Notebooks for Study and Research

These interviews with Daniel Bensaïd were broadcast in 2008 on the radio station Fréquence Paris Plurielle. Through them, Bensaïd gives his insight into twelve significant events including the October Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the assassination of Lumumba, the 1973 coup in Chile, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These milestones of the ‘short twentieth century’ are necessarily a biased and partial choice. In this book, one reads some of the main analyses that structure Daniel Bensaïd’s thinking at the beginning of the 21st century.

2015 will be a landmark in the history of Greece, Europe and the Left. This book can be used as a guide for readers who are content neither with the mainstream narrative spun by major media and creditors, nor with former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’s version in his book Adults in the Room. Greece 2015 shows instead that at each stage of the path of the Greek government in 2015, there were alternatives.
With a preface by Michael Roberts.

''A devastating critique of the Syriza government and of Varoufakis' strategy and tactics during 2015''

Socialisms: Revisiting Revolutions Betrayed, Mislaid and Unmade provides accessible description and assessment of the attempt to transcend capitalism in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The book combines an account of travel in eight countries that have experienced some form of socialist transformation with historical analysis of what happened and what went wrong.

Preface by Daniel Bensaid
Translated by Gregor Benton
Edited with an introduction by Penelope Duggan

Llivio Maitan's Memoirs of a Critical Communist tells the life of revolutionary communist in the second half of the 20th century. From his early commitment to communism under fascism in Italy, Livio chose to be 'against the current' by rejecting both Stalinism and social democracy, and charted a course towards democratic and revolutionary Marxism.

In this new collection of essays, Enzo Traverso examines the relationships between anti-Semitism, modernity and the Holocaust. Traverso analyses multiple dimensions of the destruction of the European Jews, debates over the historical memory and left-wing debates on the nature of anti-Semitism.

Inspired by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the heterodox Marxism of a thinker like Walter Benjamin, Traverso argues that after Auschwitz,  critical thought needs to reconsider the notion of progress as such.

We are facing a multifaceted threat to life the planet. Crucial resources are running out. Pollution is choking the ecosystems. The oceans are now 30 per cent more acidic than in pre-industrial times, coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate.

From a defence of the remarkable ecological content of classical Marxism – lost during the 20th century to the rise of productivism – the book is an appeal to the socialist left to take the ecological crisis far more seriously. It uncovers some fascinating stories of their lives and struggles.

By Catherine Samary

And contributions from:
Samuel Farber, Silvia Federici, Franck Gaudichaud, Zagorska Golubović, Ernest Mandel, Goran Marković, Svetozar Stojanović and Raquel Varela.

Published by Resistance Books, Merlin Press and the IIRE
ISBN: 978-0-850367-47-8
For more information and the contents, click here

The story of indigenous peoples in Peru, and struggles for land reform and change from the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972 he published:  'Land Or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru'

Hugo Blanco is a historic leader of the Peruvian campesino struggle and a key figure in the huge insurrections of the rural dispossessed. He was a key protagonist in the stories he shares in vivid but direct language. At the same time he gives voice to those who fought alongside him, while always advocating a respectful relationship with Pachamama (Mother Earth).

Published by Merlin Press, the IIRE and Resistance Books