Left-of-centre democratic ideologies and movements Books

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Book SynopsisMuch has been written about the activity of Lenin and his colleagues on the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper, whereas little has been said about the opponents of Leninism, who unsuccessfully fought for control of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party during the Iskra period. To redress the balance, Richard Mullin has translated 25 documents from this period, most of which express an anti-Lenin view. They include articles from Rabochee Delo, the Jewish Bund's Poslednie Izvestiia and the post-Lenin Iskra, pamphlets by Plekhanov and Martov, the resolutions of Party meetings and some very revealing private correspondence. However, the result is not an anti-Bolshevik polemic: through these documents a clearer, and curiously flattering picture of Lenin's thought and activity is obtained.Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements Notes on Names and Dates Preface Introduction 1. Programme of Rabochee Delo 2. Review of Lenin’s Tasks of the Social Democrats, Rabochee Delo No. 1 3. Announcement in Rabochee Delo No. 5 4. Plekhanov’s Vademecum for the Editorial Board of Rabochee Delo and Editorial Comments on the Protest of the 17 in Rabochee Delo No. 4 5. Documents of the April 1900 RSDLP Congress Attempt 6. Boris Krichevskii, ‘Economics and Politics in the Russian Workers' Movement’, Rabochee Delo No. 7 7. ‘A Historic Turn’, Listok Rabochee Delo No. 6 8. Resolution of an Émigré RSDLP Conference, June 1901, Geneva 9. Boris Krichevskii, ‘Principles, Tactics and Struggle’, Rabochee Delo No. 1 10. Alexander Martynov, ‘Exposure Literature and Proletarian Struggle’, Rabochee Delo No. 10 11. Constitution of the ‘Russian Iskra Organisation’ 12. Letters from Iulii Martov to the London Section of the Editorial board of Iskra 13. Report of the Fourth Congress of the Bund 14. Articles from Poslednie Izvestiia 15. Letter of Ekaterina Alexandrova to Lenin, Krupskaya and Martov 16. Pavlovich, Letter to Comrades about the Second RSDLP Congress 17. Resolution of the Second RSDLP Congress ‘Minority’ 18. Iulii Martov, The Struggle with the 'State of Siege' in the RSDLP 19. Georgii Plekhanov, ‘What is Not to Be Done’, Iskra No. 52 20. Georgii Plekhanov, ‘Something on “Economism” and “Economists”’, Iskra No. 53 21. Letter from the Urals and Plekhanov’s ‘Centralism or Bonapartism’, Iskra No 63 & No. 65 22. Georgii Plekhanov, ‘The Working Class and the Social-Democratic Intelligentsia’, Iskra No. 70 & 71 Conclusions Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisUsable Pasts addresses projects dating to two periods in the United States that saw increased financial support from the state for socially engaged culture. By analysing artworks dating to the 1990s by Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe and Martha Rosler in relation to experimental theatre, modern dance, and photography produced within the leftist Cultural Front of the 1930s, this book unpicks the mythic and material afterlives of the New Deal in American cultural politics in order to write a new history of social practice art in the United States. From teenage mothers organising exhibitions that challenged welfare reform, to communist dance troupes choreographing their struggles as domestic workers, Usable Pasts addresses the aesthetics and politics of these attempts to transform society through art in relation to questions of state formation.Trade Review"From Dance of the Washerwomen and Living Newspapers in the 1930s, to artist Rick Lowe’s collaborative reimagining of a defunded Black neighborhood in modern-day Houston, Larne Abse Gogarty’s Usable Pasts is exactly what it claims to be: a superbly narrated history of the socio-economic conditions that make today’s surge of socially engaged art possible. Working against cultural amnesia, Larne Abse Gogarty’s work is precisely that: a smart deep dive into the historical and structural conditions that make today’s surge of socially engaged art possible. To paraphrase Lucy R. Lippard: we would be a lot further along if we had more studies like Usable Pasts." – Professor Gregory Sholette, Queens College, Art Department, CUNY "Neither a partisan nor an opponent of aesthetic 'usefulness', Larne Abse Gogarty rather brings the concept into long-overdue dialectical focus. By showing its interrelationships with the state, law, social reproduction, race and urban rebellion as well as its own immanent 'non-contemporaneity' (Bloch), her book makes a major contribution both to a revived Marxist art theory and a communist art history freed from the blinkers of comfortable nostalgia. Full of insightful close analysis of art practices as well as big-picture argument, this book is for any reader looking to confront the realities of political artmaking in a world of ever more contradictions and determinations – and to leave behind the stale verities of formalism versus engagement." – Dr. Marina Vishmidt, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of [Speculation as a Mode of Production: Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital] (Brill, 2018)Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Figures Introduction: Historicising Social Practice  1 The New Deal Imaginary  2 The Stakes of Social Practice  3 Prevented Futures and Usable Pasts 1 Rehearsals for Real Life  1 Performance and Critical Realism  2 The Roof Is on Fire  3 Code 33  4 Injunction Granted  5 Conclusion: Legislation and Rehearsals 2 Social Practice / Social Reproduction  1 Introduction  2 Cells in Organisms/Cogs in Machines  3 Black and White at the Rockland Palace: The Body against the Belt  4 Dance and Domestic Labour  5 Expectations and Welfare Reform  6 ‘Each Week We started with the Body’  7 Expectations at Capp Street Gallery  8 Conclusion: Reproducing Culture, Reproducing Life 3 Housing, Homelessness and Documentary  1 If You Lived Here …  2 One-Third of a Nation 4 Race, Nation and Usable Pasts  1 Documentary and Nationalism  2 Blackness and the Limits of a Usable Past  3 Project Row Houses Coda: Utility and Social Practice Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExile and Everyday Life focusses on the everyday life experience of refugees fleeing National Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s as well as the representation of this experience in literature and culture. The contributions in this volume show experiences of loss, strategies of adaptation and the creation of a new identity and life. It covers topics such as Exile in Shanghai, Ireland, the US and the UK, food in exile, the writers Gina Kaus, Vicki Baum and Jean Améry, refugees in the medical profession and the creative arts, and the Kindertransport to the UK.Table of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Andrea Hammel and Anthony Grenville Agency in the Everyday: Subversive Discourses in the Work of Gina Kaus Regina Christiane Range Doris Hart at the Metropolitan Opera – The Triumph of the ‘Little People’ Rose Sillars Negotiating a Home: Henry Rothschild and the Émigré Experience Janine Barker A Family Story through Letters: Dr Edith Mahler and Hans Schächter Elizabeth Schächter   Carl Laemmle’s Protégés: Everyday Life in Exile after Escaping Nazi Germany through Help from Hollywood’s Film Mogul Bastian Heinsohn Everyday life of German-speaking refugees in wartime Ireland Horst Dickel and Gisela Holfter The Struggle to Survive: German and Austrian Refugees’ Depiction of Daily Life in Their Shanghai Exile Jennifer E. Michaels ‘Liebe Eltern!’ ‒ ‘Liebes Kind’: Letters between Kindertransportees and their Families as Everyday Life Documents Andrea Hammel Food in Exile Anna Nyburg Exilerfahrung des einsamen Intellektuellen – Jean Amérys Exilerfahrung vor 1964-66 und deren Bedeutung für sein Schreiben Jan Schröder Index

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Book SynopsisIn Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below, Dario Azzellini offers an account of the Bolivarian Revolution from below. While authors on Venezuela commonly concentrate on former president Hugo Chávez and government politics, this book shows how workers, peasants and the poor in urban communities engage in building 21st century socialism through popular movements, communal councils, communes and fighting for workers' control. In a relationship of cooperation and conflict with the state, social transformation is approached on 'two tracks', from below and from above. Azzellini’s fascinating account stands out because of the extensive empirical examples and original voices from movements, communal councils, communes and workers.Trade Review"This monograph presents the most detailed account available in English of communal councils and workers' control initiatives in Venezuela that have evolved since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999. [...] ... a sympathetic and yet unapologetic study of the developments of socialism within the Bolivarian Revolution, such as presented in this book, is indispensable to any serious engagement with the project of socialism for the twenty-first century." - Babak Amini, London School of Economics, in: Socialism and Democracy 32/2 (2018)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction 1.1 Venezuela’s specific path 1.2 The dilemma of the state 1.3 Two-track construction 1.4 Local self-government, communal councils (CCs), and communes 1.5 Cooperatives, co-management, self-management, and workers’ control 1.6 The revolution without Chávez 2. Class, Constituent Power, and Popular Power 2.1 Updating the concept of class Theoretical notes on class and multitude Class composition and breadth in Venezuela 2.2 Socio-territorial segregation and class formation 2.3 From taking power to process: Constituent power and popular power Crisis as a motor of history: Constituent power vs. constituted power The popular constituent process The simultaneity of foci: Resistance, insurrection and constituent power Popular power: The knowledge of resistance 3. Movements and Alternative Construction in Venezuela 3.1 Social movements or popular movements? 