worksinprogress.co “Time and again,” economic reformers in the former communist bloc tried to “introduce rationality” into economic planning with the aim of producing abundance, says Michael Hill. The

The communist conquest of China in 1949 was one of the most consequential – and surprising – geopolitical events of the 20th century. It shifted the world’s most populous country from the western to t

Memories of Maoism It’s 35 years since Jung ...

We need to talk about Little Red Books and big red caps, about bombarding headquarters and attacking the deep state, and what happens when leaders of an authoritarian bent decide they know what’s best

John P. Murphy New Deal Art 336pp. Thames and Hudson. Paperback, £19.99. Seymour Fogel’s “Wealth of the Nation”, installed in 1942 in a federal building in Washington DC, depicts a group of workers en

Frank Dikötter Red Dawn over China How Communism conquered a quarter of humanity 384pp. Bloomsbury. £25. “A revolution”, Mao Zedong famously wrote, “is not a dinner party … it is an act of violence by