Amadeo Bordiga was one of the greatest figures of the Third Communist International. The Science and Passion of Communism presents his Soviet and internationalist battles in the revolutionary post-WWI period until that against Stalinism, and those in the post-WWII period against the triumphant U.S. capitalism and for an original, updated re-presentation of Marxist critique of political economy.

Towards a Political Aesthetics of Cinema: The Outside of Film is a contribution to an aesthetics of cinema rooted in Marxist theory. Rather than focusing on the role that certain films, or the cinema as an institution, might play in political consciousness, the book asks a different question: how can the subject of politics in film be thought? This problem is presented in a systematic-theoretical rather than historical manner. The main aim of this book is a retrospective rehabilitation of the psychoanalytical concept of "suture," whose political core is progressively revealed. In a second step, this rereading of "suture"-theory is mediated with the Marxist aesthetics of Fredric Jameson. From the perspective of this reconfigured aesthetics of negativity, films by Hitchcock, Antonioni, Haneke and Kubrick are analyzed as articulations of a political unconscious.

James Klugmann appears as a shadowy figure in the legendary history of the Cambridge spies. As both mentor and friend to Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and others, Klugmann was the man who manipulated promising recruits deemed ripe for conversion to the communist cause. This perception of him was reinforced following the release of his MI5 file and the disclosure of Soviet intelligence files in Moscow, which revealed he played a key part in the recruitment of John Cairncross, the 'fifth man', and had a pivotal war-time role in the Special Operations Executive, helping shift Churchill and the allies to support Tito and the communist partisans in Yugoslavia. In this book, Geoff Andrews reveals Klugmann's story in full for the first time, uncovering the motivations, conflicts and illusions of those drawn into the world of communism - and the sacrifices they made on its behalf.

This volume offers new perspectives on the appeal and profound cultural meaning of socialism over the past two centuries. It brings together scholarship from various disciplines addressing diverse national contexts, including Britain, China, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Taken together, the contributions highlight the aesthetic, narrative, and religious dimensions of socialism as it has developed through three broad phases in the modern era: early nineteenth-century beginnings, mass-based political organizations, and the attainment of state power in the twentieth century and beyond. Socialism did not attract millions of people primarily because of logical argument and empirical evidence, important though those were. Rather, it told the most compelling story about the past, present, and future. Refocusing attention on socialism's imaginative dimensions, this volume aims to revive scholarly interest in one of the modern world(1)s most important political orientations.

Whilst the Chinese Communist Party is one of the most powerful political institutions in the world, it is also one of the least understood, due to the party's secrecy and tight control over the archives, the press and the Internet. Having governed the People's Republic of China for nearly 70 years though, much interest remains into how this quintessentially Leninist party governs one-fifth of the world and runs the world's second-largest economy. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party gives a comprehensive and multi-faceted picture of the party's traditions and values - as well as its efforts to stay relevant in the twenty-first century. It uses a wealth of contemporary data and qualitative analysis to explore the intriguing relationship between the party on the one hand, and the government, the legal and judicial establishment and the armed forces, on the other. Tracing the influence of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, as well as Mao Zedong, on contemporary leaders ranging from Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, the sections cover: the party's history and traditions; how the party works and seeks to remain relevant; major policy arenas; the CCP in the twenty-first century. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Politics, Asian Politics, Political Parties and International Relations. Go to https://www.bookshop4u.com/lw1 to see Willy Lam introduce the book.

In the four volumes of The Development Trajectory of Eastern Societies and the Theories and Practices of Socialism, the author re-examines Marx and Engels' theories on the development trajectory of Eastern societies by integrating theoretical analysis of Marxist theories and a historical investigation of socialist revolution and socialist construction around the world. Pointing out the guiding significance of five aspects of the basic principles of Marxism for studying how Eastern societies develop, this volume interrogates various assumptions that have prevailed in academia, addresses unexplained topics, and offers insight into the understanding of these basic principles. The result is a penetrating and specific understanding of Marxist basic principles and the development trajectory of Eastern societies. Critical engagement with predominant understandings and a refreshing reformulation of Marxist theoretical bases make the book a key new reference for readers who are studying or are interested in Marxism, Marxist philosophy, and the history of philosophy.