3.2 The historical current for change and the ruptures of the continuum 3.3 The new framework of action 3.4 Popular actors and autonomous construction The Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current The Settlers’ Movement National Network of Communards 4. The Communal Councils: Local Self-Administration and Social Transformation 4.1 Participatory budgeting The failed CLPP initiative Metropolitan Council for Planning Public Policies (CMPPP) The Municipal Constituent The Local Work Cabinets in Caracas 4.2 The communal councils The genesis of the CCs Makeup and structure Rigid law and flexible praxis Financing and financial administration Projects Decentralisation or centralisation Development, situation, and contradictions Relationship between CCs and institutions CCs and popular movements Relations between CCs and communities The appropriation of CCs by communities and the question of the state 4.3 The CCs as a means of participation in the barrios of Caracas The ‘Emiliano Hernández’ Communal Council, Magallanes de Catia, Caracas The CC as a body of self-administration Participation as a process of development and of social recognition Participation as a process of democratisation and of building collectivity The CC ‘Unidos por el Chapulún’, Parroquia Nuestra Sra. del Rosario, Baruta CCs in Caracas: Conclusions Participation Relationship between communities and institutions 5. New Collective Business Paradigms 5.1 Cooperatives Roots of cooperativism in Venezuela Governmental policies of support for cooperatives Limitations of state support for cooperatives Internal organisation of cooperatives The problematisation of cooperativism 5.2 New entrepreneurial models Private enterprise and co-management Co-management in state businesses Social Production Companies 6. Workers’ Control, Workers’ Councils, and Class Struggle 6.1 Recuperated companies and nationalisation 6.2 Workers’ control and workers’ councils The movement for workers’ control The Socialist Workers’ Councils The CVG and the 2009–19 Socialist Guayana Plan 6.3 Workers’ control: The example of Inveval From the struggle for pay to the struggle for the factory The workers abandon the cooperative and form a council 6.4 Alcasa: Class struggle for productive transformation against bureaucracy and corruption Revolutionary co-management The victory of bureaucracy and corruption Workers’ control returns The organisational structure of the new Alcasa Worker inventiveness workshops The Alcasa initiatives and the institutional embargo The attack on workers’ control and the negation of the Socialist Guayana Plan 6.5 New struggles for workers’ control 6.6 Approaching the issue of new worker subjectivities in the context of participation and class struggle Horizontality in the factory and change throughout society The new collective self 7. Communes, Production, and the Communal State 7.1. Communes Origin and form Communes and constituted power 7.2 Companies of Communal Social Property and the construction of a communal economy 7.3 Communal state: State or non-state? 8 Local and Worker Co-Management, Two-Track Construction, and Class Struggle: A Preliminary Assessment 8.1 The Bolivarian process and class struggle 8.2 Communal councils, communes, and communal state 8.3 Property models, the administration of the means of production, and class struggle 8.4 Nationalisation, workers’ control, and the Socialist Workers’ Councils 8.5 The relation of constituent and constituted power to class struggle Interviews References Index

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Book SynopsisCultures of Uneven and Combined Development seeks to explore and develop Leon Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development. In particular, it aims to adapt the political and historical analysis which originated in Trotsky’s Russia for use within the contemporary field of world literature. As such, it draws together the work of scholars from both the field of international relations and the field of literature and the arts. This collection will therefore be of particular interest to anyone who is interested in new ways of understanding world literary texts, or interested in new ways of applying Trotsky’s revolutionary politics to the contemporary world order. Contributors: Alexander Anievas, Gail Day, James Christie, Kamran Matin, Kerem Nisancioglu, Luke Cooper, Michael Niblett, Neil Davidson, Nesrin Degirmencioglu, Robert Spencer, Steve Edwards.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Part 1 Introducing the Field Introduction: Why Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development?  