The transformation from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia cannot be fully understood without taking the elites into full consideration. Elites and Democratic Development in Russia examines how elites support and challenge democracy and why they are crucial to Russian democracy in particular.
In this innovative volume, twelve respected scholars investigate how elites have affected the transition from Communist rule towards democratic development in Russia. They discuss how the elites' degree of integration on national and regional levels may constitute the main condition for the consolidation of the emerging political regime and interpret the complex post-communist elite patterns of behaviour and attitudes into a theoretical framework of elitist democracy.
This book will appeal to those interested in democratization, elites, post-Soviet Russia and post-communist studies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203712757

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.

This comprehensive collection draws upon and reengages with a long history of Marxian-anchored thought to analyze the potential for social transformation through a reinvigorated radical Left, all within the context of the ascendance of an increasingly ethnonationalist, patriarchal, and authoritarian far Right worldwide. The authors identify and reflect on strategies, tactics, and possibilities for analyzing and intervening in advanced capitalist societies by increasing and deepening popular participation and support on the far Left. The chapters are framed in terms of conceptualizing the capitalist present, organizing "the people" and reimagining the radical Left. Together, in diverse ways that draw upon both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the authors evaluate the difficulties of augmentation across multiple planes, from the tension between migrants and citizen workers, to the uneasy relationship between sovereignty and class, to the contradictions operating across international versus domestic dynamics. How and why (if at all) should the radical Left reexamine its understanding of political consciousness, identity, ideology, and institutions, as they relate to Marxian analysis and various threads of critical theory? The authors suggest new approaches for understanding what the radical Left is up against and how problematic barriers might be torn down, thus disrupting unhelpful binaries such as state versus capital, national versus international, worker versus migrant, activist versus candidate, and freedom versus necessity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Global Discourse.

'A propulsive investigation into the wild adventures of a man determined to bring down the North Korean regime . . . Deeply reported and novelistic. I flew through it' Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain 'The engrossing inside story of two recent events that are jaw dropping even for North Korea, and the obsessive man behind them . . . A terrific piece of up-close reportage that reads like a spy thriller but is all too real' Anna Fifield, author of The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un HOW DID A COLLEGE KID BECOME A GLOBAL FUGITIVE? In the early 2000s, Adrian Hong was a soft-spoken Yale undergraduate looking for his place in the world. After reading a harrowing account of life inside North Korea, he realised he had found a cause to which he could devote his life. Hong journeyed to China, outwitting Chinese security services as he helped ferry asylum-seeking North Korean escapees to safety. Meanwhile, Hong's secret organization, Cheollima Civil Defense (later renamed Free Joseon), began tracking the North Korean government's activities, and its volatile ruler, Kim Jong-un. Free Joseon targeted North Korean diplomats who might be persuaded to defect, while drawing up plans for a government-in-exile. After the shocking broad-daylight assassination in 2017 of Kim Jong-nam, the dictator's older brother, Hong, along with US Marine veteran Christopher Ahn, helped ferry Jong-nam's family to safety. Then Hong took the group a step further. He initiated a series of high-stakes direct actions, culminating in an armed raid at the North Korean embassy in Madrid - an act that would put Ahn behind bars and turn Hong into one of the world's most unlikely global fugitives. The Rebel and the Kingdom is an exhilarating account of how a trip down the safe and well-worn path of activism soon morphed into something extremely dangerous. Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Bradley Hope - who broke numerous details of Hong's operations in the Wall Street Journal -reveals his remarkable story of idealism and insanity, hubris and heroism, all set within the secret battle for the future of the world's most mysterious and unsettling nation.

In this definitive history of the evolution of the Com- munist Party in America--from its early background through its founding in 1919 to its emergence as a legal entity in the 1920s--Theodore Draper traces the native and foreign strains that comprised the party. He emphasizes its shifting policies and secrets as well as its open activities. He makes clear how the party in its infancy "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power," a fact that Draper develops in his succeeding volume, "American Communism and Soviet Russia." In his special, prescient way, Theodore Draper himself had the final words on American Communism: "It is like a museum of radical politics. In its various stages, it has virtually been all things to all men... There are many ways of trying to understand such a movement, but the first task is historical. In some respects, there is no other way to understand it, or at least to avoid seriously misunderstanding it. Every other approach tends to be static, one-sided or unbalanced." Draper correctly notes that the formative period of the American Communist movement has remained a largely untold and even unknown story. In part, the reasons for this are that the Communist movement, although a child of the West, grew to power in the Soviet East. But Draper rescues this chapter with deep appreciation for the fact that communism was not something that happened just in Russia, but also in the United States. This is a must read for scholars and laypersons alike. This volume is conceived as an independent and self-contained study of the American Communist movement. Draper correctly notes that the formative period is largely untold and even unknown. In part, the reasons for this are that the Communist movement, although a child of the West, grew to power in the Soviet East. Draper appreciates the fact that communism was not something that happened only in Russia, but also took place in the United States. That experience is the focus of this volume.

