Socialist Classics

Spokesman Books | Socialist Classics

Socialist Classics Series

Our Socialist Classics range includes:
The Levellers by H. N. Brailsford,
A Radical Reader by Christopher Hampton
A History of British Socialism by Max Beer

Plus our most recent additions:
Inside the Left by Fenner Brockway
The Miracle of Fleet Street: The Story of the Daily Herald
by George Lansbury
Tom Mann's Memoirs

All are three introduced by Ken Coates

Below is our full range of titles.

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Inside the Left</span>Inside the Left
By Fenner Brockway

"Fenner Brockway lived a long life and it was certainly packed with colourful action. Here we are reproducing the first volume of his autobiography, which was written on the eve of the Second World War. Never afraid to court controversy, this book celebrated the Socialist movement's opposition to the First World War, and the activities of an anti-war movement which continued after that conflict.

A pupil of Keir Hardie and Bernard Shaw, the young Brockway found his natural home in the Independent Labour Party, which developed his talents as an editor and public agitator. He became acquainted with many of the key personalities of international socialism, and with all the leading figures on the British Left, including H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and the political spokesmen of the growing Labour movement.

This book contains Brockway's detailed account of the efforts of the British Left to find some kind of political unity during the years of the Labour Party's split, when Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Government. The ILP left the Labour Party, and entered into a variety of negotiations with the Communists and others to attempt to crystallise a Socialist opposition."

Ken Coates
Foreword to the new edition

Reviews:
Morning Star, 22nd March 2010 - John Green

Book of the Month: Fenner Brockway's Inside the Left - by John Green in London Progressive Journal


Price: £18.00

352 pages | Indexed
ISBN: 978 085124 7748
Socialist Classic


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Miracle of Fleet Street</span>The Miracle of Fleet Street
The Story of the Daily Herald
By George Lansbury

'The Daily Herald is now dimly remembered as a forerunner to the disgraceful Sun. But it is not widely known that it began life as a daily strike bulletin when the London print unions struck for a forty-eight hour working week. This blossomed out to cover general news items and even sport, and spread its reach from London to some provincial cities. It died after the strike, but had already whetted the appetite of trade union activists for a move to relaunch it. It set off on an eventful life with a capital of £300 as a co-operative Labour daily, staunchly "unofficial" and rebellious, a veritable hell raiser ...

The demise of the Herald, and the rise of the Sun, are sad stories of the afterlife. But this book contains the account of George Lansbury, the Herald's consistent sponsor and campaigner. It was published in 1925 and has a racy account of the early struggles which established the paper ... It should reappear on the bookshelves in its own right because its author was not only a notable contender for all the good causes that distinguished the Labour Movement in the early days of the Twentieth Century, but also a most generous and decent man, well worth remembering in his own words for what were, in large measures, his own deeds.'

Ken Coates from his Foreword to the new edition

Cover 'Fantasy (Labour Leaders at their Devotions)'
by Will Dyson, Daily Herald, 3 December 1913.

A further 19 illustrations by Will Dyson can be found in
The Miracle of Fleet Street.

Reviews
Bill Hagerty - British Journalism Review
Geoffrey Goodman in Tribune
Nathaniel Mehr in the Morning Star


Price: £15.00

168 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 7663
Socialist Classic


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Tom Mann's Memoirs</span>Tom Mann's Memoirs
Introduce by Ken Coates

The first secretary of the Independent Labour Party, the President of the dockers' union, the first General Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union: a mere roster of the positions he held in the Labour Movement, of which this is a tiny fraction, would establish Tom Mann as a Pioneer. But what he did was always more impressive than the positions from which he did it. He was an initiator, a catalyst, a goad to action. Whenever a real crisis came, his stature found its true proportions, and again and again Tom Mann became a pivot for the actions of downtrodden people. Throughout his lifetime as a militant socialist, whatever the stages of evolution of his thought, he invariably displayed a gift for finding himself at the centre of every major struggle of his time. For this reason it is important that these Memoirs, first published in 1923, should again become available.

Price: £15.00

278 pages | Paperback | Indexed
ISBN: 978 0 85124 7588
Socialist Classic


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Studies in Socialism</span>Studies in Socialism
By Jean Jaurès
Introduced by J. E. Mortimer, Leon Trotsky
& R. Ramsay MacDonald


'Studies in Socialism was first published by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1906. It consists of a number of essays, most of them centred on the method of transition from capitalism to socialism in the economically advance countries.

The special point of these essays is that they reaffirm very vigorously the essential features of the analysis of capitalism made by Marx and Engels. They also illustrate the influence on Jaurès of the traditions of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, the essays challenge the interpretation sometimes made by Marxists about the method of transition from capitalism to socialism. The essays affirm strongly the case for democratic endeavour by socialists seeking to change society.'

Jim Mortimer, Foreword to 2007 Edition


Price: £15.00

210 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 7496


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Levellers</span>The Levellers
By H. N. Brailsford
Edited by Christopher Hill

To our generation fell the good fortune of re-discovering the Levellers. To the classical liberal historians they meant rather less than nothing. This neglect is puzzling. At the crisis of the English Revolution it was the Levellers and not from its commanders that the victorious New Model army derived its political ideas and its democratic drive.


Price: £18.00

816 pages | Indexed
ISBN: 978 0 85124 1548
Paperback | Socialist Classics 5


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>A History of British Socialism</span>A History of British Socialism
By Max Beer

Max Beer's History is a classic, not only because it was a brilliant pioneering study, but also because it is still urgently relevant to a new generation of socialists.

