In the first systematic study of its kind, Hua-yu Li explains why, in 1953, Mao suddenly changed direction in economic policy and launched China on a Stalinist road to socialism. In so doing, he profoundly changed the country's economic and political landscape. Including rich archival materials...

"Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labour and the left in the United States during the 1930s through a discussion of the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Focussing on James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, Palmer builds on his...

In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile,...

"Gramsci Contested is a map with which one can orient oneself in the many readings, debates and controversies that surround Gramsci's work. From the judgements of his contemporaries to the peak of his fame and the apparent decline of his star in the 1990s, we are guided through the entire...