James Christie and Nesrin Degirmencioglu 1 Uneven and Combined Development as a Universal Aspect of Capitalist Modernity  Neil Davidson Part 2 Critiquing Eurocentrism 2 Troubling Time and Space in World Politics: Reimagining Western Modernity in the Atlantic Mirror  Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu 3 The Iranian Revolution in the Mirror of Uneven and Combined Development  Kamran Matin 4 Rationalist or Nationalist? The Eighteenth-Century Public Sphere  Luke Cooper Part 3 Towards a Theory of Culture 5 Uneven and Combined Development: Between Capitalist Modernity and Modernism  Neil Davidson 6 Fredric Jameson and the Rise of World Literature: From World Systems Theory to Uneven and Combined Development  James Christie Part 4 Reading under the Sign of Uneven and Combined Development 7 Late Capitalism in Contemporary Fiction  Robert Spencer 8 Differential Time and Aesthetic Form: Uneven and Combined Capitalism in the Work of Allan Sekula  Gail Day and Steve Edwards 9 Aesthetics of Uneven and Combined Development: Tanpınar and Dos Passos at a World Literary Conjuncture  Nesrin Degirmencioglu 10 Demon Landscapes, Uneven Ecologies: Folk-Spirits in Guyanese Fiction  Michael Niblett Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking comparative study rediscovers the socialists of Russia’s borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of working-class politics and the Russian Revolution. Researched in eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy challenges long-held assumptions by scholars and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change.Trade ReviewListen to Lay Led Unions' episode on Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) featuring Eric Blanc. Also, listen to a panel discussion of Eric Blanc's groundbreaking new book, here. "Eric Blanc's remarkable new book should revolutionize the way scholars and activists think about the Russian Revolution. By looking not just at Petrograd or Russia but at the entire Russian Empire—including Finland, Ukraine, and Poland—Blanc’s pathbreaking comparative analysis examines how and why revolutionary processes diverge under parliamentary and autocratic regimes. Drawing on far-flung sources in eight languages, Blanc breaks with the Russocentrism of earlier accounts and effectively deprovincializes the revolution. Among other things, he demonstrates that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not nearly as exceptional as is often thought. This book is an extraordinary achievement." — Jeff Goodwin, New York University “Anyone interested in the Russian Revolution will need to read this outstanding contribution. Puncturing myths, cliches, and unsupported interpretations, Eric Blanc explores a forgotten historical reality — revolutionary social democracy — by vividly documenting the actual strategic outlooks and local practices of Second International Marxists across the Russian Empire, as well as Germany, the homeland of this political current. An impressively wide reading in sources from many languages allows Blanc to demonstrate the importance of borderland socialists in the revolutionary drama, bringing to life activists at all levels of party organizations throughout imperial Russia and challenging us to rethink long-held assumptions about major figures such as Lenin and Kautsky.” — Lars T. Lih, McGill University “Through impressive research and erudite argumentation, this monumental study of the broad array of ‘revolutionary social democratic’ parties that operated in the non-Russian borderlands of the Tsarist Empire in the decades leading to 1917 definitively shows why there was no ‘one-size-fits-all’ revolutionary practice and why there is no reason to overgeneralize the international relevance of the form taken by the October Revolution. A tour de force which provides strong historical foundations for all those today working to develop an anticapitalist, democratic socialist political strategy for renewed working-class formation and state transformation.” — Leo Panitch, York UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Tables Introduction  1 Bringing in the Borderlands  2 Strategic Continuities and Ruptures  3 Method, Structure, Sources 1 The Social Context  1 The Workers’ Movement  2 The Unique Impact of Orthodox Marxism  3 Socialist Political Cultures 2 Revolutionary Social Democracy: An Overview  1 The ABC s of Revolutionary Social Democracy  2 Strategy and Tactics in Germany and Russia 3 Intellectuals and Workers  1 Intellectuals and the Tensions of Class Formation  2 Intellectuals and Workers (1905–17) 4 Organisation, Mass Action, and Electoral Work  1 Socialist Organisation in Finland  2 Illegal Organising in Tsarist Russia  3 The Bolshevik-Menshevik Split  4 The First Mass Strike Debates (1903–04)  5 Mass Action and Organisation in 1905  6 Party Organisation and Mass Action (1906–14)  7 War and Revolution  8 Mass Organisation and Action in Finland: 1917–18 5 Working-Class Hegemony  1 Analysing Liberalism  2 Tactics Towards Liberals  3 The Bund versus Zionism (1897–1904)  4 The PPS and the National Democrats Before 1905  5 Class Independence in Finland  6 Early Russian Marxism and Liberals  7 Working-Class Hegemony (1905–16)  8 Proletarian Hegemony and Liberals (1906–16) 6 Working-Class Unity  1 United Front Practices Before 1905  2 Workers’ Unity and the 1905 Revolution  3 Implementing the United Front (1906–18)  4 Disunity in Europe and Poland 7 The Party Question  1 The German SPD Model  2 Finland’s Social