Eurocommunism constitutes a "moment" of great transformation connecting the past and the present of the European Left, a political project by means of which left-wing politics in Europe effected a definitive transition to a thoroughly different paradigm. It rose in the wake of 1968 - that pivotal year of social revolt and rethinking that caused a divide between radical, progressive and socialist thinking in western and southern Europe and the Soviet model. Communist parties in Italy, France, Spain and Greece changed tack, drew on the dynamics of social radicalism of the time and came to be associated with political moderation, liberal democracy and negotiation rather than contentious politics forging a movement that would hold influence until the early 1980s. Eurocommunism thus wove an original political synthesis delineated against both the revolutionary Left and the social democracy: "party of struggle and party of governance".

From Popular Movements to Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade argues that without an understanding of the popular sources of the rebellion of that time, the age of the Naxalite revolt will remain beyond our understanding. Many of the chapters of the book bring out for the first time unknown peasant heroes and heroines of that era, analyses the nature of the urban revolt, and shows how the urban revolt of that time anticipated street protests and occupy movements that were to shake the world forty-fifty years later. This is a moving and poignant book. Some of the essays are deeply reflective about why the movement failed and was at the end alienated. Ranabir Samaddar says that, the Naxalite Movement has been denied a history. The book also carries six powerful short stories written during the Naxalite Decade and which are palpably true to life of the times. The book has some rare photographs and ends with newspaper clippings from the period. As a study of rebellious politics in post-Independent India, this volume with its focus on West Bengal and Bihar will stand out as an exceptional history of contemporary times. From Popular Movements to Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade will be of enormous relevance to students and scholars of history, politics, sociology and culture, and journalists and political and social activists at large. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

This book is largely based on What Marx Really Meant which was written by Cole and published in 1934. It is a revaluation of Marx's essential ideas and methods in relation to contemporary social structures and developments and considers the bearing of Marx's theories on the structure of social classes, which altered greatly since he formulated his account of them.

A critical and provocative exploration of the political, conceptual and cultural points of resonance between Deleuze's minor politics and Marx's critique of capitalist dynamics, engaging with Deleuze's missing work, The Grandeur of Marx.
This book explores the core categories of communism and capital in conjunction with a wealth of contemporary and historical political concepts and movements - from the lumpenproletariat and anarchism, to Italian autonomia and Antonio Negri, immaterial labour and the refusal of work. This book will serve as an introduction to Deleuze's politics and the contemporary vitality of Marx for students and will challenge scholars in the fields of social and political theory, sociology and cultural studies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203361741

Communism has cast a long shadow over Romania. The passage of little over a quarter of a century since the overthrow in December 1989 of Romania's last Communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, offers a symbolic standpoint from which to penetrate that shadow and to throw light upon the entire period of Communist rule in the country. An appropriate point of departure is the observation that Romania's trajectory as a Communist state within the Soviet bloc was unlike that of any other. That trajectory has its origins in the social structures, attitudes and policies in the pre-Communist period. The course of that trajectory is the subject of this inquiry.

This book explores the historical writings of postwar Japanese Marxists - who were, and who continue to be, surprisingly numerous in the Japanese academic world. It shows how they developed in their historical writing ideas of 'radical nationalism', which accepted presupposed ideas of Japan's 'ethnic homogeneity', but which they saw as a 'revolutionary subject', creating a sphere of radical political action against the state, the American Occupation and global capital. It compares this approach in both prewar and postwar Marxist historiography, showing that in the postwar period ideas were more elaborate, and put much more emphasis on national education and social mobilization. It also shows how these early postwar discourses have made their way into contemporary ethnic nationalism and revisionism in Japan today. The book's rich and interesting analysis will appeal not just to historians of Japan, but also to those interested in nationalism and Marxism more generally.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203217772

The book traces the history of communist Bulgaria from 1944 to 1989. A detailed narrative-cum-study of the history of a political system, it provides a chronological overview of the building of the socialist state from the ground up, its entrenchment into the peaceful routine of everyday life, its inner crises, and its gradual decline and self-destruction. The book is the definitive and the most complete guide to Bulgaria under communism and how the communist system operates on a day-to-day level.

Contents:
Editors Foreword Acknowledgements Preface 1. Introduction 2. Life and Context 3. The Foundation of Sociology 4. The Works 5. A New Reception Bibliography of Simmel's Major Works Annotated Bibliography of secondary Sources Index

What is to be done? This was the question asked by Lenin in 1901 when he was having doubts about the revolutionary capabilities of the Russian working class. 77 years later, Louis Althusser asked the same question. Faced with the tidal wave of May '68 and the recurrent hostility of the Communist Party towards the protests, he wanted to offer readers a succinct guide for the revolution to come. Lively, brilliant and engaged, this short text is wholly oriented towards one objective: to organise the working class struggle. Althusser provides a sharp critique of Antonio Gramsci's writings and of Eurocommunism, which seduced various Marxists at the time. But this book is above all the opportunity for Althusser to state what he had not succeeded in articulating elsewhere: what concrete conditions would need to be satisfied before the revolution could take place. Left unfinished, it is published here in English for the first time.

