Recommended introductions

• An Anarchist FAQ - Absolutely massive archive of frequently asked questions, with clear and highly detailed responses drawing on the theory and practice of the anarchist tradition.
• What is anarchism? - Alexander Berkman - Absolutely indispensable classic introduction to anarchism.
• Introduction to anarchist communism - Anarchist Federation - Clearly written pamphlet from the Anarchist Federation (UK) explaining their tradition of anarchist-communism.
• Anarchist communism - an introduction - libcom.org's short introduction to anarchist-communism.
• Anarcho-syndicalism - an introduction - libcom.org's short introduction to anarchist-syndicalism.

Other recommended texts

• Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organisation - Excellent history of 19th and 20th century European anarchist movements and how anarchists built revolutionary organisations and movements.
• Black Anarchism: a reader - Pamphlet compiling the writings of black anarchists from the USA, Africa and Latin America, highlighting the contribution of black people to the international anarchist movement.
• Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century - Vadim Damier - The best one-stop overview of anarcho-syndicalism currently available in English, covering the well-known and not-so-well-known organisations and ideas from the anarcho-syndicalist tradition.
• Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader - Anthology of texts by anarchist women and women’s organisations on the connections between anarchism, feminism and the fight against sexism both in society and the movement.
• African Anarchism: The History of a Movement - Sam Mbah and I. E. Igariwey - Classic text covering libertarian aspects in traditional African societies, African communalism, the development of ‘African socialism’ and its failure, and a possible means of resolving Africa’s ongoing crises.
• Huerta Grande - Uruguayan Anarchist Federation - Seminal text of South American Especifismo, written in 1972 as an internal discussion document right before the brutal military coup was installed in 1973.
• Anarchy in Action - Colin Ward - A look at how people organise themselves in human societies, and how this demonstrates the viability of anarchist ideas.

Anarchist groups and organisations

• Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (Argentine Regional Workers' Federation - FORA) - Argentine anarcho-syndicalist union founded in 1901 which played a leading role in the working-class movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
• Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour - CNT) - Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union, which was a leading force in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution when it had almost two million members.
• The Makhnovists - Officially the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine, the Makhnovists, named after anarchist Nestor Makhno, were an anarchist peasant army which fought both White reaction and Red terror during the Russian Revolution from 1917-1921.
• International Workers Association (IWA) - International confederation of anarcho-syndicalist unions, founded in 1922, which at its height had multiple sections with memberships in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.
• Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation - FAI) - Class struggle anarchist organisation active in Spain and Portugal and set up to maintain the CNT’s revolutionary anarchist principles.
• Dielo Trouda (Workers’ Cause) - Group of anarchist-communist exiles from the Russian revolution formed in Paris who founded the basis of the Platformist strain of anarchism, including Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett, Peter Arshinov and Grigori Maximov.
• Mujeres Libres (Free Women) - Spanish anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation set up within the CNT in the 1930s to fight the “triple enslavement of women, to ignorance, to capital, and to men”.
• Friends of Durruti - Spanish anarchist group named after the legendary anarcho-syndicalist, Buenaventura Durruti, and set up in opposition to the CNT’s collaboration with the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War.
• Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (Uruguayan Anarchist Federation - FAU) - Anarchist-communist group and one of the strongest anarchist movements in Latin America. Went through a period of clandestine armed struggle during the country’s 1973-85 dictatorship and was the first organisation to promote especifismo.

Anarchist thinkers

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

French mutualist philosopher and first person to call themselves an ‘anarchist’.

• Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph - biography by K. Stephen Vincent.
• Essential Proudhon - A compilation of Proudhon's works, including the complete 'Philosophy of Poverty' and 'What is Property?'.
• What is Property? - Influential work on the concept of property in which Proudhon declared "property is theft!".
• The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century - Written in the aftermath of the 1848 French Revolution, Proudhon sets forth a libertarian alternative to the Jacobinism which dominated the republican and revolutionary movements in France.
• The Principle of Federation - Text outlining how a decentralised federation would provide the best way of organising society so as to ensure the fullest liberty for all those living in it.

Mikhail Bakunin

Russian revolutionary, considered the original theorist of collectivist anarchism.

