Paris Commune 150

978-81-943579-9-5

LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 2021

Language: English

108 pages

5.5 x 8.5 inches

Price INR 195.00
Book Club Price INR 136.00
INR 195.00
In stock
SKU
LWB1121

On 18 March 1871, the people of Paris opened the door to utopia. Over 72 days, the workers built new institutions and advanced the practice of democracy. The forces of counter-revolution regrouped, marched on the city, and defeated the Commune on 28 May. Two days later, Karl Marx delivered an address to the International Workingmen’s Association, a text later published as The Civil War in France. Almost fifty years later, as the Soviet Republic was being formed, Lenin reflected on Marx’s text to consider how to smash the inherited state institutions and to build socialist institutional forms. The Commune was reborn in a higher form as the Soviet. This book collects Marx’s address, Lenin’s chapter in State and Revolution on the Commune, Bertolt Brecht’s poem on the communards, and Manifesto of the Paris Commune’s Federation of Artists.


Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was a German Marxist poet, playwright and theatre practitioner. He was forced into exile in 1933, returning from the United States to Switzerland in 1947, and to East Berlin in 1949. He, along with his partner, Helene Weigel, founded the theatre company, Berliner Ensemble. Some of his most famous plays are The Threepenny Opera, Mother Courage and Her Children, Life of Galileo, The Good Person of Szechwan, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.


Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Germany, he later became stateless and spent much of his life in London in the United Kingdom. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894).


Tings Chak

Tings Chak is an artist, writer, and organiser whose work contributes to popular struggles across the Global South. She is the author and illustrator of Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention (2017) and her current research focuses on the art of national liberation struggles. She leads the Art Department of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, is an editor of Dongsheng News and, lives in Shanghai.


V.I. Lenin

V.I. Lenin (1870-1924) was the preeminent leader of the Russian Revolution, and a Marxist theoretician. His important books include, among many others, What is to be Done, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and The State and Revolution.


Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashadis director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor at LeftWord Books, and chief correspondent for Globetrotter Independent Media Institute. He is the author of forty books, including Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community, Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third
World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. The Darker Nations won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize. He lives in Santiago, Chile.