greer--Femmine Eunuch (which sold better and told more then Friedan), Monique Wittig, Judith Butler (theory head, but both on the vangaurd of destroying essentalist gender--something friedan never attempted.)

Comtes Positive Philosophy

havent actually read it.

Beyond Good and Evil

i think more and more that neitze was less of a fascist, then a radical empiricist w. an bdsm realtionship towards personal autonomy and the state. thats why uncle michel loved him so much.

More Dangerous--Of his time--Rosseou(sp)

Employment, Interest and Money

the reason why the social democroatic left in the west is failing is that they have abonded (sp) things like state ownership of utlities, using their power for massive growth projects, geniunely progressive taxation esp. copretaly, etc. Keynes was right--he saved America at least twice (40s and the 70s). The recent homophobic gut punching (fags dont care about families, fags will ruin the economy, keynes was a fag--runs the line) forges something v. basic, because fags dont have families, and because the poor cant depend of family money, and because family is so deeply defined and redefined, we cannot expect anything but a communitarian ethic--keynes fagness meant that he believed that family could not take care of its self--and personal work meant that the larger community was nto taken care of--the thing that is dangerous about keynes is that he deeply underestimated the states natuaral tendeices towards authortian control, and its losign communitarian ethics v. quickly.

More Dangerous--Fuykama and The End of History--Keynes had a wide ranging, historical, and liberal education, which centered on an understanding of the cyclical history of history, and the larger boom and bust that comes from empires. Fuykama is an arrogant apologist for the new kings.

The Population Bomb

not dangerous, because it is mostly wrong--underestimates the presence of diease as a control mechancism. bad pop pysch-recent emographic suggests the population is actually levelling off.

What Is To Be Done
Lenin
actually fairly dangerous--if you are going to plan a small and badly contained revoultion, actually make sure that you can pull if off to the end of history, or you get free healthcare but no medicine.

The Authoritarian Personality
Adorno--I actually dont like this, and think he tends to be wrong, and there were better writers at the same time, saying the same thing, with out the heavy and kind of silly marxism--and i think his refusal to find subversion in domineint (sp) texts dishearting--i do think that conseratives find it scary because it either a) tells their secrets b) hits too close to hoome.

More Dangerous--Hannah Arendt could actually write what most people could read, has an astute pyschologicla profile, and is v. good at the implications of all sorts of statecraft--but is not really a culture worker. Try her Banality o f Evil anyways.

On Liberty

I am assuming they have a problem with utlitarationism, which seems to be a fairly conserative philisophy--only consider the impt stuff, make sure the most happiness can happen to the most people for the most effiecent resources, a calvinist taste for thrift...

if you want a real radical--read about the Diggers, or the LEvellers, or even Bentham--Miller was too comfortable to do anything really dangerous.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

i am suprised to find skinner on this list--his tendency towards social control seems to be the exact thing that these folks would be into--creepy little motherfucker who refused to tell the difference b/w a rat and a man-the most dangerous book on this list.

Reflections on Violence
The Promise of American Life

havent actually read either of these

Origin of the Species

the death of god, though he was a theist. the rise of mans animal nature, though he was a pafcfist.. a carefully considered theory, placed gently, and with much doubt--the ideas that were mentioned here are really not that dangerous--unless you think young earth creationism is legitmate. (gould wrote that darwin made everyone equal, everyone had the possiblity of coming form the same source, and sectraian violence would be absurd otherwise.

Madness and Civilization
for being the most dominant thinking in the last half of the 20th century, you would figure uncle michel would be closer, and this one--against the authortian state, towards personal autonomy, viewing civilazation at the end of the 20th century, may seem nihillist--but it is a deeply hopeful work, trying to perserve something, a decade after the second world war ended everything.

More Dangerous--these folks tend to hate posties--because it tells us that langauge and ideas are not innately connected, and that we have to work for things to have meaning--but this book doesnt really say that--birth of the clinic, history of sexuality, discipline and punish all say it better--as do derrida, lyotard and buidlallard (who makes fun of america besides)--i am suprised more didnt make it onto the list and this work wasnt higher

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization

exceptionally stupid book from the mid 50s, that presents the ussr as a utopia, the progressive left believed it--which might have something to say about the eligous nature of utopias or the drunk donkey approach of the left. actaully would put it on my list.

Coming of Age in Samoa

continued the idea of the noble savage, continued the idea of a perfect idyliic wilderness, continued the idea of conalism as intergration, silly enough to not know when she is being laughed at, badly written, badly constructed, gave birth to a million hoaxes, forgets the history of western interferencei n samoa since cook, hated book in certain athropolgoical circles--dangerous for all of the reasons above. why is it on this list.

Unsafe at Any Speed
back when nader wasnt crazy, the car blew people up when bumped in minor fender benders--encorouged companies to be responsible for their prducts, hated among the right for inciting a flury of law suits--most convenient some not.

more dangerous: the telephone book (the ad on he back page since my child hood has been for an ambulance chaser)

Second Sex

we will know if the work is as dangerous as we think it is when it is translated into an edition that vaguely resmebles her orginal work--ghost wrote large chunks of sarte, who like most stalinists was deeply boring, and horribly self important.

