Books published by Verso Books

A collection of essays by theorists in culture and politics. Experts from a variety of fields re-examine the origins of the subject as understood by Descartes, Kant and Hegel, and consider contemporary ideas that revive the subject, including queer theory and national identity.

Drawing on a wide range of studies in family history, historical demography and economic history, this book provides an overview of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, demonstrating the changing structure of families from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution.

The 'Crisis' and the 'Crash' is a notable event for students of the Soviet Union and of the history if Marxist political economy.

`Vice and wretchedness exist in their most appalling and hideous forms, stalking about with bold front, unblushingly, as though vice were virtue.'

Against this background, how do historians deal with the problems of the search for "historical truth"? Drawing on examples from East Asian and American as well as European history, The Past Within US poses the question: What happens when accounts of history are transferred from one medium to another?

Portugal. Spain. Greece.

Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault.

The Case of Lysenko.

Essays in Self-Criticism contains all of Louis Althusser's work from the 1970s. It is composed of three texts, each of which in a different way presents elements of self-criticism. The first is Althusser's extended reply to the English philosopher John Lewis. In it he for the first time discusses the problem of the political causes of Stalinism, which he argues should be seen as the consequence of a long tradition of economism within the Second and Third Internationals. The second major essay, written soon afterwards, sets out Althusser's critical assessment of his own philosophical work in the 60's, including the extent and limits of his 'flirtation' with structuralism. The book ends with an autobiographical study of Althusser's intellectual development from 1945 to 1975, given on the occasion of his reception of a doctorate at the University of Picardy. The political thought of the 'new' Althusser is presented to English readers in a special introduction by his pupil Grahame Lock, which considers at length the lessons it sees in Soviet experience for contemporary communism.

Partisans and Civil War in Greece, 1943-1949

From the Paris Commune in 1871 to Hué, Cordoba and Detroit in our day, the history of of proletarian insurrections is largely uncharted—particularly in its strictly military and technical aspects. Yet for Marx, Engels or Lenin it was axiomatic that 'insurrection is an art', and that without the most careful preparation and planning for insurrection (as in Hué), the spontaneous revolutionary action of the masses would always be defeated by the organized violence of the ruling class (as in Cordoba or Detroit).This book was produced in 1928 as a practical insurrectionary manual for communists. It discusses the role of armed insurrection in the Marxist-Leninist theory of revolution, analyses a number of insurrections—both successful and unsuccessful—with the aim of determining the conditions for victory, and gives detailed information on the tactics of street fighting—ranging from the respective advantages of offensive or defensive action to the best method of building a barricade. Written in Moscow under Comintern auspices, it is a classic Third Period document. Its republication will contribute to the recovery and appraisal of the early years of Soviet and Comintern history which is so essential an ingredient in the forging of all revolutionary theory and practice today.Published under the pseudonym of 'A. Neuberg', the work was in fact written by a group of leading Comintern political and military experts. One of the authors, Erich Wollenberg, military leader of the Bochum rising in North Germany in 1923, has written a new introduction for this edition (the first edition in English) in which he gives his own account of how the book came to be written, analyses the unstated political background to the various insurrections it examines, and identifies such of the authors as were known to him. These include Mikhail Tukhachesvsky, then second-in-command of the Red Army, Ho Chi Minh, Vice-President of the Secretary of the Comintern, and the German Communist and leader of the Hamberg Insurrection, Hans Kippenberger. The work was assembled by the Agitprop section of the Comintern, headed at the time by Palmiro Togliatti.