Marxism Books - Page 9

The Revolution Betrayed

Leon Trotsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Revolutions revisited 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

In my humble opinion, Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" is the best analysis of not only the Russian revolution, but revolutions in general. I have studied revolutions in the modern world quite extensively, and re-reading this book at this particular time in history was a true eye-opener - again. To be simplistic, revolutions do not provide lasting success when nothing is to be gained. Those who rise against existing power expect to be rewarded, not with poverty, but with a certain degree of wealth and privilege. If there is nothing to be distributed, then what is the use in fighting? Stalin unfortunately stepped in at the right place, at the right time. Not good for the outcome of that revolution, not good for socialism, but good for Stalin's kind of power.

A few years ago I visited Komsomolsk, Stalin's "Youth" city. It was decaying, a pitiful sight to behold. Buildings on ultra-wide neglected avenues in need of repair, high weeds everywhere, crime uncontrolled. Power gone bad?

Stalin and his compulsive bureaucracy were feared all over Europe. Blessed with clear early childhood memories that include the conversation of adults, I vividly remember my grandmother's fear of Stalin discussed with friends and family members. They witnessed the rise of this awful bureaucracy next door, word of the killings and the horrible brutality didn't just dribble out, it flowed out. I want to say that the Stalinist bureaucracy is unique, but all bureaucracies are designed to increase continuously and feed of themselves, and exist everywhere in the world. And people flock to them for employment, protection, security, in great masses, because bureaucracies deliver security. And if people do not fly into bureaucratic arms directly, they deal with them on a daily basis. There is no getting away from that apparatus of suffocation, nowhere.

Bureaucracy does not have to be bad, and Trotsky dwells on the need for leadership from within the workers, the suppressed, creating a bureaucracy that is just and fair. Is that ever possible? I believe that capitalism and bureaucracy are a contradiction, and unless corruption reigns, they cannot coexist. What comes next?

Trotsky's book raises more questions than it answers, but I am sure it was written for that purpose as well as enlightening the scholar of his interpretation of a betrayed revolution. And where do we go from here?

Editorial Review:

Written in 1936 and published the following year, this brilliant and profound evaluation of Stalinism from the Marxist standpoint prophesied the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trotsky employs facts, figures, and statistics to show how Stalinist policies rejected the enormous productive potential of the nationalized planned economy engendered by the October Revolution.

Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village

William Hinton, Fred Magdoff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Revolution at the grassroots 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

You've heard the old joke about the guy who says he would rather be a drunk than an alcoholic because alcoholics have to go to all those meetings. That's what this book is about: meetings -- innumerable, endless meetings in a small village in revolutionary China. For three years (1946-1948, it seems that the peasants in this village met every day to discuss how to divvy up the land taken from the landlords, select their leaders, discuss the correct "line" of the revolution, criticize each other, and punish evil doers.

Hinton is an enthusiast for Chairman Mao and the communists, but he doesn't gloss over the excesses of the revolution. He paints a vivid picture of life in prerevolutionary China and an equally vivid picture of the implementation of Maoism in the countryside with all its violence, doctrinal hair-splitting, changes in direction, and imperfections. At the end of the book, he concludes that the peasants and the revolution have achieved a proper balance between equity and production in the Chinese countryside and presumably everyone will live happily ever after.

As a story about life in the countryside this book is outstanding. As a book about the makings of a revolution at the peasant level it is outstanding. As a book about land reform and Maoism, it is much, much less than prophetic. Hinton leaves us with a warm, post revolutionary feeling that all was well in the Chinese countryside in 1948. But all was not well. Tens of millions of Chinese peasants starved to death in the 1950s. Maybe they were spending too much time in revolutionary meetings and not enough time working in their fields. Revolutionary enthusiasts such as Hinton need to be called to account for the errors they make in their ardor and naivete. Perhaps we should have a meeting on that....

