I am a retired teacher of History and Politics ending my career as a full time trade union officer.
Ian using this blog basically air my views about things I have thought about over the years – some will be topical some will not. I don’t make any claims to originality, but equally, no-one should be able to accuse me of plagiarism. If I quote anyone I will certainly try to acknowledge them.
I am a socialist, I see myself as a Marxist, BUT definitely not in the Stalinist or Maoist tradition – both of whose ideas and followers I reject as mockeries and distortions of Marxism. To paraphrase Trotsky, Stalin stands in the same relation to Marxism as Judas Iscariot does to Christianity .
Many Marxists, if they read this blog will very likely see my thinking as flawed or lacking in rigour – I do not make any claims of any kind.
The blogs began with my analysis of religion and society. I spent many years writing these on and off.
Why is there Religion, the Origins of Religion, Ancient Matriarchal Society , The Roots of Christianity and the Myth of Jesus Christ are not intended to be scholastic works with masses of footnotes and references. However a reading list of some of the sources I used might be helpful.
Religion and Society – Reading List
N.I. Bukharin – Historical Materialism
J.G. Frazer – The Golden Bough
F. Engels – The Origins of Private Property and the State
Mansel – The Gnostic Heresies
The Holy Bible (authorised version)
The Qu’ran (in English)
The Dictionary of Christian Biography
The Cambridge History of the Bible
Jacquetta Hawkes & Woolley – Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilisation
Jacquetta Hawkes – Atlas of Ancient Archaeology
Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Archaeology
Tacitus – The Annals of Imperial Rome
S. Takakura – The Ainu of Northern Japan
N.G Munro – Ainu Creed and Cult
George Caitlin – Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians
Mircia Eliade – A History of Religious Ideas
Merlin Stone – The Paradise Papers
Elaine Pagels – The Gnostic Gospels
William Watson – Cultural Frontiers in the Ancient Near East
James Melaart – The Neolithic of the Near East
Bachofen – The Mother, Myth and Religion
D. Baranki – Phoenicia and the Phoenicians
A. Bertholet – History of Hebrew Civilisation
K. Bittel – Hattiska, Capital of the Hittites
D.G. Brandon – Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East
E. Butterworth – Some traces of the Pre – Olympian World
S. Melgunov – Russian Religious and Social Movements of the Seventeenth Century
Womens Liberation and Socialist Revolution – various =- Pathfinder
H. Butterworth – Christianity and History
H.N. Brailsford – The Levellers
K. Marx – Capital vol 1
J.G Robertson – A Short History of Christianity
M. Finley – Early Greece and Bronze Age Archaic Society
Radical Feminist Collective – Feminist Practice
F. Engels – The Dialectics of Nature
Alexandra Kollantai – Sexual Relations & the Class Struggle.
Rinaldo Frezzato 