Haymarket Books

The tragic defeat of the Spanish Civil War has long fascinated those who continue to struggle for social justice. Pierre Broué and Émile Témine’s long-out-of-print history details the internal political dynamics that led the popular front to hold back radical measures that would have galvanized the working class and the peasant base of the revolution and decisively weaken Franco’s fascist forces.

In this wide-ranging and insightful work, Soma Marik defends the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, arguing against many of its detractors that the early communist regime was centrally concerned with both the liberation of women and the expansion of democracy.

Soma Marik teaches history at RKSM Vivekananda Vidyabhavan, Kolkata, and is a former visiting professor, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University. She is involved as an activist in the women's movement, through the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Kolkata) and the network Das Theke Das Hajar, as well as with general democratic and anticommunal work. She has published extensively on class and gender relations in socialist and communist history.

"Essential reading for those who would prefer to judge the Panther movement for themselves. --Library Journal

Here are Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and Fred Hampton; Kathleen Cleaver and other Panther women; the party's court battles and acquittals; its positions on black separatism, the power structure, the police, violence, and education; as well as songs, poems, and political cartoons. This is the story behind the Black Panthers.

Philip S. Foner was one of the most prominent Marxist historians in the United States. A prolific author and editor, he tirelessly documented the lives of workers, African Americans, and political radicals.

In October 1932, the streets of Belfast were gripped by vicious and widespread rioting that lasted the best part of a week. Thousands of unarmed demonstrators fought extended pitched battles against heavily-armed police. Unemployed workers and, indeed, whole working-class communities, dug trenches and built barricades to hold off the police assault. The event became known as the Outdoor Relief Riot—one of a very few instances in which class sympathy managed to trump sectarian loyalties in a city famous for its divisions.

Marxism and the Party dispels the myths about "democratic centralism" and demonstrates that the kind of socialist party that Lenin built had nothing in common with the Stalinist despotism that replaced it.

In the revolutionary tradition, the name of Louis Blanqui is either remembered with derision or as a noble failure. Yet during his lifetime, Blanqui was a towering figure of revolutionary courage and commitment as he organized nearly a half-dozen failed revolutionary conspiracies and spent half of his life in jail. This is Blanqui's story.

To millions throughout the world, the Russian workers' state offered new hope. People everywhere turned from the grim alternatives of a declining capitalism—unemployment, poverty, the threat of new wars—to place their hopes in the government that the soviets, councils of working people, put into power in Russia.

Here, with critical notes and context, are V.I. Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and Nikolai Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy. They are both essential for understanding the nature of imperialism and war historically—and today.

V.I. Lenin (1870–1924) was a leader of the Russian Revolution and wrote extensively on the issues facing the working-class movement of his time.

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) was a Bolshevik leader and intellectual, and later a Soviet politician until his execution at the hands of Stalin’s government.

Phil Gasper is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California. He writes extensively on politics and the philosophy of science and is a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He is the author of Haymarket Books’ The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document.

These classic essays from the international socialist tradition make a powerful and convincing case for building revolutionary socialist organizations in the fight for liberation.

Marx's thought is being reappropriated and reinterpreted by a new generation. In this wide-ranging collection scholar-activists from around the world return to Marx, but do so in a way that avoids a dogmatic approach to his writing—focusing instead on what is of relevance to today's struggles against capitalism.

Contributors: Riccardo Bellofiore, Roland Boer, Chiara Bonfiglioli, Guglielmo Carchedi, Katja Diefenbach, Jan Drahokoupil, Peter Drucker, Sara R. Farris, Michael Heinrich, Laura Horn, Joost Kircz, Gal Kirn, Geert Reuten, Tom Rockmore, Peter D. Thomas, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Marcel van der Linden, Jeff Webber, Frieder Otto Wolf, Steve Wright, Wei Xiaoping

Praise for Richard Wolff and Democracy at Work:

"Richard Wolff's constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development, ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. A very valuable contribution in troubled times."—Noam Chomsky

"Richard Wolff is the leading socialist economist in the country. This book is required reading for anyone concerned about a fundamental transformation of the ailing capitalist economy!"—Cornel West

