“The industrial union is the embryo of the socialist commonwealth”: The International Socialist League and revolutionary syndicalism in South Africa, 1915-1920

A paper by Lucien van der Walt that examines and dispels many of the myths surrounding the International Socialist League, the main revolutionary socialist organization active in South Africa in the latter half of the 1910s.

van der Walt - International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915-1920.pdf (168.56 KB)

Bakunin’s heirs in South Africa: race and revolutionary syndicalism from the IWW to the International Socialist League, 1910–21

Lucien van der Walt disputes the prevailing discourse of the Communist school,…

Sketch of T.W. Thibedi.

Dunbar, Thibedi, Sigamoney: Three figures in the IWW in South Africa

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the Wobblies) was the main influence on the radical left…

Police disperse a strike meeting, Market Square, Johannesburg, 1913.

'Sifuna zonke!’: revolutionary syndicalism, the Industrial Workers of Africa and the fight against racial capitalism, 1915-1921 - Bikisha Media Collective

Pamphlet from the Bikisha Media Collective on the development of revolutionary…

Crossing the Color Lines, Crossing the Continents: Comparing the Racial Politics of the IWW in South Africa and the United States, 1905–1925

In two of the planet’s most highly racialized countries, South Africa and the…