Sobibor traces the life of Berek (later Bernard) Schlesinger from his Polish shtetl childhood to his life during the Holocaust - hiding in the woods, finding refuge with non-Jews, confinement in Sobibor, escape during the uprising, working with partisans' documents. A physician after the war, he follows a relentless, unfulfilled pursuit of retribution for Nazi war criminals through the courts. The Sobibor uprising and its leaders, Alexander Pechersky, are pivotal to the novel. The author, Michael Lev, a product of Soviet Jewish culture, avoids loud rhetoric and heroic pathos, keeping the narration within the limits of realism. A flowing, masterful read.

A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics. This biography reveals a deep-dyed idealist willing to compromise and even fight ugly in pursuit of a better society. Elegantly crafted and strikingly relevant to the present, True Believer celebrates Hubert Humphrey’s long struggle for justice for all.

Few documents have had more of an impact on the course of history as has the Communist Manifesto. From its famous opening lines--"A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of Communism"--to its final rallying cry--"Workers of the world unite!"--the words of Marx and Engels have moved millions to join in the struggle against capitalism. But they have also inspired a legion of critics, detractors, and even a few despots to intentionally distort their meanings so as to sow confusion and justify untold horrors. According to Hal Draper, these mis-readings have, in part, been made possible by the enduring prevalence of translations from the original German that fail to accurately capture the intended meaning of certain key phrases. In this magisterial volume, Draper assembles the original German text, the first English translation, the officially authorized English translation--providing enlightening commentary throughout--as well as his own new translation of the pamphlet.

In the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7 and the Israeli response, historian and current affairs commentator Yakov Rabkin brings together his writings that shed light on the violence in Palestine since the creation of the State of Israel. For decades, Yakov Rabkin has drawn attention to the danger Israel has posed to both Palestinians and Jews, both in Israel and in other countries. Far from protecting Jews, the State of Israel has contributed to creating and aggravating a situation that over time has become increasingly intractable. The author describes Palestine as it was on the eve of Zionist colonisation, recalling how Jews initially reacted to the Zionist movement and its goals. He highlights how Zionism, disdaining Jewish tradition, created a "new Hebrew man" steeped in a powerful mix of victimhood and exclusive nationalism and therefore oblivious to the fate of the Palestinians. He reminds us that Jewish identity is traditionally based on a spiritual commitment open to all races, the concept of Israel denoting not so much a geographical region but a community of believers. A return to the Land of Israel achieved by political and military means is antithetic to the Jewish tradition. In fact, Zionism has well-documented Protestant and Anglo-Saxon roots, which explains the massive support Israel enjoys among millions of Evangelical Christians around the world, and, on the other hand, why Jews have played such a prominent role in the pro-Palestinian protests sparked by violence against Gaza. At the same time, it shows how since 1967, there emerged a new national Judaism to provide religious legitimacy to the Zionist state. Avoiding polemics and sensationalism, this book allows the reader to reconsider the nature of the Israel/Palestine tragedy that has spilled over beyond Israel/Palestine. The book is rather short and targets the general reader. It requires no previous expertise in the subject, yet shows deeper and less known aspects of the conflict and, thus, opens perspectives on novel approaches to peace. This book has also been published in French, Japanese and Spanish language editions

Leon Trotsky has become one of the twentieth century’s most enduring political legends. Joining the Bolsheviks on the eve of the 1917 revolution he played a vital role as Lenin’s right-hand man in the insurrection and went on to lead the Red Army to victory in the ensuing civil war. Having lost to Stalin the struggle for power which followed Lenin’s death, he became an implacable opponent of the dictator over the next three decades—a stance which cost him his political career, his citizenship and ultimately his life. A charismatic orator, a prolific author and a political philosopher whose ideas continue to resonate in the wake of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, Trotsky made an indelible mark on world history. Ernest Mandel, one of the foremost leaders of the international movement which Trotsky founded before the Second World War and an influential economist and political theorist, is uniquely placed to review the life and work of Trotsky. In Trotsky as Alternative he presents a portrait of his subject which is appreciative yet critical. He shows that Trotsky’s contribution to the history of the twentieth century was primarily political rather than sociological, and this in a practical as well as a theoretical sense. He locates Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development as a crucial tool whose explanatory power of the mechanisms of world imperialism is as relevant to the late capitalism of the 1990s as it was to the first three decades of the century when it was formulated. Ranging across Trotsky’s struggles against Stalin’s bureaucracy, his formulation of an alternative economic strategy, his theories relating to the Third World, fascism and the national question, his extensive literary criticism, and concluding with a moving assessment of an extraordinary life, this book is a fitting testimony to a man who, in Mandel’s words, “will be judged by history as the most important strategist for the socialist movement.”

