New: Cuba at Sea

Ron Ridenour, whose book 'Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads' came out in an expanded edition last year, has published a new book with Socialist Resistance: Cuba at Sea.

This book gives a unique view of the Cuban revolution: from the ocean, where Ridenour worked with Cuba's merchant navy.

The only foreign writer to portray things Cuban as a volunteer merchant marine, Ron Ridenour sailed six months on five Cuban ships around the island nation delivering petroleum, and to and from Europe with container goods, to tell Cuban sailors' views of their society and the world.

In what other socialist book can you follow the crew through a gale, catching a giant shark, struggling with a life boat gone amuck, night life ashore...?

Thanks to photographs by Ron and his colleagues, the 108 pages of this book (plus four blank pahes for notes) are enlivened with 17 beautiful images. The images are made more powerful by the large, Crown Octavo, page sizes (twice the page size of a popular paperback). Readers of Resistance Books will already have appreciated this larger page size with our reprinting of Karl Kautsky's book.

The book will be launched at an Oxfordshire book fair in mid-May, but is available now by mail-order. Copies cost 8 pounds, including postage, from 'Resistance', PO Box 1109. London N2 2UU.

Expanded second edition of Ecosocialism

One of our best-selling books, 'Ecosocialism or Barbarism', will come out in an expanded second edition later this month. You can click on the image above to get a better look at the cover.

The number of pages is up, to 176, and the price is down, from 10 to 6 pounds.

A number of typographic corrections have been made in the book, and a major new section has been added: a resolution on 'Savage Capitalism' which explains the perspectives of the British ecosocialists. The draft of this resolution was published late last year by International Viewpoint.

Respect: Documents of the Crisis

Respect as it was originally constructed - as an alliance primarily between the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and George Galloway - is dead.

Our next book explains why. Contributors to 'Respect: Document of the Crisis' include Geirge Galloway, Salma Yaqoob, Alan Thornett, Chris Harman, Andy Newman, Kevin Ovenden, John Lister, Jerry Hicks, Liam Mac Uaid, Phil Hearse, Linda Smith, 'Socialist Worker' New Zealand and Nick Wrack.

The introduction to this 140-page book explains that "Respect stood on the gains of the anti-globalisation and antiwar movements, and on the fact that the anti-war movement had begun to build among sections of Muslim communities who had not previously engaged with British politics.

"But the SWP is painting a dishonest picture of what lies behind the division within Respect. They claim that they are the left in the split and everyone else is on the right (or is naively misguided, which is just as insulting). They repeat their disgraceful attacks on the Scottish Socialist Party, and by implication make comparison between those who support Respect Renewal with those in Rifondazione who have backed Italian Prime Minister Prodi in sending troops to Afghanistan. Such comparisons are ridiculous.

"Disregarding the grandiose comparisons with the splits between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks for the delusions they are, this pamphlet shows the political positions of those the SWP would paint as "the right".

"Not all the contributions we print here are from Socialist Resistance supporters, of course. But we think and hope that by publishing this collection we can contribute to an important debate, and thus help to build a socialist alternative to the ravages of war and neo-liberalism."

The book will be available from Socialist Resistance sellers after January 26th for 3.50 pounds or US $7. In February, the book will also be available at Amazon.co.uk and other online bookshops. Using the ISBN number, 978-0-902869-89-9, you can also order from any bookstore.

Rosa Luxemburg writings for just 3.25

We've just taken delivery of a new 240-page selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings.. Dover have the edition on sale and, even after the bulk shipping costs are added in, we are still able to sell the book for less than four pounds. It's 3.25 if you buy it from us face-to-face in London, and a pound more if you want it by post inside Britain. Just email us a Paypal payment for 4.25.

We're selling the book at cost, so no volume discounts are available. If you're ordering more than ten, we recommend you order direct from Dover, who sell other classics by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

The title of the collection "'Reform or Revolution' and Other
Writings" comes from her best known work about which they write "This 1899 polemic by the famous "Red Rosa" Luxemburg explains why capitalism can never overcome its internal contradictions. An effective refutation of revisionist interpretations of Marxist doctrine, it defines the position of scientific socialism on the issues of social reforms, the state, democracy, and the character of the proletarian revolution."

