Categories

Recent releases

Recorded Fragments

£12.00

Greece 2015: There was an alternative

£15.00

Socialisms

£10.00

More than a left foot

£14.00

Critique of Modern Barbarism

£17.00

Memoirs of a Critical Communist

£20.00

Decolonial Communism, Democracy and the Commons

£15.99 £13.00

Facing the Apocalypse – Arguments for Ecosocialism

£17.00 £15.00

Upcoming title

FIGHT THE FIRE
Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs

by Jonathan Neale

Many of the books concentrate on the politics of green new deals. This one concentrates on the nuts and bolts of the climate jobs that would be part of any new deal. The aim is to persuade the readers that climate jobs could stop climate breakdown, and to make that prospect vivid, detailed and compelling.

 

Upcoming title

INTRODUCTION TO MARXIST THEORY
Selected Writings

by Ernest Mandel

This volume contains a selection of essays on key subjects Mandel worked on: the theory of the state, imperialism, reformism, and bureaucracy. “The Leninist Theory of Organisation” is an influential essay on class consciousness and organisation. The “Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory” was widely used as a textbook in classes on Marxist economics.

Just published 

RECORDED FRAGMENTS
Twelve reflections on the 20th century

with Daniel Bensaïd
Preface by Michael Löwy

With contributions from Olivier Besancenot, Isabelle Garo, Michael Löwy, Arya Meroni,  Hegoa Garay, Olivier Neveux, Ugo Paletha and Christine Poupin
RRP – Print £12, €15, $18; E-book £.99, €9.99, $11.99
In these interviews, Bensaïd gives his insight into twelve significant events including the October Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the assassination of Lumumba, the 1973 coup in Chile, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These milestones of the ‘short twentieth century’ are necessarily a biased and partial choice. In this book, one reads some of the main analyses that structure Daniel Bensaïd’s thinking at the beginning of the 21st century.  The French edition was published by Editions du Croquant and the interviews were carried out at Frequence Paris Plurielle.

‘In Bensaïd's work we can salvage certain missed encounters: between a Trotskyism focused on economics and politics and a western Marxism focused on philosophy and aesthetics; between dominant trends of English-speaking Marxism and of continental European Marxism; as well as between academic Marxism and that of political activists; and between two generations of activists, that of 1968 and that of the 2000s, whose experience, inspiration and practice is very different.’ Cinzia Arruzza, author of Dangerous Liaisons: The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism, and co-author of Feminism for the 99%

Daniel Bensaïd was born in Toulouse in 1946. He became a leader of the 1968 student movement and subsequently of one of France’s main far left organizations (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and of the Fourth International. He died in Paris in 2010.

ORDER AND MORE INFORMATION  HERE

Just published
GREECE 2015
There was an alternative

By Eric Toussaint
Preface by Michael Roberts
RRP: £15, €18, $20.
260 pages
2015 will be a landmark in the history of Greece, Europe and the Left. This book is for readers who are content neither with the mainstream narrative spun by the media and the creditors, nor with former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’s version in his book Adults in the Room.
 
Eric Toussaint coordinated the work of the audit committee set up by the president of the Hellenic Parliament in 2015, and lived at the heart of events that shook Europe. Eric Toussaint is an economist, the international spokesperson of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM), and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. His most recent books are Debt System, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019; and Bankocracy, London: Resistance Books / IIRE / CADTM, 2015.
ORDER Greece 2015: There was an alternative here

SOCIALISMS
Revolutions betrayed, mislaid and unmade

 By Ian Parker
RRP £10, €12, $15
192 pages

“Taking an internationalist view of the left’s prospects, or as he describes it “revolutions betrayed, mislaid and unmade”, Ian Parker’s Socialisms is a brilliant mix of travelogue and polemic, taking in Georgia, Serbia, North Korea and Venezuela along the way." Mark Perryman (Philosphy Football).

Ian Parker is an activist and academic based in Manchester, UK. His books on politics include Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (Pluto Books, 2004), Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left (Zero Books, 2017) and Mapping the English Left through Film: Twenty Five Uneasy Pieces (Folrose Press, 2020).

Socialisms: Revisiting Revolutions Betrayed, Mislaid and Unmade provides accessible description and assessment of the attempt to transcend capitalism in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The book combines an account of travel in eight countries – Russia, Georgia, Serbia, North Korea, China, Cuba, Laos and Venezuela –  that have experienced some form of socialist transformation with historical analysis of what happened and what went wrong. These countries went through the process of revolt against capitalism in very different ways, and the failure to build socialism in each separate case offers lessons for those who still rebel against exploitation and oppression and who want a better world.