Democracy  3 The Normalcy of Splits in Underground Russia  4 The Split of Polish Socialism  5 The Bolshevik-Menshevik Split 8 Democracy, the State, and the Finnish Revolution  1 Critique of Bourgeois Democracy  2 The Socialist Revolution  3 The State and Revolution in Finland (1917–18) 9 The Autocratic State and Revolution: 1905  1 State Power and Marxist Strategy in 1905  2 The Practice of Revolutionary Government in 1905  3 Socialist Transformation in Russia  4 International Revolution 10 The State and Revolution in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland: 1917–19  1 Moderate Socialists and Dual Power in 1917  2 Moderates Join the Government  3 Russian Moderate Socialists in the October Revolution  4 Moderate Socialists in Ukraine: 1917–18  5 Moderate Socialism in Poland: 1918–19  6 Bolsheviks and State Power: February–March 1917  7 Breaking with the Bourgeoisie: April–October Epilogue: An International Revolution Defeated  1 Civil War and Authoritarianism  2 International Revolution  3 Impasse in the Imperial Periphery Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Co-operative Struggles, Denise Kasparian expands the theoretical horizons regarding labour unrest by proposing new categories to make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker co-operativism of the twenty-first century. After the depletion of neoliberal reforms at the dawn of the twenty-first century in Argentina, co-operativism gained momentum, mainly due to the recuperation of enterprises by their workers and state promotion of co-operatives through social policies. These new co-operatives became actors not just in production but in social struggle. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they shape a socio-productive form not structured on wage relations: workers are at the same time members of the organisations. Why, how and by what cleavages and groupings do these co-operative workers without bosses come into conflict?Trade Review"Denise Kasparian’s Co-operative Struggles provides an in-depth study of two worker co-operatives in the Buenos Aires area today to reveal how co-operatives emerge, are governed, and disappear. She successfully confronts people’s implicit assumptions about co-operatives with observations from everyday realities of working in Argentinian worker co-operatives in the 2000s and 2010s. Her research thereby puts several dominant myths about the co-operative economy into perspective [...] Sociological research provides a litmus test that checks which myths have become invalid or are not applicable to a particular economic sector. Kasparian has admirably shown how such a test would work in the specific political and economic conjuncture of contemporary Argentina". Tim Christiaens, in Critical Sociology, 8 April 2022. Critical Sociology “El libro amplía los horizontes teóricos sobre el conflict laboral, proponiendo nuevas categorías para visibilizar y conceptualizar las contiendas en el nuevo cooperativismo de trabajo del siglo XXI”. In Centro de Estudios de Sociología del TrabajoUniversidad de Buenos Aires, 21/04/2022. "This book, made up of two unlikely types of cooperatives, one formed voluntarily and the other formed through state-sponsorship, contributes to the literature of self-management and co-operatives and provides a deeper understanding that aspects of the democratization of conflict in co-operatives are context-specific. Future research should deepen and expand the study of self-management and conflict in the broader ecosystem of worker-recuperated, state-sponsored and traditional worker co-operatives, and thus contribute further to generalizable ideas about self-management." Stefan Ivanovski, in ILR Review, ILR ReviewTable of ContentsForeword The Democratisation of Conflict Acknowledgements List of Figures, Tables and Images Introduction  1 The Question of Work Conflicts in New Co-operatives  2 Dimensions of New Social Conflicts in Co-operative Socio-productive Contexts  3 The Challenge of Comparing Paradigmatic but Non-equivalent Experiences: Studying a Whole That Acts as a Whole  4 The Structure of the Book 1 Co-operatives ‘Made in Argentina’ The Process of Enterprise Recuperation by Their Workers  1 The Socio-genesis of the Processes of Enterprise Recuperation  1.1 When Worker Resistance Becomes an Offensive Movement  1.2 The Widespread Crisis of 2001–2002, or Adding Fuel to the Fire  1.3 The Movement of the Flames  2 The Evolution of Enterprise Recuperation Processes  2.1 The Fuel of the Growing Economy Keeps the Flames of Production Moving  2.2 The Moral Economy of Work in the Continued Presence of Enterprise Recuperations  2.3 “Argentina Is One Big, Recuperated Factory”: Public Policies for Recuperated Enterprises  2.4 The Movement’s Fragmentation, Co-operative Convergence and Union Rapprochement 2 Incubated Co-operatives Co-operative Formation under the Argentina Works Programme  1 Social Schemes with Work Requirement: From Workfare to the Argentina Works Programme  2 The Mediation of Unemployed Workers’ Organisations: Civil Associations, Productive Units and