Progress disrupted by Kautsky

Socialist Resistance had its AGM last weekend; the first year of our book project was felt to have gone well. Many thanks to you, our readers, for your support.

The incoming steering committee has just been given a report on our growing online sales, through bookshops like Amazon.com. Phil Hearse's book is our best-seller over the last three months, selling more than three times more than any other book. In the US, Celia Hart's book is selling very strongly, as is Permanent Revolution.

However, we've found some problems in our first digital printing of Karl Kautsky's book, 'Foundations of Christianity'. Most importantly, in David Packer's afterword the footnote numbers and italics are missing.

Luckily, we have sold fewer than a dozen wholesale, and we are withdrawing that edition from public sale. Folk can return the book to us at any time for a replacement; the major printing of the book will be out next month.

Even large publishers have similar issues with small-scale books. Because it's important to us that readers get the most from our books, we are in the habit of making small initial runs like this to allow us to get books quickly to reviewers and activists who have an urgent need for the book. That allows us to correct, in a second edition, errors that get past our editors.

We have started to circulate to readers a list of the corrections we are making. All the errors identified so far will be corrected in that second edition.

The LCR and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan: First issue of 'Notebooks of the Crab'

Our next book will be a title in French: is the first number of Les Cahiers du crabe (Notebooks of the Crab): "l'intervention soviétique en Afghanistan (1979)". The documents which are reproduced there, in a chronological order, all come from the bulletins interior, known as BI, of the LCR (internal discussion bulletins , in theory relatively confidential) and of its publications, Rouge (weekly of the LCR, whose files are gradually made available in DVD), Critique Communiste (theoretical review of the LCR), Inprecor (International Press Correspondance, news review of the Fourth International).

A further set of themes "On the PCF", reproducing criticisms of the LCR on the standpoint of the Communist Party in France, is placed after the other articles. At the end of the review, a special booklet of the LCR on the question of Afghanistan, published in mid-February 1980, is reproduced just as it is (this section has the least aesthetic quality).

The editors decided, for practical reasons (availability of the files and a number of pages of the review), to stop at the date of March 1980. However, a Critique Communiste article of December 1981 gives the reader a critical review with respect to the initial position of the LCR.

Notebooks of the Crab

The Notebook is published by the 'Association to safeguard of the memory of the French section of the Fourth international' (ASMSFQI). It has two wishes: to save the files of this political current, by collecting them and by digitizing them, and to allow their access. With this intention, in addition to its Internet site, it publishs a review which reproduces various documents, all resulting from the French section of the Fourth international ( at different times known as the Internationalist Communist Party, communist league, and now LCR) and all related to a specific topic.

The idea of the Notebook is this : to reproduce articles of Rouge, La Verite, and Inprecor, extracts from discussion bulletins, and posters to allow the readers and to know reader what the internal debates of the French section of the Fourth international were and what was its public positioning on such questions. It does not have any further scientific or analytical aiming. the task of the ASMSFQI is making documents known. The Notesbooks do not aim to be a place of study or criticism. Simply they aim to be able to support certain studies, reflections, and personal training, by giving access to documents.

The 104-page A4 book will be available in mid-September for £7, €10 or $14 from Amazon. You will be able to use its ISBN number (9780902869905) to order the book from bookstores.

Book list: ISBNs, authors and prices

With the ISBN numbers given below, you can find our books in any bookstore. The prices shown below were the lowest available new prices on Amazon when we last checked.

9780902869936, Foundations of Christianity: A study in Christian origins, Karl Kautsky. $22, £11.
9780902869943, Take the Power to Change the World: globalisation and the debate on power, Phil Hearse. $12, £6.
9780902869929, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects, Leon D Trotsky. $20, £9.
9780902869950, Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads. New Expanded Edition, Ron Ridenour. $14, £9.
9780902869967, MIDDLE EAST: war, imperialism, and ecology, Gilbert Achcar. $26, £13.
0902869973, Ecosocialism or Barbarism, Jane Kelly. $14, £7.
0902869981, Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads (First edition) Ron Ridenour. $11, £6.
9780902869998, It's never too late to love or rebel, Celia Hart. $11, £6.

All our books are printed on archive-quality acid-free paper. Most are demy octavo, the regular paperback size. Karl Kautsky's book is textbook sized (Crown Octavo).