ORDER Socialisms  here

MORE THAN A LEFT FOOT

By Bob Williams-Findlay

Preface by Marian Brooks-Sardinha
RRP £14, €17, $20; 370 pages

The book places the struggles for the emancipation of disabled people within the context of Bob’s life journey. Bob traces his experience of life, discrimination and political awakening both as an individual and as part of a specific social group. This journey links disability politics to a wider politics within students, disabled peoples, trade union and labour movements. The book concludes with sober commentary of the on-going struggle against disablement and capitalism.

ORDER More than a Left Foot here

CRITIQUE OF MODERN BARBARISM
Essays on fascism, anti-Semitism and the use of history

By Enzo Traverso
RRP: £17, €20, $24
345 pages

In this new collection of essays, Enzo Traverso examines the relationships between anti-Semitism, modernity and the Holocaust. Traverso analyses multiple dimensions of the destruction of the European Jews, debates over the historical memory and left-wing debates on the nature of anti-Semitism.

“The essays and book chapters collected in this remarkable volume represent a watershed in the history of Marxist critical thinking. For the first time, a comprehensive reflection of the historical meaning of Auschwitz as a “civilisational break” is developed, from a Marxist viewpoint which critically analyses the limitations, and sometimes blindness, of most Marxist writings on the Holocaust. In our days, when post-fascist or neo-fascist regimes are in spectacular rise on a planetarian scale, this book is not only timely: it is an indispensable intellectual tool for the resistance against Barbarism.”- Michael Löwy.

Read here a review of this book by Herman Pietersen

ORDER Critique of Modern Barbarism  here.

MEMOIRS OF A CRITICAL COMMUNIST
Towards a history of the Fourth International

by Livio Maitan

Preface by Daniel Bensaid
Translated by Gregor Benton
Edited and with an introduction by Penelope Duggan
RRP: £20, €24, $28; 456 pages

“Livio Maitan helped inspire the growth of Italian Trotskyism. There was also a wave of Maoism in the 1960s and a debate ensued, to which Livio contributed his book on China, Party, Army, and Masses. I was deeply influenced by it, and I translated it for New Left Books. The book combined criticism of the Chinese Revolution with support. From it, I learned how to write engaged scholarship. Livio could have shone at a leading university had he wanted, but instead he spent most of his life working on a shoestring. In 2002, he wrote this history of the Fourth International to go alongside his autobiography. Translating this new book was a bittersweet experience. Through it, I was able to relive chapter by chapter my wild political youth and my middle age. Livio Maitan’s spirit lifts this story from a catalogue of false starts into a chronicle of heroism and optimism. He died before Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Corbynism, Gilets Jaunes, Extinction Rebellion  and other new struggles, but he paved the way for them. This book shows the road to socialism remains open." – Gregor Benton.

ORDER Memoirs of a Critical Communist here.

FACING THE APOCALYPSE
Arguments for ecosocialism

By Alan Thornett
RRP: £17, €20, $24
342 pages

We are facing a multifaceted threat to life the planet. From a defence of the remarkable ecological content of classical Marxism – lost during the 20th century to the rise of productivism – the book is an appeal to the socialist left to take the ecological crisis far more seriously. Thornett engages directly with major debates such as the rising human population and carbon pricing that remain unresolved on the socialist left. His approach is to promote a transitional approach, distinct from both those that think capitalism will find a solution and those who think revolutionary propaganda is enough. He argues that defending the planet against this crisis today requires broadest possible movement of those – the 99 per cent – who are victims of it.

ORDER Facing the Apocalypse here

DECOLONIAL COMMUNISM, DEMOCRACY & THE COMMONS

By Catherine Samary

Contributions from Samuel Farber, Silvia Federici, Franck Gaudichaud, Zagorska Golubović, Ernest Mandel, Goran Marković, Svetozar Stojanović and Raquel Varela.
RRP: £15.99; 400 pages
How far did the Bolcheviks introduce a ‘decolonial communism’,  later destroyed by Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’? Did the Tito-Stalin break in 1948 and the other revolutions transform these objectives? How far did the struggles and debates in the Yugoslavia of ‘market socialism’ in the mid 1960s follow a path towards democracy and the commons The contributors in this book review past and present experiences and Catherine Samary reconsiders the debates in the light of current  emancipatory thinking and movements.
ORDER Decolonial Communism here

Resistance Books is a feminist, internationalist and ecosocialist publisher. We publish books independently, and also jointly with Merlin Press (London) and the International Institute for Research and Education (Amsterdam).

Contact: info@resistancebooks.org; PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9GQ.