Editorial Review:

More than forty years after its initial publication, William Hinton’s Fanshen continues to be the essential volume for those fascinated with China’s revolutionary process of rural reform and social change. A pioneering work, Fanshan is a marvelous and revealing look into life in the Chinese countryside, where tradition and modernity have had both a complimentary and caustic relationship in the years since the Chinese Communist Party first came to power. It is a rare, concrete record of social struggle and transformation, as witnessed by a participant. Fanshen continues to offer profound insight into the lives of peasants and China’s complex social processes. Rediscover this classic volume, which includes a new preface by Fred Magdoff.

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Fred W Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

Robin D. G. Kelley

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama—the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood radical movements in American history.

The Alabama Communist Party was built from scratch by working people who had no Euro-American radical political tradition. It was composed largely of poor blacks, most of whom were semiliterate and devoutly religious, but it also attracted a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, iconoclastic youth, and renegade liberals. Kelley shows that the cultural identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the development of the Party. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.

In the South race pervaded virtually every aspect of Communist activity. And because the Party's call for voting rights, racial equality, equal wages for women, and land for landless farmers represented a fundamental challenge to the society and economy of the South, it is not surprising that Party organizers faced a constant wave of violence.

Kelley's analysis ranges broadly, examining such topics as the Party's challenge to black middle-class leadership; the social, ideological, and cultural roots of black working-class radicalism; Communist efforts to build alliances with Southern liberals; and the emergence of a left-wing, interracial youth movement. He closes with a discussion of the Alabama Communist Party's demise and its legacy for future civil rights activism.

Dedication And Leadership: Philosophy

Douglas Hyde

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On March 14, 1948, Douglas Hyde handed in his resignation as the news editor of the London Daily Worker and wrote "the end" to twenty years of his life as a member of the Communist Party. A week later, in a written statement, Hyde announced that he had renounced Communism and, with his wife and children, was joining the Catholic Church.

The long pilgrimage from Communism to Christ carried Douglas Hyde from complete commitment to Marxism, to a questioning uneasiness about Soviet Russia’s glaring contradictions of ideology and action, to a final rejection of the Party.

In Dedication and Leadership, he advances the theory that although the goals and aims of Communism are antithetical to human dignity and the rights of the individual, there is much to be learned from communist methods, cadres and psychological motivation. Hyde describes the Communist mechanics of instilling dedication, the first prerequisite for leadership. Here is the complete rationale of party technique: how to stimulate the willingness to sacrifice; the advisibility of making big demands to insure a big response; the inspirational indoctrination; and the subtle conversion methods.

In this small book, so large with implications, Douglas Hyde comments on both Communist and Catholic potential and their lack of maximum effectiveness. He advocates positive Catholic action, not just a negative anti-Communism, and he points out that the guidelines are now down for a decisive choice between total Communism and a total Christianity.

Here is a realistic approach to an acute problem uncolored by emotional propaganda, and here is a realistic answer on how to inspire dedication for leadership.

The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?

Slavoj Zizek

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Theology for Marxists, Atheists and Agnostics 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful.

A self-described "fighting atheist," though not a very conventional one, and an avowed Marxist, though not a very typical or orthodox one, Žižek writes rooted deeply within Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to produce some of the most intriguing, bewildering, and relevant philosophy concerned with post-modern conundrums such as relativism, agency, and subjecthood.

Žižek in this work embraces the shared Marxist and Christian messianic visions of history as an alternative to both the post-modern, New Age-Gnostic moral sludge dominating PC culture and the excesses of capital. The true heart of the work-and its most convincing parts as well-occur mid-way through in Žižek `s treatment of Pauline agape vs. the Law/Sin dialectic as it relates to modern human rights. More or less, this is a desperate attempt to revive Marxism as an alternative to Liberalism. Good Luck.

Žižek writes in a frenetic, gregarious style that is endearing but not necessarily rigorous. His penchant for citing movies, novels and popular culture besides the likes of Schelling, Lacan, Hegel and Heidegger lightens the atmosphere, but the problem is that many things that he says, many conclusions he arrives at from overly generalized instances of cultural practice are just blatantly false. Also, it can be annoying when he rambles on for five pages about a movie you've never seen, thus, making any attempt to understand his point tedious. [Recommendation: definitely make sure you've watched Hitchcock's VERTIGO before reading this book].

