"Red Diaper Baby is James Laxer's compelling and extraordinary memoir of growing up in a communist family during the height of the Cold War. When Jim was born in a Montreal hospital, his father was living in hiding under an assumed name. And when it came time to begin school in Ottawa, Jim was enrolled under a false birth date. Throughout his childhood he was repeatedly instructed not to tell anyone what his father did for work. Laxer's parents were dedicated members of the Communist Party, true believers in an ideology that was generally reviled and had been outlawed during much of World War II. From an early age, Laxer was collecting signatures on ban-the-bomb petitions, delivering Party flyers door to door, attending eccentric left-wing Camp Naivelt, and campaigning for the charismatic J. B. Salsberg, a Communist MPP in the Ontario legislature. Dramatic, humorous, and full of period detail, Red Diaper Baby offers a rare look at the McCarthy years through the eyes of a child. It also explains a great deal about Laxer's eventual and crucial role in the founding of the Waffle faction of the NDP, his continued engagement with the left, and his evolution into one of Canada's preeminent intellectuals."--

The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organized by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right-wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union -- a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

"Theodore Draper is one of the two or three most cogent and thoughtful social historians in the United States today. Everything he writes merits close attention." -Irving Howe "Theodore Draper is a historian of today's world in a class by himself-formidably equipped with learning and experience, fearless in attacking the naivet of the left and the cruelty of the right." -Alfred Kazin Theodore Draper is one of America's most trenchant and informed critics. A Present of Things Past gathers together ten of his most recent and most powerful selected essays, in which Draper, with his customary acuity and wit, tackles a host of issues that define America's political culture. A Present of Things Past is concerned with a reexamination of the Second World War in both its military and its political aspects; the trajectory of American conservatism as it manifested itself during the Reagan years; the rise of Gorbachev and the history of "reform" in the Soviet Union; the revisionist debate over the origins and history of American communism; and the persistent mystery of a man named Max Eitingon, who was, depending on one's reading of the sources, either an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis or an agent of the Soviet secret police, or both. In "American Hubris," Draper illuminates the assumptions that have guided American foreign policy in the postwar period, and concludes that our costly misadventures-in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and elsewhere-cannot be considered a string of aberrations. They were, he argues, a consequence of the Truman Doctrine. In "Reagan's Junta," Draper observes: "This is supposed to have been the era of the imperial presidency. It has turned out to be the era of presidencies that have tried to make themselves imperial-and failed." Throughout these compelling essays, Draper demonstrates the uses and abuses to which history has been put by ideologues of both the left and the right. He finds unacceptable, for example, the practice of many journalists of fictionalizing their sources. The New York Times has called Draper "one of the clearer-eyed observers of the issues that torment us." A Present of Things Past enhances that reputation. Theodore Draper is the author of numerous books, including Present History: On Nuclear War, Dtente & Other Controversies and American Communism. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. "Is especially recommended for students of political science, the Cold War era, and twentieth century American history as a powerful, thought-provoking view of the people and events that shaped nations, and through nations the world."-- Library Bookwatch

The story of contemporary China typically dates back to Mao's 1949 revolution. But in this classic work, Harold R. Isaacs uncovers how workers and peasants struggled for a different kind of revolution, one built from the bottom up, in the 1920s. The defeat of their heroic efforts profoundly shaped the further course of modern Chinese history.

A fascinating account of life as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain The Lost World of British Communism is a vivid account of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Raphael Samuel, one of post-war Britain’s most notable historians, draws on novels of the period and childhood recollections of London’s East End, as well as memoirs and Party archives, to evoke the world of British Communism in the 1940s. Samuel conjures up the era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power, brilliantly bringing to life an age in which the Communist Party enjoyed huge prestige as a bulwark for the struggles against fascism and colonialism.

Löwy's book is the first attempt to analyze, in a systematic way, how the theories of uneven and combined development, and of the permanent revolution &mdash inseparably linked &mdash emerged in the writings of thinkers such as Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Such radical reflections permit us to understand modern economic development across continents as a process of ferocious change, in which "advanced" and "backward" elements fuse, come into tension, and collide &mdash and how the resulting ruptures make it possible for the oppressed and exploited to change the world.

A superb synoptic survey of worldwide communism, from Marx through to the fall of the Soviet Empire and up to today.

In this comprehensive and dynamic Deutscher Prize winning work, Liebman rises about the dogmatism and sterility that plague most appraisals of Lenin, and persuasively makes the case that the Russian Revolutionary's political ideas have an enduring relevance for today's activists.

