Lenin150 (Samizdat)


Book Description

Lenin150 (Samizdat) aims to contribute to the re-kindling of the communist attractor by engaging, in the spirit of critical solidarity, with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the year of his 150th anniversary. Conceived out of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, the book brings together contributions from all continents, ranging in style from the academic to the lyrical. As such, these compelling, and in some cases absolutely urgent, appropriations of (the spectre of) Lenin aspire to be of considerable use-value for the struggles ahead.




Lenin Lives?


Book Description

A lively, accessible and wide-ranging account of one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. Through a brief but stimulating and penetrating account of his life and chief ideas the study examines how 'Leninism' emerged and became a global force.




Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education


Book Description

This Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education showcases the explanatory power of Marxist educational theory and practice.




States of Emergency


Book Description

"Brilliantly researched, impeccably sourced, the story is told in an engaging style and with great analytical acuity. Here is a dire warning against the slide into authoritarianism..." WILLIAM I. ROBINSON, Distinguished Prof. of Sociology, UC-Santa Barbara Ever since large parts of the world were placed in lockdown in March 2020 in the name of public health, there has been a growing public suspicion that some sort of global seizure of power and social transformation is being implemented under guise of the extraordinary suspension of democracy and unprecedented restrictions of basic freedoms occurring in so many countries at the same time. This book contends that since the financial collapse of 2008, populations in many countries have become restive in the face of extreme inequality and diminishing life chances. In a digital economy, one to two billion people will soon be superfluous, but they are not likely to remain sitting on their hands; in many parts of the world their resistance has begun. The Western capitalist elites have lost the capacity to engage their respective peoples in an equitable social contract and have resorted to stoking fear -- from the terrorism scare and the Russian threat to the COVID infliction, with more variants coming on line -- as a formula for curtailing protest and maintaining power. It analyses the social forces driving this process: the US national security state and its intelligence apparatus, the IT giants spun off from it, and the large media conglomerates that have joined forces to create a comprehensive surveillance system of Orwellian dimensions The production of disease threats is amplified by the Gates Foundation and other public international organizations including the WHO, along with the pharmaceutical industries, foresee unprecedented profit in plans to inoculate the world population with experimental gene therapies sold as vaccines. Ideas on using a pandemic to initiate a worldwide state of siege have matured until the need for collective intervention -- the threat of a new financial meltdown and the need to remove Trump -- prompted global elites to seize the day. The virus threat may not be an idle one, given the Pentagon's biowarfare infrastructure which for decades has been producing gain-of-function viruses in laboratories the world over, as have a wide range of countries. The book is the first to offer an extensively documented, comprehensive analysis of all aspects of this real and embellished threat




Crime, Poverty and Survival in the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

The concept of the 'dangerous classes' was born in a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nineteenth century Europe. It described all those who had fallen out of the working classes into the lower depths of the new societies, surviving by their wits or various amoral, disreputable or criminal strategies. This included beggars and vagrants, swindlers, pickpockets and burglars, prostitutes and pimps, ex-soldiers, ex-prisoners, tricksters, drug-dealers, the unemployed or unemployable, indeed every type of the criminal and marginal. This book examines the 'dangerous classes' in the Middle East and North Africa, their lives and the strategies they used to avoid, evade, cheat, placate or, occasionally, resist, the authorities. Chapters cover the narratives of their lives; their relationship with 'respectable' society; their political inclinations and their role in shaping systems and institutions of discipline and control and their representation in literature and in popular culture. The book demonstrates the liminality of the 'dangerous classes' and their capacity for re-invention. It also indicates the sharpening relevance of the concept to a Middle East and North Africa now in the grip of an almost permanent sense of crisis, its younger generations crippled by a pervasive sense of hopelessness, prone to petty crime and vulnerable to induction as foot soldiers into drug and people smuggling, petty gangsterism and jihadism.




