Showing titles in Communism & Socialism

The inspiration for the upcoming film Reagan starring Dennis Quaid and directed by Sean McNamara “Combining the skills of great story-telling with his commitment to scholarly detail, Paul Kengor has written an important book that also makes for a fascinating read. The Crusader will not only...

No country is as misunderstood as North Korea, and no modern tyrant has remained more mysterious than the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Now, celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice pulls back the curtain to expose the life story of the "Incarnation of Love and Morality". Taken directly from books spirited out of Pyongyang, Dear Reader is a carefully reconstructed first-person account of the man behind the mythology.

The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller Red Horizons, Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, giving the dictator a nervous breakdown and inspiring him to send assassination squads to the U.S. to find his former spy chief and kill him. They failed.

"Ingrao mi riceve in un salottino, attorno a un tavolinetto basso. Lui mi sta seduto di fronte, in poltrona. Dialogando con lui sulla sua esperienza di pensare e fare il Comunismo avevo l'impressione che quel che diceva fosse meno di quel che pensava e viveva. Sentivo una passione a monte del suo discorso, che il discorso smorzava e riduceva a semplici parole. Sto dicendo che, in un certo senso, chi ha vissuto tutta una vita per fare il comunismo, contrae un'esperienza che in un tempo non comunista non è dicibile e non è comunicabile."

Der linke Publizist Robert Misik nimmt auch hier kein Blatt vor den Mund: Mit Ironie und starker Überzeugungskraft verdeutlicht er, warum Gesellschaftskritik wieder angesagt ist, und macht dabei keinen Hehl aus seinem eigenen linken Hintergrund. Neben dem Porträt sehr unterschiedlicher Charaktere der linken Szene - von Michael Moore bis zu Naomi Klein - befasst er sich mit Fragen nach politischen Alternativen und untersucht, warum man heute mit rebellischen Äußerungen darauf gefasst sein muss, womöglich einen neuen Trend zu starten.

Anders als der reale Sozialismus bricht der Kapitalismus nicht zusammen - es sei denn durch "äußere Anstöße von extremer Heftigkeit" und eine "glaubwürdige Alternative im Innern". Dieser Einschätzung des französischen Historikers Fernand Braudel folgt Elmar Altvater in seinem nunmehr in siebter Auflage erschienenen Buch. Die Dynamik der modernen Gesellschaften verdankt sich der "Dreifaltigkeit" von europäischer Rationalität der Weltbeherrschung, kapitalistischen sozialen Formen und fossilen Energien.

Finanskrise, klimaforandringer og voksende social og økonomisk ulighed har de seneste år fået stadig flere til at sætte spørgsmålstegn ved den kapitalistiske økonomi. Samtidig er socialistiske idéer om en demokratisering af økonomien igen sat på dagsordenen. Men hvordan kan økonomien styres mere demokratisk? Hvad betyder det at demokratisere ejerskabet, og hvem skal egentlig eje virksomheder og banker? Hvilken rolle skal markedsmekanismer spille? Og hvordan skaber vi en økonomi, der sikrer mest mulig frihed og indflydelse for den enkelte.

»Unser Kernauftrag ist es, komische Kritik zu üben, junge Menschen zu politisieren, die (verfickte) AfD zu ärgern und schließlich: Grüne, Linke und SPD mit Utopien zu konfrontieren, zur Not mit ihren eigenen.« (Martin Sonneborn, SPIEGEL im Februar 2021) Das utopische Bewusstsein, die...

La vita della sezione e i suoi tipi umani, la diffusione militante dell'Unità, il rito del congresso, i vezzi e la retorica del dibattito politico. Una nostalgia ragionata del Partito comunista italiano e lo spietato contrappunto con la sinistra di oggi. Attraverso storie, personaggi, aneddoti divertenti, Novelli smonta le false verità sul partito scomparso nel 1991, ma non chiude gli occhi davanti alle questioni critiche, prima fra tutte il rapporto con l'Unione Sovietica e i paesi del socialismo reale.

Conservative columnist and think tank research fellow Justin Haskins examines the moral perils of Marx's socialism. In Socialism Is Evil, Haskins makes the moral case against socialism and also describes in detail what socialists believe, the differences between socialism and communism, why Marx's socialism will never be completely adopted, and why even the more moderate European-style socialism, called "democratic socialism" by some, is highly immoral and anti-American.

Although one of the most influential thinkers of the last millennium, Karl Marx was relatively unheralded during most of his lifetime. Famous for predicting the inevitable demise of capitalism, it was only after his death that his clarion call reached a wide audience: "Workers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your chains." Andrew Collier breathes new life into the achievements of Karl Marx, arguing that his work is still of vital relevance in today’s global climate of inequality.

Mafia Spies is the definitive account of America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever - with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue. In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassination.

In 1929, Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive "revolution from above", a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power for a new war. He forced 25 million peasant families into state-run collectives and transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument. In 1939, he concluded the pact with Hitler that enabled him to grasp at Eastern Europe while Hitler made war in the West. 

In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915-1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx - a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism. 

During the pitched battle over slavery in the United States, Black writers - enslaved and free - allied themselves with the cause of abolition and used their art to advocate for emancipation and to envision the end of slavery as a world-historical moment of possibility. 

As this book argues, every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends, one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity, but a creative one. As our historical conditions change, so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing. 

A different kind of politics for a new kind of society - beyond work, scarcity, and capitalism. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union and its global empire, most observers assumed that the 70-year argument that socialism was superior to capitalism was over.

The United States' approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing that began the period of reform and opening in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later, the hope of producing a benign People's Republic of China utterly failed. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.

Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and nonhuman world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more.