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.

First published in 1988. The years 1945-51 were crucial to the Labour Party and the Left in Britain. This elegantly written book traces the gradual and painful disillusionment of the Labour Left with the Attlee governments and analyses the alternative, more militant, programme which the Labour Left devised. Never an organised bloc, the author argues that they are best understood as Labour's conscience - a militant tendency is the true sense of the words. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of political history.

This compilation includes articles representing the school of analytical Marxism, a school of thought inaugurated by the publication of G.A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History in 1978. Since then, scholars in political philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, history and anthropology have contributed to it. This two-volume set of 31 articles (dating from 1977-1993) has been divided into seven parts: class, exploitation, power and domination, historical materialism, the state, market socialism, freedom and methodology. Contributors include P. Bardhan, A. Carling, G.A. Cohen, J. Cohen, J. Elster and J. Reiman.

Building a new platform for change, prominent social critic Stanley Aronowitz diagnoses America 's crisis of democracy and the dangers of the new authoritarianism. Aronowitz draws on his vast knowledge of history and political theory and from currents of political change around the globe, from the traditions of the European left to the newest political trends in Latin America that have challenged the death of socialism.Demonstrating why Democrats lose when they cling to centrism and compromise their core values, this book shows us what a new left party in America would look like in an era of globalization, terrorism, and a crisis of public confidence in government.Listen to Stanley Aronowitz's December 12th, 2007 interview with Against the Grain here: http: //www.againstthegrain.org/

Xiang explains the nature and depth of the legitimacy crisis facing the government of China, and why it is so frequently misunderstood in the West. Arguing that it is more helpful to understand the quest for legitimacy in China as an eternally dynamic process, rather than to seek resolutions in constitutionalism, Xiang examines the understanding of legitimacy in Chinese political philosophy. He posits that the current crisis is a consequence of the incompatibility of Confucian Republicanism and Soviet-inspired Bolshevism. The discourse on Chinese political reform tends to polarize, between total westernization on the one hand, or the rejection of western influence in all forms on the other. Xiang points to a third solution - meeting western democratic theories halfway, avoiding another round of violent revolution. This book provides valuable insights for scholars and students of China's politics and political history.

Building a new platform for change, prominent social critic Stanley Aronowitz diagnoses America 's crisis of democracy and the dangers of the new authoritarianism. Aronowitz draws on his vast knowledge of history and political theory and from currents of political change around the globe, from the traditions of the European left to the newest political trends in Latin America that have challenged the death of socialism.Demonstrating why Democrats lose when they cling to centrism and compromise their core values, this book shows us what a new left party in America would look like in an era of globalization, terrorism, and a crisis of public confidence in government.Listen to Stanley Aronowitz's December 12th, 2007 interview with Against the Grain here: http: //www.againstthegrain.org/

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".

The Atlantic Ocean not only connected North and South America with Europe through trade but also provided the means for an exchange of knowledge and ideas, including political radicalism. Socialists and anarchists would use this "radical ocean" to escape state prosecution in their home countries and establish radical milieus abroad. However, this was often a rather unorganized development and therefore the connections that existed were quite diverse. The movement of individuals led to the establishment of organizational ties and the import and exchange of political publications between Europe and the Americas. The main aim of this book is to show how the transatlantic networks of political radicalism evolved with regard to socialist and anarchist milieus and in particular to look at the actors within the relevant processes-topics that have so far been neglected in the major histories of transnational political radicalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Individual case studies are examined within a wider context to show how networks were actually created, how they functioned and their impact on the broader history of the radical Atlantic.

Does socialism have a future in the world of the twenty-first century? If not, what is the future for progressive politics?

This is a major contribution to contemporary social and political thought written by one of the world's leading critical historians. Gabriel Kolko ask the difficult questions about where the left can go in a post-Cold War world where neoliberal policies appear to have triumphed in both the West and the former Soviet bloc. In trying to answer this, he interrogates both the origins and development of socialist ideas and the contemporary dynamics of the globalized economy dominated by American military, cultural and political might.