A Freedom Budget for All Americans


Book Description

While the Civil Rights Movement is remembered for efforts to end segregation and secure the rights of African Americans, the larger economic vision that animated much of the movement is often overlooked today. That vision sought economic justice for every person in the United States, regardless of race. It favored production for social use instead of profit; social ownership; and democratic control over major economic decisions. The document that best captured this vision was the Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve Freedom from Want published by the A. Philip Randolph Institute and endorsed by a virtual ‘who’s who’ of U.S. left liberalism and radicalism. Now, two of today’s leading socialist thinkers return to the Freedom Budget and its program for economic justice. Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates explain the origins of the Freedom Budget, how it sought to achieve “freedom from want” for all people, and how it might be reimagined for our current moment. Combining historical perspective with clear-sighted economic proposals, the authors make a concrete case for reviving the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and building the society of economic security and democratic control envisioned by the movement’s leaders—a struggle that continues to this day.




Mau Mau From Within


Book Description

Mau Mau from Within is told by Karari Njama, a school teacher who was directly involved in the struggles for freedom from colonial rule, to anthropologist Donald L Barnett. As the late Basil Davidson put it: "Njama writes of the forest leaders' efforts to overcome dissension, to evolve effective tactics, to keep discipline (including sexual discipline) and mete out justice ... His narrative is crowded with excitement. Those who know much of Africa and those who know little will alike find it compulsive reading. Some 10,000 Africans died fighting in those years . Here, in the harsh detail of everyday experience, are the reasons why." Originally published as Mau Mau From Within: An analysis of Kenya's Peasant Revolt, it is a story of courage, passion, heroism, combined with recounting of colonial terror, brutality and betrayal. Far from being just an analysis of a peasant revolt, this is the inside story of the struggles of Kenya's Land and Freedom Army told from within by a person who worked closely with Dedan Kimathi. This new expanded edition includes new commentary by Karari Njama, and contributions from Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Micere Githae Mugo as well as a statement from Gitu Wa Kahengeri, Secretary General of the Mau Mau War Veterans Association.




Life Histories from the Revolution


Book Description

In the early 1970s, Donald Barnett - who worked with Karari Njama to produce Mau Mau From Within (published by Daraja Press) - also worked with three militants of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army to enable them to tell the story of their experience in fighting for freedom and against British colonialism. These rarely acknowledged militants were Karigo Muchai, Ngugi Kabiro and Mohamed Mathu. Their stories were published in 1973 by LSM Information Center (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) as part of a series entitled Life Histories of the Revolution, as The Hardcore: The Story of Karigo Muchai; The Man in the Middle by Ngugi Kabiro; and The Urban Guerrilla by Mohamed Mathu. As part of its mission of Nurturing reflection, sheltering hope and inspiring audacity, Daraja Press is please to republish the three booklets as a book that will help a new generation of activists - Kenyan and international - reflect on a history that might inspire audacious struggles to continue the struggle for freedom that was the goal of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Donald Barnett's introduction to each booklet contained the following text: The life histories in this series have been recorded and prepared as historical documents from the revolutionary struggles of our time. The techniques and methods employed at each stage of the process, from initial contact to final editing, have therefore been chosen or fashioned with the purpose of guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of the life history concerned. These stories, then, to the best of our ability to make them so, constitute a body of data and testimony as revealed by a few of those history-makers normally condemned to silence while others speak on their behalf.




Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature


Book Description

Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels’ works has been a common but somewhat unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. The entire Engels debate separates into two opposite views: Engels the contaminator of Marx’s “new materialism” vs. Engels the self-educated genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a critical reading that considers the relationship between different layers of this standard text: authorial, textual, editorial, and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, this book questions the elements that structure the debate on the Dialectics of Nature. It analyzes different political and philosophical functions attached to Engels’ text, and relocates the meaning of the term “dialectics” into a more precise context. Arguing that Engels’ dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is but that he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit, this book fully documents and critically analyzes Engels’ intentions and concerns in the Dialectics of Nature, the process of writing, and its reception and edition history in order to reconstruct the solved and unsolved philosophical problems in this unfinished work.




Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy


Book Description

Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians, and the utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy.