The worst idea in history is back. Communism has wrecked national economies, enslaved whole peoples, and killed more than a hundred million men and women. What's not to like? Too many young Americans are supporting communism. Millennials prefer socialism to capitalism, and 25 percent have a positive view of Lenin. One in four Americans believe that George W. Bush killed more people than Josef Stalin. And 69 percent of Millennials would vote for a socialist for president. They ought to know better. Communism is the most dangerous idea in world history, producing dire poverty, repression, and carnage wherever it has been tried. And no wonder-because communism flatly denies morality, human nature, and basic facts. But it's always going to be different this time. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism, renowned scholar and bestselling author Paul Kengor unmasks communism, exposing the blood-drenched history-and dangerously pervasive influence-of the world's worst ideology.

Milan Kundera warned that in in the states of East-Central Europe, attitudes to the west and the idea of 'Europe' were complex and could even be hostile. But few could have imagined how the collapse of communism and membership of the EU would confront these countries with a life that was suddenly and disconcertingly 'modern' and which challenged sustaining traditions in literature, culture, politics and established views on identity. Since the countries of East-Central Europe joined the European Union in 2004 the politicians and oppositionists of the centre-left, who once led the charge against communism, have often been forced to give way to right-wing, authoritarian, populist governments. These governments, while keen to accept EU finance, have been determined to present themselves as protecting their traditional ethno-national inheritance, resisting 'foreign interference', stemming the 'gay invasion', halting 'Islamic replacement' and reversing women's rights. They have blamed Communists, liberals, foreigners, Jews and Gypsies, revised abortion laws, tampered with their constitutions to control the Justice system and taken over the media to an astonishing degree. By 2019, amid calls for the suspension of their voting rights, both Poland and Hungary had been taken to the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament and had begun to explore ways to put conditions on future EU funding. This book focuses on the interface between tradition, literature and politics in east-central Europe, focusing mainly on Poland but also Hungary and the Czech Republic. It explores literary tradition and the role of writers to ask why these left-liberals, who were once ubiquitous in the struggles with communism, are now marginalised, often reviled and almost entirely absent from political debate. It asks, in what ways the advent of capitalism 'normalised' literature and what the consequences might be? It asks whether the rise of chauvinism is 'normal' in this part of the world and whether the literary traditions that helped sustain independent political thought through the communist years now, instead of supporting literature, feed nationalist opinion and negative attitudes to the idea of 'Europe'.

Between the two world wars, thousands of European antifascists were pushed to act by the political circumstances of the time. In that context, the Spanish Civil War and the armed resistances during the Second World War involved particularly large numbers of transnational fighters. The need to fight fascism wherever it presented itself was undoubtedly the main motivation behind these fighters' decision to mobilise. Despite all this, however, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that some of these volunteers felt they were the last exponents of a tradition of armed volunteering which, in their case, originated in the nineteenth century. The capacity of war volunteering to endure and persist over time has rarely been investigated in historiography. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the radical and transnational tradition of war volunteering connected to Giuseppe Garibaldi's legacy in Southern Europe between the unification of Italy (1861) and the end of the Second World War (1945). This book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the long-term, interconnected, and radical dimensions of the so called Garibaldinism.

This book provides a comparative and transnational examination of the complex and multifaceted experiences of anti-labour mobilisation, from the bitter social conflicts of the pre-war period, through the epochal tremors of war and revolution, and the violent spasms of the 1920s and 1930s. It retraces the formation of an extensive market for corporate policing, privately contracted security and yellow unionism, as well as processes of professionalisation in strikebreaking activities, labour espionage and surveillance. It reconstructs the diverse spectrum of right-wing patriotic leagues and vigilante corps which, in support or in competition with law enforcement agencies, sought to counter the dual dangers of industrial militancy and revolutionary situations. Although considerable research has been done on the rise of socialist parties and trade unions the repressive policies of their opponents have been generally left unexamined. This book fills this gap by reconstructing the methods and strategies used by state authorities and employers to counter outbreaks of labour militancy on a global scale. It adopts a long-term chronology that sheds light on the shocks and strains that marked industrial societies during their turbulent transition into mass politics from the bitter social conflicts of the pre-war period, through the epochal tremors of war and revolution, and the violent spasms of the 1920s and 1930s. Offering a new angle of vision to examine the violent transition to mass politics in industrial societies, this is of great interest to scholars of policing, unionism and striking in the modern era. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429354243, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Looks at the major Western European communist parties since the collapse of communist power in Eastern Europe. Discusses how they now see their futures, what their potentials are and how they have coped both ideologically and materially with the changes. It looks specifically at the parties in Italy, Scandinavia, France, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.