• Mikhail Bakunin, 1814-1876 - biography.
• Basic Bakunin - Anarchist Federation - Pamphlet outlining the key features of Bakunin's ideas.
• Marxism, freedom and the state - Collection writings touching on his controversy with Marx over the nature of the state and its role in the liberation of the international working class.
• God and State - Classic and highly influential atheist text setting out the anarchist critique of religion as bound up in legitimising the state.
• The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State - A critique of the state and analysis of the events surrounding the 1871 Paris Commune.
• A Critique of the German Social Democratic Program - An early and powerful critique of the statist, reformist, class-collaborationist and counter-revolutionary tendencies of emerging social democracy.

Louise Michel

Legendary French anarchist who held a leading role in the Paris Commune and played an essential role in building the anarchist movement across Europe at the end of the 19th century.

• Louise Michel, 1830-1905 - biography.
• Memories of the Commune
• Anarcho-feminism and Louise Michel - Marian Leighton on the beliefs and eventful life of the revolutionary Louise Michel.

Peter Kropotkin

Russian revolutionary (as well as scientist, zoologist, geographer and evolutionary theorist!) who was the first to advocate a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers - anarchist-communism.

• The Conquest of Bread - Classic work explaining the defects of feudal and capitalist economic systems and how they can be replaced by a decentralised economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation.
• Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution - Kropotkin's response to Social Darwinism in which he explains the phenomenon of co-operation in evolution.
• Fields, Factories and Workshops - Hugely influential work outlining how a society based on mutual aid and voluntary association could work.
• Memoirs of a Revolutionist - Autobiography recounting his aristocratic beginnings to his transformation into the revolutionary he would be for the rest of his life.
• The State--Its Historic Role - Classic work on the state and its function in society.

Lucy Parsons

American anarchist-communist labour organiser and founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World of mixed African-American and Hispanic heritage. Known for her powerful public speaking, she was also the widow of Haymarket Martyr, Albert Parsons.

• Lucy Parsons, 1853-1942 - biography.
• A lifelong anarchist! Selected words and writings of Lucy Parsons - A collection of Lucy Parsons’ writings and speeches, along with biographical context.
• The Ballot Humbug - Article explaining the sham of electoral politics in a capitalist society.
• Speech to the IWW in 1905 - At the founding conference of the IWW, Parsons spoke on the oppression of women and how to develop radical new tactics to win strikes, making statement far ahead of her time.

Errico Malatesta

Highly influential Italian anarchist-communist who wrote and spoke widely across Italy and spent many years either in jail or in exile.

• Errico Malatesta, 1853-1932 - biography.
• Anarchy - Malatesta's best known work, a pamphlet on what anarchism means.
• Anarchism and organisation - Essay on the importance of organisation to anarchism.
• Syndicalism and anarchism - Essay on the relationship of anarchists to the labour movement.
• At the cafe - A primer on the fundamentals of anarcho-communism, described through conversations.

Emma Goldman

Lithuanian-born Jewish anarchist who emigrated to the USA, where she became highly involved in radical unions, anti-war and feminist activism. Became known as "the most dangerous woman in America".

• Emma Goldman, 1869-1940 - biography.
• Anarchism and Other Essays - collection of Goldman's classic essays on anarchism and other subjects.
• Living My Life, 2 Vols. - Two volume autobiography taking her from her birthplace in Tsarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan's Lower East Side.
• My Disillusionment in Russia - excellent book on the degeneration of the Russian revolution.

Alexander Berkman

Lithuanian-born anarchist-communist Alexander "Sasha" Berkman, who became a leading figure in the American anarchist movement and was sent to prison for attempting to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the steel boss responsible for the deaths of workers in the 1892 Homestead strike.

• Alexander Berkman, 1870-1936 - Biography.
• What is anarchism? - Absolutely indispensable classic introduction to anarchism.
• Prison memoirs of an anarchist - Autobiographical account of his experience in prison after being sentenced to 22 years for the attempted assassination of an industrialist.
• The Russian Tragedy - Berkman's anaylsis the failure of the Russian Revolution, written 1922.
• The Bolshevik Myth - Book describing his experiences in post-revolution Russia from 1920 to 1922
• The Kronstadt Rebellion - Berkman's analysis of the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising by the Bolshevik government.

Rudolf Rocker

Prominent anarcho-syndicalist who organised extensively amongst the Jewish community in the East End of London.