Price: £11.99

271 pages
ISBN: 978 0 81524 4082
Paperback | Socialist Classics 6


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Cromwell and Communism</span>Cromwell and Communism
Socialist Democracy and
the Great English Revolution

by Eduard Bernstein

Bernstein lives in the socialist folk-memory as the founder of "revisionism": admirers see him as a great innovator, while detractors still describe him as the "pope" of moderation. In reality, he had a radical mind, which is very well displayed in this still vibrant history of socialist and democratic thought in the English Revolution.

Price: £15.00

287 pages | Indexed
Paperback | Socialist Classics 1
ISBN: 978 0 85124 6307


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>A Radical Reader</span>A Radical Reader
By Christopher Hampton

This major anthology spans 500 years of radical protest from the Peasants’ Revolt to the First World War. Provides an alternative political and social history of England.

This is history as creative defiance, as communal action, involving the intellectual and imaginative witnesses of those among the privileged poets, writers, and thinkers who have had the strength and courage to make themselves passionate spokesmen for the dispossessed.

Read reviews by:
Lorna Sage
Jim Murphy
Denis Smyth
David Boulton


Price: £18.00

600 page | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 7250


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us</span>Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us
By Benjamin Farrington

This long awaited reprint makes available once again
a seminal work by a distinguished classical scholar.

Price: £15.00

320 pages | Indexed
ISBN: 978 0 85124 6341
Paperback


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Pigs Meat</span>Pigs Meat
Selected writings of Thomas Spence,
Radical and Pioneer Land Reformer


In the history of the emergence of British radicalism and socialism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the works of Thomas Spence are an indispensable element.

Price: £9.99

192 pages
ISBN: 978 0 85124 4242
Paperback | Socialist Classics 2


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Pigs Meat</span>Pigs Meat
Selected writings of Thomas Spence,
Radical and Pioneer Land Reformer


Price: £35.00

192 pages | Hardback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 3153


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Attack and Other Papers</span>The Attack and Other Papers
R H Tawney was a major figure in the development of English socialist thought.

Tony Benn contributes an introduction which is itself a thoughtful development of the argument in which Tawney was engaged throughout his long and stimulating life.

Price: £6.95

194 pages | Indexed
ISBN: 978 0 85124 3115
Paperback | Socialist Classics 3


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Head and Hand in Ancient Greece</span>Head and Hand in Ancient Greece
By Benjamin Farrington

The four essays which make up this volume treat four great movements of ancient thought historically.
The first essay discusses the character of the great early period of Greek science.
The second traces the effects on the art and science of medicine of social changes affecting the attitude to manual work and the manual worker.
Stoicism, as a living and developing movement in a changing environment, forms the subject of the third essay.
The fourth shows how the mild religion and bold science of Epicurus threatened to rob superstition of its police function and alarmed the governing class.

Price: £9.99

119 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 6543


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Making of the Labour Movement</span>The Making of the Labour Movement
The Formation of the Transport and General Workers' Union, 1870 - 1922
By Ken Coates and Tony Topham

The Making of the Labour Movement traces the growth of socialist ideas, syndicalism and guild socialism. It charts the influence of internationalism on the struggle of low-paid workers to improve their conditions of life.

Price: £15.00

909 pages
Indexed | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 5652


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Time The Refreshing River</span>Time The Refreshing River
By Joseph Needham

The new edition of this work restores a text of crucial importance to the understanding of the 'thirties: but it does more. It reveals a great mind at work, sculpting new insights which are still entirely relevant to a new generation, struggling for human survival in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Joseph Needham contributed a new introduction.

Price: £9.95

280 page
Indexed | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 3496


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Time The Refreshing River</span>Time The Refreshing River
By Joseph Needham
Price: £20.00

280 pages
Indexed | Hardback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 4297


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Community Work in the 1990's</span>Community Work in the 1990's
Edited by Sidney Jacobs and Keith Popple

Community work needs to recapture its radical traditions. During the 1990's, the very survival of community work demanded considerable flexibility and innovation. Such adaptability is reflected in a diversity of initiatives spread throughout the country, some of which are represented here.


Price: £11.99

180 pages | Paperback
ISBN 13: 978 0 85124 569 0


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Community Under Attack</span>Community Under Attack
The Struggle for Survival in the
Coalfield Communities of Britain

by Ken Coates and Michael Barratt Brown

This book examines some alternatives created by local people and some of the difficulties which they have experienced. It looks at the sources of official funding and finds them inadequate to meet the needs of the coalfield communities. It makes a strong appeal to stop the drift, and bring real support to the project of renewing the coalfield economies.


Price: £6.99

208 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 085124 6130


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>N. I. Bukharin</span>N. I. Bukharin
Selected Writings on the
State and the Transition to Socialism

Edited by Richard B. Day

Price: £20.00

258 pages
ISBN: 978 0 85124 2750
Hardback | Socialist Classics 4


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Marxism and Reform in China</span>Marxism and Reform in China
Su Shaozhi

Su Shaozhi has long argued for political and economic reform in his country. Socialist humanism and democracy are his guiding principles, while, all the time, writing with an insider's understanding of the politics of China. The first three chapters of the present volume were written before Su left China, in 1989, ans are included here for their historical importance. In the remaining chapters, written since Tiananmen, he scrutinizes Chinese political developments, and assesses the prospects for future reform.

Price: £13.95


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