Communism was destroyed not from without, but from within--by a persistent failure to make its economic theories work in practice. But what exactly did go wrong with its central planning? Until the last moment, top western economists claimed that Communism was superior to western models. Even now, centralised Marxist planning retains its admirers, especially among the young. With the benefit of new archival research, we can finally grasp how falsified and manipulated statistics blindfolded Communist governments and confused western leaders, leading to staggering errors of judgement. Both sides believed that East Germany had a stronger economy than West Germany; that North Korea would overtake South Korea; that Mao's China was a paradise for its starving peasants. Those who warned that a dearth of reliable economic data would condemn central planning to irrational misallocation of investment and labour were ignored or belittled. But, ultimately, they were vindicated. Jasper Becker answers the big question: what accounts for the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, China and everywhere else? And why don't present debates acknowledge that failure? This unconventional history of Communism and the Cold War explains why the same old clash of theories is continuing to shape the world today.

Marx's Capital is one of the most important texts of the modern era. The three volumes, published between 1867 and 1883, changed the destiny of countries, politics and people across the world - and continue to resonate today. In this book, David Harvey lays out their key arguments.

In clear and concise language, Harvey describes the architecture of capital according to Marx, placing his observations in the context of capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. He considers the degree to which technological, economic and industrial change during the last 150 years means Marx's analysis and its application may need to be modified.

Marx's trilogy concerns the circulation of capital: volume I, how labour increases the value of capital, which he called valorisation; volume II, on the realisation of this value, by selling it and turning it into money or credit; volume III, on what happens to the value next in processes of distribution.

The three volumes contain the core of Marx's thinking on the workings and history of capital and capitalism. David Harvey explains and illustrates the profound insights and enormous analytical power they continue to offer in terms that, without compromising their depth and complexity, will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those coming to the work for the first time.

Zhang Shenfu, a founder of the Chinese Communist party, participated in all the major political events in China for four decades following the Revolution of 1919. Yet Zhang had become a forgotten figure in China and the West--a victim of Mao's determined efforts to place himself at the center of China's revolution--until Vera Schwarcz began to meet with him in his home on Wang Fu Cang Lane in Beijing. Now Schwarcz brings Zhang to life through her poignant account of five years of conversations with him, a narrative that is interwoven with translations of his writings and testimony of his friends. Moving circuitously, Schwarcz reveals fragments of the often contradictory layers of Zhang's character: at once a champion of feminism and an ardent womanizer, a follower of Bertrand Russell who also admired Confucius, and a philosophically inclined political pragmatist. Schwarcz also meditates on the tension between historical events and personal memory, on the public amnesia enforced by governments and the "forgetfulness" of those who find rememberance too painful. Her book is not only a portrait of a remarkable personality but a corrective to received accounts and to the silences that abound in the official annals of the Chinese revolution.

The Postcommunist World in the Twenty-First Century presents studies by senior scholars and practitioners that are highly relevant to contemporary political challenges. The democratic vision that accompanied the collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and East Central Europe has been replaced by a range of authoritarian, semi-authoritarian and democratic regimes, and growing division between Western and Russian influence. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to renewed tensions and international crisis. China, which presents major challenges to the US, Europe, and the global order, has emerged as a critical actor in the international conflict. The need to understand the internal dynamics and international behavior of communist and authoritarian regimes is more urgent at this time. The expertise provided by the volume's contributors is especially timely, offering new insights into the past and contemporary politics of these states, the agendas driving their behavior, regimes' domestic strengths and weaknesses, and the role of leaders' differing perceptions in exacerbating international conflict. Practitioners demonstrate how such knowledge can inform effective policy and ameliorative efforts.

This book examines the relations between the Albanian communist regime and the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (AAOC) from 1945, when the communists came to power, to 1967, when Albania became the only atheistic state in the world, and religion of all kinds was completely suppressed. Based on extensive archival research, the book outlines Orthodox Church life under communism and considers the regime's strategies to control, use, and subordinate the Church. It argues against a simple state oppression versus Church resistance scenario, showing that the situation was much more complex, with neither the regime nor the Church being monolithic entities. It shows how, despite the brutality and the constant pressure of the state, the Church successfully negotiated with the communist authorities and benefited from engaging with them, and how the communist authorities used the Church as a tool of foreign policy, especially to strengthen the regime's ties with their East European allies.