A comparative analysis of the dominant ideologies and modes of legitimization in communist Yugoslavia and post-Communist Serbia and Croatia. The aim of the book is to identify and explain dominant normative and operative ideologies and principal modes of legitimization in these three case studies.

This highly accessible account of Marxism and the city covers their relationship from the 1850s to the present through biographical chapters on eight towering figures in the Marxist tradition - Marx, Engels, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, Manuel Castells, David Harvey and Marshall Berman.
Each chapter combines interesting biographical anecdotes with a readable analysis of each individual's contribution to the evolving Marxist theory of the city. Merrifield highlights the dialectical nature of the modern city in both its industrial and post-industrial phases. Cities are the places where capital organizes itself and inequality is most intense, but also where the potential for progressive change is most real.

This volume is a systematic comparative study of the French and Italian Communist parties in the period from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. Focusing on the municipal level, it carefully exmaines the cultural policies implemented by the parties in two communist strongholds, Ivry-sur-Seine (France) and Reggio Emilia (Italy). The author uses these two case studies to test empirically the hypothesis found almost universally in the comparative literature. That is, it is generally argued that the French Communist Party (PCF) remained an orthodox, sectarian Leninist party, which aimed at creating a Soviet style society in France, whereas the former Italian Communist Party (PCI) is depicted as a more moderate party, which rejected the Soviet-style model after World War II and embarked on a new strategy, veering towards reformism and social democracy.

Music and Marx considers Marx's relevance to current issues in musical scholarship from perspectives that range across disciplinary and political vantage points. Exploring everything from Marxism in hip-hop to feudal properties of Hindustani music to revolutionary music of Central America, the essays in this book find surprising, paradigm-shifting revelations. This book will revolutionize the way music production and consumption is viewed.

After the collapse of the Soviet world, North Korea alone has continued on the rigid communist way, in spite of its economic consequences leading the state beyond ruin to famine. What are the reasons behind this peculiar choice of direction? Why did the leaders in Pyongyang pursue a policy abandoned not only by the Soviet Union, but also by China and Vietnam?
The author of this book spent three years as head of the embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang. Until a few years ago, it was the only Western embassy in North Korea. His unique experiences are related with descriptions of day-to-day life and with analyses of economic, political and ideological conditions. A picture is drawn of a society and a political order that defy both human nature and common sense.

This remarkable work situates the great Karl Mannheim not only in the Austro-Hungarian empire, but in Hungary and especially in the intellectual fever pitch of pre-war Budapest, with its plethora of revisionist Marxists, anarchists, and intellectuals from a variety of areas who brought radical ideas into the mainstream of biological and social sciences. As Gabel reminds us, Budapest provided a special environment in which the cross-currents of Europe met, and was uniquely devoid of the xenophobia and militarism of so many other parts of Europe. The volume serves as a useful introduction to the force and character of Marxism in Central Europe. Gabel covers not only key figures but major concepts associated with Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge: ideology and false consciousness; the socially unattached intelligentsia; and the utopian conscience. In addition, we are given a tour of the work of Mannheim as seen in Germany, France and England. Gabel's has a unique mastery of the major languages of Europe, and this gives him the potential for a reinterpretation of Mannheim that reveals the author to be a talented thinker in his own right, and not simply a chronicler of the work of others. His final chapter on Mannheim, comparing him with Lukacs as well as Marx, is central to our understanding of sociology. In raising the importance of the role of consciousness in the study of society, Mannheim overcame what Marx and Engels, no less than many of his followers understood to be an essential weakness in the so-called economic interpretation of history. This book, linking Mannheim to the Hungarian climate, helps us appreciate how this sociological synthesis came about in a specific social setting. Joseph Gabel was born in Hungary, and educated in French universities. He is the author of False Consciousness (1962); Sociology of Alienation (1970); Ideologies, Vol. I (1974); Ideologies II (1978), all in French. His book on The Forms of Estrangement (1964) was published in German. His shorter articles have appeared in Kolner Zeitschrift for Soziologie und Sozial-psychologie, and the Newsletter of the International Society for the Sociology of Knowledge.

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 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.

Russia's transition from communism holds great significance not only for that country but also for the wider world. This collection of essays examines the broad spectrum of Russia's transition since 1991 - considering not only the pattern of events but also what the changes have meant for Russians themselves, and for their future. Particular attention is given to political attitudes and foreign policy, to the changing status of women, to religion and censorship, and to the continuing war in Chechnya.

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.

The purpose of this book, first published in 1982, is to analyse certain crucial aspects of the great power triangle in order to establish a more complete picture of the role of China in the superpower balance. These essays examine the key political, economic and military issues involved in the complex relations between the three great powers.