For me, Žižek is one of the authors with whom I part ways with on the big questions but with whom I often side with on the smaller questions. His acuity in the realm of cultural interpretation and his applications of Lacanian psychoanalysis to politics are both haunting and memorable long after you've finished the books. Re-reading this book, I came across this passage in footnote #12 that sent shivers down my spine with it's accuracy.

Editorial Review:

With typical brio and boldness, Slavoj Zizek argues in The Fragile Absolute that the subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. Here is a fitting contribution from a Marxist to the 2000th anniversary of one who was well aware that to practice love in our world is to bring in the sword and fire.

Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation (Reconfiguring American Political History)

Kate Weigand

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Much needed piece of history 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This is a well-documented, even-handed account of the influence American communism had on the second wave of the women's movement. Weigand is thoroughly convincing in her assertation that in the 30s, 40s and 50s, the American Communist Party began an important dialogue on sexism, culture, the politics of everyday life and the intersectionality of race, class and gender that carried into the rise of the second wave in the 1960s (and indeed into today). Weigand takes on the notion that feminists in the 1960s had no foremothers (and fathers) to draw from. Instead she argues that young feminists had a sizable collection of literature analyzing gender relations, many of them grew up in families modeled on gender equality and that young feminists interacted with women who had been key in Communist discussions on sexism. What I really like about this book is that it reminds us of how long the struggle for equality has been and (as the author says) how we still grapple with these issues. A very important book for any one who cares about the past, present and future of gender equality in this society. I am recommending it to all my friends.

Editorial Review:

Drawing on substantial new research, Red Feminism traces the development of a distinctive Communist strain of American feminism from its troubled beginnings in the 1930s, through its rapid growth in the Congress of American Women during the early years of the Cold War, to its culmination in Communist Party circles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The author argues persuasively that, despite the devastating effects of anti-Communism and Stalinism on the progressive Left of the 1950s, Communist feminists such as Susan B. Anthony II, Betty Millard, and Eleanor Flexner managed to sustain many important elements of their work into the 1960s, when a new generation took up their cause and built an effective movement for women's liberation. Red Feminism provides a more complex view of the history of the modern women's movement, showing how key Communist activists came to understand gender, sexism, and race as central components of culture, economics, and politics in American society.

Che Guevara Reader: Writings by Ernesto Che Guevara on Guerrilla Strategy, Politics & Revolution

Ernesto Guevara, David Deutschmann

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A new, revised and expanded edition of an Ocean Press classic.

This reader is the bestselling, most comprehensive selection of Che Guevara's writings, letters and speeches available in English. This volume covers Che's writings on the Cuban revolutionary war, the first years of the revolution in Cuba and his vision for Latin America and the Third World. It includes such classic essays as "Socialism and Man in Cuba" and his call to create "Two, Three, Many Vietnams."

Among the features of this expanded edition are several unpublished articles, essays and letters, including a letter from Che to his children shortly before his death in Bolivia in 1967 and an essay, "Strategy and tactics for the Latin American revolution."

This new edition of a popular Ocean title is published in collaboration with the Che Guevara Archive in Havana. It includes:
a new 24-page selection of photos (many previously unpublished)
an expanded and revised chronology
complete bibliography of the works of Che Guevara
new, extensive annotation and index

"Deep inside the T-shirt where we have tried to trap him the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with im-patience." -- Ariel Dorfman

Two new movies to be released in Fall 2003 confirm Che's enduring status as an "icon of the century."
Ocean Press is preparing a range of merchandise, including T-shirts, bookmarks and posters to promote our books on Che Guevara.

This new, expanded edition of an Ocean Press classic complements several bestselling biographies of Che Guevara.

