Revolutionary
strategy
The free-market triumphalism of the
1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like
Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth
and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for
the moment, the beneficiary of growing anti-capitalism
is forms of right wing religious and nationalist nostalgia
politics. The political left remains in the shadow of
its disastrous failures in the 20th century.
The centre-left, insofar as it has not joined forces
with the neoliberal right, clings to nationalist and bureaucratic-statist
nostalgia for the social-democratic Cold War era. The
far left clings to the coat-tails of the centre-left.
It is barred from uniting itself - let alone anyone else
- by its unwillingness to think critically about the ideas
of the early Communist International, especially on the
‘revolutionary party’.
To get beyond these traps we need to re-examine critically
the strategic ideas of socialists since Marx and Engels’
time and their development. In this book, Mike Macnair
begins this task.
September 2008
£7.99 (plus £2 p+p)
Fantastic
reality
As well as defending secularism and exploring contemporary
religious questions such as political islam, Zionism and
christian fundamentalism, Jack Conrad outlines the historic
evolution of the main Abrahamic religions from their origins.
£15 (plus £2 p&p), pp528
"It is one of the best political documents based on Marxist
historical materialism that I've read in quite some time
- if ever. ... As a non-Party-not-anti-Party, Trotskyite
sympathizer, I found Fantastic reality ... to
be intellectually challenging ... an absolute must read
for Marxists, socialists & atheists." (Review at www.gnostics.com/fantastic.html.)
Click here to read
the opening chapter of the book
The first edition is sold out, the second edition is in
production. Both will not be available online until later
in the year
Remaking
Europe
Capitalism is incapable of uniting Europe democratically,
argues Jack Conrad - there is only quasi-unity and a quasi-democracy.
The historically long overdue task of uniting Europe falls
to the working class - as envisaged by Friedrich Engels,
Karl Kautsky and Leon Trotsky.
October 2004
£5 or €8 (incl. postage & package)
Click here to read this book
online
This book is available to order
CPGB
draft programme
£1 or €1.50 (incl. postage & package)
Click
here to read it online
This book is now out of print
Europe:
the challenge of continental unity
First edition of 'Remaking Europe', which deals with similar
issues. In addition, it comments on the debate inside
the (then still existing) Socialist Alliance on the Euro
and our attitude to the European Union.
2002
£5 or €8 (incl. postage & package)
This book is now out of print
Click here to read it online
Towards
a Socialist Alliance party
Jack Conrad’s book argues for the Socialist Alliance to
move to a higher organisational and political stage. Drawing
on an extensive study of history, this work presents the
ways and means of arriving at that end. This is the second,
updated edition.
December 2001
£5 or €8 (incl. postage & package)
This book is now out of print
Click here to read it
online
Towards
a Socialist Alliance party
First edition.
August 2001
£5 or €8 (incl. postage & package)
This book is now out of print
Click here to read it
online
From
October to August
The August 1991 counterrevolution
unleashed an unprecendented barrage of bourgeois triumphalism.
The bourgeoisie think they will now last forever. They
want, they need, to believe that they have beaten, not
simply this or that Communist Party, this or that revolution.
No, they want to believe that the collapse of 'official
communism' is the organisational expression of
capitalism's final victory over its own mortality.
Jack Conrad charts the rise and
demise of the Soviet Union and delivers an effective answer
to this reactionary crap.
£6.95, pp279
September 1992
This book is available to order
In
the enemy camp
Why do communists stand in elections? Marxists have always
viewed parliamentary democracy as a sham. So whys does
the Communist Party of Great Britain - in the tradition
of Lenin's Communist International - think that standing
in elections is "obligatory"?
Jack Conrad examines the theory and practice of communist
electoral and parliamentary work - from Russia's Bolsheviks
to the Communists Party's 1992 general election in Britain.
£4.95, pp141
July 1993
This book is available to order
Problems
of communist organisation
During the months of July to September 1993 members of
the Communist Party of Great Britain were involved in
a fierce battle over the question of democratic centralism.
A minority claimed the Party was dominated by a "bureaucratic
clique" that strangled initiative and was causing
a creeping sclerosis of the entire organisation.
Jack Conrad explores the theory of proletarian organisation,
both philosophically and practically.
Both the views and documents of the majority and minority
are published in this book.
£4.95, pp63
November 1993
This book is available to order
Which
road?
Without a Communist Party the working class can never
liberate itself. And without a communist programme there
can be no genuine Communist Party. The roots of the collapse
of the bureaucratic socialist states of Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union can be seen in those parties' abandonment
of Marxism.
This was not the fault of one person, or the break-down
in collective intellect. The programmes of 'official communism'
reflected - were designed to serve - those in the workers'
movement who had no interest in revolution.
In this book Jack Conrad deals with the reformist programmes
of various strands of opportunism in Britain.
£6.95, pp267
third edition, October 1991
This book is available to order