• Rudolf Rocker, 1873-1958 - biography.
• Anarcho-syndicalism - Definitive extended work on anarcho-syndicalism.
• Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism - Two essays introducing first the concept of anarchist politics and then its manifestation in anarcho-syndicalism.
• Nationalism and Culture - Classic text on nationalism and culture.
• The Tragedy of Spain - Rocker's history of the Spanish Civil War.
• The London Years - First hand account of his time in London, where he became involved in the Jewish anarchist movement of the East End, helping set up unions and organising the 1912 Jewish tailor's strike.

Ricardo Flores Magon

Mexican anarchist, friend of legendary revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and leading participant in the 1910 Mexican revolution.

• Ricardo Flores Magon, 1873-1922 - biography.
• Manifesto of the Mexican Liberal Party, 1911 - Manifesto issued by the Organising Council of the anarchist Mexican Liberal Party, September 23, 1911, scattered at that time broadcast and republished in its official organ, Regeneracion.
• Without bosses - Ricardo Flores Magon writes on why we would be better off in a society without bosses.
• Government? - "No, there is no need to fear life without government; we long for it with all of our hearts."

Nestor Makhno

Ukrainian anarchist-communist who led a revolutionary army during the 1917 Russian revolution which fought against both the old Tsarist regime and the new Bolshevik one.

• Nestor Makhno, 1889-1934 - biography.
• The struggle against the state and other essays - Collection of essays dealing with both Makhno's experiences during the Russian Revolution and wider questions of organisation.
• Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) - Written by the Dielo Truda group, ‘The Platform’ would become a highly debated and influential text on anarchist organisation.

Daniel Guerin

French anarchist and revolutionary supporter of gay liberation.

• Daniel Guerin, 1904-1988 - biography.
• No Gods, No Masters: an anthology of anarchism - Classic anthology of anarchism bringing together unpublished documents, letters, debates and more, showing the history, organisation and practice of the movement.
• Anarchism: from theory to practice - Book about the theoretical basis of anarchism, and its practical application to the real world in selected historical examples.
• Libertarian Marxism - Two essays in which Guerin attempts to bridge the gap between anarchism and Marxism by drawing out the commonalities in both.

Albert Meltzer

British anarcho-syndicalist print worker who fiercely opposed individualist strains within anarchism and was a major figure in the British anarchist movement.

• Albert Meltzer, 1920-1996 - Biography.
• I couldn't paint golden angels: Sixty years of commonplace life and anarchist agitation - A lively and witty account of a working class boy who went on to put in 60 years of activism, Meltzer's autobiography doubles as a first-person history of the British and European anarchist movements.
• Anarchism: arguments for and against - Short book answering some common criticisms of anarchism while offering a critical view of the anarchist movement itself.
• The floodgates of anarchy - Book co-written with Stuart Christie, it presents an argument against class-based society and hierarchy and advocates for a free and equal society based on individual dignity and merit.

Murray Bookchin

American libertarian socialist and founder of social ecology who severely criticised individualist and spiritual elements within radical politics.

• Bookchin remembered - Obituary written by Iain Mackay.
• Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - Essay against the increasingly individualist, misanthropic, mystical and anti-organisational trends in US anarchism.
• Listen, Marxist! - An anarchist criticism of Marxism, aimed predominantly at the Maoist Progressive Labor Party in America.
• Post-Scarcity Anarchism - Collection of essays envisioning an anarchist society without scarce resources, if we rely on technology.
• Anarchism, Marxism and The Future of The Left - Collection of texts including accounts of his years as a teenage Communist during the Great Depression, his experiences and reflections on the 1960s and his vision of a libertarian communist society, libertarian politics and the future of anarchism.
• The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 - History of the day-to-day activism of Spanish anarchists in the decades leading up to the famous civil war and revolution of 1936.

Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin

African-American class struggle anarchist, former Black Panther and participant in the civil rights and black power movements.

• Anarchism and the Black Revolution - easy-to-read introduction to the fundamental principles of class struggle anarchism and an analysis of their relevance to the black liberation movement.
• Black autonomy: civil rights, the Panthers and today - Interview with Lorenzo and JoNina Abron about their involvement in the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers and the relevance of anarchism to black struggle.
• Black People Have a Right to Rebel - Lorenzo Komboa Ervin's analysis of the place of the 2001 Cincinnati riots within the history of US urban riots and the struggle against racism.
• Back from hell: Black power and treason to whiteness inside prison walls - A personal account of a cross-race alliance of prisoners against conditions at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana in the early 1970s.