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 provides a comparative analysis and a systemic categorization of the Populist Radical Left Parties (PRLPs) in Western Europe. Institutional and socio-economic aspects have transformed the political culture of many modern democracies, leading to the creation of radical left-wing parties who, by combining a strongly populist political offer with the historical demands of the traditional left wing, are capable of electoral success. This book analyzes a range of different Populist Radical Left Parties (PRLPs) in Western Europe through in-depth case studies. The author uses statutes, internal documents, programs, election results, membership data, and international political literature combined with interviews with executives and national secretaries to describe and interpret the main features of PRLPs, their paths of formation and political transformation. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of political science and political sociology, media studies and anyone interested in trying to better understand European populism and the distinctions among its different forms.

Today, there is plenty of evidence that Russia has become a prominent external actor in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, few books have attempted to better understand the reasons behind Russias return and Moscow's continuous engagement in the region. In order to fill the gap, this volume offers the first interdisciplinary study of Russian-Latin American relations after the end of the Cold War. Across 16 chapters, leading experts from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America collectively re-examine the Soviet legacy to reveal the conditions in which Russia operates today and identify the key trends of contemporary Russian relations with this part of the world. The book then moves on to provide a detailed case study analysis of Russia's bilateral relations with Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, identifying the most critical dimensions of Russian engagement. Rethinking Post Cold-War Russian-Latin American Relations allows readers to identify the fundamental driving forces of Russia's renewed commitment to the area, its strategies and experiences. The book will be of interest to readers of international relations and area studies, historians of modern Latin America, migration studies, political economy, and any political scientists interested in Russian decision-making.

This volume contains the end of Marx's economic manuscripts of 1861-63 which concludes his analysis of the production process of capital, concentrating on problems of the reproduction and circulation of the aggregate social capital. The book is part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collabo ration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.

Marx's Capital, Capitalism and Limits to the State examines the capitalist state in the abstract, and as it exists in advanced capitalism and peripheral capitalism, illustrating the ideas with evidence from the North and the South. The volume unpacks the capitalist state's functions in relation to commodity relations, private property, and the crisis-ridden production of (surplus) value as a part of the capital circuit (M-C-M'). It also examines state's political and geographical forms. It argues that no matter how autonomous it is, the state cannot meet the pressing needs of the masses significantly and sustainably. This is not because of so-called capitalist constraints, but because the state is inherently capitalist. Each chapter begins with Capital volume 1. And each chapter ends with theoretical/practical implications of the ideas which taken together counter existing state theory's focus on state autonomy and reforms and point to the necessity for the masses to establish a new transitional democratic state. But the book goes 'beyond' Marx too, as it deploys the combined Marxism of 19th and 20th centuries. Marx's Capital, Capitalism and Limits to the State will interest scholars researching state-society/economy relations. It is suitable for university students as well as established scholars in sociology, political science, heterodox economics, human geography, and international development.

One hundred years ago, "October 1917" galvanized leftists and oppressed peoples around the globe, and became the lodestar for 20th century politics. Today, the left needs to reckon with this legacy--and transcend it. Social change, as it was understood in the 20th century, appears now to be as impossible as revolution, leaving the left to rethink the relationship between capitalist crises, as well as the conceptual tension between revolution and reform. Populated by an array of passionate thinkers and thoughtful activists, Rethinking Revolution reappraises the historical effects of the Russian revolution--positive and negative--on political, intellectual, and cultural life, and looks at consequent revolutions after 1917. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. But the main purpose of this Socialist Register edition--one century after "Red October"--is to look forward, to what might happen next. Acclaimed authors interrogate and explore compelling issues, including: - Greg Albo: New socialist strategies--or detours? - Jodi Dean: Are the multitudes communing? Revolutionary agency and political forms today. - Adolph Reed: Are racial minorities revolutionary agents? - Zillah Eisenstein: Revolutionary feminisms today. - Nina Power: Accelerated technology, decelerated revolution. - David Schwartzman: Beyond global warming: Is solar communism possible? - Andrea Malm: Revolution and counter-revolution in an era of climate change.

