Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend

Iskra Books is proud to publish the first authorized English edition of Domenico Losurdo's now-mythic text, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend-translated for the first time from the original Italian. Operating under the assumption that the prevalent rejection of, or dismissiveness about, Josef Stalin as a historical figure merits closer and critical inspection, Losurdo encourages readers to make up their own mind on Stalin, rather than to uncritically accept received, popular notions. In fact, it is precisely the now-widespread caricatures of Stalin as personified evil-rife in liberal democracies and uncritically accepted by most Western leftists-that Losurdo shows to be more related to contingent ruling class preoccupations than actual evidence. Even pointing out such problems with conventional representations of Stalin brought a shower of accusations of "Stalinism" or "neo-Stalinism" upon Losurdo, who made it clear that the text of Stalin was not a rehabilitation but a contribution to contextualizing and ending the demonization of Stalin, who was even, in 1946, praised by Gandhi.Losurdo's work on the historical representations of Stalin, as well as other works like it, is perhaps more vital today than it ever has been. With the passage of time, we become further removed from the contemporary voices challenging the construction of what has become the hegemonic view of Stalin. Losurdo teaches us, among other things, that historical contextualization and coeval comparisons are crucial to testing one's political philosophy and principles, to deepening our knowledge of socialist history, and, at the same time, a key to dismantling bourgeois ideologies."Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend recaptures the distorted personal and political narrative proffered by western historians for over 75 years. This magisterial work convincingly counters the biased distortions of both establishment and left historians through a balanced historiographic and philosophical exegesis of Stalin's complex life and leadership, as well as his contribution to socialism and the defeat of fascism. Losurdo's heretical counter-hegemonic history authentically counters the mythical, demonic figure into a true-to-life biography of the most significant political figure of the 20th century. Fifteen years after its publication in Italian, Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro's superb translation brings Losurdo's compelling corrective of Stalin to English readers."Immanuel Ness, Author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class"In this intrepid and rigorous study, Domenico Losurdo takes on the myth of the monster by shedding much-needed light on the monstrous situation in which Joseph Stalin found himself: that of building the world's first socialist state under conditions of incessant imperialist assault, civil war, subversive plots, fascist invasion, and the risks of nuclear annihilation. Losurdo's dialectical assessment of the commendable as well as the deplorable decisions made by Soviet leadership, given the circumstances, provides the reader with an extraordinary opportunity to learn practical and difficult lessons from concrete history. This book is thus an essential antidote to the terrifying tales whose purpose is to produce fear-induced ignorance, and thus benighted ideological alignment against 'the monster.'"Gabriel Rockhill, Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University

Biographies & Memoirs

LOSURDO, Domenico

Leaders & Notable People

Iskra Books

Peace! Land! Bread! This was the rallying cry of the Bolsheviks that united the disparate revolutionary factions of Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. Peace, for the war-weary; land, for the landless; and bread, for the hungry. &#8203; Now, in the early part of the twenty-first century-as fascism reemerges in the form of right-wing nativisms sweeping the globe, firmly entrenched within the structures of capital- socialism once again stands to oppose it: to fight the global darkening of imperial war, of climatological and economic dispossessions, and of pervasive food insecurity. Peace, Land, and Bread must once again be our rallying cry-the rallying cry of socialists and anti-imperialists everywhere. In our inaugural issue, we are incredibly excited to bring you insightful and avant-garde critique, analysis, poetry, and more from Josh Zolotin, D.M., Rainer Shea, Shane Lawrence Pick, Christian Noakes, Jarrod Grammel, and others!

