Resistance Books is the publishing arm of Socialist Resistance. We publish books independently, and also jointly with Merlin Press (London) and the International Institute for Research and Education (Amsterdam).
Out now
HUGO BLANCO – a revolutionary for life
by Derek Wall
Published by Resistance Books and Merlin Press
£12 from Resistance Books, 150 pages.
Click here to order the book
This engaging biography tells the story of one of Latin America’s most important revolutionary leaders. Hugo Blanco led a successful uprising for land rights in Peru in the 1960s. Praised by Che Guevara, remarkably Hugo is still politically active and militant in 2018. A Marxist in the 1960s, Hugo’s life charts a whole history of the Latin American left. He escaped the Chile coup of 1973, promoted indigenous struggles across the continent and met up with Zapatistas in the 1990s. Today Hugo is one of the world’s most prominent ecosocialist leaders, who argues that the most important task on the left is to fight climate change by transcending capitalism.
This is book that draws practical political lessons about how we change the world so humanity and the rest of nature has a future. It is equally an account of a dramatic revolutionary life, exile, prison and numerous brushes with death are all described.
“Derek Wall has written an extraordinary book about an extraordinary life filled with political lessons for today. Hugo Blanco has been an active participant in the movements of workers, peasants and indigenous communities in Peru and throughout Latin America for over fifty years.” Warren Montag
WE THE INDIANS – The indigenous peoples of Peru and the struggle for land
By Hugo Blanco, with an introduction by Eduardo Galeano
Foreword by Norma Giarracca
Published by Resistance Books, Merlin Press and the IIRE
£14 from Resistance Books
For more information or to buy the book, click here
The story of indigenous peoples in Peru, and struggles for land reform and change from the 1950s and 1960s.
Hugo Blanco is a historic leader of the Peruvian campesino struggle and a key figure in the huge insurrections of the rural dispossessed. He was a key protagonist in the stories he shares in vivid but direct language. At the same time he gives voice to those who fought alongside him, while always advocating a respectful relationship with Pachamama (Mother Earth).
A red thread runs through these beautiful, scattered reflections, polemical interventions, autobiographical vignettes, and letters – Hugo Blanco’s unwavering stand with the oppressed, and belief in their capacity for self-emancipation. Jailed, exiled, tortured, his spirit of sedition never seems to wane. From student militancy, to factory organizing, to mobilizing with the landless, Blanco’s first political decades in Peru and Argentina set on course a long life of resolute antagonism to the tyranny of capital across several continents. – Jeffery R. Webber, author of The Last Day of Oppression, and the First Day of the Same: The Politics and Economics of the New Latin American Left Hugo
Blanco is an inspiration.
Forthcoming books
DECOLONIAL COMMUNISM, DEMOCRACY & THE COMMONS
Edited by Catherine Samary and Fred Leplat
Authors: Catherine Samary, Silvia Federici, Zagorska Golubović, Svetozar Stojanović, Ernest Mandel, Franck Gaudichaud, Raquel Varela and Samuel Farber.
Published by Resistance Books, Merlin Press and the IIRE
Available in February 2019.
How far did the Bolcheviks introduce a ‘decolonial communism’, which was later destroyed by Stalin’s ‘construction of socialism in one country’? Did the Tito-Stalin break in 1948 and the other revolutions transform these conflicting 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, and defend socialist values and self-management rights? The contributors in this book review past and present experiences, and reconsider the debates in the light of current thinking:
– In Yugoslavia, before and after its break-up through the lens of Commons
– In Cuba, the debate on socialism at the turn of the 1960s, a country which is today confronted to ‘market reforms’ with or without self-management;
– In Portugal and Chile in the 1970s and in the Latin American ‘progressive cycle’ under conflicting logics.
Catherine Samary uses a ‘decolonial’ framework to challenge all relations of domination, which can also involuntarily mark those identifying with Marxism by ignoring gender, race and the environment. She argues that those who also ignore class relations of domination are unable to effectively resist a globalized capitalist ‘world-system’.
Vivid historical memory, global outreach, and emancipatory nerve are all present in this necessary compendium that guides us through our current situation and arms us with heavy intellectual artillery in face of dramatic challenges ahead. Under the guidance of Catherine Samary, whose erudition, perseverance and energy are legendary, she and other authors leave no stones unturned: from October 1917 to the Left’s new dilemmas and imperatives hundred years later, from socialist Yugoslavia and its self-management to the new Balkan rebels, via Prague in 1968, Chile and Portugal in the 1970s, and the 1989 ‘velvet’ revolutions, all the way to the Zapatistas and the worldwide defence of the Commons. This book will not only inform you but will challenge your assumptions and, finally, appease your insecurities. Despite widespread cynicism and hesitation, you will better understand your place and role in the struggle as you learn that no defeat is entirely hopeless and no revolution ever guaranteed to last.
