Hello comrades,
I want to get my younger half brother a good book to read on the subject of leftism/socialism and the true workings of economic oppression we live in.
However I have a contentious relationship with my family. My wife and I currently live in a dilapidated rv in my mother’s driveway. When i was sixteen she moved us into a house with her at the time boyfriend whom she met at her job where I also worked as a teenager It turned out this guy who had pretended to be my friend was really an abusive authoritarian. Not so much violent abusive but definitely emotionally and psychologically. Several memories i have after we all moved in together are one time we were arguing in each others face and a little bit of my saliva escaped my Mouth and as a response he literally hocked a lugie and spat in my face. That was the most extreme and looking back I wish i had responded differently, as in called the authorities because no adult should spit in a teenagers face ever. but even before that the hypocrisy was making itself pretty evident. Before we moved in together I had a rather autonomous existence as a socially active developing 16 year old. I had issues with authority and had dropped out of highschool after my sophomore year.I was someone who got good grades however i didn’t often do homework and just coasted along on high test scores and my sponge like memory. After dropping out I was in a punk rock band with 40 year olds who i met through one of my mother’s best friends. She bought me beer for my birthday, took me to a heavy metal concert where we smoked cannabis together. At that time my mother and i had a close relationship and a tight bond. Things changed after they started seeing each other once he had even asked me to get pot for him before we moved in when he couldn’t get any. But even after that, there was one day when i came back from a camping trip in Maine with friends and i asked to buy some from him since he sold at the time and he said “im not selling weed to a kid” then after we moved in together it became a hellscape of “my house my rules, im the man of the house” authoritarianism. I could not smoke even outside of this house on the property and had to go walk half a mile away to a nearby cometary to smoke unless i asked permission and offered to smoke with him. Then they would search my room and once found some mushrooms I had in my dresser and claimed to have flushed them although a month or so prior they both had purchased a quarter ounce from me. All this motivated me to move out as soon as i could. Luckily they allowed me to leave several months before I officially turned 18. But this was 2007 and it was possible to live a decent life on a low wage even after the market collapse in 2008.
I was not very socio/politically conscious at the time. However i was aware of the hypocrisy of our society. Just not entirely aware of my socio/political ideals as being far left/ socialist until the end of my twenties.
My half brother is just about to turn 17. He has virtually no autonomy. Besides a part time fast food job he only recently acquired and his learners permit it seems he doesn't have the ability to take a piss without asking for permission. And it also seems that while we are living in a 40 year old rv in the driveway with no access to electricity and having to spend $30-45 weekly on propane so we and our pets don't freeze, that we are obviously persona non gratis. I just recently started communicating with my brother through a messaging app after last thanksgiving and he has encrypted the chat so that gives me an idea of the environment he lives in as being repressive.
I want to develop a relationship with my half brother but i feel as though i am walking on eggshells. This last thanksgiving we talked and joked while his father was not present but on christmas he was present so my brother was a completely different Person when he was there. I just feel really awful knowing how he tried to control me as a teenager despite myself being unrelated to him in any way and I can not even imagine what its like for him being directly related.
So i want to get him a book on socialist thought. I was thinking something by michael parenti could help to open his eyes to the reality of this world we live in. And that would also be easier to give to him as it wouldn't be something so overtly and obviously controversial as something by Marx/engels or even noam chompsky whom my opinion of is somewhat torn considering his past associations with jeffery epstien have given me some serious ick.
What do you all think would be the best book to give to a heavily repressed 16 year old on his seventeenth birthday in a few months?
Thanks for any suggestions and for reading my deluge of over sharing my personal family issues.
I don't disagree, the writing could definitely be better. But i think the general idea and the title have some merit. Fred hampton has become a symbol of power against corrupt authority and if mangione is truly the one culpable for the killing of Thompson then that act should be seen as a symbol for what happens when you manipulate the public for 50+ years, nullify the progress made by prior leftist movements using any and all means possible against your own citizens and remove true leftist policies from the mainstream while amplifying far right ideologies.