World War I
The opportunism of the Communist Party of the Netherlands - Hermann Gorter
Hermann Gorter recounts his struggle against the Dutch Communist Party, following its abandonment of internationalist principles and adoption of reformist policies.
The communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only.... In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality....
Marut, Ret: The Early B. Traven - James Goldwasser
A 1990s article surveying the then recently-acquired Ret Marut archive, now residing with the University of California. The documents confirm certain known facts of Marut's life and times, prior to his (now generally accepted) transformation into the reclusive anarchist novelist B. Traven. The collection also provides some further fuel for speculation on the life and identity of the enigma that remains B. Traven.
Marut and his partner Irene Mermet published the anti-war anarchist magazine "Der Zeigelbrenner" (The Brickmaker or Brickburner) throughout the 1st World war - and continued post-war, after Marut became a fugitive wanted for his participation in the Bavarian Council Republic.
The Communist Left in Germany 1918-1921 - Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier
A analysis of the revolutionary movements in Europe at the end of World War I, their contradictions and limitations.
First published in France in 1976, as 'La Gauche Communiste en Allemagne (1918-1921)'. English translation by M. DeSocio published in 2006. Taken from the Collective Action Notes website.
Churchill, the Cenotaph and May Day 2000 - Practical History
This response to the graffitiing of official monuments in London on May Day 2000 looks at the origins of war memorials in the social conflicts at the end of World War One and at the myth of the Second World War as an anti-fascist crusade. See also A good day out in London? for further reflections on May Day 2000.
"The destruction of representational images is the destruction of a hierarchy that is no longer recognised... The solidity of the images was the expression of their permanence. They seem to have existed for ever, upright and immovable; never before had it been possible to approach them with hostile intent.
Speech in the Reichstag - Otto Rühle
Otto Rühle's speech to the Reichstag, rejecting the proposed shift to parliamentary democracy and calling for social revolution.
25th October 1918
A people's history of World War I - Howard Zinn
Historian Howard Zinn's account of US involvement in World War I, the reasons behind it, and working class resistance to it.
Mollie Steimer, 1897-1980 - Paul Avrich
The life of Mollie Steimer, a Jewish anarchist in New York who opposed the First World War, and later lived in exile in France and Mexico.
Mollie Steimer: An Anarchist Life
By Paul Avrich
Memoirs of the I.W.W. [Australia] - Bill Beattie
Recollections of struggles in the years around the First World War - by a former Australian Wobbly.
From; Labour History no. 13, (Journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), Nov. 1967.
MEMOIRS OF THE I.W.W. [Australia]
Bill Beattie
The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919: The Forgotten Revolution - Alan Woods
Trotskyist Alan Woods on the Hungarian uprising of 1919. Wood's account suffers from the usual analytical errors by Trotskyists but is included for reference to these little-known events.
November 12, 1979
Glasgow and the Wobblies
The Industrial Workers of the World's influence in Glasgow is not so well known, but it had considerable influence on the shop stewards movement in the period around the First World War:
"It was perhaps a natural development that one of the strongest branches of the Advocates of Industrial Unionism should be in the Singer Sewing Machine Works at Kilbowie, Clydebank, which employed some 12,000 workers. Singers was primarily an American firm, but it had established itself in Europe, and exerted an effective monopoly in the manufacture of sewing machines.