While avoiding the temptations of either pessimism or utopianism, Kolko offers an original and practical solution about the way forward for a liberal politics.

This collection of essays from one of the major Austrian economists working in the world today brings together in one place some of his key writings on a variety of economic issues.

Does socialism have a future in the world of the twenty-first century? If not, what is the future for progressive politics?

This is a major contribution to contemporary social and political thought written by one of the world's leading critical historians. Gabriel Kolko ask the difficult questions about where the left can go in a post-Cold War world where neoliberal policies appear to have triumphed in both the West and the former Soviet bloc. In trying to answer this, he interrogates both the origins and development of socialist ideas and the contemporary dynamics of the globalized economy dominated by American military, cultural and political might.

While avoiding the temptations of either pessimism or utopianism, Kolko offers an original and practical solution about the way forward for a liberal politics.

In February 1900 a group of men representing trade unionists, socialists, Fabians and Marxists gathered in London to make another attempt at establishing an organisation capable of getting working-class men elected to Parliament. The body they set up was the Labour Representation Committee; six years later when 29 of its candidates were elected to the House of Commons, it changed its name to the Labour Party. No women took part in that first meeting, but several watched from the public gallery. Amongst them was Isabella Ford, an active socialist and trade unionist who would have been familiar to most of the men assembled below. She had been asked by her friend, Millicent Fawcett, to attend and report back on what happened. A few years later she would become the first woman to speak at a Labour Party conference, moving a resolution on votes for women but, at the Party's inception in 1900, she and every other woman in the hall was silent. Throughout Labour's history, even in its earliest years, women were present in the room, but they were not always recorded or remembered. They came from many different backgrounds and they worked for the causes they believed in as organisers, campaigners, negotiators, polemicists, public speakers and leaders. They took on the vested interests of their time; sometimes they won. Yet the vast majority of them have been forgotten by the Labour movement that they helped to found. Even Margaret Bondfield, who became Britain's first woman cabinet minister, often barely merits a footnote. Women made real and substantial contributions to Labour's earliest years and had a significant impact on the Party's ability to attract and maintain women's votes after World War I. In addition to Margaret and Isabella, in many of the rooms in which the Labour Party found its feet, remarkable women wait to be rediscovered. This book tells their story.

This book is an excellent introduction to the ideas and arguments that have guided Labor's economic thinking from 1884 until the present day, and the influence these ideas have exerted over the formulation of economic policy. It provides clear and concise summaries of leading thinkers and schools, and clearly brings out the diverse nature of the economic thought that has characterized the Labour party.
This significantly revised edition brings the book up to the present day and provides a much needed analysis of the Blair government. It explores how the early thinking of the 1990s has been applied in government and, in addition to providing a more developed historical contextualization of ideas and thinkers, the new edition includes:
* A new introduction discussing the emergence of the Labor Party and the disparate elements of which it is comprised
* A chapter discussing the intellectual antecedents of, and influences on, New Labor. It also explores the impact of globalization and the shifting Labor position on the EU
* A chapter examining the ideological trajectory of New Labor and where its political economy now lies on the political spectrum. It also discusses Britain's economic performance since 1997
* A new conclusion discussing the themes that have guided and informed economic thinking within the labor party and also the methodologies and emphases that have characterized democratic socialist political economies in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The book will be of great interest to students and scholars studying British politics, British history, economic and political thought.

The substantial German colony in mid-19th century London included not only Karl Marx, but hundreds of less well-known exiles planning a revolution at home and hoping to introduce socialism. Revolutionary Refugees traces the developments of this German socialism in Britain from its origins in artisans' clubs, through the revolutionary movements of 1848, to the differing reactions to their failure. Often opposed to Marx and in competition with liberal radicalism, the migr s developed both an independant socialist strategy as well as internationalist ideas and activities. They cultivated contacts with English Chartists as well as French, Italian, Polish and other foreign exiles, and also contributed to a vibrant social life within their own ethnic community.