Humanity faces epoch-making challenges arising from the convergence of demographic, social, economic, ecological and political megatrends, which are additionally superimposed by the fatal COVID-19 pandemic and the new Cold War. Traditional economic thought is not able to cope with them. In the conditions of irreversible globalization, these challenges are met by the original concept of a new pragmatism - a peculiar interface between economic theory and practical economic policy for sustainable development. Grzegorz W. Kolodko, an outstanding economist with a world-wide reputation, a public intellectual, successful politician and a globetrotter who has explored the world - clearly writes what is happening in the economy and why, on its links with society and politics, environment, security, culture and technology. The work devotes due attention to the rise of China and the consequences of its global expansion. The unique interdisciplinary approach to the issues discussed makes this book a fascinating read for all professionals interested in the future of a rapidly changing world.

Can electoral and parliamentary arenas be used toward revolutionary ends? This is precisely the question that held Lenin's attention from 1905 to 1917, leading him to conclude that they could-and would. This book explores the time in which Lenin initiated his use of the electorate, beginning with the Marxist roots of Lenin's politics, and then details his efforts to lead the deputies of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the First and Second State Dumas, concluding with Russia's first experiment in representative democracy from 1906 to 1907. During this time, Lenin had to address issues such as whether to boycott or participate in undemocratic elections, how to conduct election campaigns, whether to enter into electoral blocs and the related lesser of two evils dilemma, how to keep deputies accountable to the party, and how to balance electoral politics with armed struggle. Lenin later said that the lessons of that work were 'indispensable' for Bolshevik success in 1917, which means that this detailed analysis of that period is crucial to any thorough understanding of Leninism.

Communism as a political movement attained global importance after the Bolsheviks toppled the Russian Czar in 1917. After that time the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, especially the influential "Communist Manifesto (1848)", enjoyed an international audience. The world was to learn a new political vocabulary peppered with 'socialism', 'capitalism', 'the working class', 'the bourgeoisie', 'labor theory of value', 'alienation', 'economic determinism', 'dialectical materialism', and 'historical materialism'. Marx's economic analysis of history has been a powerful legacy, the effects of which continue to be felt world-wide. Serving as the foundation for Marx's indictment of capitalism is his extraordinary work titled "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", written in 1844 but published nearly a century later. Here Marx offers his theory of human nature and an analysis of emerging capitalism's degenerative impact on man's sense of self and his creative potential. What is man's true nature? How did capitalism gain such a foothold on Western society? What is alienation and how does it threaten to undermine the proletariat? These and other vital questions are addressed as the youthful Marx sets forth his first detailed assessment of the human condition.

Marx's Theories of Surplus Value is the fourth volume of his monumental Das Kapital (Capital). Divided into three parts, this lengthy work reviews classic economic analyses of labour and value (Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and others), focusing on the concept of "surplus value" - the difference between the full value of a worker's labour and the wages received for this labour. This is a key concept for Marx since in his view the capitalist maintains power through controlling surplus value.

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.

Newly accessible communist archives in Britain and Moscow have given us a fuller and richer picture of the membership of the British Communist Party than of any other British political party, and indeed of most other communist parties. This project presents the fullest and most authoritative details of the Communist Party in Britain yet assembled. It tracks down British communists: who they were, where they came from, how their allegiances were forged and sustained, how communist identities were created and dissolved, the diverse roles party members played in British society. A truly collaborative project led by academics with sustained research experience, this book will not simply deepen our understanding of one of the key social movements of the twentieth century, it will provide a social history of left-wing activism in Britain, from the social ferment and grassroots militancy of the interwar period to the cultural politics and 'designer socialism' of the 1980s.

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.

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.