Marxism and Terrorism

Leon Trotsky

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The bankruptcy of terrorism 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

... This collection of essays by one of the leading revolutionaries of the 20th century provides a much-needed critical perspective on terrorism. Not from a moralizing point of view, but to show that by relying on individual �heroic� acts of violence like assassinations of government leaders, terrorist tactics ignore and devalue the masses of people as the most important agent of their own liberation. Though his examples are drawn from Hapsburg Austria, Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany, when you read his words, you can easily see the relevance to liberation struggles taking place today from Palestine to Ireland to the Philippines. I especially like the way that Trotsky sympathizes with the hatred of the gross injustice that breeds terrorism, but at the same time explains that individual terrorist tactics are doomed to fail.

Editorial Review:

The propertied classes have always laid the charge of "terrorism" on those leading the struggle against exploitation and oppression. But it has been the terror of the capitalist rulers against which an outraged majority eventually rises. Trotsky explains why the working class is the only social force capable of leading the toiling majority in overthrowing the capitalist exploiters and beginning the construction of a new society and why individual terrorism--whatever its intention--relegates the workers to the role of spectators and opens the workers movement to provocation and victimization.

Also available in: Farsi

Terrorism and Communism (Revolutions)

Leon Trotsky

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defense of equality 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

this was Trotsky's bout with one-time Marxist Karl Kautsky, representative of Social-Democracy,revolution,the affinity for parliamentarian incremental change through bourgeois means; ballot-boxes, sitting sovereigns, capital comforted with safety nets, and the context here is Soviet Russia was waiting(isolated) for assistance from the German Revolution to happen which just eroded away with the murder of Rosa Luxemberg, curious that the word "terror" has magnetized itself around it new multi-dimensional meanings,the media has done wonderful work bundling the word "terror" with anything resembling opposition, I doubt if Israeli apparatchiks could speak on TV without utilizing the word a few dozen times, to define, fears fears-of-fears, Unknown-Knowns-Fears,Known-Knowns, the Rumsfeldian epistemology,still there is some marvelous reflections here from Trotsky on the Paris Commune,the balance of power in the shape of the globe circa 1920; the paradigms of power and the next thread in its evolution, Kautsky simply wanted to preserve, the Known-Knowns,without seeking to face those monstrous Un-Knowns, he didn't have a sensibility for such dangers, Trotsky did up to a point,but was blind of his own fate, yet here there is good analysis of the reality of aftermath Soviet situations prior to the Stalin Thermidor was to take root,a vastly involutarily trained endoctrinated marxologist himself I suspect Zizek is looking for cognitive "threads"in shapes resembling Badiou-ian " Truth" nodes, "Events" which can illumine a path perhaps simply to more discussions on youtube within the world un-evolving postpoltical context, with bio-politics, and the neo-liberal order at the helms stirring the ship with their own cognitive maps. Zizek is good at what he does, and leaves out the residue of rhetorical hatreds you still odiously find on the Left,fighting self-defeating battles merely to hear one's own voice, I like to recall the old RCA white putchee dog, staring mindlessly into vinyl playing speaker cone; "What's this?" like the Left does today for things they refuse to explain, Zizek has a Wotan-like spirit in these Verso writings assignments assembling his theoretical "Walkure" to assist him;

Editorial Review:

Revolutions: Classic revolutionary writings set ablaze by today's radical writers. This essential new series features classic texts by key figures who took center-stage during a period of insurrection. Each book is introduced by a major contemporary radical writer who shows how these incendiary words still have the power to inspire, to provoke and maybe to ignite new revolutions...

Soon after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky led the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White armies. Written in the white heat of the Civil War, Terrorism and Communism is one of the most potent defenses of revolutionary dictatorship of the twentieth century. In his provocative commentary in this new edition the coruscating critic Slavoj Zizek argues that Trotsky's attack on the illusions of democracy has a vital relevance to today.

Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis

Lyman Tower Sargent

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Editorial Review:

Since its initial publication 35 years ago, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS has been the leading text in the field. This text successfully introduces readers to current and emerging political ideologies--offering a comparative analysis of nationalism, democracy, Marxism, and Islam, as well as an effective introduction to the lesser-known ideologies surrounding environmentalism, feminism, and liberation theology. The goal is to help readers draw their own conclusions about each ideology. To this end, the author makes every effort to present a balanced presentation of the ideologies covered in the text, and to objectively discuss the way that ideology functions today.