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 1

Communist Studies, Center For

Arts & Photography

Peace! Land! Bread!\nThis was the unifying cry of the Russian revolutionaries that called for peace for the war weary, land for the landless, and bread for the hungry. It is hard to say if Vladimir Lenin could have predicted just how relevant those words would be some 103 years later. But, in 2020 we once again find ourselves in a position that was not unfamiliar to the Bolsheviks.\nPeace is threatened by imperialist conflicts. Land is being bought, sold and exploited by capitalist industries which leave the land barren through unsustainable agricultural and mining practices. Food security is threatened by capitalist trade wars, overexploitation and climate change which drives wide-spread hunger and displacement affecting an estimated 810 million people. We also find ourselves governed by an incompetent political class, under the cloud of a global pandemic and experiencing the resurgence of Fascism. Everywhere you look, it seems, the early-20th century is repeating itself and the writings of Lenin and Marx seem more and more relevant.\nMarxism is often turned to as the solution when capitalism becomes strained following events such as pandemics. In her book, Laura Spinney argued that it was hard to decouple the revolutionary wave that swept the globe and the effects of the devastating 1918 Spanish Flu. In 1920 Soviet Russia became the first to implement a fully centralised public healthcare system, resulting in the development of the first flu vaccine. In Ireland, the election of socialist Sinn Féin, the formation of the Limerick Soviet and the sitting of the first Dáil Éirean saw an end to colonial rule and greater rights for the ethnic Irish working class (discussed in David Swanson's article, page 123). More recently, nationalisation is used to prevent capitalist businesses such as Virgin Australia from collapsing. Perhaps most excitingly, we are seeing people reckon with deep-rooted racism, anti-semitism, and social injustice following the Black Lives Matter protests and the ongoing economic strain of COVID-19.\nMany contemporary issues are examined through the Marxist-Leninist lens in the July issue of Peace, Land and Bread. The coronavirus pandemic, capitalism, and the potential for reform is thoughtfully discussed in Maya Bhardwaj's article (page 15). Decolonisation and imperialism also features prominently in this issue during Zhong Xiangyu's piece (page 36) and during the exciting interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (page 81), in which Viet discusses the story behind his debut novel The Sympathizer with Quynh Vo. Rainer Shea discusses the troubling rise of fascism in his article on America's imperialistic economic system (page 29).\nAlthough Peace, Land and Bread is a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication, it is our firm belief that revolutionary thinking throughout history has been expressed through art and literature. In our second issue, we continue our tradition of including artwork and poetry, addressing themes ranging from Black Lives Matter, religion, police brutality, revolution, American imperialism and LGBT+ rights.\nThe articles and art work presented in our July issue contribute to some of the biggest conversations happening on a global scale. Importantly, these articles shed light on how Marxism-Leninism is best suited to cope with the big issues facing us as a species. We hope these peer-reviewed, scholarly articles will aid our readers in understanding the world around them in the context of communism, and suggest new avenues of debate and thinking.

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 2

Peace, Land, and Bread is a leading voice of international communist scholarship, offering Marxist-Leninist perspectives on politics, history, ecology, economics, literature, and aesthetics. Released quarterly, the print journal is dedicated to the publication of rigorous, peer-reviewed, and avant-garde works. At 300 pages, issue three includes articles from Taylor Genovese, Christian Noakes, Sam Parry, Donald Courter, and more.

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 3

José Carlos Mariátegui was born in Moquegua, Peru, to a poor mestizo family on July 14, 1894. Considered by many to be the father of Latin American Communism, he is celebrated for being the first person to utilize Marxist methods of analysis in order to better understand concrete reality in Peru and for carving a path to revolution based off of these particular historical conditions. As such, he was one of the first Latin American socialists to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and Indigenous peoples. Rather than take a paternalistic or humanitarian position, Mariátegui believed that these overlapping groups needed to be the architects of their own liberation and to do so using their own cultural knowledge, experience, and language.

Selected Works of José Carlos Mariátegui

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

"After a long century-thanks to the careful translation by Taylor Genovese-we finally have Alexander Bogdanov's classic work available in English. A provocative and combative tract written during the Russian Revolution, Art and the Working Class anticipates later debates on the centrality of culture in revolutionary struggles. This is all about cultural revolution! And we have Genovese to thank for this brilliant translation and his expert Introduction." 
-Alexander Aviña, Associate Professor of History, Arizona State University\n"This work, gorgeously translated into English for the first time, provides a crucial resource for those on the anti-capitalist left hoping for a theory of art informed by and for the toiling masses. Using critical methodologies, Bogdanov illustrates the importance of fostering and analyzing proletarian art. Introduced with a sharp and eminently useful piece by the translator, Taylor Genovese, Art and the Working Class develops a working class analytical framework of the arts, and provides inspiration for those who set out not only to dream of a more just and beautiful world, but also for those who fight for it." 
-Henry Hakamäki, Guerrilla History Podcast\nAppearing for the first time in English, Art and the Working Class is the work of Alexander Bogdanov, a revolutionary polymath and co-founder, with Vladimir Lenin, of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Bogdanov was a strong proponent of the arts, co-founding the Proletarian Culture (Proletkult) organization to provide political and artistic education to workers.