Over the next generation, humanity will confront a dystopian future of climate disaster and mass extinction. Yet the only "solutions" on offer are toothless cap-and-trade programs, catastrophic geoengineering schemes, and privatized conservation, which will do nothing to reverse the damage suffered by the biosphere. Indeed, these mainstream approaches assume that consumption in the Global North can continue unabated. It can't. What we can do, environmental scholars Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass argue, is strive for a society able to provide a comfortable standard of living while stabilizing the environment: half-earth socialism. This means: - Rewilding half the Earth to absorb carbon emissions and restore biodiversity. - A rapid transition to renewable energy, paired with drastic cuts in consumption by the world's wealthiest. - Global veganism to cut down on energy and land use. - Worldwide socialist planning to efficiently and equitably manage production. - The involvement of everyone - even you! As this thrilling and provocative book makes clear, we must humbly accept that we cannot fully understand or control the Earth - but we can control our economic system, and we can regulate energy and land use for the common good.

This volume sets forth as simply as possible the theoretical foundations which underlie the practical policies of democratic Socialism. This involves both a repudiation and a refutation of the assumptions of the older classical economists who believed in laissez-faire, and a careful differentiation of the economics of democratic Socialism from the neo-classical doctrines associated with the name of Maynard Keynes.

Revolutionary Desires examines the lives and subjectivities of militant-nationalist and communist women in India from the late 1920s, shortly after the communist movement took root, to the 1960s, when it fractured. This close study demonstrates how India's revolutionary women shaped a new female - and in some cases feminist - political subject in the twentieth century, in collaboration and contestation with Indian nationalist, liberal-feminist, and European left-wing models of womenhood. Through a wide range of writings by, and about, revolutionary and communist women, including memoirs, autobiographies, novels, party documents, and interviews, Ania Loomba traces the experiences of these women, showing how they were constrained by, but also how they questioned, the gendered norms of Indian political culture. A collection of carefully restored photographs is dispersed throughout the book, helping to evoke the texture of these women's political experiences, both public and private. Revolutionary Desires is an original and important intervention into a neglected area of leftist and feminist politics in India by a major voice in feminist studies.

First published in 1990, this book was intended as a counter to the rising and continued strength of the New Right and an attempt to bolster the perceived weakness of the opposition - providing a critical discussion of New Right ideology and also of the more influential Left reactions to them. The contributors scrutinise the attempts to reconstruct the idea of socialism in the 1990s, and pinpoint the relation of socialism to freedom, equality and the market. In the course of this searching evaluation, they also take up issues relating more directly to specific policy areas such as monetary policy and international finance, secondary education, social welfare, and race relations.

First published in 1983, this book is concerned with the prospects for socialist politics in contemporary Britain, in particular with the limitations of political analysis produced both by Marxist socialism and the non-Marxist socialism of the Labour left. The author suggests ways in which socialist political analysis and strategic thinking should be reconstructed if socialism in Britain was to survive political as a force. The major Marxist debates on, and the limitations of, socialist politics under conditions of parliamentary democracy are examined, as well as what is involved in a politics of democratisation. The dominant forms of strategic thinking on the Labour left are also analysed.

Women's emancipation was a central but contested pillar of socialist and communist internationalism during the twentieth century. The collapse of state socialism has led to renewed interest in the history and legacies of women's movements across the former socialist world during the era of decolonisation, and their significance for global feminisms in the present day. Responding to these debates, this collection of essays explores the history of transnational socialist feminisms during the global Cold War from the perspective of mid-ranking activists, officials and functionaries in international communist and left-revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe and the postcolonial world. Drawing on new sources, including private correspondence, interviews, memoirs and institutional archives, the essays ask how these activists defined women's rights from the era of the Popular Fronts in the 1930s until the United Nations Decade of Women (1976-1985).