"Bold, thoughtful, transformative-a powerful and challenging vision that takes us beyond both corporate capitalism and state socialism. Richard Wolff at his best!"—Gar Alperovitz

While most mainstream commentators view the crisis that provoked the Great Recession as having passed, these essays from Richard Wolff paint a far less rosy picture. Drawing attention to the extreme downturn in most of capitalism's old centers, the unequal growth in its new centers, and the resurgence of a global speculative bubble, Wolff—in his uniquely accessible style—makes the case that the crisis should be grasped not as a passing moment, but as an evolving stage in capitalism's history.

Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Visiting Professor at the New School in New York. Wolff's recent work has concentrated on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the global economic crisis. His groundbreaking book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism inspired the creation of Democracy at Work, a nonprofit organization dedicated to showing how and why to make democratic workplaces real.

The pieces in this volume voice the rage and helplessness sweeping through the Kashmir Valley while offering rare insights into the lives of those caught in the crossfire. This book is a timely collection of the most exciting writing that has recently emerged from within Kashmir, and about it.

Sanjay Kak is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom, 2007), a feature-length film about Kashmir. He is based in New Delhi, India.

A leading light of the anti-colonial revolts of the 1960s and '70s, Frantz Fanon also prophetically explored the dangers of post-colonial power. Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon is a rich exploration of Fanon's life and times, combining interviews with those who fought alongside him with selections from his work. This book gives and giving new insight into the extraordinary life and ideas of one of the twentieth century's most important revolutionaries.

Leo Zeilig is a lecturer at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London; Senior Visiting Fellow, South African Research Chair in Social Change; Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg; and editor of Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa.

Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France is the president of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and the daughter of Frantz Fanon.

"Joe Hill's influence is everywhere. Without Joe Hill, there's no Woody Guthrie, no Dylan, no Springsteen, no Clash, no Public Enemy, no Minor Threat, no System of a Down, no Rage Against the Machine."—Tom Morello, from the foreword

Radical songwriter and organizer Joe Hill was murdered by the capitalist state in 1915, but his songs continue to inspire working-class activists and musicians. In this collection of letters, assembled by radical historian Philip Foner with  new material by Alexis Buss, readers are provided a window into the political reflections and personal struggles behind Hill's legend.

In these beautiful essays, Wallace Shawn takes us on a revelatory journey in which the personal and political become one.

Whether writing about the genesis of his plays, such as Aunt Dan and Lemon; discussing how the privileged world of arts and letters takes for granted the work of the “unobtrusives,” the people who serve our food and deliver our mail; or describing his upbringing in the sheltered world of Manhattan’s cultural elite, Shawn reveals a unique ability to step back from the appearance of things to explore their deeper social meanings. He grasps contradictions, even when unpleasant, and challenges us to look, as he does, at our own behavior in a more honest light. He also finds the pathos in the political and personal challenges of everyday life.

With a sharp wit, remarkable attention to detail, and the same acumen as a writer of prose as he is a playwright, Shawn invites us to look at the world with new eyes, the better to understand—and change it.

Praise for Wallace Shawn and Essays: 

“Lovely, hilarious and seriously thought provoking, I enjoyed it tremendously.”—Toni Morrison

“Wallace Shawn writes in a style that is deceptively simple, profoundly thoughtful, fiercely honest. His vocabulary is pungent, his wit delightful, his ideas provocative.”—Howard Zinn, author, A People’s History of the United States

“Wally Shawn’s essays are both powerful and riveting. How rare to encounter someone willing to question the assumptions of class and the disparity of wealth that grows wider every year in this country. To have such a gentle and incisive soul willing to say what others may be afraid to is considerably refreshing.”—Michael Moore, film-maker

