This book analyzes the dynamics through which the two major communist parties of the capitalist world—which in the 1970s had great influence on their respective national political contexts since the 1980s are increasing their marginality and, although in different forms and with different timeframes are unable to stem the decline of their political and cultural influences on the working classes.
In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).
The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.
In a careful exposition of French Marxism, William Lewis places Althusser and his thought alongside the pre- and post-war French communist intellectual climate: the result is an excellent and unique work. Part theoretical treatise on some of Althusser's more complicated and less explored ideas, part intellectual history, Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism is, in total, an important text for philosophy, French and francophone studies, political thought, cultural studies, marxist thought, and several other disciplines interested in the intellectual life and times of the twientieth century.
This up-to-date new analysis of the French Communist Party reveals it as an entirely unconventional political force: not a normal party vying for office, but a Leninist bureaucracy armed with an apocalyptic mission to deliver humanity from capitalism. Its interests have been defined as part of an outpost of a world revolutionary movement; and whilst its strategies may have varied, they have done so in order to serve Soviet foreign policy purposes. D. S. Bell and Byron Criddle trace the history of the Communist Party in France from its origins. They focus in particular on the period since 1958 and explore the Party's unique organizational structures and international loyalties. They examine structure and ideology, relations with the Socialist Party, electoral performance, and the 1980s decline in the Party's fortunes. This study will be essential reading for all students of contemporary French history and politics.
This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.
The demise of the French Communist Party (PCF) has been a recurrent feature of overviews of the Left in France for the past two decades, and yet the Communists survive. This study examines the factors that undermined the position of the PCF as the premier party of France, but also highlights the challenges that the party faces in a society disillusioned with politics, and the new strategies that it is developing in order to revive its fortunes.
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.