Many studies of the origins of National Socialism claim that the "volkisch" and proto-Nazi movement arose largely as a reaction to the materialistic ideas of nineteenth-century science and especially to the naturalistic philosophy of Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League. Using hitherto unexplored material, Daniel Gasman calls this generalization into question. Arguing that the importance of science has been relatively neglected in accounts of the intellectual origins of Nazism, he attempts to show that Haeckel's "scientific" Darwinism, and his movement, the German Monist League, were proto-Nazi in character. Contrary to popular belief, Haeckel's type of social Darwinism actually played a critical role in the formation of National Socialist ideology. In his new introduction, Gasman notes that recent research goes far to confirm Haeckel's role as an ideological progenitor of fascist ideology. This is true not only for Germany, but also for the birth of fascist thought in Italy and France. In general, Gasman claims, the history of science plainly reveals how Haeckel's social Darwinism nourished the roots of fascism no less than avant-garde modernism. When "The Scientific Origins of National Socialism" initially appeared, the "Times Literary Supplement" called it a "very well-argued thesis... that is completely successful... and leaves the reader to extract his own moral lessons." "Medical History," in its review of "The Scientific Origins of National Socialism," said, "His book is essential for understanding modern Germany. It has a general message derived from the events in Germany, where scientific data were permitted to take on a mystical signficiance... with ghastly consequences." Bruce Chatwin, in the "New York Review of Books," called the book "brilliant." Now available in paperback, with a new introduction by the author, this seminal work will be of interest to intellectual historians, as well as those interested in twentieth-century Europe.

It was not long after the election of a record number of women to the House of Commons in 1997 that the backlash began. The criticism was all-encompassing: they wore the wrong clothes, they voted the wrong way and they were concerned with the wrong issues. Above all, they were accused of failing to make difference, to have failed women, and were dismissed by some as 'Blair's Babes'. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than half of the new Labour women MPs, Sarah Childs reveals how these women actually experienced being MPs, and explores whether they acted for and like women - in their constituencies, in parliament and in government. She presents important insights into theories of women's political representation, showing that the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation is complicated, that party and gender identities are crucial, that women's differences must be acknowledged and that it might not always be possible for women representatives to act for women even if they want to. Including a key section on women's selection for parliament; whether women MPs act as role models; why it is important that women should be present in politics; as well as exploring in depth the subject of women's substantive representation, New Labour's Women MPs is essential reading for all those interested in women and politics, legislative studies, political behaviour and representation.

The Iranian left is of great historical significance and a trend of direct relevance to the current situation in Iran and to the evolution of the struggle between 'reformers' and 'conservatives'. Even though the left has never held power in Iran, its impact on the political, intellectual and cultural development of modern Iran has been profound. This book's authors undertake a fundamental reexamination and reappraisal of the phenomenon of leftist activism in Iran, interpreted in the broadest sense, throughout the period of its existence up to and including the present. "Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran" brings together contrasting views about the balance sheet of a century of leftism in Iran.

How does New Labour compare with old Labour? What can we learn about the current Government by looking at its predecessor? How does New Labour interpret the record of old Labour in power?
We are constantly told that New Labour forms an historic departure from the traditions of the Labour Party. This book, written by a distinguished selection of academics and commentators, provides the most detailed comparison yet of old and new Labour in power. It is also the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of the last Labour Government before the rise of Thatcher and the re-emergence of the Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership. It reveals much about the history of the Labour Party as well as providing a much-needed context from which to judge the current government.
Contributors include: Vernon Bogdanor, Raymond Plant, Jim Tomlinson, Robert Taylor, Polly Toynbee, David Walker, Roy Lowe, John W Young, Ann Lane, Chris Ballinger, Philip Norton, Kevin Theakston, Ed Gouge, Dilys M Hill, Brendan O'Leary, Eric Shaw, Steven Fielding, Stuart Holland, Kenneth O Morgan, Peter Riddell, Robert Skidelsky and Dennis Kavanagh. They compare all the key aspects of the political thought and policy of the Wilson-Callaghan Government of 1979 with the Blair Government making this book essential reading for all of those interested in how Labour, both past and present, governs.