From “possibly the most engaged mainstream journalist of our age” (New Statesman) comes a new global history of communism—ranging from Renaissance England to 21st century China and tracing communism’s transformation from a political idea, into a mass movement, and ultimately into totalitarian regimes that covered half the earth.

Twenty years ago, we thought we’d seen the last of communism. Today, the world’s most successful economy labels itself communist. If China becomes the dominant country on the planet, it will get to rewrite the definition of communism—and the history books.

Capitalism, meanwhile, is in trouble, together with the rules-based global order that was once its strongest selling point. Millions of people in the Global South see China’s offer of an authoritarian, state-led development model as a viable alternative.

In Reds, Paul Mason sets out to arm a new generation, who never experienced the death throes of the Soviet system, with an understanding of where it came from and why it failed. He shows how communism mutated from a Utopian critique of early capitalism into a revolutionary plan of action, migrating from the advanced economies to the periphery to inflict existential defeats on the autocracies of Russia, China, and their satellites.

He confronts the horrors of mass incarceration and devastating famine, alongside the heroism of workers and peasant activists for whom all other alternatives to fascism had failed.

Reds explains why, and what we can do to guard against a repeat of the Gulag and the Purges. With capitalism failing and the far right on the advance, Reds warns a new generation against the dangers of authoritarian leftist politics which substitutes action for ethics.