This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of "optimal planning" which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as "computopia," there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew-based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

In Marxism's uneasy relationship with ethics a small number of theorists considered it imperative to develop the moral principles implicit in Marx's social theory. They created a humanistic Marxism in stark contrast to the crude approach of Stalinism. This collection brings together analyses by leading scholars on those thinkers who made signifiant contributions to ethical thinking within the Marxist tradition—Kautsky, Bloch, Fromm, Marcuse, Lefebvre, Macpherson, and Heller.

Extraordinary growth of the financial relative to the nonfinancial sector has marked the development of mature capitalism during the last four decades. The changing balance between the two sectors has altered the outlook of the economy and facilitated the spread of financial concerns, practices, and outlooks across society. The result has been the gradual transformation of contemporary capitalism - namely, its financialization since the late 1970s. There are similarities between the Marxian, the Post-Keynesian and other heterodox approaches to analyzing the profound changes in money and finance in the global economy since the 1980s. Prominent among them is a common focus on financialization but also on the limits of monetary policy, the transformation of banking, the tendency to crisis related to financial excess, and the problematic role of neoliberalism in finance. Furthermore, the complexity of the interrelationship between finance and the rest of the economy has increased since the great crisis of 2007-9. This book tackles several of these developments as well as engaging in debate among different currents of heterodox economics. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Japanese Political Economy.

This handbook advances the interdisciplinary field of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) by identifying thirty-five topics of ongoing research. Instead of focusing on historically significant texts, it features experts talking about current debates. Individually, each chapter provides a resource for new research. Together, the chapters provide a thorough introduction to contemporary work in PPE, which makes it an ideal reader for a senior-year course. The handbook is organized into seven parts, each with its own introduction and five chapters: I. Frameworks II. Decision-Making III. Social Structures IV. Markets V. Economic Systems VI. Distributive Justice VII. Democracy The "Frameworks" part discusses common tools and perspectives in PPE, and the "Decision-making" section shows different approaches to the study of choice. From there, parts on "Social Structures," "Markets" and "Economic Systems" each use tools from the three PPE disciplines to study and distinguish parts of society. The next part explains dominant theories and challenges to the paradigm of "Distributive Justice." Finally, a part on "Democracy" offers five challenges to current democratic practice.

The Political Economy of Populism explores the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century. The book discusses the political and economic implications of populist governance using data on populist incumbencies and linking it to historical data on the macro economy and democracy. Chapters draw from the most recent political science, economics and other social science literature, as well as historical data, to explain the long-term causes and consequences of populism. Populism emerges and gains traction when political entrepreneurs exploit underlying identity conflicts for political gains. As the distributional consequences of both economic distress and economic growth typically favor the elite over the poor and the lower middle class, economic shocks usually sharpen the underlying identity conflicts between the groups. The book provides evidence of significant differences in the ways fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by incumbent populists in Latin America, Europe and the OECD. The work concludes by suggesting avenues through which a 21st century social consensus can be built, so that our society can avoid repeating the mistakes that led to wars and failed economic experiments in the 20th century. The Political Economy of Populism marks a significant contribution to the study of populism and is suited to students and scholars across the social sciences, including economics, political science and sociology.

This book, first published in 2001, uses key oral histories to confirm and explain the professional and private lives of post-1949 Chinese intellectuals through the focal point of Chen Renbing, a man personally criticised by Mao Zedong. Intellectuals have faced unique perils in modern Chinese history, thousands of whom were targeted by Mao. Mao's Prey provides invaluable insight into their experiences and fates.