Co-operatives  3 The Dual Logic of the Argentina Works Programme’s Socio-genesis: Creating Jobs and Co-ordinating Local Politics  4 Induced Co-operatives? The Struggle of Unemployed Workers’ Organisations  4.1 The Evolution of the Argentina Works Programme  4.2 The Intensity and Dynamics of Contentious Action  4.3 The Demands and Forms of Contentious Action 3 Keeping and Having a Job A Milestone in Constitutive Conflicts  1 ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’ … and Have!  2 From ‘Induction’ to the ‘Co-operative without Brokers’  3 A Comparative Lens on Constitutive Conflicts 4 The Recuperated Enterprise and Social Power in Production  1 Recuperators, Activists and the ‘Born and Bred’  2 Property Relations: Social Possession and Differential Appropriation of the Fruits of Labour  3 The Logic of Production and the Issue of Sustainability in Recuperated Enterprises  4 The Political Dimension: Between Self-management and Delegation  5 Social Groupings and Potential Antagonisms: Opportunity Hoarding, Enterprise Projects and Work Generations 5 The Argentina Works Co-operative and State Power in Production  1 The Labour and Socio-spatial Precarity of Argentina Works Programme Workers  2 Property Relations: Social Possession and Autonomy  3 The Logic of Production: Between Subsistence and Political Accumulation  4 The Political Dimension: State Power and Co-management  5 Social Groupings and Potential Antagonisms: State Officials, Co-operative Members and Activists 6 The Production of Co-operative Conflict  1 Board Removals: Conflicts over the Running and Expansion of the Productive Process  2 Regulations, Sanctions and Exclusions: From ‘Founder Members’ to ‘Founderer Members’  3 “We Fought over the River Module”: The Conflict over Autonomous Work  4 Between Subsistence Consumption and Political Accumulation in the Social Organisation  5 A Comparative Lens 7 Conclusions  1 The New Twenty-First-Century Co-Operativism and Its Struggles Around Work  2 What Patterns of Conflicts are There without Bosses? Towards a Theory of Unrest in Worker Co-operatives  3 From Prelude to Present: A Toolbox for New Research Questions Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution, the Brazilian historian Joana Salém Vasconcelos presents in clear language the complicated challenge of overcoming the condition of Latin America’s underdevelopment through a revolutionary process. Based on diverse historical sources, she demonstrates why the sugar plantation economic structure in Cuba was not entirely changed by the 1959 Revolution. The author narrates in detail the three dimensions of Cuban agrarian transformation during the decisive 1960s — the land tenure system, the crop regime, and the labour regime —, and its social and political actors. She explains the paths and detours of Cuban agrarian policies, contextualized in a labour-intensive economy that needs desperately to increase productivity and, at the same time, promised widely to emancipate workers from labour exploitation. Cuban agrarian and economic contradictions are well-synthetized with the concept of Peripheral Socialism.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Foreword—English Edition Cuba’s Present and a Specter Haunting the Spectators Foreword—Brazilian Edition List of Tables, Charts, and Maps Cuban Provinces from 1940 to 1976 Introduction Dilemmas of Peripheral Socialism 1 Modernization of Cuban Plantation (1902–1958)  1 Latifundium-Minifundium Land Tenure Structure 1.1 Between Latifundium and Minifundium  1.2 Origins of Structural Heterogeneity 1.3 Social Actors of Modern Plantation  2 Cropping Regimes: Sugarcane Fields in Wall Street 2.1 Military Order No.62 and Primitive Accumulation 2.2 Dance of the Millions 2.3 Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 and the Jones-Costigan Amendment 2.4 Ascension of Cuban Saccharocracy  3 Labor Regime: the Curse of the Crowds 3.1 Statistics Cover-Up 3.2 A Portrait of Rural Misery 3.3 Structural Unemployment and tiempo muerto  4 The World Seen from Above 4.1 Batista and the Rockefeller-Sullivan   4.2 A Portrait of Saccharocracy  5 Revolution against Underdevelopment 5.1 The Moncada Program 5.2 Revolutionary Democratic Nationalism 5.3 Sierra Maestra Law No.3 2 First Agrarian Reform, Impulses and Impasses (1958–1963)  1 Transformation of the Land Tenure System 1.1 The Agrarian Reform Law of 1959 1.2 Nationalization Laws 1.3 A Portrait of Structural Transformation  2 Cooperatives or State Farms? 