Communist opposition to Zionism has a long history which pre-dates both the Russian Revolution and the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. Yet the Communist and Marxist critique of Zionism has always had a curious inconsistency, since it is not applied to all nationalist solutions of social problems. Thus Soviet and Chinese Communists regard their Marxist-Leninist ideology as perfectly compatible with Russian or Chinese nationalism, and the same is true of the 'people's democracies' in Eastern Europe or Asia where nationalism has been a predominant force. Similarly, Arab and Palestinian nationalism have been considered 'progressive' despite their very thin socialist content. Only in the case of Zionism, which historically has been a reaction to the failure of European and Islamic societies to resolve the Jewish question on democratic lines, has a major national movement been judged a priori 'reactionary', illegitimate and ultimately condemned to extinction. Anti-Zionism has become the great bazaar in which Soviet and Chinese Communists, Arab and Third World Marxists, Trotskyists, anarchists and Castroists together with feudal sheikhs, conservative Islamic rulers, and oil companies in the West (plus fascist fringe-groups) can find common ground in their antagonism to the Jewish State. Contemporary anti-Zionism is not merely the anti-Semitism of the left - Israel has even become the alibi for reviving the hoary Nazi myth of 'World Jewry' seeking to control and manipulate the fate of humanity. The essays in this book will give the reader a better understanding of the causes and possible consequences of this sinister trend. Mostly written between the Six-Day War of 1967 and the October War of 1973, they remain timely and important for the light they shed on a development whose implications are only now becoming fully apparent. They analyse the complex and changing factors which have influenced the position of the Communist parties and New Left movements towards the Middle East conflict, the significance of the 'anti-Zionist' campaigns in Russia and Eastern Europe, the dissentions and contradictions in western Communist parties, the relations of Soviet, Chinese and East German Communists to the Arab world, and the attitude of the post-Auschwitz New Left to Israel and the Jewish problem. All these disparate elements must be taken into account if one is to understand Communist and Marxist standpoints towards Israel and the Middle East conflict. Subject categories: Anti-Zionism; Communism; Israel; Politics

We can't sit under Mises at his famous Vienna private seminar. We can't go back in time and attend his New York seminar, or follow him to his speaking engagements that he held in the 50s and 60s.But thanks to this second volume in a thrilling series (here is volume one), we do have access to what he said. He is warm, funny, passionate, and learned. This book provides a candid look at the man and his teaching style. It demonstrates his dazzling command over the material, and teaches in a breezier way than his treatises.This volume contains nine lectures delivered over one week, from June 23, to July 3, 1952, at the San Francisco Public Library. Mises was at his prime as a teacher and lecturer. He shares a lifetime of learning on topics that were (and remain) central to American public life.As the title indicates, his main focus is on Marxism. He discusses Marx and his place in the history of ideas, the destruction wrought by his dangerous ideology, the manner in which his followers have covered up his errors, and how the Marxists themselves have worked for so long to save Marxism from itself. He discusses Marxist claims about history and refutes the smear of the industrial revolution.The approach is systematic but casual. So the reader encounters wonderful insights in the form of short asides. For example: "The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends."As a lecturer, he is steady and relentless. The reader can nearly "hear" him speaking through the prose. And there are times when Mises reveals a level of rhetorical passion that you would never encounter in print. That's because what is printed here are not pre-prepared lectures in the sense that they were written out. They were transcribed by Bettina Bien Greaves from what he actually said.Thus can we hear this passage:It is not true, as Marx said, that the improvements in technology are available only to the exploiters and that the masses are living in a state much worse than on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Everything the Marxists say about exploitation is absolutely wrong! Lies! In fact, capitalism made it possible for many persons to survive who wouldn't have otherwise.Some readers of Mises's larger works have said that while his rigor is dazzling, the man himself can seem remote. Whether or not you agree with this observation, Mises comes across in these lectures as brilliant but very warm and charming in an old world sense.This approach is particularly fruitful in the last four of the lectures, which cover topics such as savings, interest, inflation, profit and loss, and the place of foreign investment. The lecture on interest rates, for example, must surely rank as one of the best explanations of this complicated topic. He recounts the history of the attempt to suppress interest rates, from the ancient world to the modern period. He explains why this cannot work because interest is merely the objective sign of a phenomenon that is integral to human action. As he moves on to money, Mises reveals himself to be tougher on the issue of fiduciary media than he was when he wrote his 1912 book The Theory of Money and Credit.In response to a question Mises says: "In the future no additional banknotes should be issued, no additional credit should be entered on a bank subject to check, unless there is 100 percent coverage in money."Also not to be missed is Mises's wry defense of "money cranks": at least they were only more consistent than the advocates of Keynesian and monetarism.Mises was clearly pressed for time, so he had to be at once thorough and move quickly through the material. It's still not "light reading" by the normal standards, but for people who want to see a great mind at work, this has a wonderful element of spontaneity about it that attracts and teaches at the same time.

