1920s

Lenin's famous manual of reformism, "Left Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder(1920), which directed Communists to work within parliament and existing labour unions, was partly a response to British anti-parliamentarism.

From; A Long Way From Home, Claude McKay; Pluto Press, London 1985. Originally published in 1937.

The Workers Opposition began to form in 1919, as a result of the policies of War Communism, which set a precedence for the domination of the Communist Party over local party branches and trade unions. During the civil war, the Workers Opposition began agitating against the lack of democracy in the Communist Party as a result of the centralising actions of the party’s bureaucracy.

This version is taken from: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mhuey/HOME.html Copyright © 1992, 1998 by Scott Zenkatsu Parker.
The author permits the unlimited duplication, transmission, and distribution of this text with the proper citations for academic, educational, and non-commercial use only.

I

“You are workers, labourers, continue the strike for final victory, for a new society where there will be neither poor nor rich, a society without weapons or uniforms, where reigns joy, respect for the human being, where nobody will have to kneel because there will be neither those in cassocks nor superiors”
- Antonio Soto at the last general assembly of the Patagonian strikers.

"The Mexican revolutionary syndicalists: their form of organization - anarchosyndicalist; their leadership - artisan and professional; their numbers - 150 000; their goals - the seizure and operation of the means of production and the onset of worldwide proletarian revolution; their means - revolutionary war against capitalism by workers' militias and the general strike."

Ernesto Bonomini was born on 18 March 1903 at Pozzolengo in Italy. From a very young age he became interested in socialist ideas and became an active antimilitarist. He trained as a tailor, in which trade he was expert.

With the fascist repression against the workers’, socialist and anarchist movements, Ernesto was forced to emigrate to France in 1922.

The strikers confronted the shared hostility of governments, employers and union leaders alike. The text also deals with how the racism prevalent in the labour movement affected the conduct and outcome of the strike.

"THIS IS A STRIKE that has vanished from history. In August 1925, the seamen of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand walked off their ships in protest against a ten per cent wage cut. It was one of the few genuinely international strikes, directed against a powerful international cartel. One would have expected it to be widely debated. Yet, newspaper coverage apart, history has largely been silent.

He describes the conflicts and tensions between the various political factions; between communist revolutionaries and social democracy, between German revolutionaries and Russian Bolshevism. He discusses reasons for the failure of the revolution in the context of the wider international situation and the development trends of capitalism.

“Our laws are not generally known; they are kept secret by the small group of nobles who rule us … for the laws were made to the advantage of the nobles from the very beginning, they themselves stand above the laws” (Kafka, The Problem of Our Laws)

For the fifty years prior to 1927, the struggles in the Colorado mines had been a flashpoint for labour relations throughout the mining industry and had been marked by many strikes, aborted uprisings and confrontations between miners and mine owners, and the state militia.

“But we do not fear you or your hangmen. Soviet 'justice' may kill us, but you will never kill our ideals. We shall die as anarchists and not as bandits.”
- The anarchist Machanovskii at his trial before the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal, 13th and 22nd December 1922

"Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards?"
- Presiding Judge Webster Thayer

After World War II, the police archives were taken by the Americans and when these were opened to scholars they found that German anarchist resistance through the ages had been extremely large. There had been an extremely active and influential working class anarchist movement in a line from that under Bismarck to that under Hitler.

Mahatma Gandhi is often cited by pacifists as the shining example of how non-violent civil disobedience works successfully. Unfortunately, these paeans of praise leave out a close study of Gandhi’s role in the Indian struggle for ‘independence’, and just as importantly, who were his class allies in that struggle.

In the history of the working class some things are certain, and one of these things is the suicidally ‘moderate’ attitude of social democrats. No matter the gravity of the threat, European Centre-Left leaders have always had one gear - reverse. In 1920s and 30s Austria they developed this tendency into an art form under Social Democrat Party (SPO) chairman Otto Bauer and his executive.

Glasgow Green lies in the centre of the City, it is the oldest of Glasgow’s parks. Its origin lies in the Common Lands of the Burgh. Since the 1100s the area of the Green has been used for all manner of purposes from peat cutting, pasturing, slaughtering cattle, executions, walking, talking and playing.

A Siberian Makhnovschina?

Academics like Paul Avrich, along with militants like Voline, Gorelik and Archinov, have given us only a sketch of anarchism in Siberia. The important role of anarchism there has remained obscured.