“Wallace Shawn’s career as a playwright has been uncompromisingly devoted to proving, again and again, that theater is an ideal medium for exploring difficult matters of great consequence. The qualities that make his dramatic work so challenging, startling, unsettling, sensual, mind-and-soul expanding, so indispensible, are equally in evidence in the marvelous political and theatrical essays collected here. The basic faith of politically progressive people, that human beings are full of decent impulses perverted by political and economic malevolence, is in Shawn’s writing held up to the liveliest, sharpest scrutiny imaginable; not, as in so much reactionary art, to shift blame from oppressor to oppressed, or from artifice to Nature, not to insist that we’re innately, inescapably incapable of change, but rather as a scrupulous accounting of the slippery ethics, dream logic, fear-ridden resistance to progress, disturbing desires, of the greatest problem confronting all our hopes for a better, transformed world: Us, the actors in our collective drama. His essays are without sentiment and entirely resistant to the easy comforts of despair. Complexities are rendered delightfully plain, obfuscations are unsnarled and illuminated, clarity and rational thought are organized to plumb mysteries, and mysteries are respected and celebrated. Shawn’s language, his unmistakable, original voice, felicitous, is unadorned, elegant, immediate, true. He’s also a brilliant interviewer, as everyone who’s seen My Dinner With Andre (which is just about everyone) knows. And, of course, he’s very funny.”—Tony Kushner, playwright, Angels in America

“Wallace Shawn is a bracing antidote to the op-ed dreariness of political and artistic journalism in the West. He takes you back to the days when intellectuals had the wit and concentration to formulate great questions - and to make the reader want to answer them.”—David Hare, playwright

"People think speaking truth to power is easy, but if it was easy everyone would do it. This book does it. . . . It speaks truth to the powers that be, from Brazil to the US to FIFA to the IOC. It hits you like an uppercut that rattles your brain and sets it straight. I cannot recommend this book highly enough."—John Carlos, 1968 Olympic medalist

The people of Brazil celebrated when they learned that in the space of two years their country would host the world's two largest sporting events: the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Now they are protesting in numbers the country hasn't seen in decades.

Dave Zirin relies on fieldwork from the most dangerous corners of Rio to the halls of power in Washington, DC, exposing how sports and politics have collided in spectacular fashion. One of the Boston Globe's "Best Sports Books of 2014," this edition has been newly updated to assess the final tally of debt and displacement that accompanied the 2014 World Cup, eyewitness accounts of the militarized police crackdown, and new reporting on the pre-Olympic plans furthering immiseration in cities across Brazil.

Dave Zirin is sports correspondent for the Nation magazine and the author of nine books on the intersection of sports and politics. Named one of UTNE Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World," Zirin is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN, and Democracy Now! He also hosts his own weekly Sirius XM show, Edge of Sports Radio.

This book sheds crucial new light on the epochal US interventions in Southeast Asia after World War II. Antiwar activist Fred Branfman describes the tragic lives of Laotian peasants under US bombing. Cambodia scholar Ben Kiernan and colleague Owen Taylor illuminate the course of Cambodia history after unprecedented US bombing. The book also includes classic works by Noam Chomsky, Nick Turse, and Edward Herman.

Mark Pavlick is an independent editor. He was active in the US movement against the Indochina wars in volunteer work with the Indochina Mobile Education Project and the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, DC.

"Is socialism an impossible, discredited dream or the only realistic path for human survival? If you're not sure of the answer, or are just curious about what the Left really believes in, you need to read Maass. He's the Tom Paine of the contemporary American left."—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

Global capitalism is in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment is growing. America's imperial wars rage on. In this brilliant polemic, translated to Spanish, Alan Maass argues that the alternative is a democratically planned economy based on workers' control.

Alan Maass is the editor of socialistworker.org, a daily website of left news and opinion, and the Socialist Worker newspaper.

A collection of letters is also essentially a biography – here of a man recognized as one of the twentieth century’s leading thinkers. By translating and presenting for the first time many letters previously overlooked by other volumes, this collection greatly expands what the English-speaking world knows of him, both politically and personally. These extracts from his pre-prison correspondence—with his wife and her sister, international communist leaders, and fellow Italian revolutionaries—show his most important ideas at their beginnings, and give a well rounded picture of Gramsci’s political, intellectual, and emotional development.