Prison Notebooks
have not actually read it.

Silent Spring
the only reason why we do not have three dicks and no robins is that this work was written, creating the epa, and encourgaging some vague work on not fuckign up the world as quickly as we had.
more dangerous--jane jacobs, i am convinced the recent destruction of brooklyn for a football stadium is delayed revenge for not getting an expressway.

Wretched of the Earth
havent read it.
Introduction to Psychoanalysis
even this freudian doesnt have the energy to defend freud--but try william reich or jaque lacan.
The Greening of America
havent read it
The Limits to Growth
havent read it.
Descent of Man
the more dangerous, and more explicit of the two darwin books on the list--reading edward o wilson puts the dread

books on this list that lefties have problems w/ (besides mein kampf) -- comte, lenin, skinner, the webbs.

Gramsci is hilariously chauvanistic, but he claimed that simply seeing how hegemony works will lead to revolution. Kind of ineffectual, then.

Fanon said that blacks could never be autonomous in the eyes of whites and for colonized Africans, violence was the only choice -- can't remember if which part came from Wretched.

http://tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/06/you-cant-trust-those-wingnuts-to.html

...It's the self-identification that gets me. They are not mere scholars not public policy leaders. They are "conservative" scholars and public policy leaders. I don't trust them at all because they fetishize their own ideology before their competency. There are many qualities to admire in a teacher - their knowledge, their teaching ability, their humanity and their empathy. But conservatism, liberalism or socialism are not qualities to admire by themselves. Their alignment could make for good conversations at the nearest university bar. Or it could make them intolerant and strident. Whatever - just leave it out of the classroom...

and

http://wetware.blogspot.com/2005/06/conservatives-most-harmful-books.html

I read Adam Smith as a great misunderstood liberal. Genuine Free Marketeers could argue that no society has implemented a truly Free Market, in the same way that Marxists would argue no society has implemented True Communism. It's hard to see in the long run how democracy can exist without free trade. Many people now believe that the only lasting way to solve problems of poverty in the developing world is through free trade.

You list Summerhill in the "more dangerous" category. You could easily trace the school's ethos back to Rousseau - he vehemently believed that children should develop without adult control. One of the only things I find myself in sympathy with Rousseau on.

I don't think they bothered with pomo/poststructuralism on the assumption that those works belong to an academic clique. I think they're wrong, but that's my guess.

I thought your description of Nietzsche was pretty true and funny, but once again I wonder why the idiots are so obsessed with such an unrepresentative work as BGAE?

Do you know John Gray? If so, what do you think his position should be in relation to this list and its theoretical opposite posited on this thread?

The most glaring omission from the original list is dear old Sade, I reckon, whose influence shadows more than a couple of the authors that actually made the cut.

Listing Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex baffles me as I've heard from several sources that it's rather outdated. It's still important to feminists, which is probably why it's listed (alongside the fact that she courted Sartre, who was a Marxist), but it's seen more as a historical curio than something entirely relevant today.

to fanon, violence was not the "only answer," it was the absolute condition of any conflict; since colonialism was based on the monopoly of violence held by the settler, the possibility of the settlers' death had to be there for any real negotiation. he's extraordinarily romantic about a new society forged by anti-colonialist violence but it's not quite 200 pages of "kill whitey"

At least to people learning how to write.

Yes and no. The Second Sex is more of a historical anomaly that stands outside all currents of feminism. Some of it (Beauvoir's "history of sex", perhaps) is indeed dated, but some of the other ideas (mostly, that you aren't born to be a woman, rather than raised up as one) have a deep resonance with today's feminism, and I assume were extremely radical when the book was published (the late forties).

Smith has attained a kind of "the devil can quote scripture for his purpose" status in economics. He was the preeminent free marketeer, but he also had a deep background in moral philosophy, and was mindful of the potential for collusion (his remark about conversations between people of the same trade often ending in a "conspiracy against the public") and other phenomenon that would be harmful to consumers/workers. Given his historical remove, especially in economic time -- he was writing before the industrial revolution, before mass production, etc. -- I often wonder what he would have identified as "market failures" where the government should step in today. Health care perhaps?

+lmao @ "unsafe at any speed" & "origin of species" in the "bubbling under" section.

Only if they're shaped like coffins and thick scarlet strawberry jam oozes out when you bite them.

Mark David Chapman did.

http://giganticmag.com/images/ilx/lennon.jpg

He made loyal Gloria's life miserable. "The only place you could go for privacy was the bathroom," she told Gaines, "and so often at night I'd go in there and lock the door and just cry."

He bought two copies of The Catcher in the Rye and made Gloria read one. He talked of changing his name to Holden Caulfield and even wrote the Hawaii attorney general to ask about the procedure.

