The German-Dutch communist left - Philippe Bourrinet

Below, Mattick Jr's review of this book, the concluding sentence of which is: 'It suggests to this reader nothing less than the work of a Catholic theologian, who has for some reason fallen in love with the Albigensians, though he is ultimately forced to condemn their doctrine as heretical.'

https://bit.ly/32EGS24

[HistoricalMaterialistBookSeries,125.]Brill,Leiden2017lxii, 639 pp. ill. €210.00; $252.00.

I'm no stranger to lefty books costing an arm and a leg but bloody hell

FWIW a version of this book was published by the ICC. As far as I can work out without the authors consent. Not sure how to two versions compare.

I think these books are first published by Brill for a steep price but are then republished for a consumer price by Historical Materialism.

Historical materialism is the series which is owned by Brill the publisher and its board are on contract with it, I've seen these books sold for cheaper from other retailers, but new still seem to be very steep at around £60-80 except for Haymarket books which is selling many a bit below that, but the prices seem to fluctuate a lot between issues and even with a discount would still look at a very expensive collective price tag for anything approaching a complete set.

Anything cheaper appears to be second hand resellers of individual copies.

Yeah sorry, I meant Haymarket Books, though there is like a year or so between them republishing.

Please don't give your money to trotskyists

ISO has disbanded so I don't know how much you can call haymakret books trotskyists

Well, since the ISO disbanded over how it handled sexual assault by a leader and not a mass rejection of trotskyism I don't see what relevance that has. I haven't seen much of political realignment from the group that runs the bookseller.

Going to commit a moscow trials on a book publishing firm

Darren:

Bourrinet was an ICC member, and that is how the ICC version, which is the original version, came about. Here, written in their inimitable style, is the ICC side of the story of the dispute between Bourrinet over the ICC's right to continue its distribution:

https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201502/12079/doctor-bourrinet-fraud-and-self-proclaimed-historian

After leaving the ICC, Bourrinet off-and-on either in French or in English or both, made his constantly revised two books (one about the Dutch; one about the Italians) freely available on his site http://www.left-dis.nl . Presumably he doesn't anymore now that he has got it commercially published. (Copyright.)

I read the internet 'middle versions', but not the ICC version or the Brill version, so, aside from no doubt added information, photos etc, I can't say what the political differences might be at the two ends. (No doubt ICC member Alf would be pleased to tell us us?)

But more important (and having nothing to do with Bourrinet vs the ICC) is the inaccuracy in the book concerning Mattick and company's attitude on Spain:
https://increasinglyadequate.com/commleft_german.html . ( Thanks to klas batalo for posting this link already on May 17. )

Alf? Alf? Are you there?

I'm here, now and again..
To be honest I haven't done a comparative read through of both texts. I assume Bourrinet's new version is much less critical of the council communists/councilism than the original. But the real gulf is between different conceptions of political behaviour. As the article linked above shows, Bourrinet crossed a line by threatening legal action against the ICC even though the entire original text was written when he was a member and he agreed to its publication at that time, and even though we later agreed to insert a note ascribing authorship of the text to him.

Reddebrek

Well, since the ISO disbanded over how it handled sexual assault by a leader and not a mass rejection of trotskyism I don't see what relevance that has. I haven't seen much of political realignment from the group that runs the bookseller.

Well speak of the devil

https://twitter.com/isoleakss/status/1323283378100183045?s=20