Manifesto


Book Description

“If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.




Revolution in the Air


Book Description

The first in-depth study of the long march of the US New Left after 1968 The sixties were a time when radical movements learned to embrace twentieth-century Marxism. Revolution in the Air is the definitive study of this turning point, and examines what the resistance of today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao and Che. It tells the story of the “new communist movement” which was the most racially integrated and fast-growing movement on the Left. Thousands of young activists, radicalized by the Vietnam War and Black Liberation, and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano and Asian-American movements, embraced a Third World oriented version of Marxism. These admirers of Mao, Che and Amilcar Cabral organized resistance to the Republican majorities of Nixon and Ford. By the 1980s these groups had either collapsed or become tiny shards of the dream of a Maoist world revolution. Taking issue with the idea of a division between an early “good sixties” and a later “bad sixties,” Max Elbaum is particularly concerned to reclaim the lessons of the new communist movement for today’s activists who, like their sixties’ predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the Left lacks mass support and is fragmented along racial lines. With a new foreward by Alicia Garza, cofounder of #BlackLivesMatter.




Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency


Book Description

This book, originally published in 1977, provides a historical account and case study of a little-publicised social movement, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The League, a black Marxist-Leninist movement that developed among automobile workers in Detroit, appeared shortly after the 1967 Detroit urban disorders. It spread from the automobile industry to other industries, and from Detroit to other urban areas, before an internal split led to its demise in 1971. The author bases his study on interviews with members of the League and on a detailed analysis of the movement's literature. He carefully examines the development of different ideologies within the League and the resultant conflict over tactics. Although the League was unified in its advocacy of black revolt, one wing of the League's leadership emphasised class analysis and supported a strategy of collaboration with white workers and white radicals. Another wing stressed national liberation struggles and rejected such collaboration in favour of an exclusively black movement.




The Romance of American Communism


Book Description

“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public. From the immigrant Jewish enclaves of the Bronx and Brooklyn and the docks of Puget Sound to the mining towns of Kentucky and the suburbs of Cleveland, over a million Americans found a sense of belonging and an expanded sense of self through collective struggle. They also found social isolation, blacklisting, imprisonment, and shattered hopes. This is their story--an indisputably American story.




Marxism & Nationalism


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The State and Revolution


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Far Left of Center


Book Description

Histories of American radical left groups abound. The Communist party, the tiny Trotskyist movement, and the New Left have all been abundantly chronicled. Very little information has been available, however, about the radical left today. "Far Left of Center "remedies that deficit. Many people erroneously assume that with the collapse of the New Left in the early 1970s, American radicalism disappeared. It is true that the 1980s have not been good years for radicals. Their ideologies, particularly Marxism-Leninism, have been discredited, their tactics and visions have been repudiated, and they have been plagued by internal problems. Even so, the history of American radicalism suggests that such movements have rebounded in the past; and in any event, Marxist-Leninist groups have often had an impact far out of proportion to their size. Part One deals with the Communist party of the United States, the largest and most influential Marxist-Leninist group in the United States. Its membership is only about 15,000, but it has been growing steadily in recent years. This section also discusses a variety of front groups which the party has created to facilitate work and to garner support from people who would not otherwise cooperate with Communists. Part Two deals with Trotskyist, Maoist, and other Marxist-Leninist organizations in the United States. Far more militant than the CPUSA, these sects are usually quite small, often under a thousand members. They include the tiny offshoots of the New Left. Part Three deals with organizations that eschew formal ties to Marxist-Leninist parties and are not under the control of these parties, although they may work with them toward some of the same objectives. Many of these have especially targeted Israel as a danger to world peace and security. They are also hostile to American foreign policy and support Marxist revolutionary regimes abroad. The basic premise of "Far Left of Center "is that these far-left groups support and defend oppressive and totalitarian regimes, and cooperate with those dedicated to the destruction of democracy and intellectual freedom. The author is careful to distinguish these groups from democratic socialists in the United States, who have vigorously and continuously denounced Marxism-Leninism and those regimes founded on its principles. This book is not about these organizations. The focus is, instead, on groups whose denunciations of American society and political life go hand-in-hand with testimonials to some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Klehr has written a sober, well documented, comprehensive account of the radical left in the United States today.




Left Transnationalism


Book Description

In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).