Communism (1917--)

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder.

To lift a phrase from Brad DeLong's review of Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, the tragic hero of the twentieth century. That is: noble in birth and intention, but undone by fatal flaws in its own character.

See also:
• the Left
• Marxism
• Millenarianism
• Narrative Communities
• Revolutions and Revolutionaries
• Socialism
• the USSR

Recommended:
• R. H. S. Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed: Six Studies in Communism [A book much more often praised or reviled than read with anything like attention, or even open eyes. The current American edition, for instance, includes an introduction by the idiotic Norman Podhoretz, who ignores the fact that the ex-Communists who wrote it remained socialists, and manages to mis-spell Gramsci's name.]
• Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet [i.e., his life of Trotsky, originally published as a trilogy]
  1. The Prophet Armed
  2. The Prophet Disarmed
  3. The Prophet Outcaste
• Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System
• Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism [recommended as an attempt at emphathetic understanding, not as political proposals]
• Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914--1991 [The aforementioned review]
• Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism
• Branko Milanovic, "A secular religion that lasted one century"
• Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
• Leon Trotsky [Recommending these works does not, in this case, constitute endorsement[
  • The Defense of Terrorism
  • Their Morals and Ours
  • "The Soviet Economy in Danger"
• Adam Westoby, The Evolution of Communism in the Twentieth Century
• Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station

To read:
• Norberto Bobbio, Ideological Profile of Twentieth-Century Italy
• George W. Breslauer, The Rise and Demise of World Communism
• Albert Fried, Communism in America: A History in Documents
• Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion
• János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism [More on Kornai here.]
• A. James McAdams, Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party
• Silvio Pons, The Rise and Fall of the Italian Communist Party: A Transnational History
• David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism
• Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism
• Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism
• Trotsky
  • The Russian Revolution
• Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation