Reviews and Comments

David Eldred

dpe@wyrms.de

Joined 1 year, 4 months ago

Book lover and English language teacher. I taught in the Czech Republic from 2017 to 2021. I’m currently teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kyrgyzstan.
Mastodon: https://mas.to/@dpe

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Karl Marx: The communist manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1963, Russell & Russell) 4 stars

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), …

Review of 'The communist manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

3.6 stars. If this were written today, people would demand research, stats, and data to support its conclusions. There were a lot of declarations where Marx and Engels just said things. “The proletariat is this,” and “The bourgeois thinks that” type of phrasing.

There also oddly seemed like there were unfinished thoughts. For example, free education and the abolishment of child labor is advocated for, and the paragraph where this is discussed ends with “etc, etc.” Really Marx? “etc, etc?” I can see Lenin now, channeling his inner Marx — “We’re going give power to the worker, and like, whatever.”

It also decried prison reform, humanitarianism, and the prevention of the cruelty to animals as “conservative bourgeois socialism.” That seems a bit cynical to me. The manifesto seems to be implying that these issues would just go away without the bourgeois, and that a society where workers are in control …

Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman: Manufacturing Consent (2002, Pantheon Books) 5 stars

In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the …

Review of 'Manufacturing Consent' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Despite giving this book 5 stars, I have some criticisms. To its credit, this book is pretty damning with its rebuke of U.S. mainstream media propaganda, and provides exhaustive case studies that back its claims. I do however think some arguments could have been even stronger.

1. The authors (Herman and Chomsky) cite reporting that they themselves don't scrutinize. Namely, reporting from Amnesty International. They do the very thing with Amnesty International that they are accusing the mainstream media of doing with U.S. Government propaganda. They report it without analysis, as if it's fact. I am not claiming that Amnesty International is a bad source. Quite the contrary. I greatly admire the organization (I'd even love to work for them). But the authors should go through the same effort of proving why Amnesty International is providing trustworthy information each time they cite them, just as they did with proving why …