* Offers a practical overview of 28 crucial concepts in Marxist theory as developed and integrated by Jacques Lacan. * Opens up new possibilities of discourse within the academic field for considering Marxist economic, philosophical, epistemological, political and sociological concepts within the context of Lacan's readings. * Demonstrates the importance of Marxist concepts to Lacanian psychoanalytic practice. * Brings together a broad range of international contributors on the cutting edge of researching Marxist / Lacanian encounters. * Will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as academics and researchers in a broad range of fields.

The popularization of basic legal knowledge is an important and contested technique of state governance in China today. Its roots reach back to the early years of Chinese Communist Party rule. Legal Lessons tells the story of how the party-state attempted to mobilize ordinary citizens to learn laws during the early years of the Mao period (1949–1976) and in the decade after Mao’s death. Examining case studies such as the dissemination of the 1950 Marriage Law and successive constitutions since 1954 in Beijing and Shanghai, Jennifer Altehenger traces the dissemination of legal knowledge at different levels of state and society. Archival records, internal publications, periodicals, advice manuals, memoirs, and colorful propaganda materials reveal how official attempts to determine and promote “correct” understandings of laws intersected with people’s interpretations of written laws and with their experiences of laws in practice. They also show how diverse groups—including party-state leadership, legal experts, publishers, writers, artists, and local officials, along with ordinary people—helped to define the meaning of laws in China’s socialist society. Placing mass legal education and law propaganda at the center of analysis, Legal Lessons offers a new perspective on the sociocultural and political history of law in socialist China.

This volume constitutes a rigorous attempt to assess the actual influence of traditional Marxist theory - the doctrines of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - on developments in revolutionary China. Employing primary documents, the exposition carries the reader from the first years of the Chinese Communist Party, through the stresses of the war of resistance against Japan and the Civil War - that concluded with the proclamation of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. An account of the Mao epoch, inspired by a fundamentally transformed Marxism, is prelude to the 'Second Chinese Revolution' that saw the 'Thought of Deng Xiaoping' shaping the destiny of the New China. The role of modern China, as a reactive nationalist, single-party, developmental dictatorship, is assessed against what we know of such systems, and how they have influenced our history in the past.

This book is about nuclear legacies in Russia and Central Asia, focusing on selected sites of the Soviet atomic program, many of which have remained understudied. Nuclear operations, for energy or military purposes, demanded a vast infrastructure of production and supply chains that have transformed entire regions. In following the material traces of the atomic programs, contributors pay particular attention to memory practices and memorialization concerning nuclear legacies. Tracing the Atom foregrounds historical and contemporary engagements with nuclear politics: how have institutions and governments responded to the legacies of the atomic era? How do communities and artists articulate concerns over radioactive matters? What was the role of radiation expertise in a broader Soviet and international context of the Cold War? Examining nuclear legacies together with past atomic futures and post-Soviet memorialization and nuclear heritage shines light on how modes of knowing intersect with livelihoods, compensation policies, and historiography. Bringing together a range of disciplines - history, science and technology studies, social anthropology, literary studies, and art history - this volume offers insights that broaden our understanding of twentieth-century atomic programs and their long aftermaths.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives. Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition. The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

This book examines contemporary militant democracies in post-communist states in the European Union. Examining, through case studies, their broader relevance to political, legal, and social structures, this book looks in revealing detail at the struggles between these democratic and anti-democratic actors that share similar historical experiences of contentious politics, communism, and political transformation. It importantly unravels the tension between them, determining which are already authoritarian, and which are teetering on the brink of an anti-democratic breakthrough. Analysing regimes' continuance trajectories to capture how and what shaped the neo-militant aspects of democracies (neomilitancy) over time, the book accounts for why particular post-communist European neo-militant democracies emerge while others decline or transform into quasi-militant democracies despite transformation, how they differ from each other, what brings about the differences and similarities between them, and how and why they change over time. With right-wing populist parties coming to power on the back of fears associated with economic, social, and cultural globalisation and the misuse of state authorities to strengthen protective measures against threats to democratic institutions, the book represents a timely and important contribution. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Post-Soviet/Communist/East European Studies, Democratic Backsliding, European and Comparative Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, Democracy and Dictatorship, Public Comparative Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law and Political Theory.