Written in 1936 and published the following year, this brilliant and profound evaluation of Stalinism from the Marxist standpoint prophesied the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent related events.The effects of the October Revolution led to the establishment of a nationalized planned economy, demonstrating the practicality of socialism for the first time. By the 1930s, however, the Soviet workers' democracy had crumbled into a state of bureaucratic decay that ultimately gave rise to an infamous totalitarian regime. Trotsky employs facts, figures, and statistics to show how Stalinist policies rejected the enormous productive potential of the nationalized planned economy in favor of a wasteful and corrupt bureaucratic system.Six decades after the publication of this classic, the shattering of Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe has confused and demoralized countless political activists. The Revolution Betrayed offers readers of every political persuasion an insider's view of what went wrong.

    Why capitalism cannot overcome its internal contradictions and the working class cannot "reform" away exploitation and economic crises.

    Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing.. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership, lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism.In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change.

    “Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.” —Albert Einstein

    Woods, Jr. offers the first critical analysis of the 2010 mid-term elections and answer the #1 question on conservatives’ minds: How do we roll back the liberal policies and big government programs that Obama/Pelosi/Reid rushed through Congress before the mid-terms? From getting rid of wasteful and inefficient federal agencies to abolishing the income tax to repealing health care reform and all of Obama’s "green” policies, Woods outlines a bold plan for dramatically overhauling the government and restoring our Founding Fathers vision for America.

    Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events.A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property.Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers.Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy - The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

    The cure is a radical one because, as the book incontrovertibly shows, the many problems that confront us today are no accident. They stem from the nature of government itself. Only peaceful cooperation based on the free market can rescue us from our present plight.Against the State is written by Lew Rockwell, the founder of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com, and the closest friend and associate of Murray Rothbard, the leading theorist of anarcho-capitalism. Rockwell applies Rothbard’s combination of individualist anarchism and Austrian economics to contemporary America. The book shows how the government is based on war, both against foreign nations and against the American people themselves, through massive invasions of our liberties. Fueled by an out-of-control banking system, the American State has become in essence fascist. We cannot escape our predicament through limited government: the government is incapable of controlling itself. Only a purely private social order can save us, and Rockwell succinctly sets out how an anarcho-capitalist order would work.

    But the left and right can usually agree on one thing: that the Nordic system is impossible to replicate here at home. The US is too big, or too individualistic, or too puritan, or too . . . something. Whatever the reason, it's impossible, and we shouldn't bother to try.Enter George Lakey. A longtime activist and academic, Lakey has spent decades studying the economies of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, and in Viking Economics, he reveals that Scandinavia's deep commitment to the welfare state is much more recent than we think. Not long ago, Scandinavia was a far more unequal place, with a much weaker commitment to the social welfare of its citizens. There's nothing inherently Scandinavian about greater equality . . . so why not try it here?Viking Economics is more fun and entertaining than any economics book you've ever read. And, very possibly, more convincing! As he ranges from twentieth-century Norwegian history to the details of Swedish childcare policies, Lakey never loses his sense of humor or his expansive, generous vision of a better, more equal future. By explaining that even Scandinavia's grandest experiments in social equality are rooted in recent political struggles, Lakey explains shows how we can do it, too—conventional wisdom be damned.From the Hardcover edition.

    "Richard Wolff's book is the best accessible and reliable treatment we have of what socialism is, was, and should be.” - Cornel West“In the same accessible style that has made his programs and lectures such a hit, he explains his subject in a way that's not only smart, but makes the rest of us feel smart. It's actionable intelligence for the every person.” - Laura Flanders“Lucid, brilliant and uncompromising in his dissection of the capitalist system he also provides a sane and just socialist alternative to capitalist exploitation, one we must all fight to achieve.” - Chris Hedges

    And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.In this work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.

    Most people of the current generation lack a sense of the historical sweep of the intellectual side of the right-wing collectivist position. Jeffrey Tucker, in this collection written between 2015 and 2017, argues that this movement represents the revival of a tradition of interwar collectivist thought that might at first seem like a hybrid but was distinctly mainstream between the two world wars. It is anti-communist but not for the reasons that were conventional during the Cold War, that is, because communism opposed freedom in the liberal tradition.Right-collectivism also opposes traditional liberalism. It opposes free trade, freedom of association, free migration, and capitalism understood as a laissez-faire free market. It rallies around nation and state as the organizing principles of the social order—and trends in the direction of favoring one-man rule—but positions itself as opposed to leftism traditionally understood.We know about certain fascist leaders from the mid-20th century, but not the ideological orientation that led to them or the ideas they left on the table to be picked up generations later. For the most part, and until recently, it seemed to have dropped from history. Meanwhile, the prospects for social democratic ideology are fading, and something else is coming to fill that vacuum. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it leading?This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap, to explain what this movement is about and why anyone who genuinely loves and longs for liberty classically understood needs to develop a nose and instinct for spotting the opposite when it comes in an unfamiliar form. We need to learn to recognize the language, the thinkers, the themes, the goals of a political ethos that is properly identified as fascist."Jeffrey Tucker in his brilliant book calls right-wing populism what it actually is, namely, fascism, or, in its German form national socialism, nazism. You need Tucker’s book. You need to worry. If you are a real liberal, you need to know where the new national socialism comes from, the better to call it out and shame it back into the shadows. Now."— Deirdre McCloskey

    An invaluable addition to the libraries of instructors, students, and anyone interested in history, government, and anarchist thought.

    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.

    6 cassettes.

    A careful study of this document can help us better understand many fundamental questions, including: how did capitalism transform into its higher and final stage of imperialism, how a Party should be constituted and by whom, and the importance of the worker and peasant alliance.