History

Stonehenge and the Neolithic Counter-revolution by Lionel Sims

Lionel Sims says that Stonehenge can only be understood properly in the context of the defeat of the female sex and the transition from primitive communism to class society.

Temma Kaplan - 'On the socialist origins of International Women's Day'

(in the USA, Europe and during the Russian Revolution)

Peasant Women's Protest during Collectivization by Lynne Viola

Women's riots against collectivization in Stalin's Russia.

The Everyday Lives of Parisian Women and the October Days of 1789 - David Garrioch

'The men are holding back, the men are cowards . . . we will take over'

On 5 October 1789 thousands of Parisian women tramped twelve miles to Versailles to bring the king back to the capital. This event radicalised the French Revolution.

Labor Discipline and the Decline of the Soviet System - Don Filtzer

The issue of labor discipline lay at the very heart of the antagonistic relationship between the Soviet elite and its work force. Soviet industry was plagued with high labor turnover, absenteeism, heavy drinking, and slow work. Don Filtzer explains how this encouraged the system's eventual collapse.

Parisian Metallurgists in May 1968 - Michael Seidman

Michael Seidman shows how workers acted differently from the way they are usually portrayed in leftist and anarchist accounts of May 1968.

'Down with infernal work rhythms' - May 1968 poster

Workers' Resistance and the Demise of East Germany by Jeffrey Kopstein

Jeffrey Kopstein argues how the everyday resistance of East German workers could wear down a despotic state over four decades until it was eventually overthrown.
.

I. Intellectuals and Workers

Tom Barclay (1852 - 1933)

A short biography of Tom Barclay, a founder of the Socialist League in Leicester

Thomas Patrick Barclay was born to an impoverished Irish immigrant family in Leicester in 1852. Tom’s parents from Limerick and Mayo had been forced to quit Ireland because of the potato famine. They lived in a two-room hovel. He never went to school and was taught to read by his mother. His father scraped a living as a rag and bone man.