This book analyzes the stance of international communism towards nationality, anti-colonialism, and racial equality as defined by the Communist International (Comintern) during the interwar period. Central to the volume is a comparative analysis of the communist parties of three British dominions, South Africa, Canada and Australia, demonstrating how each party attempted to follow Moscow's lead and how each party produced its own attempts to deal with these issues locally, while considering the limits of their own agency within the movement at large.

While Marxian theory has produced a sound and rigorous critique of capitalism, has it faltered in its own practice of social transformation? Has it faltered because of the Marxian insistence on the hyper-secularization of political cultures? The history of religions - with the exception of some spiritual traditions - has not been any less heartless and soulless. This book sets up a much-needed dialogue between a rethought Marxian praxis of the political and a rethought experience of spirituality. Such rethinking within Marxism and spirituality and a resetting of their lost relationship is perhaps the only hope for a non-violent future of both the Marxian reconstruction of the self and the social as also faith-based life-practices. Building on past work in critical theory, this book offers a new take on the relationship between a rethought Marxism and a rethought spirituality (rethought in the life, philosophy and works of Christian thinkers, anti-Christian thinkers, Marxian thinkers, those critical of Marxist Statecraft, Dalit neo-Buddhist thinkers, thinkers drawing from Judaism, as well as thinkers drawing critically from Christianity). Contrary to popular belief, this book does not see spirituality as a derivative of only religion. This book also sees spirituality as, what Marx designated, the "sigh of the oppressed" against both social and religious orthodoxy. In that sense, spirituality is not just a displaced form of religion; it is a displaced form of the political too. This book therefore sets up the much needed dialogue between the Marxian political and the spiritual traditions. The chapters in this book were originally published in Rethinking Marxism - A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society.

This work explores the question of defining ideology from a Marxist perspective. Advancing beyond the schemas of discussion presented in current Marxist literature, the author offers an account of how the concept of ideology should be defined and what role it plays within historical materialism. Through a close reading of Karl Marx's relevant writings, this volume demonstrates that while there is no coherent, single account of ideology in Marx's work, his materialist framework can be reconstructed in a defensible and 'non-deterministic' way. The definition of ideology presented is then articulated through a close reading of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Efforts are also made to demonstrate that Gramsci's interpretation of historical materialism is indeed consistent and compatible with Marx's. A systematic articulation of a theory of ideology that combines the works of Marx and Gramsci, as well as adding elements of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory and William James's psychology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy and Marxist thought.

The complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxism value theory Unlike such obvious forms of oppression as feudalism or slavery, capitalism has been able to survive through its genius for disguising corporate profit imperatives as opportunities for individual human equality and advancement. But it was the genius of Karl Marx, in his masterwork, Capital, to discover the converse law of surplus value: behind the illusion of the democratic, supply-and-demand marketplace, lies the workplace, where people trying to earn a living are required to work way beyond the time it takes to pay their wages. Leave it to the genius of Samir Amin to advance Marx's theories--adding to them the work of radical economists such as Michal Kalecki, Josef Steindl, Paul Baran, and Paul Sweezy--to show how Marxian theory can be adapted to modern economic conditions. Amin extends Marx's analysis to describe a concept of "imperialist rent" derived from the radically unequal wages paid for the same labor done by people in both the Global North and the Global South, the rich nations and the poor ones. This is global oligopolistic capitalism, in which finance capital has come to dominate worldwide production and distribution. Amin also advances Baran and Sweezy's notion of economic surplus to explain a globally monopolized system in which Marx's "law of value" takes the form of a "law of globalized value," generating a super-exploitation of workers in the Global South. Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value offers readers, in one volume, the complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxian value theory. The book includes texts from two of Amin's recent works, Three Essays on Marx's Value Theory and The Law of Worldwide Value, which have provoked considerable controversy and correspondence. Here, Amin answers his critics with a series of letters, clarifying and developing his ideas. This work will occupy an important place among the theoretical resources for anyone involved in the study of contemporary Marxian economic and political theory.

This book develops a comprehensive systematic economic theory, conceiving how the dynamic of market relations generates an economy dominated by the competitive process of individual profit-seeking enterprises. The author shows how, contrary to classical political economy and contemporary economics, the theory of capital is an a priori normative account properly belonging to ethics. Exposing and overcoming the limits of the economic conceptions of Hegel and Marx, Rethinking Capital determines how the system of capitals shapes economic freedom, jeopardizing the very rights in whose exercise it consists. Winfield thereby provides the understanding required to guide the private and public interventions with which capitalism can be given a human face.

