Portside

When Communist writer Albert Maltz was blacklisted in the McCarthyist era, no commercial publisher in the U. S. would touch his novel A Tale of One January. A new edition slated for US distribution means his 70-year blacklist will finally end.

The German Marxist philosopher's work can help us understand fascism and how to fight it. Ernst Bloch was a critical Marxist thinker, a close supporter (though not a member) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from the 1920s through the 1950s.

An extended ode to the revolutionary German playwright-genius Bertolt Brecht, whose exhaustive new collected poems exalt combating injustice while keeping faith in his fidelity to dissent.

Ludwig Lore's grandson recounts the life of the revolutionary militant and German emigre who began a new life as a newspaper editor and political commentator. A close associate of Leon Trotsky, Lore was a founder of the American Communist Party until his expulsion when he went on to be be a noted critic of both Stalin and Hitler.

This book is an international history of the movement named "Antifa," discussing its roots and constraints. Reviewer Provenzano offers an assessment.