Igor Štiks – author of Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States and co-editor of Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism.
FACING THE APOCALYPSE
Arguments for ecosocialism
By Alan Thornett
To be published March 2019
We are facing a multifaceted threat to life the planet. Crucial resources are running out. Pollution is choking the ecosystems. The oceans are now 30 per cent more acidic than in pre-industrial times, coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate.
From a defence of the remarkable ecological content of classical Marxism – lost during the 20thcentury to the rise of productivism – the book is an appeal to the socialist left to take the ecological crisis far more seriously. It uncovers some fascinating stories of their lives and struggles.
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, which separates him both 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 91 per cent – who are victims of it.
CONTENTS
Part One: The scale of the crisis
A ‘civilisational wake-up call’; Planetary boundaries; Fresh water; The biodiversity crisis
Part Two: The development of the environmental movement
Classical Marxism and the ecology of the planet; Challenges to the Foster Burkett thesis; The rise of the post-war ecology movement; The Stalinist legacy; The struggle of environmentalists in the USSR; The rise of the green parties and the modern ecology movement; The global struggle against climate change; The indigenous struggle.
Part Three: The debates in the movement today
Ecosocialist strategy; Economic growth and productivism; Population: A taboo subject; Should ecosocialists advocate carbon taxes? Cars and transportation; Environmental responsibility: personal, governmental, Food and agriculture; The ecological struggle in Britain.
CRITIQUE OF MODERN BARBARISM
Essays on fascism, anti-Semitism and the use of history
By Enzo Traverso
To be published Summer 2019
Enzo Traverso is an Italian historian who has written on issues relating to the Holocaust and totalitarianism. He worked at the IIRE from 1989 to 1991. His recent books include: Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory, Columbia University Press, 2017, The End of Jewish Modernity, Pluto Press, 2016; Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945, Verso, 2016; The Origins of Nazi Violence, New Press, 2003.
In this book, Traverso argues that after Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the gulag, the choice we face is no longer between the progress of civilization and a fall into ancient savagery, but between socialism conceived as a new civilization and the destruction of humankind. For Traverso the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is an image of what should impel us to rebel: not a sense of inevitable victory, but an ethical imperative.
FUNDAMENTALISM IN SOUTH ASIA
By Farooq Tariq, Achin Vanaik, Farooq Suhleria, Pierre Rousset, Mohiuddin Ahmad et al.
To be published Summer 2019
The authors analyse nationalist and religious fundamentalisms in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The rise of religious fundamentalism is not confined to Islamic fundamentalism, as can be seen in India. The authors analyse and discuss these movements, and discuss strategies of resistance.
REDISCOVERING THE PAST
Early British radical texts by Thomas Spence, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Heyrick, Thomas Hodgskin, William Cobbett, William Benbow, Standish Motte, Sussana Inge, et al.
Many individuals, organisations, and events played a formative role in the development of a radical tradition in 19th century Britain, but their memory was largely extinguished in the latter half of the century following the decline of Chartism and the emergence of Labourism. This book republishes material that would have been originally published in the form of pamphlets, manifestos, or magazine/newspaper articles. The texts are presented with an introduction and biographical information about the author.
Recent titles
OCTOBER 1917 – workers in power
Authors: Paul Le Blanc, Ernest Mandel, David Mandel, François Vercammen, and contemporary texts by Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Leon Trotsky.
“October 1917: Workers in Power provides a stimulating starting-point for centennial reassessment of the Russian revolution. Paul Le Blanc provides a sparkling and authoritative survey of major historical studies; David Mandel expertly analyses workers’ control in the Russian upheaval. Classic assessments of the October upheaval by Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and more recently, Ernest Mandel round out this important addition to socialist literature on 1917.” John Riddell.
Price £14 plus p&p. For more information and to order your copy, click here.
THE FAR RIGHT IN EUROPE
Authors include Michael Lowy, Phil Hearse, Adam Fabry and Manuel Kellner.
This book is analyses the far right in Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden. The survey, by activists and researchers, reveals a picture of far-right parties, some with a mass base, which have been able to drag the mainstream political parties to the right. This book is intended to be a contribution to understanding the nature of these far-right parties and of the threat we face.
Price £12 plus p&p. For more information and to buy the book, click here.
