Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism

Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and...

In January 1928 Stalin, the ruler of the largest country in the world, boarded a train bound for Siberia where he would embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He was about to begin uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and...

Leading sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos makes an impassioned case for the politicisation of the World Social Forum, arguing that its full potential as a force for social, economic and political change can be achieved only by taking a stand against...

Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**'A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close' Rachel Maddow 'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important...

Countering recent hype around technology, a leading expert argues that the endurance of dictatorship in China owes less to facial recognition AI and GPS tracking than to the human resources of the Leninist surveillance state.For decades China watchers...

Edited and with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element - the classroom - outlining a project that Fisher's death left so bittersweetly...

This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions.Gulag is the only major history in any language to...

Winner of the Duff Cooper and Lionel Gelber prizesIn 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With...

For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich...

This revised and enlarged edition of the leading anthology provides the essential writings of Marx and Engels-those works necessary for an introduction to Marxist thought and ideology.About the AuthorFriedrich Engels was born in 1820, in the German city...

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning... Here is the...

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary, yet tragic, attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write. In The Soviet Century,...

A devastating critique of New Left thinking. In Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Roger Scruton first surveys and then deconstructs the golden idols of left wing thought from the 1960s to the present day. He dissects the hollow works of Hobsbawm and E. P...

*Selected by Emma Watson for her Ultimate Book List* Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E...

1961. The height of the Cold War. Just hours before work begins on the Berlin Wall, a KGB assassin and his young wife flee for the West before the Iron Curtain comes down and traps them in the East forever. This gripping story of real-life espionage...

A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW YORKER AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023'An indelible feat of reporting and an urgent read ... It's a privilege to read books like these' Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers'A powerful reminder of the ways...

Ellen Wilkinson was a key radical figure in the 20th century British socialist and feminist movement, a woman of passionate energy who was involved in most of the major struggles of her time. Born in October 1891 into a working-class textile family,...

One of the seminal texts of the British New Left Leo Panitch Parliamentary Socialism presents a detailed and scholarly record of the Labour Party's thinking and of its role in British politics from 1900 until the 1960s. A postscript reflects on the...

An explosive analysis of the central strategic concepts in Gramsci's thought, as revelatory today as on first publication in New Left Review in 1976. This landmark essay has been the subject of keen debate across four decades for its disentangling of the...

The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. At its peak, more than a third of the world's population had lived under communist power. What is communism? Where did the idea come from and what attracted...

The "forgotten" second volume of Capital, Marx's world-shaking analysis of economics, politics, and history, contains the vital discussion of commodity, the cornerstone to Marx's theories.The "forgotten" second volume of Capital, Marx's world-shaking...

Spies and Lies by Alex Joske is a groundbreaking expose of elite influence operations by China's little-known Ministry of State Security. Revealing for the first time how the Chinese Communist Party has tasked its spies to deceive the world, it...

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'A critical...

The book discusses the importance of Marx's critique of political economy in Lacan's attempt to rethink the political and philosophical legacy of Freudian psychoanalysis. By situating Marx in the broader context of Lacan's teaching it highlights the...

'Bizarre and quite brilliant.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times'Thrilling.' Michael Burleigh, Sunday Telegraph'Francis Spufford has one of the most original minds in contemporary literature.' Nick HornbyThe Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was...

Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891, became the leader of the Italian Communist Party in his early thirties, was arrested by Mussolini's police in 1927, and remained imprisoned until shortly before his death ten years later. The posthumous...

LONGLISTED FOR FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDA FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR'Excellent . . . reveals an insidious matrix of spying, deception, censorship and repression . . . compelling' Daily Telegraph'A timely...

"It is easier to imagine the end of the world," the theorist Fredric Jameson has remarked, "than to imagine the end of capitalism." Jacobin Editor Peter Frase argues that technological advancements and environmental threats will inevitably push our...

'A tremendous book, timely, wise, authoritative and clear' Stephen Fry'A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism' Owen Jones'Clear, brave, compelling' David Miliband'Inspiring ... impassioned ... full of hope' Zadie...

"The clue to our future lies in our past and Toye has winkled it out with elegant and devastating precision." Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda WAS THE ATTLEE GOVERNMENT OF 1945 REALLY THE GOLDEN PERIOD OF LABOUR POWER? 2024 marks the centenary of the...

How did Manchester became the poster-child of neoliberal urbanisation, and what can the people that live there do about it? As the crane capital of Europe, Manchester's transformation since the financial crisis has been profound. Capital has flooded...

Why did the 1917 American Red Cross Mission to Russia include more financiers than medical doctors? Rather than caring for the victims of war and revolution, its members seemed more intent on negotiating contracts with the Kerensky government, and...

With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal...

The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leaders in 1936, Edgar Snow came away with the first authorised account of Mao's life, as well as a history of the famous Long March and the men and women who were responsible for the...

First published in 1985, Thomas Sowell's book is a crisp, lucid and commonsensical introduction to Marx's own writings and to Marxist theory. It combines readability with intellectual rigour and distils more than a quarter of a century of Thomas Sowell's...

Based on more than a decade's writing, research, and travel, this book offers a rare glimpse into China's expanding economic, cultural, and political power in the Eurasian heartland. China's rise is changing the world. Much attention has been given...

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday.Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked...

What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. Hegel's Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is one of the greatest works of moral, social, and political philosophy. It contains significant ideas on justice, moral responsibility, family...

Almost two decades have passed since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Robert Service, one of our finest historians of modern Russia, sets out to examine the history of communism throughout the world. His uncomfortable conclusion...