1. The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1952
   A history of the American Socialist Party, which at its height had over 150,000 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers, and won almost a million votes for its presidential candidate.
2. Critical Theory
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1972
   Essays by the founder of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.
3. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1998
   The authors criticize postmodernism in academia for its misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics: (1) The incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; (2) the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others". The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism," and in particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing." The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
   Published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles and in the United Kingdom as Intellectual Impostures.
4. A field guide to critical thinking
   Resource Type: Article
   
5. How to Win an Argument
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1979
   Michael Gilbert sets out to show how to identify and defend oneself against tricky and flawed arguments.
6. Man for Himself
   An Inguiry into the Psychology of Ethics
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1969
   Fromm reaffirms the validity of humanistic ethics, to show that our knowledge of human nature does not lead to ethical relativism but, on the contrary, to the conviction that the sources of norms for ethical conduct are to found found in human nature itself.
7. Marxists Internet Archive
   Resource Type: Website
   Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
8. News and Letters
   Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
   Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
9. Onward Humanist Soldiers!
   Arming Ourselves with Logic
   Resource Type: Article
   Published: 1999
   A humanist take on the religious debate over whether or not "God" should be removed from the Canadian constitution.
10. The Phenomenology of Mind
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1807
    The birthplace and essence of Hegel's dialectic.
11. Postmodern Disrobed
    Review of Intellectual Impostures
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1998
    An admirable job of exposing the daffy absurdity of postmodernism intellectuals.
12. Problems of Knowledge and Freedom
    The Russell Lectures
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1972
    These lectures explore Bertrand Russell's work on empiricism, morality, linguistics and politics.
13. Rationality/Science
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1995
    Chomsky writes: "It strikes me as remarkable that the left today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use."
14. Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1982
    Part I - Rosa Luxemburg as Theoretician, as Activist, as Internationalist. Part II - The Women's Liberation Movement as Revolutionary Force and Reason. Part III - Karl Marx: From Critic of Hegel to Author of Capital and Theorist of "Revolution in Permanence."
15. Strange Fruit
    Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2008
    Malik makes the case that most anti-racists accept the belief, also held by racialists and outright racists, that differences between groups are of great importance. While racialists attribute the differences to biology, anti-racists attribute them to deep-rooted cultural traditions which are typically seen as inherent in the group. Malik argues that these positions are actually quite similar, and makes the case that racism and racial inequality are best combatted by focusing not on our differences but on what unites us. Malik also strongly criticizes the cultural relativism of many anti-racists, and their increasing tendency to reject science as some kind of western imperialist conspiracy to oppress the rest of the world.
16. The World Turned Upside Down
    Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1984
    Hill looks at radical groups such as the Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, and others, whose ideas threatened to overturn the established order in the mid-seventeenth century.

Experts on Reason in the Sources Directory

1. Marxists Internet Archive