leftist mindfuck books?
can't describe my request any better than this. sorrry if it's too vague. books that dismantle your liberal understanding of the world. can be a historical work of fiction, doesn't really matter. just something that'll leave a mark on you ig
The Wretched of the Earth is always good. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and The State and Revolution have been what I would consider the 3 most impactful books on me in the "traditional" Marxist Canon (though in 2025 I plan on reading Capital volumes 1-3).
As for non-"traditional," Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti is my favorite recommendation for liberals, the ones who read it generally walk away with far less anti-AES brainworms, and the ones who don't read it wouldn't be willing to be impacted by it anyways. Losurdo's essay Has China Turned to Capitalism? as well as Roderic Day's Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" and China Has Billionaires have been crucial for understanding modern China, as well as understanding why people believe what they believe.
Jakarta Method and If We Burn by Vincent Bevins are really good. Jakarta Method is about CIA mass executions of communists, and If We Burn is about how to understand social movements post 2010.
A recent one I read was Killing Hope by William Blum. Took me ages to finish it because every chapter just left me feeling like
Not necessarily explicitly leftist or anti-imperialist but Chaos by Tom O'neill is a lot of fun and brainworm inducing.
Maybe the best thing I've encountered like what you're describing is maybe The Fever by Wallace Shawn. It's a one-man theatre performance about a guy truly beginning to understand the truth and consequences of imperialism for the first time.
Other recommends would be:
The first chapter of The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, read as a standalone short story. It's a climate horror about a wet-bulb event (where at a certain temperature in combination wity 100% humidity means the body can no longer cool itself by evaporative cooling) in Mumbai leading to a massacre that kills tens of millions.
The Semplica Girl Diaries by George Saunders, a short story about a hapless suburban mother trying to make ends meet who, for her daughter's birthday, irresponsibly spends a windfall on a set of ornamental Vietnamese girls who you suspend by a wire through their skulls on your lawn to display your wealth.
Those Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Leguin, a short story about a town whose prosperity depends on the unending suffering of a single girl.
Some other George Saunders stories might include Ghoul, about a worker/prisoner in a demented prison in which everyone is trapped in a deteriorating theme park and goes to work every day but it is enforced by capital punishment that no one can talk about the fact that no one will ever attend the park.
Brad Carrigan, American (this one is kind of wild) about a guy living inside a perpetually filming television show that has continued ad absurdum the ratchet of delivering increasing amounts of product to consumers while supports are continually stripped away.
Brad Carrigan, American, is awesome. I love it, its so absurd, but among the absurdity are all these threads of thoughts and feelings that seem so familiar. This feeling of hopelessness that accompanies you're growing awareness of the horrors just outside your vision. The sudden change in perception of the people you thought you knew as they clash against your growing concern for the horrors just outside your vision, and your desire to provide any meaningful change you can muster. The desperate attempts to salvage the relations you had, foolishly believing that if you just explained it well enough, the horrors, your concerns, they would change too. Realizing just how vapid and materialistic these people we're, and seeing them for the hedonistic zombies they are. Ultimately, being painted as the villain, always being a downer, never grateful for your position, to good to accept life as it is, and willing to ruin the good life for everyone else for a people they all view as backwards. In the end, the only hope you can hold on to is the hope that, whatever comes after you, is imbued with your convictions and sees it through.
Its simply Incredible.
It's my favourite Saunders story, from my favourite of his collections. I agree, and I've never encountered another person who's read it except my partner!
Semplica girl diaries is a wild read...
The Very Hungry Caterpillar had a lasting impact on my outlook at life. It highlights the dangers of greed and overconsumption.
Malthusian drivel. From each caterpillar according to their length and colorfulness, to each caterpillar according to their hunger.
A lot of good fiction and non fiction mentioned but one I haven’t seen so far is the Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
That one really feels like a key to unlock how much of all propaganda bullshit to me.
I'm not sure they really do what you describe, but I quite like This Soviet World, and The Cold War and Its Origins (or at least the parts up until the end of WWII that I have read). Killing hope as already recommended is great. Maybe Triumph of Evil?
This Soviet's World's depiction of science and agriculture is the starting point for a future. I love the idea of science being something people just do.
Blackshirts and Reds
If you want to be completely immunized against all capitalist philosophy forever, I recommend The Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukacs.
He goes through the history of philosophy in Germany, taking apart each 'significant' philosopher in turn (Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kirkegaard, Nietzche, etc.) and showing that, at each stage, the philosophy being written (as well as the period in which it becomes popular) are entirely dependent on the psychological needs of the bourgeoisie in justifying and maintaining their rule at that specific moment in time.
He also shows at every stage how dialectical materialism is correct, and is the only true successor of the entire philosophical movement originating in ancient Greece. Just like communism is an evolution beyond the highest degree of capitalist organization, dialectical materialism is the evolution beyond the highest development of liberal philosophy (Hegel's dialectical idealism).
There is a price for this knowledge though, as the book is over 850 pages long.
If you want just a key slice, the chapter on Nietzsche is very good and gets across some key points, and is 'only' about 100 pages.
Fkin links direct to libgen, viva la hexbear
Read Settlers, but seriously.