2.1 The Proletarian Peasant and the Scale Preservation 2.2 Agricultural Cooperatives 2.3 Granjas del Pueblo (People’s Farm) 2.4 Converting Cooperatives into Granjas  3 Peasantry: Principle of Voluntarism and anap 3.1 anap Foundation and Its Principles 3.2 Mistakes Made with the Peasantry 3.3 anap’s “Administrativism” 3.4 Politics of Voluntary Collectivism  4 Agricultural Diversification: Disruption of the Double Articulation 4.1 Neocolonial Insertion Crisis: the Search for National Sovereignty 4.2 Increase of Internal Demand: Searching for Social Equity 4.3 Diversification: Searching for Economic Development 4.4 Structural Problems of Diversification: Extensive, Disorganized, and Inefficient 4.5 Intensification of Class Struggle and General Economic Trends in 1963 3 Second Agrarian Reform and the Sugar Paradox (1963–1967)  1 Transformation of the Land Tenure System 1.1 The Agrarian Reform Law of October 1963 1.2 Cyclone Flora 1.3 The Social Structure of the New Agriculture 1.4 A Combined Strategy: Sugar, Diversification and Technology  2 The Soviet Union and the Sugar Paradox 2.1 The 1964 Agreement 2.2 Back to Sugar 2.3 Inserted Revolution and the Paradox of the New Dependency 2.4 Third World: Arena for National Sovereignty   3 Agrarian Management: between Relative Autonomy and Centralization 3.1 Agrupamientos, Departamentos, Lotes (Grouping, Departments, Allotments) 3.2 Aspects of the Great Debate in Agriculture  4 Specialized Diversification and Technology-Intensive Model 4.1 Crop Performance between 1964 and 1970 4.2 Combinados and Special Plans: Modes of Diversification 4.3 Peasantry and Special Plans  5 Technological Dependency and Sugarcane Mechanization 5.1 Investment and Consumption 5.2 Tiempo Muerto in Reverse: Unemployment in Disguise 5.3 Paths and Detours of Technological Choice 4 The 1970 Harvest and Development Strategy (1967–1970)  1 Agrarian Structure and Development Strategy 1.1 Import Substituting Industrialization 1.2 Turnpike Strategy: the Return of “Comparative Advantages”? 1.3 Why Ten Million?  2 Revolutionary Offensive and Moral Economy 2.1 Moral Economy and Ideological Centralization 2.2 Collective Wage Agreement and Lack of Accounting Control 2.3 The Shrinking of the Peasantry  3 The 1970 Harvest: Plan and Reality 3.1 Simultaneous Battles 3.2 The Harvest in Numbers 3.3 Causes of Failure 3.4 Structural Distortions  4 Voluntary Work: between Consciousness and Coercion 4.1 Drop in Productivity and Elimination of the Foreman 4.2 Criticism of Volunteer Labor 4.3 The Militarization of Labor 4.4 Self-Criticism 5 Conclusion Dilemmas of Peripheral Socialism  1 Geopolitical Implications: the Source of Surplus 1.1 The Transfer of Soviet Resource 1.2 Multilateral Payment Agreement 1.3 Cold War and Geopolitical Advantages 1.4 Joining the comecon  2 Peripheral Socialism and Rationality of the Possible 2.1 From Segregation to Egalitarianism 2.2 Development of the Productive Forces 2.3 Peripheral Socialism and Rationality of the Possible Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Xuduo Zhao revisits the early twentieth-century Chinese revolution by focusing on two forgotten Cantonese socialists: Chen Gongbo and Tan Pingshan. By analyzing a host of previously untapped primary sources, Zhao discovers a social democratic approach within the newly founded Chinese Communist Party and argues that its decline marked a key moment in the Chinese communist movement. The study of these two figures, and the ebbs and flows of their lives, reflects and reveals the fundamental tensions in the Chinese revolution which have shaped China’s political trajectory to contemporary times and the broader political, social, and cultural landscapes of Republican China.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements list of Abbreviations Introduction  1 The Decline of Social Democracy: a Turning Point  2 Reflections on the Origin of Twentieth-Century Chinese Radicalism  3 A Fundamental Conundrum: between Governance and Revolution  4 Political Ideas and Social Identities: a Dynamic Entanglement  5 The Structure of the Book 1 Between Province and Capital (1917–1920)  1 Tan Pingshan: Climbing the Ladder  2 Making Sense of the Education Reforms  3 Chen Gongbo: off the Track  4 PKU: a Cultural Field  5 Learning to Be an Intellectual: Tan Pingshan and Chen Gongbo at PKU  6 Reception and Reinterpretation of Marxism 2 Between Democracy and Revolution (1920–1922)  1 The Discredited Establishment  2 Zhengheng: a Prelude to Social Democracy  3 Mapping the World: the Advent of the Age of Revolution  4 Making Sense of Marxism: Cantonese Social Democracy  5 Rationality, Debate, and Socialism: Creating a Public Cultural Space 3 Between Sun and Chen (1922)  1 The June 16th Incident  2 To Choose between Sun and Chen: an Enigmatic Quarrel within the CCP  3 A Difficult Decision to Make: the Communists in Shanghai  4 A Vague Relationship: Chen Jiongming and the Cantonese Communists  5 Behind the Mystery: the Origin of the Rumor  6 The Identity Problem: Intellectual vs. Revolutionary 4 Between Revolutionary and Politician (1923–1928)  1 Transforming into a Revolutionary: the Start of the Nationalist Revolution  2 Revolutionary vs. Politician: a Dilemma in Guangzhou  3 Revolutionary vs. Politician: a Dilemma Again in Wuhan  4 Building a Revolutionary Party: a Way Out? 5 Between Communism and Nationalism (1923–1928)  1 The Rise of Materialist Historiography in China  2 The School of “New History” and Hayes’ Historical Writings  3 Chen Gongbo’s Historical Practices  4 Chen Gongbo’s Interest in British Anti-Imperialism  5 Locating Chen Gongbo’s Left-Wing GMD Program Conclusion  1 The Abandonment of Social Democracy  2 Revolution and