As capitalism continues with business as usual, climate change is fast expanding the gap between rich and poor between and within nations, and imposing unparalleled suffering on those least able to protect themselves. In THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE, anticapitalist activists from five continents offer radical answers to the most important questions of our time: ** Why is capitalism destroying the conditions that make life on Earth possible? ** How can we stop the destruction before it is too late? " In 46 essays on topics ranging from the food crisis to carbon trading to perspectives from indigenous peoples, they make a compelling case that saving the world from climate catastrophe will require much more than tinkering with technology or taxes. Only radical social change can prevent irreversible damage to the earth and civilization. "Essential reading for everyone who is serious about confronting the climate emergency." -Emma Murphy, co-editor, Green Left Weekly EDITED BY IAN ANGUS Ian Angus, who wrote several of the articles in this book and selected the others from a wide range of authors and movements, is one of the world's best-known ecosocialist activists. He is editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism, which has been described as "the most reliable single source of information and strategic insights for climate justice." Ian is also Associate Editor of Socialist Voice, an Advisory Editor of Socialist Resistance, and a founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network. He lives in Ontario, Canada. THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE Editor: Ian Angus Publisher: Resistance Books (London) ISBN: 978-0-902869-87-5 Publication Date: July 2009 Trade paperback: 6" x 9" (15cm x 23cm) 284 pages "At last, an absolutely indispensable guide to the debate on climate change, a sourcebook that makes the case for anti-capitalist action as the only effective way to stop global warming. Of course the powers-that-be don't agree - after all, who else is responsible for the current crisis? But we all need The Global Fight for Climate Justice if we are to fight for a liveable world." -Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature; founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network "A wonderful collection of articles from across the world by climate change activists, from governmental leaders such as Evo Morales to trade unionists like Tony Kearns. This book will inform, excite and energise those who see the need to fight both the impact of climate change and the political systems that have produced it." -Jane Kelly, editor (with Sheila Malone) of Ecosocialism or Barbarism "Everyone who wants a better world should read The Global Fight for Climate Change, to understand the economic, social and political causes of the climate crisis, and the sweeping changes that are needed to save the Earth." -Suzanne Weiss, Socialist Voice contributing editor; author of Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Defense of Palestinian Rights "'Socialism or Barbarism' is no longer (if it ever was) an abstract theoretical proposition. This comprehensive collection of essays focused upon the climate and food crises, the responses of capital and socialist alternatives, draws upon both global social movements and leading advocates of an alternative to barbarism to demonstrate that the choice before us is an immediate one, not one to be put off to the future." -Michael A. Lebowitz, author of Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century and Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class "The most reliable single source of information and strategic insights for climate justice is Climate and Capitalism, the website Ian Angus edits, and it is a tribute to the movement's development that demand has arisen for this book." -Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Paul Wetherly provides a restatement and defence of the classical Marxist theory of the state, developing an analytical approach that draws on G.A. Cohen's functional interpretation of Marx's theory of history. Instrumentalist and structuralist arguments are conceived as related causal mechanisms within the functional approach, and the principle of economic determination is shown to be consistent with the relative autonomy of the state as an institution with its own interests and capacities. This old-fashioned interpretation is defended against rival approaches within contemporary Marxism, notably Jessop's strategic relational approach.

Through extensive archival research in eight different languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy introduces readers to the politics and practices of socialists in Tsarist Russia's imperial borderlands. These parties fought for democracy and workers' power across the entire span of the Russian Empire-from the factories of Warsaw, to the oil fields of Baku, to the autonomous parliament of Finland. Eric Blanc's incisive study of these parties shows that the Russian Revolution was far less Russian than is commonly assumed. And the implications of this discovery challenge the long-held assumptions of historians, sociologists, and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change under both autocratic and democratic conditions.

Originally published in 1981 Practice and Progress is a collection examining the changes that have occurred in the theories, methodologies and practices of sociology, in the institutional and educational setting of the subject, and in British society. The themes pursued include the professionalization of sociology its development and standing in the universities; the impact on it of Marxism and feminism and the major debates over positivism and empiricism, quantitative methods, linguistic analysis; and numerous other crucial methodological and theoretical concerns.

