Leslie Holmes

Holmes takes us very briefly through the basic theory of (small-c) communism as set out by Marx and others, and then in more detail through the history of rule by Communist parties in Europe and Asia in the 20th century. He looks at their successes and failures in economic, social and geopolitical terms, mostly through high-level data indicators, and then looks at the collapse of Communist rule in most of these countries around 1989-91 and the possible reasons historians have postulated for show more that. The book was written in 2009, when neo-liberal capitalism was not looking especially credible as an economic system either, so he allows himself to speculate that there could be scope for some kind of comeback of socialism in the long term, but he is not optimistic about the future of Chinese-style authoritarian capitalism.

For me, this feels like one of the less satisfying VSIs I’ve read so far — it told me a lot of things about European (and Chinese) history that I already knew, without really adding very much in the way of privileged insights. Of course, there are already VSIs on Marx, Socialism, Modern China and The Soviet Union (at least), so Holmes obviously needed to concentrate on the general features of Communism as a political reality rather than going into Marxist theory, but even so I felt he could have gone a bit deeper without breaking his page-limit. show less

I have read many books in the short introduction series and I think this one is the very best example of the idea. It is well written, academic but not effete. It did a good job covering a complex topic in such a small package. I learned many new things and it help solidify my previous understanding of the topic. It was well organized and easy to pick up and put down.

if you have any interest in politics, this book must be on your list of books. I classify this book as essential reading. Leslie Holmes has done a stellar job in helping to clarify many misconceptions on this topic.

As I read the book, I was constantly surprised by what I read. American politicians have not been kind to communism by labeling the system as one run by "commies". As there are shades to democracy, there are layers of complexity to comminism.

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Short overview of corruption, the difficulty of defining and measuring it, why it exists, and what might be done about it. A little dry and a bit pedantic, it nevertheless gives a good high-level look at this problem and gives a list for further reading.