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was a founding member of the Italian Communist Party, and among the twentieth century's most influential theorists.

Long-considered dead by mainstream critics, the basic ideas of Karl Marx are brought to life in this overview of his thought. This book argues that instead of irrelevant, Marx's ideas of globalization, oppression, and social change are more important than ever.

Paul D'Amato is managing editor of the International Socialist Review. His writing has appeared in CounterPunch, Socialist Worker and Selves and Others.

Arundhati Roy is a writer and global justice activist. From her celebrated Booker Prize–winning novel The God of Small Things, to her prolific output of writing on topics ranging from climate change to war, the perils of free-market "development" in India, and the defense of the poor, Roy's voice has become indispensable to millions seeking a better word.

John Cusack is a writer, filmmaker, and a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He has written the screenplays for the movies Grosse Point Blank, High Fidelity, and War, Inc., with Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser, among many others. His writing has appeared widely, including the Guardian, Truthout, and Outlook India. 

“Truman Nelson’s biography of John Brown is a refreshing and eloquent corrective to the common misconceptions about the character and actions of this extraordinary American hero.”—Howard Zinn

On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a historic attack on the Harper’s Ferry Armory. Nelson narrates the incredible events that unfolded that day and explodes the conventional dismissal of John Brown as a fanatic, presenting him as a revolutionary who, at the cost of his own life, helped bring an end to slavery.

After Brown’s execution, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said of him, “If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. . . . Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm, the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone—the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union—and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown’s, the lost cause of the century.”

Truman Nelson (1911–1987) wrote many books, including The Surveyor and The Right of Revolution.

Amusing, well researched, and surprisingly sophisticated, Leon Trotsky: An Illustrated Introduction is the perfect primer on the life and thought of the great leader and chronicler of the Russian Revolution. With sympathy and humor, Tariq Ali and Phil Evans trace his political career, from prison to the pinnacle of revolutionary power to his eventual exile and murder by Joseph Stalin.

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics. He is an editor of New Left Review.

Phil Evans is a longtime political cartoonist based in England. He has illustrated Karl Marx's Kapital for Beginners, among many other books.

Chris Harman unearths the history of the lost revolution in Germany—the swastika entered modern history on uniforms of the counterrevolutionary troops of 1918–1923—and reveals its lessons for struggles for a better world.

Chris Harman is the author of many books, including A People's History of the World.

As the United States now faces a major defeat in its occupation of Iraq, the history of the Vietnam War, as a historic blunder for US military forces abroad, and the true story of how it was stopped, take on a fresh importance. Unlike most books on the topic, constructed as specialized academic studies, The (Last) War the United States Lost examines the lessons of the Vietnam era with Joe Allen’s eye of both a dedicated historian and an engaged participant in today’s antiwar movement.

Many damaging myths about the Vietnam era persist, including the accusations that antiwar activists routinely jeered and spat at returning soldiers or that the war finally ended because Congress cut off its funding. Writing in a clear and accessible style, Allen reclaims the stories of the courageous GI revolt; its dynamic relationship with the civil rights movement and the peace movement; the development of coffee houses where these groups came to speak out, debate, and organize; and the struggles waged throughout barracks, bases, and military prisons to challenge the rule of military command.

Allen’s analysis of the US failure in Vietnam is also the story of the hubris of US imperial overreach, a new chapter of which is unfolding in the Middle East today.

Joe Allen is a regular contributor to the International Socialist Review and a longstanding social justice fighter, involved in the ongoing struggles for labor, the abolition of the death penalty, and to free the political prisoner Gary Tyler.

Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Noam Chomsky is widely regarded to be one of the foremost critics of U.S. foreign policy in the world. He has published numerous groundbreaking books, articles, and essays on global politics, history, and linguistics. Among his recent books are The New York Times bestsellers Hegemony or Survival and Failed States.

Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer's striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. The European Union has broken apart. Multiethnic great powers like Russia and China have shriveled. America's global military footprint has virtually disappeared and the United States remains united in name only. Nationalism has proven the century's most enduring force as ever-rising global temperatures have supercharged each-against-all competition and conflict among the now 300-plus members of an increasingly feeble United Nations.