In the past two decades, Marxism has enjoyed a revitalization as a research program and a growth in its audience. This renaissance is connected to the revival of anti-capitalist contestation since the Seattle protests in 1999 and the impact of the global economic and financial crisis in 2007-8. It intersects with the emergence of Post-Marxism since the 1980s represented by thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe, Ranajit Guha and Alain Badiou. This handbook explores the development of Marxism and Post-Marxism, setting them in dialogue against a truly global backdrop. Transcending the disciplinary boundaries between philosophy, economics, politics and history, an international range of expert contributors guide the reader through the main varieties and preoccupations of Marxism and Post-Marxism. Through a series of framing and illustrative essays, readers will explore these traditions, starting from Marx and Engels themselves, through the thinkers of the Second and Third Internationals (Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, among others), the Tricontinental, and Subaltern and Post-Colonial Studies, to more contemporary figures such as Huey Newton, Fredric Jameson, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein and Samir Amin. The Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism will be of interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, cultural studies and theory, sociology, political economics and several areas of political science, including political theory, Marxism, political ideologies and critical theory.

The Art of Czech Animation is the first comprehensive English language account of Czech animation from the 1920s to the present, covering both 2D animation forms and CGI, with a focus upon the stop-motion films of Jiri Trnka, Hermina Tyrlova, Jan Svankmajer and Jiri Barta. Stop-motion is a highly embodied form of animation and The Art of Czech Animation develops a new materialist approach to studying these films. Instead of imposing top-down Film Theory onto its case studies, the book's analysis is built up from close readings of the films themselves, with particular attention given to their non-human objects. In a time of environmental crisis, the unique way Czech animated films use allegory to de-centre the human world and give a voice to non-human aspects of the natural world points us towards a means by which culture can increase ecological awareness in viewers. Such a refutation of a human-centred view of the world was contrary to communist orthodoxy and it remains so under late-stage consumer-capitalism. As such, these films do not only offer beautiful examples of allegory, but stand as models of political dissent. The Art of Czech Animation is a unique endeavour of film philosophy to provide a materialist appraisal of a heretofore neglected strand of Central-Eastern European cinema.

A foundational essay of class struggle published in English for the first time Considered one of the most important intellectuals in Latin American social thought, Ruy Mauro Marini demonstrated that underdevelopment and development are the result of relations between economies in the world market, and the class relations they engender. In The Dialectics of Dependency, the Brazilian sociologist and revolutionary showed that, as Latin America came to specialize in the production of raw materials and foodstuffs while importing manufactured goods, a process of unequal exchange took shape that created a transfer of value to the imperialist centers. This encouraged capitalists in the periphery to resort to the superexploitation of workers - harsh working conditions where wages fall below what is needed to reproduce their labor power. In this way, the economies of Latin America, which played a fundamental role in facilitating a new phase of the industrial revolution in western Europe, passed from the colonial condition only to be rendered economically "dependent," or subordinated to imperialist economies. This unbalanced relationship, which nonetheless allows capitalists of both imperialist and dependent regions to profit, has been reproduced in successive international divisions of labor of world economy, and continues to inform the day-to-day life of Latin American workers and their struggles. Written during an upsurge of class struggle in the region in the 1970s, and published here in English for the first time, the revelations inscribed in this foundational essay are proving more relevant than ever. The Dialectics of Dependency is an internationalist contribution from one Latin American Marxist to dispossessed and oppressed people struggling the world over, and a gift to those who struggle from within the recesses of present-day imperialist centers--nourishing today's efforts to think through the definition of "revolution" on a global scale.

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.

This provocative book addresses the ideological and political crisis of the Western left, comparing it with the problems facing leftist politics in Russia and other countries. The author presents a radical critique of the current state of the Western left which puts discourse above class interest and politics of diversity above politics of social change. The trajectory away from class politics towards feminism, minority rights and the coalition of coalitions led to the destruction of the basic strategic pillars of the movement. Some elements of this broad progressive agenda became mainstream, but in fact this made the crisis of the left even deeper and contributed to the disintegration of the left's identity. The author demonstrates that a simple return to 'the good old times' of classical socialist politics of the industrial age is not possible, suggesting that class politics must be redefined and reinvented through the experience of new radical populism. This book speaks directly to the way the identity politics/class politics divide has been framed within the English-speaking world. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of political science and political sociology, international relations, security studies and global studies, as well as socialist activists.

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.