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Has anyone else read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene? (archive.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by znonymous@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

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If anyone has read this, and could provide a Marxist/materialist perspective, or a link to a known one, I would greatly appreciate it.

Edit: Wow! I am glad I asked before wasting any time at all reading any part of this. Thank you.

I am asking, because I was recommended to read Dale Carnegie's 1936 book How to Win Friends and Influence People, by my current boss, and I had read that when I was 19 at the recommendation of my Evangelical father. I mostly disliked it then, finding it trite and vague. So, I was trying to find an alternative, and tried to look up an alternative that I could read instead. I saw that this 48 Laws book was highly read by people incarcerated in US prisons, and the book had been banned by many prisons. I was hoping it had some sort of subversive anti-authoritarian messaging that could fly under my boss's radar.

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[–] batsforpeace@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I see this guy's next book was called 'The Art of Seduction' cringe I guess he really was targeting a self-help grindset audience even back in the early 2000s

[–] LGOrcStreetSamurai@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

I read that one too, really glad I broke out of the orbit of that nonsense. Yeah, it’s all slimeball literature. It’s not poorly written sadly so can’t even dunk it for that or anything like that, however it’s all gross. The whole genre is like “elevated manosphere” stuff. There is some real thought and some basic philosophy infused in these books but most of them are all about understanding philosophy for personal gain or accumulation of power. Which is why I hate it the most, in that if were written in a less slime-y way it could offer something of worth to people, but instead it’s just how to push others down so you can stand taller