This book states that the political systems of China, Vietnam, Cuba and other socialist countries are showing distinct maturity and ability to deal effectively with challenges – the most recent being the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to understand how they have developed their structures, it is time to return to the roots of the Marxist tradition and re-examine the question of socialist governance. It was Friedrich Engels (and less so Marx) who laid out some of the theoretical foundations for socialist governance. On the basis of extensive research in 1870s and 1880s, Engels developed his analysis of the nature of hitherto existing states as a ‘separated public power’; the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its exercise of power; the actual meaning of the ‘withering away of the state’, which would be one of the very last outcomes of socialist construction; and the nature of socialist governance itself. On this matter, he proposed a de-politicised public power that would stand in the midst of society and focus on managing the processes of production for the sake of the true interests of society.

The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction examines the history behind the political, economic, and social structures of communism as an ideology.

In the four volumes of The Development Trajectory of Eastern Society and the Theories and Practices of Socialism, the author re-examines Marx and Engel’s theories on the development trajectory of the Eastern societies by integrating theoretical analysis of Marxist theories and a historical investigation of socialist revolution and construction around the world. This volume discusses the victories and failures of the 100-year trajectory of socialism. Since the Russian Revolution of October 1917, socialism has been practiced for nearly a hundred years in countries at various stages of development. The author provides a proper synthesis of the lessons derived from socialism’s first hundred years as well as China's reforms and interaction with the world. In addition, he analyzes Marx and Engels' socialist theories and their significance for contemporary social development in Eastern societies. Readers who study Marxism, Marxist philosophy, philosophical history and the history of philosophy will find this volume of immense interest.

In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by Marx that cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well. Through highly informed readings of work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond. For this expanded edition, Anderson has written a new preface that discusses the additional 1879–82 notebook material, as well as the influence of the Russian-American philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya on his thinking.

The theory of Permanent Revolution has been associated with Leon Trotsky for more than a century since the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Trotsky was the most brilliant proponent of Permanent Revolution but by no means its sole author. The documents in this volume, most of them translated into English for the first time, demonstrate that Trotsky was one of several participants in a debate from 1903-7 that involved numerous leading figures of Russian and European Marxism, including Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Parvus and David Ryazanov. This volume reassembles that debate, assesses it with reference to Marx and Engels, and provides new evidence for interpreting the formative years of Russian revolutionary Marxism.

Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.

This book is part of a series which makes available to English-speaking audiences the work of the individual Chinese economists who were the architects of China’s economic reform. The series provides an inside view of China’s economic reform, revealing the thinking of the reformers themselves, unlike many other books on China’s economic reform which are written by outside observers. Yu Guangyuan (1915-) is a famous Chinese philosopher and economist. A member of the Chinese Communist Party from 1937, he has made significant contributions in the fields of Marxist theory and in state planning. He was head of the Political Research Office of the State Council from 1975 and the first director of the Economic Research Institute of the State Planning Commission. He has held many other important posts, and was editor-in-chief of the "Dictionary of Economics". The book is published in association with China Development Research Foundation, one of the leading economic and social think tanks in China, where many of the theoretical foundations and policy details of economic reform were formulated.

What is wrong with capitalism, and how can we change it? Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values—equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity—can provide both the basis for a critique of capitalism and help to guide us toward a socialist and democratic society. Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible. Included is an afterword by the author’s close friend and collaborator Michael Burawoy.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Intellectual and Manual Labour is a major text of post-war Marxist theory with ongoing relevance to current debates about value, abstraction, and domination.