Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was a defining text of the movement for Indian independence from British colonial rule. It also articulated a radical new idea of politics in a modern context – peaceful protest or non-violent resistance. David explores the wider legacy of Gandhi’s ideas and asks what Gandhi’s withering attack on ‘machine’ politics means for the politics we have today.

Free online version of the text:

• https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf 

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/gandhi-hind-swaraj-and-other-writings-2nd-edition?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Stephen Haggard on Gandhi for the LRB
• M.K. Gandhi, An autobiography: or the story with my experiments of truth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).
• Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1915-1948
• Talking Politics with Ramachandra Guha on Gandhi’s politics
• Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
• Martin Luther King, ‘My Trip to the Land of Gandhi’
• E.M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’

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The Communist Manifesto (1848) remains the most famous revolutionary text of all. But what was the problem with politics that only a revolution could solve?  And why were the working class the only people who could solve it? David explores what Marx and Engels really had to say about capitalism, crisis and class and he asks what still resonates from that message today.

Free online version of the text:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61-images.html 

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/marx-later-political-writings?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Karl Marx, ‘The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German ideology
• Jonathan Wolff, Why read Marx today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
• Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: greatness and illusion (London: Allen Lane, 2016)
• In Our Time on Marx

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Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went to see American democracy for himself and what he actually found. Tocqueville was amazed and impressed by the American way of doing politics, but his fears about how its democracy might go wrong remain as prescient as ever.

Free online version of the text:

•  Volume 1 and Volume 2

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Democracy-America-Essays-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447601

Going Deeper:

• In Our Time on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
• Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr, Tocqueville: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Annette Gordon Reed, ‘America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy’
• Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of democracy in the age of revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
• Talking Politics American History series on the 15th and 19th amendment

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Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to take an interest in politics? What happens if we don’t? David explores the lessons Constant drew from the failures of the French Revolution and his timeless message about the perils of political indifference.

Free online version of the text:

• https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/constant-political-writings?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Benjamin Constant, Adolphe 
• William Doyle, The French Revolution: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• In Our Time on Germaine de Stael
• Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.

Free online version of the text:

•  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/wollstonecraft-vindication-rights-men-and-vindication-rights-woman-and-hints?format=PB 

Going Deeper:

• In Our Time on Mary Wollstonecraft 
• Wollstonecraft in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Sylvana Tomaselli, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)
• Virginia Woolf on Mary Wollstonecraft
• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

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Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a strange and puzzling power. David explores what Hobbes was trying to achieve and how a vision of politics that came out of the English civil war, can still illuminate the world we live in.

Free online version of the text:

•  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/hobbes-leviathan-revised-student-edition?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• David Runciman, ‘The sovereign’ in The Oxford handbook of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Richard Tuck, Hobbes a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
• (Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’
• (Video) Sophie Smith, ‘The nature of politics’, the 2017 Quentin Skinner lecture. 
• Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• David for The Guardian on Hobbes and the coronavirus

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