Counter-Revolution  3 Nationalism and Socialism Appendix: Events in Republican China (1915–1920) Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRaising the Red Flag explores the origins of the British Marxist movement from the creation of the Social Democratic Federation to the foundation of the Communist Party. It tells a story of rising class struggle, the founding of the Labour Party, the fight against World War One, the Russian Revolution, and the explosive year of 1919. The book also uses new archival sources to re-examine Marxist organisations such as the British Socialist Party, the Socialist Labour Party, and Sylvia Parkhurst’s Workers’ Socialist Federation. Above all, this is the story of men and women who fought to liberate the working class from capitalism through socialist revolution.Table of ContentsList of Figures Abbreviations Introduction 1 Mr Hyndman versus Comrade Engels: The Birth of the Social Democratic Federation  1 The Birth of the Social Democratic Federation  2 From the Socialist League to the Independent Labour Party 2 The Labour Party Question: Labourism, Leftism, and the Second International  1 The Russian Influence  2 The Labour Party and the Second International 3 Britain in Crisis: Labour’s Great Unrest and the Revolutionary Left  1 Realignment on the Left and the British Socialist Party  2 The Second International Steers towards the Labour Party  3 The Rise of the Revolutionary Left  4 The SLP and Revolutionary Syndicalism  5 Beyond Suffragism 4 August 1914: British Marxists in the Face of War  1 The BSP and SLP and the Test of War  2 The Anti-war Left  3 Revolutionary Opponents of War 5 The Clyde Turns Red: John Maclean and the Enemy at Home  1 The War on the Home Front  2 The Easter Rising and the British Left  3 Nashe Slovo, the BSP and Revolutionary Internationalism  4 The Zimmerwald Debate in Britain 6 ‘Lads Like Me Had Whacked the Bosses’: The Coming of the Russian Revolution  1 Repression and Revolt  2 Follow Russia! The Leeds Convention  3 Labourism Responds to the Russian Revolution  4 Bolshevism and the British Left 7 1919: The Question of Power  1 ‘Are You Ready to Take Power?’  2 The Police Strikes  3 Leadership, the Lefts and the Left  4 Racist Scourge in Europe  5 Ireland’s Tragedy, Labour’s Disgrace 8 Between Labour and Bolshevism: Towards A Communist Party  1 Towards Unity … and the Labour Party?  2 The Coming of the Communist International  3 Britain and the Amsterdam Bureau  4 The Fate of John Maclean 9 ‘Long Live the Communist Party!’ Building a British Section of the Communist International  1 The Second Congress of the Comintern  2 The Birth of the Communist Party of Great Britain  3 The Unification Conference  4 A Stillborn Party? Conclusion  In Praise of Learning Appendix 1: Timeline Appendix 2: Figures Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGilles Deleuze's assertion that 'Sartre knew how to invent the New' suggests a vital aspect of the French philosopher, one that departs from the image that has often been presented of him. Sartre’s post-1956 critique of the Stalinist USSR, together with the increasing prominence of anti-colonial struggles and a series of experiences that would find their condensation in 1968, pushed him to a continuous rearticulation of his political ideas, on the basis of an intense confrontation with Marx. In Basso’s lucid study, here newly translated into English, the expression 'singular universal' seeks to capture the revolutionary potential of individual and collective subjects, illuminating the close but also unstable relationship between history and politics.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1 Sartre: From Descartes to Marx 1 The Invention of Human Freedom: Descartes Beyond Descartes  1 Anthropology  2 A Philosophy of Freedom  3 Humanism and Intersubjectivity: towards the Critique of Dialectical Reason 2 ‘Fused Group’ and Fraternité: Between Rousseau and the French Revolution  1 The Practico-Inert: Objectivity and Alienation  2 Acting in Common: the Storming of the Bastille  3 The Dynamic of Fraternity 3 The Novum of Communism between Freedom and Equality: Marx  1 The Confrontation with Marx and Marxism  2 Class and Action  3 ‘The Realm of Freedom’ Part 2 Sartre and the Twentieth Century 4 Common Praxis and History: From the Russian Revolution to the Soviet Union  1 The Dimension of History  2 Between Stalin and Trotsky: ‘Socialism in One Country’ and ‘Permanent Revolution’  3 The Incarnation of the Russian Revolution and Totalisation 5 Seriality and Bureaucratisation: a Reified Equality  1 The Construction of the Soviet Man  2 The ‘Sovereignty of a Single Individual’ and Stalin’s Ghost 6 The ‘Spectre’ of 1968: Critique of Colonialism and New Spaces of Emancipation  1 Another Socialism Is Possible?  2 Between Race and Class: the Struggle of the ‘Wretched of the Earth’  3 ‘Autour De 68’ 7 The Invention of the ‘Universal Singular’  1 Open Problems  2 Between the ‘Individual’-‘Collective’ Dualism: Rethinking Subjectivation Bibliography Index

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