Paul Mason is an absolute clown and well known in British left and communist circles. I believe he’s a Trot turned social democrat who is now an ardent anti-communist. He tried to run in a load of different seats for the labour party and failed every time.

Not worth using as toilet paper is my assumption based on his credibility.

“Mason is a worthy successor to Marx” - Guardian

He put that on the cover of his own book.

Delusions of grandeur aside, superficially this appeals to the venn diagram overlap of those who see both Marx not in a fully negative light and also see the Guardian as authorative.

Given that is extremely niche I guess the real purpose is to gain success amongst liberals who can go “see even marxists consider stalin bad” ie something for liberals to use to retort against marxists defending Stalin. (We’ll ignore that tankies are some of the most well read folks, so yeah good luck with that)

I’m guessing Applebaum has lost her appeal amongst those considering themselves pro-palestine but still stalin=bad.

Edited to add:

(1) read Losurdo’s books on both Stalin and Liberalism if you haven’t already

(2) just read a blurb for the book saying “Paul Mason’s startling new book will argue that the desire to live without hierarchy and property is an impulse deeply rooted in our human nature”. This is the metaphsyical perspective of Bakunin that has been ripped to shreds all over the place but you could start here https://redsails.org/the-philosophical-roots-of-the-marx-bakunin-conflict/ and here https://redsails.org/marx-on-bakunin/

(3) it’s clearly an anti-china and anti-russia book which dovetails nicely with imperialism. If he gains traction expect collaboration with the Mamdanis of the world.