By Ian Parker

RRP £10, €12, $15 192 pages

Published by Resistance Books (London) and the International Institute for Research and Education (Amsterdam).

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. The eight countries under examination here – Russia, Georgia, Serbia, North Korea, China, Cuba, Laos and Venezuela – went through the process of revolt against capitalism in very different ways, and the failure to build socialism in each separate case offers lessons for those who still rebel against exploitation and oppression and who want a better world.

Ian Parker is an activist and academic based in Manchester, UK. His books on politics include Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (Pluto Books, 2004), Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left (Zero Books, 2017) and Mapping the English Left through Film: Twenty Five Uneasy Pieces (Folrose Press, 2020).

CONTENTS

Introduction: Blueprints
Russian Federation
Georgia
Republic of Serbia
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
People’s Republic of China
Republic of Cuba
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Bibliography

Socialisms can be purchased from Resistance Books here.