Wilde argues that under capitalism the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them: instead of realizing their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it because, the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

    It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make this account of the life of the victims of early industrial change into a classic - a historical study that parallels and complements the fictional works of the time by such writers as Gaskell and Dickens. What Cobbett had done for agricultural poverty in his Rural Rides, Engels did - and more - in this work on the plight of the industrial workers in the England of the early 1840s. This edition includes the prefaces to the English and American editions, and a map of Manchester c.1845.

    He had shaved off his usual beard but he was still taking a risk. Especially as this wasn't an anarchist cafe, but had a variety of customers including the local policeman. The conversations he had in this cafe became the basis for the dialogues that make up this book. For the first time in English, Malatesta, in his usual commonsense and matter-of-fact style, sets out and critically analyses the arguments for and against anarchism. Translated by Paul Nursey-Bray, this is a classic defence of anarchism that anticipates the rise of nationalism, fascism and communism.

    Black Bolshevik is the autobiography of Harry Haywood, the son of former slaves who became a leading member of the Communist Part USA and a pioneering theoretician on the Afro-American struggle.The author’s first-hand accounts of the Chicago race riot of 1919, the Scottsboro Boys’ defense, communist work in the South, the Spanish Civil War, the battle against the revisionist betrayal of the Party, and other history-shaping events are must reading for all who are interested in Black history and the working class struggle.

    Far too many people, however, separate Marx the man from the evils wrought by the oppressive ideology and theory that bears his name. That is a grave mistake. Not only did the horrific results of Marxism follow directly from Marx’s twisted ideas, but the man himself penned some downright devilish things. Well before Karl Marx was writing about the hell of communism, he was writing about hell.   “Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well,” he wrote in a poem in 1837, a decade before his Manifesto. “My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.” That certainly seemed to be the perverse destiny for Marx’s ideology, which consigned to death over 100 million souls in the twentieth century alone.   No other theory in all of history has led to the deaths of so many innocents. How could the Father of Lies not be involved?   At long last, here, in this book by Professor Paul Kengor, is a close, careful look at the diabolical side of Karl Marx, a side of a man whose fascination with the devil and his domain would echo into the twentieth century and continue to wreak havoc today. It is a tragic portrait of a man and an ideology, a chilling retrospective on an evil that should have never been let out of its pit.

    An effective refutation of revisionist interpretations of Marxist doctrine, it defines the position of scientific socialism on the issues of social reforms, the state, democracy, and the character of the proletarian revolution.

    In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse. Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism.

    Seven years later, The Invisible Committee follows up their premonitory manifesto with a new book, To Our Friends.From The Invisible Committee:In 2007 we published The Coming Insurrection in France. It must be acknowledged that a number of assertions by the Invisible Committee have since been confirmed, starting with the first and most essential: the sensational return of the insurrectionary phenomenon. Who would have bet a kopeck, seven years ago, on the overthrow of Ben Ali or Mubarak through street action, on the revolt of young people in Quebec, on the political awakening of Brazil, on the fires set French-style in the English or Swedish banlieues , on the creation of an insurrectionary commune in the very heart of Istanbul, on a movement of plaza occupations in the United States, or on the rebellion that spread throughout Greece in December of 2008?During the seven years that separate The Coming Insurrection from To Our Friends , the agents of the Invisible Committee have continued to fight, to organize, to transport themselves to the four corners of the world, to wherever the fires were lit, and to debate with comrades of every tendency and every country. Thus To Our Friends is written at the experiential level, in connection with that general movement. Its words issue from the turmoil and are addressed to those who still believe sufficiently in life to fight as a consequence.To Our Friends is a report on the state of the world and of the movement, a piece of writing that's essentially strategic and openly partisan. Its political ambition is immodest: to produce a shared understanding of the epoch, in spite of the extreme confusion of the present.

    

    Offers a radical rethinking of Marx's concept of revolution that shows how we can bring about social and political change today.

    In Russia to this day Lenin inspires adulation. Everywhere, he continues to fascinate as a man who made history, and who created a new kind of state that would later be imitated by nearly half the countries in the world.Lenin believed that the 'the political is the personal', and while in no way ignoring his political life, Sebestyen focuses on Lenin the man - a man who loved nature almost as much as he loved making revolution, and whose closest ties and friendships were with women. The long-suppressed story of his ménage a trois with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his mistress and comrade, Inessa Armand, reveals a different character to the coldly one-dimensional figure of legend.Told through the prism of Lenin's key relationships, Sebestyen's lively biography casts a new light on the Russian Revolution, one of the great turning points of modern history.

    Comrades are equals on the same side of a political struggle. Voluntarily coming together in the struggle for justice, their relationship is characterized by discipline, joy, courage, and enthusiasm. Considering the egalitarianism of the comrade in light of differences of race and gender, Dean draws from an array of historical and literary examples such as Harry Haywood, C.L.R. James, Alexandra Kollontai, and Doris Lessing. She argues that if we are to be a left at all, we have to be comrades.

    Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the human interaction with nature.This new edition is substantially revised and expanded, with extensive new material on imperialism, anti-Eurocentric history, capitalism and the nation-state, and the differences between capitalism and non-capitalist commerce. The author traces links between the origin of capitalism and contemporary conditions such as globalization, ecological degradation, and the current agricultural crisis.

    After turning from Marxism toward Christianity, his 1913 criticism of the Orthodox Church led him to be charged with blasphemy, a crime for which he would have been liable to permanent Siberian exile, though WWI and the 1917 Revolution prevented his coming to trial.While at odds with the Bolsheviks after the revolution, Berdyaev gained appointment as professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow in 1920, only to be expelled from the country in 1922 (in the famous “philosophers’ ships”), eventually settling in Paris where he remained till his death in 1948. His corpus includes some 483 signed books and articles, many still unavailable in English.Of his “The Origin of Russian Communism”, Inna Naletova, now at the University of Vienna, wrote in 2001:“In his study of the origin of Russian Communism, Nikolai Berdyaev presented a now classic thesis that the Russian religious mentality and communist ideology have much in common. This commonality, according to Berdyaev, takes its roots not in the Russian Orthodox faith but in Russian sectarian and schismatic psychology. […]“Although Berdyaev’s analysis was focused on Russia of the beginning of the twentieth century (the time of transition between Tsarist rule and the Soviet regime), it provides a valuable illustration to Russia’s contemporary problems. The revolutionary mass movement of the beginning of the last century found its inspiration not only in Western socialist ideas and the misery of Russia’s economic situation, but also in Russian messianic spirituality, in people’s readiness for an apocalyptic solution to social problems, and in their hope for a radical transformation of the whole society and creation of a ‘kingdom on earth.’” (Inna Naletova, Orthodoxy and Gnosticism in Russia; Extraordinary Times, Vol. 11, Vienna 2001; http://www.iwm.at/wp-content/uploads/... )

    First published in 1919 and 1920 respectively, Programme of the Russian Communist Party and ABC of Communism were created as popular introductions, explanations, and commentary for the masses on the new party. Today they serve as historical documents and offer a non-Stalinist view of early Russian Communism. A new introduction and a glossary are included.