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Please recommend some Marxist history

lionking said:
I'm not sure if this is what you are after, but as a lawyer you just might like it:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tyrannicide-Brief-Charles-Scaffold/dp/0307386376

The Tyrannicide Brief, by lawyer, writer and celebrity lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, not only about the radical lawyer, John Cooke, and how he prosecuted Charles I, but about the background to the Civil War.
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I read it. I liked it a lot too. I particularly liked the micro detail about drafting the charges and observing procedure and I mention that because I see it as an element in Marxist history to understand very close up the economic relations between people. How exactly did someone of Cromwell's class live? What land tenure did they have, how was their land worked and what did it yield? Was he in commerce in any way, or moving in commercial circles. What was his income and taxes? Without knowing these things we cannot know how many decisions were rooted in self interest nor to what extent. Mainline history makes far too many assumptions in these areas (maybe just that the reader isn't interested).

But great book for anyone who hasn't read it, especially any lawyers out there. Robertson is himself a very fine lawyer.
 
Craig B said:
Does the understanding of history consist in settling on the "right formulations"? More generally, are ideological predispositions to be sought in sources of historical information - or on the contrary should they be discounted and, as far as possible, removed?
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I think formulations are very important. They should not be confused with ideological predispositions. The trouble with bourgeois history is it doesn't acknowledge its own ideological predispositions. Like people who think they're the only ones who don't speak with an accent.

Try to make a statement about some historical event or period that isn't a formulation. Scratch that, too easy. Try this: account for WW1 without using a formulation.
 
You could try The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix.
 
I'd like to see a history of conspiracies in world events across time, and how they re-direct history.

Including diagrams of ties between officials and money.
 
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Sounds to me like you're really looking for fiction. Ken Follett's Century Trilogy should be right up your alley. I've only read the first two books (Fall of Giants and Winter of the World) but it has all the right heroes (the poor and Labour pols) and villains (the rich and Tories).
 
Brainster said:
Sounds to me like you're really looking for fiction. Ken Follett's Century Trilogy should be right up your alley. I've only read the first two books (Fall of Giants and Winter of the World) but it has all the right heroes (the poor and Labour pols) and villains (the rich and Tories).
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No thanks :)

I am reading Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down as recommended above.
 
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