Revolutions Thwarted: Poland, South Africa, Iran, Brazil and the Legacies of Communism

by John Rose, Alex Callinicos (Editor), George Paizis (Editor)

Based on a remarkable set of interviews with key participants, John Rose returns to four revolutionary crises in the late twentieth century: Poland 1980-1, Iran 1978-79, the anti-apartheid struggle in 1980s South Africa and the resistance to Brazil’s military regime in the 1980s.

Rose shows how in each case militant workers’ movements were central to these insurgencies. Why then, asks Rose, did the workers’ movement become sidelined by other forces? His answer sets this within the framework of the legacy of Stalinism in the USSR and its subversion of the original vision of communism offered by Marx and Lenin.

"An ambitious, comparative overview that is fresh and thought-provoking", Steve Smith, author of Red Petrograd and Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928

408 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2025

About the author

John Rose was an English socialist and anti-Zionist Jew who taught sociology at Southwark College and London Metropolitan University. After growing up in Harrogate as a Zionist in 1966 he went to the London School of Economics where he met Tony Cliff and was recruited to the International Socialists, later the Socialist Workers Party (UK) in 1967 amid discussions around the Six Day War. He was one of the London Recruits who undertook anti-apartheid work as a student in South Africa under the direction of the ANC. In the late 1970s he was an editor of Socialist Worker for a period.

Rose was a tireless campaigner for Palestinian rights and the author of numerous articles and the book The Myths of Zionism. He attended and spoke at the Cairo Anti-war Conference in the mid-2000s. He completed his PhD on Workers Power and the failure of Communism at King's College London in 2020.

Reviews

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is possibly one of the most remarkable books to come out of the International Socialist tradition in the last 10 years. John Rose, veteran of 1968, and a lifelong revolutionary, never got to see it in print. But it was his last great theoretical contribution, building on a life in the struggle and decades of research. A comparative study of four great "thwarted" revolutions - Brazil, Iran, Poland and South Africa - to try and understand why mass working class movements did not break through into workers' revolution. Its a fantastic read, with a stunning opening chapter that explores the classical Marxist tradition from Marx to Lenin, and reasserts central themes about working class self emancipation. Whatever tradition of socialism you might come from, this is one to engage with.