Also Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad
this very loosely fits but the Mistborn series, at least the first three books, are essentially about a workers/slave uprising and protracted peoples war against a tyrannical god-king and the aftermath and failure of the liberal project that follows
also a cute little love story in there and neat magic system involving eating metal-flakes and metabolizing them
Might have to take the Sanderson pill after all...
for a mormon writer the o.g. trilogy has critiques of patriarchy, is pretty aware of women's issues, is brutally honest about poverty and the disparity between rich and poor.
also one gets the strong feeling that the heroine in the story is a write in for his wife and is very wife-pilled and based. we love a stan who idolizes his wife in this house
a criticism i would have is it is slow at times, especially in book 2 and 3 but sanderson has a knack for big pay-offs for his setups so if you have the attention span you'll enjoy it
The follow up series really hits hard the importance of a vanguard party
still gotta get to it. i read Warbreaker which is another good book that is hyper aware of poverty and such but the end isnt some revolution in the same way. i dont know if i could recommend that book because it is so slow of a read even if i felt it was good overall.
just started the stormlight archives series
haven't read it yet but from what I've heard Losurdo's Liberalism: a Counter-History seems to fit
I have read it and I would disagree. That's a book for us.
"Kill Anything That Moves" left me feeling quite mind-injured.
Seconding This Soviet World, although I imagine it only works on people who are open to the concept of the USSR not being le ebil ruskies but just don't know a lot about the history or their system of government. It helps that it doesn't jump straight to "here's why stalin is good actually" and works up to it with background information
The state and revolution is potentially pretty good for certain kinds of radlibs
Blackshirts and Reds very good on AES
Capitalist Realism for those still fully enmeshed in the titular brain-box
I heard reading a thousand plateaus can give you schizophrenia
Only if you understand it (impossible)
I'll third Killing Hope.
Manufacturing Consent is of course a classic too.
If you're going to do manufacturing consent why not go for the original, Inventing Reality?
(though actually, its hard to find copies of Inventing Reality outside of libraries and ebooks, plus manufacturing consent may have had more forewords and stuff written, updating it for modern media? The lessons are similar tho)
There's an unofficial reprint on Lulu I got a while ago. It's good quality.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-parenti/inventing-reality/paperback/product-4zy2gp.html
They had new copies at the bookstore a couple years ago
I guess there is a more relevant foreword, yeah, but the main thing is that as a phrase I find it more precise and recognisable than 'inventing reality'. I love Parenti, and his strength is making things easy to understand from a common sense perspective, but that's my problem with 'inventing reality' as a phrase - used in conversation or academically, it's a combination of words that people from all sides of the political spectrum use for different reasons. Manufacturing Consent is a clear definition tied to Chomsky and his left-ish base.
It's worth reading both really. Open a mind in conversation with Parenti, then bring in the big term from Chomsky once you've got them where you want them.
The Man in the High Castle by PKD
Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti
didn't you find it kind of overly Doomer and pointless?
Kill Anything That Moves
Killing Hope
The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
The Devil's Chessboard
Confessions of an Economic Hitman
I also liked The Illumantus series, but thats fiction.
Illuminatus cured me of conspiracism. Kind of like smoking the whole pack of cigarettes.
So, I can think of two works specifically. And I have an idea of a third.
Thin air. It is a cyberpunk military fiction book. The inciting probelms are 1. Struggling to pay rent. 2. Disability accommodation 3.toxic masculinity. The author is British and went on to be a terf though his suspicious self loathing of masculinity. However that and market forces were in his good period and hard boiled action works about how capitlaism fucks stuff up.
Iron clad or Ogre by Adrian Tchaikovsky. They are both fun adventure stores about class struggle. Orge is more fleshed out and it specifically deals with a revolution being coopted. The twist at the end of that one actually hit me in the guts.
Then finally I don't know how to shape the idea. Any super hero book. Batman's super power is being rich. Spider man doesn't have to pay rent. And the only thing that holds him back from saving more people is having to have a day job. Technically any story where it isn't about asset accumulation has the potentially for a leftist reading but I haven't worked that out.
Oh, and The Time Wanderers. It is a soviet mystery sci fi novel in the far future. It is about the optimism and seeing a beautiful future ahead of you and the sadness of knowing you won't get to see it but your descendants will. It hits hard given how things have gone.
Me reading this thread: ✍️
Also, what was the book written by some poloitican about a race of sci-fi aliens that starts a cult. The super rich aliens on the planet got bored and started kidnaping and torturing people for fun. It is trash but the guy that wrote it was like the head of a British bank or something so the vibe is super fucked.
The Dawn of Everything by David’s Wengrow and Graeber completely re-wrote my understanding of early human history and development in the best ways
The Crying of Lot 49 and Inherent Vice. Actually, paranoia and it's consequences are a common theme of my works.
Not as mindfucking as my other works, but Gravity's Rainbow is kind of all over the place and I don't agree with how I depicted women in V.
Oh, and for nonfiction I'd highly recommend some David Graeber, he's really great at soft-selling socialism. He tends to start from a neutral positionand assume the reader doesn't have our sensibilities, and holds them by the hand through a series of individually mild and well-cited statements and leaves them in an unambiguously radical place.
Bullshit Jobs is an easy read and much better than it sounds. Debt: The First 5000 Years is his masterpiece, but is a much more challenging read.
I came here to recommend Bullshit Jobs, Debt by contrast I found too sweeping / less convincing (and in any case a much bigger ask for the reader)
I felt like I already knew pretty much everything Bullshit Jobs was going to say before it said it. Debt had some new ideas for me. I think your background matters a lot.
The book or the essay? I've heard the book version just feels drawn out but never got it myself, skipped straight to Debt
Debt I think is good if you've already bought into being anticapitalist. That said, it did hit me harder having dropped acid and getting through the middle portion of the book