Blackshirts and Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology. These terms are often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege.

In "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" (1883), Friedrich Engels explains that Marxism is scientific socialism. Engels claims that whereas utopian socialism is idealist, reflects the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, scientific socialism derives itself from reality. It focuses on the materialist conception of history, which is based on an analysis over history, and concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism.

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (1902) is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Lenin contends that the working class will not become politically aware simply by struggling with employers over wages, hours and working conditions. He maintains that Marxists should form a political party of committed revolutionaries to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924) is better known by his alias Lenin. A Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist, he served as the head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia became the Soviet Union, a one-party state governed by the Communist Party.

‘It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings’. The Communist Manifesto is, perhaps surprisingly, a most engaging and accessible work, containing even the odd shaft of humour in this translation by Samuel Moore for the 1888 English edition.

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a future president, authored the most explosive document in the history of America: "The Declaration of Independence", formally severing the link between America and the British state. Michael Hardt, co-author of the groundbreaking "Empire and Multitude", examines this and other texts by Jefferson, arguing that his powerful concept of democracy is, seen through contemporary eyes, a biting critique of the current American administration's tyranny.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State is an 1884 treatise by Friedrich Engels. The work is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalism. He called it a patriarchal system in which women were servants and claimed that communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom. The role of the state would then become superfluous.

Reform or Revolution, also titled Social Reform or Revolution?, is an 1899 pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg, in which she argues that trade unions, reformist political parties, and the expansion of social democracy could not create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. She contends from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism is economically unsustainable and will eventually collapse and that a revolution is necessary to transform capitalism into socialism.

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.

Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. It is a book that could easily have been a song of despair - a lament of lost causes; it is, after all, a roll call of butchers and assassins; of plots against people's movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World by the country where liberty is a statue.

In The Conquest of Bread, first published in 1892, Kropotkin set out his ideas on how his heightened idealism could work. It was all the more extraordinary because he was born into an aristocratic land-owning family - with some 1,200 male serfs - though from his student years his liberal views and his fixation on the need for social change saw him take a revolutionary path. This led rapidly to decades of exile. It is a passionate, even a fierce polemic for dramatic social change.

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility - the one percent of the population who controlled 99 percent of the empire's wealth. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti recounts this period, spanning the years 100 to 33 BC, from the perspective of the Roman people. In doing so, he presents a provocative, trenchantly researched narrative of popular resistance against a powerful elite.

On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.

From one of the most prominent voices on the American left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism in the US today. Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to health care, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities.

On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.

This classic, definitive account of totalitarianism traces the emergence of modern racism as an "ideological weapon for imperialism", beginning with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe in the 19th century and continuing through the New Imperialism period from 1884 to World War I.

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a future president, authored the most explosive document in the history of America: "The Declaration of Independence", formally severing the link between America and the British state. Michael Hardt, co-author of the groundbreaking "Empire and Multitude", examines this and other texts by Jefferson, arguing that his powerful concept of democracy is, seen through contemporary eyes, a biting critique of the current American administration's tyranny.

The Constitution of Liberty is considered Hayek's classic statement on the ideals of freedom and liberty, ideals that he believes have guided - and must continue to guide - the growth of Western civilization. Here, Hayek defends the principles of a free society, casting a skeptical eye on the growth of the welfare state and examining the challenges to freedom posed by an ever-expanding government.

Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology - which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind - threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful listening of this book.

Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the 18th-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the 20th century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future.

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term's meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word's polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles.

From one of the leading critics of leftist orientations comes a study of the thinkers who have most influenced the attitudes of the New Left. Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. Scruton delivers a critique of modern left-wing thinking.

From one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century comes a seminal study and critique of propaganda. Taking not only a psychological approach but a sociological approach as well, Jacques Ellul outlines the taxonomy for propaganda and, ultimately, its destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.

The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history

Most people have no idea what the United States represents. Ayn Rand did grasp America's political essence down to its roots. Seventy-two years in the making, this book illuminates why the United States is "the only moral country in the history of the world" and features never-before-published discussions with Ayn Rand, plus work from Leonard Peikoff and the New Intellectuals.

"Anarchy" (1907) is a political classic written by famous anarchist Errico Malatesta. "Anarchy is a word which comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, without government: the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a party (which party has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare)."

From the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles comes an exploration of a promising theory that when put to practice wreaked havoc on the world. An expert on communism, Richard Pipes follows the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the Cold War, and finally, to its deterioration and collapse.

A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).