In this short text from 1953, Amadeo Bordiga explores the history of counterrevolutions from the defeat of Spartacus to the Battle of Legnano in 1176, to the Peasant War in Germany of 1525, to Stalinism in 1922. "Everyone knows how to orient themselves at the moment of victory, but few are those who know what to do when defeat arrives." Amadeo Bordiga (1889-1970) was the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, and was one of the leading voices against the Stalinist hegemony of the 20th century left. Bordiga saw the Soviet Union as "state capitalist," and sought to rebuild a "true" Leninism as the basis for a revolutionary party.
The flow and counter flow of revolution and counterrevolution have become the norm of the twentieth century. In this fascinating and well-rounded volume, the author illuminates the revolutionary process as it has developed from antiquity to the present day, from the vantage points of political science, history, and sociology. Meisel's work is presented in the form of twelve absorbing episodes in the history of Western civilization. His remarkable for the detail with which he approaches a subject often difficult to define and even more difficult to explain. He suggests a new and highly useful perspective of history by viewing it as a process of revolution and counterrevolution and their transitional stages. As it is the nature of revolutions to fall short of their objectives and to enjoy only a brief heyday that becomes the stereotype accepted by posterity, the author emphasizes their antithetical closing phases--whose lessons posterity tends to forget. Meisel's belief is that second-echelon figures teach us more about the natural process of revolution than the atypical "men of destiny," and he illustrates his account with many portrayals of comparative unknowns who lived through all the stages of revolution and counterrevolution. But revolutions can also be aborted or be preceded by counterrevolutions, as Meisel demonstrates by enlightening analyses of Mussolini's coup d'utat, the origins of the Spanish Civil War, and General de Gaulle's defeat of a potential army insurrection in behalf of French Algeria. In this profound and wide-ranging work, Meisel achieves an admirable balance between theory, action, and biography. The result is a unique survey of revolutionary history, in which a sophisticated thinker provides on almost every page a deepening understanding of the problems of revolution for the scholar and student of political processes, political theory, and comparative politics. The reader with a lively interest in the modus operandi of history will also find this book compelling reading.
Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.
Felix Morrow's book, written in the white heat of the struggle, remains a Marxist classic on the Spanish Civil war. It is one of the clearest accounts produced of the movement of the Spanish masses, describing the events in Catalonia and the role of all those involved. This book contains the text of Revolution and counter-revolution together with the earlier Civil war in Spain and Ted Grant's 1973 article which provides an overview of the Spanish revolution. This book provides an excellent companion to the writings of Leon Trotsky on this question and deserves to be studied by all class-conscious activists.
This text examines the preventive counter-revolution undertaken by the Putin leadership in response to political instability - the colour revolutions - in the former post-Soviet republics and their potential to destabilise Russia itself.
Lessons of the Spanish Revolution examines the many ways in which Spain’s revolutionary movement contributed to its own defeat. Was it too weak to carry through the revolution? To what extent was the purchase of arms and raw materials from outside sources dependent upon the appearance of a constitutional government inside Republican Spain? What chances had an improvised army of guerrillas against a trained fighting force? These were some of the practical problems facing the revolutionary movement and its leaders. But in seeking to solve these problems, the anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists were also confronted with other fundamental questions. Could they collaborate with political parties and reformist unions? Given the circumstances, was one form of government to be supported against another? Should the revolutionary impetus of the first days of resistance be halted in the interests of the armed struggle against Franco or be allowed to develop as far as the workers were prepared to take it? Was the situation such that the social revolution could triumph and, if not, what was to be the role of the revolutionary workers? Originally written as a series of weekly articles in the 1950s and expanded, republished, and translated into many languages over the years, Vernon Richards’s analysis remains essential reading for all those interested in revolutionary praxis.
After the 1917 Russian Revolution, revolutionary upsurges erupted around the world: workers power was on the agenda. This book recounts the rise and fall of the Communist International and the lessons it holds for today.
"The far right is on the rise globally, with the rhetoric of anger and resentment emanating from personalities like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Rodrigo Duterte, and Viktor Orban captivating and mobilizing large numbers of people. Indeed, in a number of countries, the extreme right has already captured the government or is on the threshold of power. While the swift turn of events has shocked or surprised many in the North, the extreme right's seizure of power is not an uncommon event in the South. Deploying what he calls the "dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution" and harnessing the methods of comparative history and comparative sociology, Walden Bello's Counterrevolution is a bold, sweeping enterprise that seeks to deconstruct the challenge from the far right. Using as case studies Italy in the 1920's, Indonesia in the 1960s', Chile in the 1970's, and contemporary Thailand, India, and the Philippines, Bello lays bare the origins, dynamics, and consequences of counterrevolutionary movements. Reflections on the rise of the right in the United States, Europe, and Brazil round out this remarkable, timely study by one of the premier intellectuals of the South. Bello weds his well-known analytical scalpel to vigorous and clear writing to produce what reviewers have already dubbed one of the most profound, exciting, and controversial contributions to the study of social movements in years, one that bears comparison to the classic works of Barrington Moore, Jr., and Theda Skocpol. While he is well known for his progressive views, Bello, who was a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize) and named the International Studies Association's Outstanding Public Scholar, is one of those rare analysts who does not let politics get in the way of clear-sighted analysis."--
Few moments in history have seen as many seismic transformations as 1979. That single year marked the emergence of revolutionary Islam as a political force on the world stage, the beginning of market revolutions in China and Britain that would fuel globalization and radically alter the international economy, and the first stirrings of the resistance movements in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. More than any other year in the latter half of the twentieth century, 1979 heralded the economic, political, and religious realities that define the twenty-first. In Strange Rebels, veteran journalist Christian Caryl shows how the world we live in today -- and the problems that plague it -- began to take shape in this pivotal year. 1979, he explains, saw a series of counterrevolutions against the progressive consensus that had dominated the postwar era. The year's epic upheavals embodied a startling conservative challenge to communist and socialist systems around the globe, fundamentally transforming politics and economics worldwide. In China, 1979 marked the start of sweeping market-oriented reforms that have made the country the economic powerhouse it is today. 1979 was also the year that Pope John Paul II traveled to Poland, confronting communism in Eastern Europe by reigniting its people's suppressed Catholic faith. In Iran, meanwhile, an Islamic Revolution transformed the nation into a theocracy almost overnight, overthrowing the Shah's modernizing monarchy. Further west, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain, returning it to a purer form of free-market capitalism and opening the way for Ronald Reagan to do the same in the US. And in Afghanistan, a Soviet invasion fueled an Islamic holy war with global consequences; the Afghan mujahedin presaged the rise of al-Qaeda and served as a key factor -- along with John Paul's journey to Poland -- in the fall of communism. Weaving the story of each of these counterrevolutions into a brisk, gripping narrative, Strange Rebels is a groundbreaking account of how these far-flung events and disparate actors and movements gave birth to our modern age.