Art and the Working Class

History & Criticism

Collected Works of Josef Stalin: Volume 1

This edition of the English translation of J. V. Stalin's Works has been reproduced faithfully from the text of the English-based on the Russian edition-prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Central Committee, C.P.S.U. Iskra Books, the imprint of the Center for Communist Studies, has chosen to publish the full series of the Collected Works due to an academic scarcity of the materials, an increasing inaccessibility of used copies of the original Foreign Languages Publishing House editions of the 1950s, and a growing scholarly and practical interest in the writings and ideas of one of the Twentieth Century's most impactful socialist heads of state. Stalin's Works are both pedagogically accessible and theoretically important, and they deserve to be studied not only as world-historical and practical applications of the development of Marxist-Leninist political theory, but - especially in an era where the rise of hegemonic imperialism and the decay of capitalism lead to an increasing global fascism - also as political-theoretical texts in their own right; as the core theoretical works underpinning extant socialist state governance, policy, legislation, and practice.

Stalin, Josef V

Publishing the selected works of Kim Il-Sung on education is a controversial move in the United States. In fact, there's almost a proportional relationship between the demonization of the DPRK and the level of ignorance one has about the state, the country, its government, its people and society, and its history. This is particularly striking given the recent interest in decolonial and anti-colonial education, in socialist and communist educational methods, and in socialism and communism more generally. Given these recent activist and scholarly interests, Riley Park and Cambria York's new collection, Socialist Education in Korea, is a welcome contribution. Their book not only provides key insights into the socialist educational project in Korea-including its pedagogical philosophies and practices, organizations, purposes, government institutions, and more. It also helps provide a more accurate description of the DPRK's socialist project as articulated by the state's founder and, for almost five decades, central leader. "Academic and public libraries in the West should expand their collections with revolutionary education. Socialist Education in Korea delves into the history and educational praxis of North Korea in a way that is rarely studied in the US, as this work counters many of the western media narratives against North Korea. As librarians, it is our duty to build collections with a wide range of ideas, and the research in this book presents a challenge to our current institutionalized education systems. Only through the study of a socialist pedagogy, can we really see that the education of the working class is paramount to our collective liberation." 
-Stephen Lane, Reference and Outreach Archivist, Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis 
"As decolonial and anti-racist educational projects gain global prominence, especially in the epicenters of imperialist power such as the U.S., it is high time critical educators reject the racist, Cold-War anti-communism so viciously aimed at North Korea, and open our minds to the rich pedagogical lessons taught by one of the DPRK's most important historical figures, Kim Il-Sung. Since the U.S.'s so-called Pivot to Asia in 2015, escalating military aggression, and increasing crisis and white supremacist backlash in the U.S., Riley Park and Cambria York's important collection of Kim Il-Sung's writings is a welcome contribution to the field." -Donna-Marie Cole-Malott, Assistant Professor of Professional and Secondary Education, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania

Socialist Education in Korea

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

"As the crises of imperialist capitalism continues to worsen, Ford's pedagogy of the encounter provides a key weapon for navigating the unknow gap between the current situation and a communist future." - Curry S. Malott, Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies, West Chester University of Pennsylvania.\n"Encountering Education is a powerful call for resistance which masterfully weaves together Ford's ground-breaking theoretical work and his activist experience from the streets and picket lines. The result is a revolutionary book which calls to action and directs that action, through pedagogies of the class struggle." - Petar Jandric, Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, Croatia, and University of Wolverhampton, UK\nIn Encountering Education, organizer, and political and educational theorist Derek R. Ford develops new marxist pedagogical elements to advance the class struggle. Ford argues that the entire marxist project of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and creating a classless society entails an educational praxis that builds up disinterpellative encounters. Through an inventive reading of Marx Althusser, Glissant, and others, they advance two dialectical pedagogical processes of inquiry and presentation, developing both-and the political relations between the two-through a range of theorists and situations. Encountering Education both illuminates the historical, political, spatial, technological, and sonic conditions of our struggle and assembles new pedagogical forms of reading, writing, listening, and learning through which we can encounter and realize an alternative social formation and, through the guidance of the Party, a new mode of production.

Encountering Education: Elements for a Marxist Pedagogy

Ford, Derek R.

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Books by Iskra Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Iskra Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 1

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 2

Peace, Land, and Bread: Issue 3

Selected Works of José Carlos Mariátegui

Selected Works of José Carlos Mariátegui

Art and the Working Class

Collected Works of Josef Stalin: Volume 1

Socialist Education in Korea

Encountering Education: Elements for a Marxist Pedagogy