About Red Mole Guides & Books

Red Mole Guides

Each Red Mole Guide is a primary-source reader with an argued introduction. The introduction takes a position on a question where the standard left account falls short; the documents that follow, reprints or translations assembled as a casebook, are the evidence the reader can weigh against it.

Already available

1. Crisis and Continuity in Revolutionary Industrial Strategy
   Red Mole Guides, #1 — Red Mole — Ebook price: $5.00

2. Mapping the International Left on Venezuela: Campism vs. Critical Solidarity, 2018–2026
   Red Mole Guides, #2 — Red Mole — Ebook price: $4.00

3. The Dialectics of Rebellion in Iran
   Red Mole Guides, #3 — Red Mole — Ebook price: $3.00

4. Ideology & Society: On Some Theoretical Premises of the Transitional Programme
   Red Mole Guides, #4 — Ernest Mandel — Ebook price: $1.00

5. Relations Between the Communist Vanguard and the Mass Movement
   Red Mole Guides, #5 — Livio Maitan and Red Mole — Ebook price: $1.00

6. Rent, Modes of Production, and the Debate on Technofeudalism
   Red Mole Guides, #6 — RedMole.org — Ebook price: $1.00

7. The Case for Workers’ Control: Nottingham & Hull, 1966–1967
   Red Mole Guides, #7 — Ken Coates et al. — Ebook price: $1.00

8. Imperialism, Stalinism and Permanent Revolution
   Red Mole Guides, #8 — Red Mole and John Robens — Ebook price: $1.00

Available now

Coming later in 2026

These guides are available now, in ePub format. Guides will be provided to paid subscribers as perks during the indicated months [In square brackets].

• 9. The Reaction and the Wave: Young Women, Young Men and the Far Right in Europe, 2019–2026 [September 2026]

• 10. The Break-up of Britain, Revisited. England, Scotland and Wales in the Fourth International's press, 1968–2026. [October 2026]

• 11. Democracy or Bonapartism? The Fourth International’s argument over post-war Europe, 1941–1946 [November 2026]

• 12. One System, Unevenly Shared: Exploitation, oppression, and the distribution of surplus value. [December 2026]

  

  

  Forthcoming September -December 2026

  Coming soon

  These guides are available now, in ePub format, to paid subscribers upon request.

• 13. The Instrument and the Objective: The Fourth International against the Morenoite Indictment, 1977–2026 [January 2027]

• 14. The Republic of Ireland: D. R. O’Connor Lysaght [February 2027]

• 15. Foundation, Banner, Bridge: The programme, the manifesto and the programme of action in the Marxist tradition [March 2027]

• 16. The Fourth Forecast: Automation, class and the mode of production

  in the Fourth International’s press, 1936-2026 [April 2027]

• 17. The Meaning of Gramsci and Trotsky Today: Hegemony, permanent revolution, and the argument the British left had in 1977. [April 2027]

• 18. The Guarantee and the Vote: Militant International Review against the Fourth International press, 1968–1995 [May 2027]

• 19. Fit for Work: Disability, disablism and the rate of exploitation, 1918–2026 [June 2027]

  

  

  Free to paid subscribers in 2027

What to expect from Red Mole Guides

Most draw on Marxist works otherwise unavailable in English, including documents from congresses and plenums of the Fourth International, internal bulletins from affiliated sections, and writings by its principal theorists. A few are research guides built from AI-assisted background material rather than primary texts. All are too long for Substack. They are available at:
https://books2read.com/ap/RWOvYN/Red-Mole-Substack

Red Mole’s books

Red Mole also publishes books, which are thematic collections of previously published articles. They include:

• Organisational strategy for the left: Revolutionary Strategy in an Age of Organizational Crisis

• A defence of Ernest Mandel’s ideas against the AWL: Open Marxism vs. Sectarian Dogma: Defending Ernest Mandel Against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty

• A collection about the conservative left ideology, and its impact on British left groups including Your Party, rs21 and the SWP: The Conservative Left: Campism, Organisational Failure, and the Politics of Liberation

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Start with the archive

Every Guide grows out of arguments worked out first on Red Mole. If you want to read the case before you buy the casebook, start here. Each Guide below is followed by the posts closest to it.

#1. Crisis and Continuity in Revolutionary Industrial Strategy

• The Socialist Workers’ Party Without Workers

• The Triangular Struggle: Can Your Party’s New CEC Crack the Union Question?

