SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

This beautiful novel (466 [small] pg) by Gorky is his novel of the urban poor, and the conditions and frustrations which they live through, and the capitalist illusions they may hold on to as dreams to sustain themselves. It is really way before it's time, for it was written in the early 1900's (I am not sure exactly when), about a condition which has become a large occurence around the world only in the last 50 years or so: that of the rural poor/peasants migrating to cities, and the majority of the time being forced to live in slums (the only affordable housing for them) and work in very low-paid jobs in factories, or in the "informal" sector (i.e. street sellers, illegal activities, garbage collection/picking, etc...). In this novel the "main" character lives in horrible, run-down housing, and works mainly in the informal sector, in specific garbage picking, and later becoming a street seller.

Gorky also attacks and deconstructs the bourgeois myth of happiness: that all one needs is a little property to make money off of (like a small shop for instance) to be happy. He also shows the ridiculousness and impracticallity of this notion for the lower classes, who it is often forced upon like so many other components of bourgeois culture/thought. Also, in doing so, Gorky exposes the dirty and hypocritical reality which stands behind bourgeois morality and "philosophy" and shows it trully to be in essence a dirty, useless, hypocritical, and greedy type of life, built on the exploitation of others (involving little to no serious labor on the oppressors part) in the sole pursuit of the bourgeois god: money.

Anyways, this is a surprisingly relevant and even up to date novel, given the large number of people around the world living in slums and working in the "informal" sector, trying to feed themselves and stay alive when they have been given nothing but problems, and are dehumanized and brutalized constantly by the dirty, hypocritical upper classes of the world. Enjoy comrades:

Download: 

The Three - Maxim Gorky.pdf