A comprehensive primer on the key figures of the Marxist tradition. The readings collected here - of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky and Gramsci - reflect the experience of the labour, socialist and communist movements that did so much to shape modern history. From Marx to Gramsci aims to serve as a basic introduction through to the pimary sources containing revolutionary ideas of these influential thinkers.

We live in an age where everything has been internationalised. Imperialism brought in its wake world politics and world economics. In this book, Pierre Frank explains how the Fourth International, founded in 1938 by Revolutionary Marxist militants, nuclei, currents and organizations, answered the problem of the construction of anti-capitalist, revolutionary political formations. As Ernest Mandel's biographical essay explains, Frank was secretary to Leon Trotsky in 1932-1933. This book draws on Frank's experience as a central leader of the Fourth International through to 1979. Daniel Bensaid's appendix explains the following 30 years of the Fourth International life. Two contributions develop its perspective of establishing a new independent political representation of the working class that takes into account the diversity of the working class in defending a resolutely class-based programme: a statement by founders of the French LCR explaining its decision to dissolve into the NPA; and the key resolution adopted by the Fourth International's 2009 world congress.

This book, first published in 1980, addresses the questions raised by the death of Mao Zedong and the arrest of the 'Gang of Four'. Was China reverting to a capitalist form of development, and abandoning Mao's policies? Was China's leadership remaining loyal to Mao's strategy but correcting damage done by the 'Gang of Four'? The essays in this book analyse these questions and illustrate differences in interpretation amongst the post-Mao leadership. Individual chapters deal with disagreements over political line, the role of the CCP, economic policy and industrial management, policy towards the rural sector, controversies over the role of art and literature, the nature and function of the education system and the incorporation of China into the international economy.

The decade of the 1980s began in China with great expectations of the societal benefits of modernisation, and ended with gunfire in Tiananmen Square. This book, first published in 1991, presents essays that explore the political and economic reform policies that emerged in post-Mao China under Deng Xiaoping. In general, they conclude that the advent of partial marketization and structural reform tended to magnify structural contradictions rather than solve them.

This book, first published in 1981, is a study concerned with the leadership and the people of China during the 1942-1962 period. It analyses the attempt made by the CCP to develop new policies of administration in the wartime base areas and the subsequent transformation of these policies after the Communists came to power. The problems of establishing control over China are detailed, as are those associated with adopting the Soviet model. The rejection of that model led to the adoption of the strategy that led to the Great Leap Forward, and its attendant problems are also studied here.

This book, first published in 1977, attempts to show Mao Tse-tung in his relationship with the Chinese people. The author makes extensive use of a number of interviews with a cross-section of Chinese people, as well as examining the written records made by foreign visitors.

This book, first pubished in 1998, collects the final letters and articles of Chen Duxiu (1879-1942). He founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, after a revolutionary career in the movement that overthrew the Manchus and brought in the Republic. Between 1915 and 1919, he had led the New Culture Movement that electrified student youth and laid the intellectual foundations for modern China, and he also helped found the Chinese Trotskyist Opposition, which he then led. Between his release from prison in 1937 and his death in 1942, he wrote the pieces collected here.

This book, first published in 1977, sets out two models of administration and participation used in Communist China, one worked out by the CCP during the war against Japan and one imported from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. These models have given rise to different policy positions, studied here, and the models provide a framework within which to examine the nature and structure of the CCP, state structures, the army, rural and urban policy, and the incorporation of national minorities.

This book, first published in 1992, provides a detailed analysis of the reform programme in post-Mao China. In it, a distinguished group of specialists show how the dramatic events that came to a head in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were the result of a profound crisis in the reform programme launched in 1978. Individual chapters examine the roots of this crisis: the inability to deal sufficiently with the Maoist legacy; insufficient political reform; the clash between Deng's revolution from above and society's revolution from below; the imbalances created by the new economic programme; and the relationship between these domestic changes and China's foreign policy.

This book, first published in 1983, examines the significant economic reforms undergone by China following the death of Mao and the downfall of the Gang of Four. It looks at Chinese economists' conceptions of the necessity for change and compares China's reforms with similar ones carried out by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There is a detailed analysis of the different sectors of the economy which shows how the reforms were carried out in practice.