Recent releases
ALIENATION, SPECTACLE & REVOLUTION
A critical Marxist essay
by Neil Faulkner
RRP: £5, €7, $8 (print); 136 pages
The fast-accelerating world crisis is driving us towards barbarism and extinction. The capitalist system means ecological and social collapse. Mainstream politics, embedded in the system, has been reduced to irrelevance. Revolution has become an existential imperative. This book offers critical Marxist thinking about the nature of the crisis and what must be done to turn mass protest into the revolutionary transformation on which our survival depends.
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INTRODUCTION TO MARXIST THEORY
Selected writings
by Ernest Mandel
RRP: £15, €18, $20 (print); 300 pages.
Introduction to Marxist Theory 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.
Introduction to Marxist Theory is the first in a series of selected writings by Ernest Mandel. The other volumes will be Marxists Against Stalinism and Historical and Theoretical Essays.
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THE PARIS COMMUNE
An ode to emancipation
by Daniel Bensaïd, Olivier Besancenot, Sandra Bloodworth, Judy Cox, Penelope Duggan, Mathilde Larrère, Michael Löwy, Kay Mann, Eric Toussaint.
RRP: £12, €15, $18 (print)
The Paris Commune of 1871 was one of the first working class attempts at the social emancipation of the oppressed and exploited. Between 18 March and 29 May 1871, the popular classes succeeded for a while in breaking their chains. It was a short period when people could take control of their lives. The Paris Commune is an inspiration today. The memory of the past and its struggles strengthens the fight for the utopia of the future.
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SYSTEM CRASH
An Activist Guide to Making Revolution
By Neil Faulkner, Phil Hearse, Rowan Fortune, Simon Hannah, and Nina Fortune
RRP: £10, €12, $14 (print)
It is the greatest crisis in human history. We are hurtling towards an abyss. The system is terminally diseased. Pandemic, climate crisis, endless war, mega-slums, police repression, creeping fascism, economic stagnation: these shape our world. On one side, grotesque greed and rampaging corporate power. On the other, poverty, oppression, and despair. Capitalism came into the world, Marx wrote, ‘dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt’. Now, the ageing system is putrescent and gangrenous. Revolution – ending the rule of capital and the state – has become an existential necessity. This book is a call to arms.
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FIGHT THE FIRE
Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs
by Jonathan Neale
RRP: £15, €18, $20 (print)
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. There is also a political thread running through the book, which is that we have to make the necessary changes to move beyond the constraints of the market.
Jonathan Neale is a professional writer. His books include A People’s History of the Vietnam War (The New Press, 2003); What’s Wrong with America (Vision, 2004), Stop Global Warming: Change the World (Bookmarks, 2008). He One Million Climate Jobs and wrote a report on climate jobs and transport for the European Transport Workers Federation. From 2004 to 2011 Jonathan was international secretary of Campaign Against Climate Change Britain.
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WHY WE NEED ANTICAPITALIST RESISTANCE
by Simon Hannah
RRP: £4, €5, $6 (print)
60 pages; 178x108mm.
The world is facing an unprecedented crisis with the pandemic, climate disaster, and an economic crash. Extreme inequality is out of control. Resistance is happening on every continent against the capitalist system. The vision of Karl Marx for a new society is still relevant today. Simon Hannah gives an outline of Marxism and how it can help us in the fight to free people from exploitation and save the planet.
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REC
ORDED 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 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.
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GREECE 2015
There was an alternative
By Eric Toussaint
Preface by Michael Roberts
RRP: £15, €18, $20.
260 pages
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
BUY 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.
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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
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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.