• Why Rank-and-File Militants Keep Losing to Union Bureaucrats: Unite’s Palestine Fight Shows the Pattern

#2. Mapping the International Left on Venezuela

• Venezuela: Between Imperialism and Bonapartism

• Order Reigns in Venezuela: Regime capture, not regime change

• Whose State? Whose Gain? Venezuela and the Test of Revolutionary Nationalisation

#3. The Dialectics of Rebellion in Iran

• How the British Left Dismisses Iran’s Uprising: The Campist Playbook

• Solidarity with the Iranian Protesters: Statement of the Indian section of the Fourth International

• The Workers’ Bomb: A Dangerous Illusion in the Fight Against Imperialism

#4. Ideology & Society

• Available in English, at last: Ernest Mandel’s 1977 polemic with Nahuel Moreno

• Beyond the China Question - Revolutionary Strategy vs. Sectarian ‘Purity’

• Whoever Wins on Thursday, the Left Is Losing the Terrain That Matters

#5. Relations Between the Communist Vanguard and the Mass Movement

• After Mamdani’s First Months: The Maitan Question Comes Due

• The SWP’s 50% Problem Has a Name: Livio Maitan Called It the Method Gap

• When Peter Taaffe and Ted Knight debated Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitain

#6. Rent, Modes of Production, and the Debate on Technofeudalism

• ‘International Socialism’ Journal’s Mistaken Illusion of Chaos: Trump’s Tariffs as Symptoms of Systemic Decay

#8. Imperialism, Stalinism and Permanent Revolution

• Fighting Campism Requires Understanding National Pathways: Lessons from Germany, Portugal, the Spanish State and US

• Why Study the Fourth International?

• Defending Ernest Mandel’s Legacy: A Call for Reviewers and Co-Authors to Reply to the AWL’s Distortions

#9. The Reaction and the Wave

• How the ‘Manosphere’ Is Winning Young Men: Why Liberal Individualism Fails to Counter the Extreme Right

• Mapping the Conservative Left: Why Some Socialists Sound Like the Right

• Support the Future of the Movement: Send Young Comrades to the Fourth International Youth Camp!

#10. The Break-up of Britain, Revisited

• The Interregnum Begins in Britain

• What the Connections Convention Needs to Hear

• Support the Future of the Movement: Send Young Comrades to the Fourth International Youth Camp!

#11. Democracy or Bonapartism?

• Venezuela: Between Imperialism and Bonapartism

• The Campist Drift and the Theory We Need

• How Ted Grant Mistook Bureaucratic Capitalism for Socialist Transition, and Disoriented a Generation of Trotskyists

#12. One System, Unevenly Shared

• Ernest Mandel on the Marxist notion of productive and unproductive labour

• Whoever Wins on Thursday, the Left Is Losing the Terrain That Matters

• Why Reproductive Rights Matter!

#13. The Instrument and the Objective

• The Fourth International: From activist origins, through splits, to theoretical growth

• Available in English, at last: Ernest Mandel’s 1977 polemic with Nahuel Moreno

#14. The Republic of Ireland

• The Socialist Stance: No to Pacifism, No to Blind Neutrality

• The Sinn Féin Dilemma

• Why the CWI failed to back the Irish left’s landslide victory

#15. Foundation, Banner, Bridge

• Rodolphe Prager: The Founding of the Fourth International

• Find Them, Link Them, Arm Them: Transitional demands, community terrain, and what Cymru can teach the left

• The Jugular Named, the Jugular Avoided: Greens Organise After the Wave

#16. The Fourth Forecast

• Ernest Mandel: The Global Role and Economic Roots of American Imperialism

• The RCP Interprets AI: The Point, However, Is to Change It

#17. The Meaning of Gramsci and Trotsky Today

• Class Organization: Pure Anti-Capitalism at its Limit

• Abandoning the Masses: How Left Voice’s Opposition to ‘Useful Parties’ Repeats Classical Ultra-Left Errors

• On The German Ideology

#18. The Guarantee and the Vote

• Mamdani, Grant & the Illusion of Immediacy: Revolutionary Voluntarism & Organizational Failure in the ‘Revolutionary Communist International’

• The Clean Banner: 20 years after Ted Grant’s death, the RCP exemplifies Trotsky and Grant’s warnings about propaganda societies

• When Peter Taaffe and Ted Knight debated Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitain

Two Guides on this list have no companion post yet: #7, The Case for Workers’ Control, and #19, Fit for Work. Workers’ control and disability are the two subjects the archive has not yet argued out in public. That is a gap, and it is where the next writing goes.