"Whatever historical judgments one wishes to make about Mao Tse-tung and the Maoist era," Maurice Meisner writes, "that era will be recorded as one of the great utopian episodes in world history, and the history of Maoism will remain relevant for those who seek to understand the fate of Marxism and the role of utopianism in the modern world, whatever their political persuasions. In an age which suffers from a paucity of utopian imagination, it is perhaps a history worth recalling." In this volume, Meisner makes an important contribution to understanding the Maoist era in the history of Chinese Communism by exploring the utopian strains in the thought of Mao Tse-tung. Believing that an activistic utopianism is essential to the vitality of Marxism in the contemporary world. Meisner argues that it was precisely Mao's utopian departures from orthodox Marxism-Leninism that transformed the inherited body of Marxist theory into a doctrine relevant to the needs of revolution in the modern Chinese historical environment. He argues further that it was Mao's visionary utopianism in the years after 1949 that was responsible, in large measure, for molding much of what has been distinctive about the postrevolutionary history of the People's Republic of China. In examining the nature of Maoist utopianism, Meisner employs cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to analyze the relationship of Maoism to the original writings of Marx and Engels, early nineteenth-century Western European socialist theories, and classical Russian Populist thought. He also discusses the idiosyncratic character of Mao's utopian vision, the phenomenon of the cult of Mao, and the fate of Maoist utopianism in post-Maoist Chinese Marxist ideology.

At a time when many repentant leftists are proclaiming Marxism incapable of explaining the new phenomena of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Ernest Mandel reminds us that Marxism drew from its very inception on the advances of all the social sciences and emancipation movements of its time.In a survey of the multiple sources of Marx and Engels' theory, Mandel identifies the specific contribution of the two friends in the various disciplines to which they applied themselves: philosophy, political economy, social history, revolutionary organization, self-organization of the working class, emancipation movements, and internationalism. Concluding that Marxism "constantly learns from perpetually changing reality" and that it is the conscious expression of the real movement of workers toward self-emancipation, Mandel proposes a formula which provides for a dialectical interaction between innovation and the verification of established tenets.

In order to "Bolshevize" the Jewish population, the Soviets created within the Party a number of special Jewish Sections. Charged with the task of integrating the largely hostile or indifferent Jews into the new state the Sections' programs are, in effect, a case study of the modernization and secularization of an ethnic and religious minority. Zvi Gitelman's analysis of the Sections during the first decade of Soviet rule examines the nature of the challenge that modernization posed, the crises it created, and the responses it evoked. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Over four decades ago, radical scholars began to suggest a new way of looking at South African society - one that blamed the economic power of those who owned property for the racial bondage of the black majority. Their work, and the debates it triggered, are mostly forgotten, but they and their critics have much to say that sheds lights on today's South African realities. Harold Wolpe was arguably the most influential theorist of this generation. His writings played a major role in a revolution in thought, and his celebrated escape from prison in the 1960s made him a symbol of alternative action. Race, Class and Power clearly and insightfully examines Wolpe's work in the political, intellectual, and social contexts in which it was developed and to which it gave form. Drawing on interviews with those who Wolpe worked with, disagreed with, and inspired, the book also maps his influence on ideas and the culture that emerged in anti-apartheid circles in the 1970s. Harold Wolpe's writings are a prism through which South African society can be viewed, and this book is an intellectual biography both of Wolpe and of South Africa's left. It also assesses and engages with the ongoing impact of Wolpe's ideas into the post-apartheid present. Moreover, it suggests how Wolpe's work can move us towards a way of thinking about and acting upon South Africa's realities differently.

"This book brings together twelve essays by senior historians who, after decades of study, reflect on the 'hows' and 'whys' of Stalinism as an authoritarian dictatorship determined to build a version of socialism in the Soviet Union at all costs"--

Mandel's essays are a spirited affirmation of internationalism, macropolitics, political economy, and class analysis. Unashamedly committed to progress, he rightly refused to ignore capitalism's myriad victims or to scrap what Marxism and Leninism offer to the struggle for emancipation; such spirited engagement is a remarkable and welcome achievement.

Nearly five centuries after the first wave of Catholic missionaries arrived in the New World to spread their Christian message, contemporary religious workers in the Bolivian highlands have begun to encourage Aymara Indians to return to traditional ritual practices. All but eradicated after hundreds of years of missionization, the "old ways" are now viewed as local cultural expressions of Christian values. In order to become more Christian, the Aymara must now become more Indian. This groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation," which upholds the beliefs and practices of a supposedly pristine Aymara culture as indigenous expressions of a more universal Christianity. Addressing essential questions in cultural anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial studies, and globalization studies, Catechizing Culture is a sophisticated documentation of the widespread shift from the politics of class to the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism.

Disillusioned by communism as a young man, Wolfe devoted his life to the study and writing of Russian history. These essays show how clearly he understood the precious quality of freedom and the durability of despotism as it is experienced under totalitarian governments. His analyses of the contemporary Soviet scene, though often at odds with prevailing opinion, have repeatedly proven to be correct.Originally published in 1981.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In October 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd. By the middle century almost half of humankind was under communist rule, and the Cold War was raging.