Communism comes from the future but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history
from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory from Marx
to C. L. R. James The Future of Revolution illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class
society in the twenty-first century. When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed
that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it
for its own purposes " he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism
and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our
communist horizon which would-be revolutionaries then as now must negotiate one way or
another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of
Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism Jasper Bernes synthesizes from
a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent
mission of the world proletariat.