On Sept. 20, he wrote a letter to a friend, Lynda Irish, in New Mexico. On it he drew a picture of Diamond Head with the sun, moon and stars above it.

"I'm going nuts," he wrote.

He signed it "The Catcher in the Rye."

He brought home books from the library on one subject after another. One of them was John Lennon: One Day at a Time by Anthony Fawcett. In it he read about Lennon's life in New York. He was furious.

"He was angry that Lennon would preach love and peace but yet have millions," Gloria told Gaines. He began to talk of going to New York.

And he began, he would tell Gaines in prison, to pray to Satan. "There were no candles, no incantations," Gaines writes. "Just Mark, sitting naked, rocking back and forth at the controls of his stereo and tape recorder, splicing together his reasons for killing John Lennon from the lyrics of Beatles songs, the soundtrack of "The Wizard of Oz", and quotations from The Catcher in the Rye.

Of course, it's also possible that you're an asshole. Let's not rule that out.

he's hardly a lunatic. i think the main mistake people make with him is to read him outside of the philosophical tradition and context within which he is working.

a pretty nice description of Nietzsche's philosophy btw!

I guess you're separating the definition of "lunatic" and "smart and important man". I think he's both. A lot of people are.

He makes sense, terrible sense, in chunks. As a whole, he's a smart lunatic -- like, say, Hitler, for instance

No! no no no no no. Nietzsche is a logical man, fundamentally, and holes in his logic are just that. Holes. Perhaps at worst his ideas are the ravings of a nice, well-meaning, completely innocuous madman who lived with his mother. Like Marx, he advocates nothing that we can today point at and say, "That's morally wrong." He's a thinker. He's a kook. He was maybe wrong, but we need these people.

Mein Kampf, on the other hand, should be taught in schools as a perfect example of every logical fallacy ever invented. You want to teach logic and critical thinking, teach this book. It's the best example of what not to do that could probably ever be written.

Nietzsche's a philosopher that happens to be insane and whose ideas are, in my opinion, completely untenable. That doesn't make him Hitler, and I'm sorry for saying any such thing. My bad, for real.

And I think I've said too much already.

You sound like Nietzsche ;)
I don't think his ideas are untenable. He's trying to think his way out of the straitjacket his society put him in. Sometimes that might be doomed to fail. But we need to keep trying, nonetheless.

think about it.

nice choice (as far as the fluff slot goes)

We do?

Does Steve.n still post here?

Am I wrong for wanting to run a 10 most harmful records poll on ILM now? ;)

Am I wrong for wanting to run a 10 most harmful polls poll on ILM now? ;)

Curious George books spread lies about the AIDS virus

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

Paulo Coelho

The Dice Man

Note to self, never read The Dice Man.

Coelho is some seriously harmful and self-deluding bullshit.

The Dice Man is very funny. Sometimes dicks like stuff that's good.

Top 10 non-harmful books:

1. The Holy Bible
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Non-harmful? The Bible?

the original list is hilarious, especially with the runners-up. i mean, "on liberty"? what in the world could a conservative find in there to disagree with?

"what is to be done?" and possibly "mein kampf" are the only books on the list that caused any demonstrable harm.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/jk.jpg

Top 10 non-harmful books:

1. The Holy Bible

the original list is hilarious, especially with the runners-up. i mean, "on liberty"? what in the world could a conservative find in there to disagree with?

The origins of "nonjudgmentalism" in modern thought and the idea that eccentricities are good, ipso facto, because they break away from tradition. Other things too, but those are two biggies.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/da/LRonHubbard-Dianetics-ISBN1403105464-cover.jpg/150px-LRonHubbard-Dianetics-ISBN1403105464-cover.jpg

I can't believe I'm first to thread with this.

ZS, I think libcrypt was making with the joeks.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/1980/51wk5wfps2blkx2.jpg

I don't notice the sarcasm when it's evident, and sometimes I think I sense it when it's not there. I suck at the internet!

You're doing fine!!

I apologize in advance for posting this:

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/167/imageuploadimagexq2.gif

Is there a thread where people post everything harmful about The Holy Bible? The fact that Eve took the apple (and other shit in the bible) has made women be treated and stereotyped as inferior since god knows when that sacreligious book was written.

Is there a thread where people post everything harmful about The Holy Bible?

Manic Street Preachers: Clasur Neu Methiant

We should note that Human Events is really far-right wacko shit; it does not, despite Reagan's fondness for quoting anecdotes in Cabinet meetings, represent mainstream conservative thought.

let's recall that at one time ronald reagan was a far-right wacko who did not represent mainstream conservative thought!

c.f. also barry goldwater's gradual evolution (helped by liberal-ish dissing of falwell) from epitome of wacko right-winger into the epitome of the "good conservative"

Is there a thread where people post everything harmful about The Holy Bible?

THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN

Gah, there's enough Dawkins threads on this board, what runneth over with such critiques. Or others 'bout 'ligion and such.