Written in July 1955, Livio Maitan's 'Relations Between the Communist Vanguard and the Mass Movement' addresses the central problem of Marxist politics: how does a revolutionary organisation relate to the class it seeks to lead?Maitan was thirty-three years old and working under conditions of deep entry into the Italian Communist Party when he wrote this document for the Fourth International's internal discussion. The result is one of the clearest systematic treatments of the vangu...

The British Socialist Workers Party once commanded real industrial power. In 1972, SWP members coordinated flying pickets during the miners' strike and ran workplace papers across engineering, education, and the docks. Over 300,000 shop stewards operated with genuine autonomy from the union bureaucracy, and the IS tradition provided the political glue binding militant sections together. They didn't just theorize rank-and-file organization; they built it.Then came Tony Cliff's "down...

When mass demonstrations erupted across Iran in December 2025, they represented the most profound challenge to the Islamic Republic since the revolutionary upheaval of 1979. This was no "economic riot" staged by foreign actors. It was a revolt against dictatorship in all its forms: a manifestation of the law of uneven and combined development, wherein the most advanced contradictions of global financial capital collide with the archaic, theocratic structures of a semi-colonial state.

The January 2026 U.S. military extraction of Nicolás Maduro forced every tendency on the international left to show its cards. No more theoretical abstraction, no more equivocation about "objective conditions." The Venezuelan crisis divided the global left into three irreconcilable camps, and this ebook maps exactly where each organization stood when it mattered most.Category A organizations—the Fourth International, International Socialist Tendency, Liga Internacional de los...

This essay collection presents a compelling and insightful analysis of the Palestinian freedom movement from a socialist perspective.In Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, contributors examine a number of key aspects in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. These essays contextualize the situation in today's polarized world and offer a socialist perspective on how full liberation can be won.Through an internationalist, anti-imperialist lens, this book exp...

The revolutionary wave that swept the Middle East in 2011 was marked by spectacular mobilization, spreading within and between countries with extraordinary speed. Several years on, however, it has caused limited shifts in structures of power, leaving much of the old political and social order intact. In this book, noted author Asef Bayat—whose Life as Politics anticipated the Arab Spring—uncovers why this occurred, and what made these uprisings so distinct from those that came bef...

Why is the Middle East a crisis factory, and how can it be fixed? What does the future look like for its 500 million people? And what role should the West play? Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash tell the story of the modern Middle East as a series of broken promises. They chart the entrenchment of tyranny, terrorism and foreign intervention, showing how these systems of oppression simultaneously feed off and battle each other. Exploring demographic, economic and social trends, the authors...

This comprehensive history lays out the essential background for understanding Palestine and its place in the struggle for socialism. Unlike many accounts that focus simply on Israel's on-going human rights atrocities, Joseph Daher situates Palestine in the context of more than a century of imperialist intervention in the Middle East. An important contribution that not only makes sense of the current moment, but also helps us think about future paths to liberation.Adam Hani...

The fourth edition of this dynamic and popular text provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary politics in the Middle East. Fully revised and updated throughout, it features a new chapter on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, plus a wide range of vibrant case studies, data, questions for class discussion and suggestions for further reading.Purposefully employing a clear thematic structure, the book begins by introducing key concepts and contentious debates before outlini...

"An excellent primer on the country of Iran and offers a look behind the curtain on how the Iranian government is organized and administered." —George Hodge, Military ReviewWhen Iranians overthrew their pro-Western monarchy in favor of an Islamic regime in 1979, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for years to come. Yet in the decades since, Iran has emerged as a key player in the Middle East and...

Civic space worldwide is shrinking – nowhere is this plainer than in Palestine–IsraelSuppressing Dissent brings together leading experts of shrinking civic space and transnational repression concerning Palestine–Israel to show how failing to address the phenomenon has impacts in the United States, the Middle East and beyond.TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction: Palestine, Israel, and the Battle for Hearts and Minds – and the Lever...

Turkey’s growing assertiveness on the international stage, difficulties with EU accession, rapidly rising economy, and the long and controversial reign of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) are all necessitating a need for analysis. The present study of the Centre for European Studies presents two papers which look at Turkey and the AKP from different perspectives. Svante Cornell’s paper argues that AKP has moved away from democratic reforms and that Turkey’s ‘zero problems with the n...