Book by Laski, Harold Joseph

With a new introduction by the author, this is an enduring analysis of British politics, stressing the lessons to be learnt from history. By the winner of the 1993 Wolfson History Prize awarded as 'tribute to a lifetime's contribution to the study of history.'

"A series of public lectures on nationalism arranged by the History of Ideas Unit in the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University."

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Braunthal, Julius

Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution is one of the most important additions to the arsenal of marxism. It was first developed by Trotsky in 1904, on the eve of the first Russian Revolution. At that time, all the tendencies of the Russian Social Democracy had the perspective of a bourgeois democratic revolution. Trotsky alone in 1905 put forward the idea that the Russian working class could come to power before the workers of Western Europe. The correctness of Trotsky's theory was brilliantly demonstrated in 1917, when the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian proletariat to power in the first workers state in the world. However, after the death of Lenin in 1924, the theory of the permanent revolution was subject to a vitriolic onslaught by the stalinist bureaucracy, which had in effect renounced world revolution in favour of "socialism in one country". The attack on the theory came to epitomise the struggle against "Trotskyism". Today, however, with the collapse of Stalinism (and with it "socialism in one country"), Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution has become more relevant than ever. This edition contains an introduction by Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com.

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Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience; and yet there was at one time a danger that his name would disappear altogether from history. Isaac Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine, and in this definitive work Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian revolution. This first volume of the trilogy, originally published in 1954, traces Trotsky’s political development: his early activities, the formation and crystallization of his distinctive and motivating idea—the permanent revolution— his long feud and final reconciliation with Lenin and Bolshevism, and his role in the October insurrection of 1917. The volume ends in the year 1921, when Trotsky, then at the climax of his power, unwittingly sowed the seeds of his own defeat.

A new English translation of Isaak Illich Rubin’s classic Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. First published in the Soviet Union in 1923, Rubin’s book sparked a fierce value controversy with contemporary Soviet economists during the late 1920s. As such, the present translation is conceived as a variorum edition, including all the essential supplementary materials related to this foundational work in Marx’s value theory, published here in English for the first time. In addition to Rubin’s main work, this edition includes his four most important related publications, as well as ten debate articles written and published by his contemporary proponents and opponents.

Michael Polanyi's The Contempt of Freedom quite plausibly helped to steel Friedrich Hayek to write The Road to Serfdom. In a 1941 review of Polanyi's book, Hayek wrote: The four essays [of the present book] were...written during the five years between 1935 and I940 when the ideas of liberty "were left almost uncultivated" and "the progressive minds were so fascinated by the prospects of the revolution in Russia that they had little interest left for the fate of the traditional liberties." [Polanyi's] analysis...in the essay on the "Rights and Duties of Science " is perhaps the most illuminating discussion yet attempted of the psychological propensities which so frequently turn the man of science into an ardent advocate of central planning, and of the inconsistencies which this attitude involves. While Professor Polanyi has no doubt that "the major force behind this attitude is the passionate desire to put science into the consciously organised service of human welfare", he is convinced that a consistent policy of "organising" all scientific research..."would actually stop the development of science altogether". Discover here an early work of the man who coined the term "spontaneous order" and wrote Science, Faith and Society (1946), The Logic of Liberty (1951), Personal Knowledge (1958), The Study of Man (1959), and The Tacit Dimension (1959).

Totality has been an abiding concern from the first generation of Western Marxists, most notably Lukács, Korsch, Gramsci, and Bloch, through the second, exemplified by the Frankfurt School, Lefebvre, Goldmann, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Della Volpe, up to the most recent, typified by Althusser, Colletti, and Habermas. Yet no consensus has been reached concerning the term's multiple meanings—expressive, decentered, longitudinal, latitudinal, normative—or its implications for other theoretical and practical matters. By closely following the adventures of this troublesome but central concept, Marxism & Totality offers an unconventional account of the history of Western Marxism.

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