As he navigates the world of 2050, Julian West offers a roadmap for the path we're already on, a chronicle of impending disaster, and a faint light of hope. He may be humanity's last best chance to explain how the world unraveled—if he can survive the savage beauty of the Splinterlands.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. In 2012–2013, he was also an Open Society Fellow looking at the transformations that have taken place in Eastern Europe since 1989. He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has also produced six plays, including three one-man shows, and published a novel.

Kevin Coval is the author of Schtick, L-vis Lives, the American Library Association "Book of the Year" Finalist Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, and an editor of The BreakBeat Poets.

Idris Goodwin is a playwright, spoken-word performer, and essayist recognized across mediums by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.

Illegal. Unamerican. Disposable. In a nation with an unprecedented history of immigration, the prevailing image of those who cross our borders in search of equal opportunity is that of a drain. Grace Chang's vital account of immigrant women—who work as nannies, domestic workers, janitors, nursing aides, and homecare workers—proves just the opposite: the women who perform our least desirable jobs are the most crucial to our economy and society. Disposable Domestics highlights the unrewarded work immigrant women perform as caregivers, cleaners, and servers and shows how these women are actively resisting the exploitation they face.

"[Bananeras] is a vital accounting of the struggles still being waged."—Margaret Randall, author of When I Look Into the Mirror and See You: Women, Terror, and Resistance

Women banana workers have organized themselves and gained increasing control over their unions, their workplaces, and their lives. Highly accessible and narrative in style, Bananeras recounts the history and growth of this vital movement and shows how Latin American woman workers are shaping and broadly reimagining the possibilities of international labor solidarity.

Dana Frank is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of the award-winning Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism.

Haymarket Books proudly brings back into print Winona LaDuke's seminal work of Native resistance to oppression.

This thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. Filled with inspiring testimonies of struggles for survival, each page of this volume speaks forcefully for self-determination and community.

Winona LaDuke was named by Time in 1994 as one of America's fifty most promising leaders under forty. In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke served as Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate in the Green Party.

What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness?

This collection of reports and essays (the first collaboration between Truthout and Haymarket Books) explores police violence against black, brown, indigenous and other marginalized communities, miscarriages of justice, and failures of token accountability and reform measures. It also makes a compelling and provocative argument against calling the police.

Contributions cover a broad range of issues including the killing by police of black men and women, police violence against Latino and indigenous communities, law enforcement's treatment of pregnant people and those with mental illness, and the impact of racist police violence on parenting, as well as specific stories such as a Detroit police conspiracy to slap murder convictions on young black men using police informant and the failure of Chicago's much-touted Independent Police Review Authority, the body supposedly responsible for investigating police misconduct. The title Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? is no mere provocation: the book also explores alternatives for keeping communities safe.

Contributors include William C. Anderson, Candice Bernd, Aaron Cantú, Thandi Chimurenga, Ejeris Dixon, Adam Hudson, Victoria Law, Mike Ludwig, Sarah Macaraeg, and Roberto Rodriguez.

This reexamination of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's thoughts on socialism, democracy, and revolution is a must-read for today's activists—or anyone longing to fight for a better world.

Fifty years after his death, Guevara remains a symbol to legions of young rebels and revolutionaries. This unique book provides a way to critically engage with Guevara's economic views, his ideas about revolutionary agency, and his conduct as guerrilla commander and government administrator in Cuba.

Samuel Farber was born and raised in Cuba. He has written extensively on Cuba and the Cuban Revolution and is author of Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959.

The indigenous imperative to honor nature is undermined by federal laws approving resource extraction through mining and drilling. Formal protections exist for Native American religious expression, but not for the places and natural resources integral to ceremonies. Under what conditions can traditional beliefs be best practiced?

Recovering the Sacred features a wealth of native research and hundreds of interviews with indigenous scholars and activists.

Winona LaDuke was named by Time in 1994 as one of America's fifty most promising leaders under forty. In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke served as Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate in the Green Party.