Other media

• No Gods, No Masters, part one, two and three - Excellent three-part documentary on the history of anarchism as an international movement, from its origins through to its involvement in numerous revolutions around the world until the Second World War.
• Free Voice of Labour: the Jewish Anarchists - Documentary covering the Jewish anarchist movement in North America, with interviews from participants.
• Noam Chomsky on anarchism - interview by Barry Pateman - Video of an interview by Barry Pateman with Noam Chomsky about anarchism.
• Living utopia - Unique feature-length documentary which chronicles the origins and evolution of the Spanish anarchist movement and its important role during the 1936-1939 Spanish Revolution. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Key texts

• Anarcho-syndicalism - an introduction - Short, accessible introduction written by the libcom.org group.
• Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century - Vadim Damier - The best one-stop overview of anarcho-syndicalism currently available in English, covering the well-known and not-so-well-known organisations and ideas from the anarcho-syndicalist tradition.
• Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle - Solidarity Federation - Short book outlining the history, theory and practice of anarcho-syndicalism in relation to the mainstream workers' movement and other radical traditions, and setting out their own approach.
• Anarcho-syndicalism: theory and practice - Rudolf Rocker - Classic anarcho-syndicalist text, strong on the early history and ideas of anarcho-syndicalism up until the Spanish revolution of 1936.
• A history of anarcho-syndicalism - SelfEd - A 24-unit self-education course on the history of anarcho-syndicalism and the workers' movement, produced by the Solidarity Federation.

Key people and groups

• IWA - International Workers Association, international confederation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions, founded in 1922.
• CNT - Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union founded in 1910, which took part in the 1936 Spanish civil war and revolution.
• FORA - Federación Obrera Regional Argentina, Argentinian anarcho-syndicalist union founded in 1901 which played a leading role in the working class movement at the beginning of the 20th century.
• Friends of Durruti - Anarchist group founded during the civil war opposing the CNT's participation in the Republican government.
• Mujeres Libres - Anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation active within the Spanish CNT before and during the Spanish revolution.
• Emile Pouget - French anarchist and influential early advocate of syndicalism who was vice-secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) from 1901-1908.
• Rudolf Rocker - Prominent German anarcho-syndicalist who organised extensively amongst the Jewish community in the East End of London.
• Gregori Maximov - Russian anarcho-syndicalist and participant in the 1917 Russian revolution who wrote extensively both on anarchist involvement in the events as well as the Bolshevik counter-revolution.
• Buenaventura Durruti - Legendary anarcho-syndicalist rail worker, CNT member and military leader, killed during the Spanish civil war.
• Albert Meltzer - British anarcho-syndicalist who fiercely opposed individualist strains within anarchism and founded Black Flag magazine.

Other recommended texts

• Overview: the International Workers Association - Edited version of the article originally put together for the organisation's page on Wikipedia and includes some content not available on that site.
• Revolutionary syndicalist internationalism, 1913-1923: the origins of the International Working Men’s Association - Wayne Thorpe - A highly detailed 1979 PhD thesis about the origins of the anarcho-syndicalist international, the International Workers Association.
• What is the CNT? - English translation of ¿Qué es la CNT?, introduction to the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT-AIT.
• Free women of Spain - Martha Ackelsberg's book on the Mujeres Libres [Free Women], a group of anarcho-syndicalist women in the Spanish revolution.
• Durruti in the Spanish revolution - Abel Paz - Highly recommended book that is as much a social history as biography of the anarchist bank-robber turned-revolutionary unionist.
• Revolutionary unionism in Latin America - the FORA in Argentina - Excellent pamphlet outlining the origins and development of the Argentinian working class movement, focussing in particular on the anarcho-syndicalist FORA (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina).
• Syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism in Germany - Helge Döhring - Introduction to the development of German syndicalism from its beginnings in 1890 until the early 1960s.
• Anarcho-syndicalism in Peru, 1905-1930 - Steven Hirsch - Article about the Peruvian anarcho-syndicalist movement with details of its influential involvement in numerous strikes, its far-reaching network of cultural associations and its influences from other syndicalist movements in the region.
• Anarchosyndicalism in inter-war France: The vision of Pierre Besnard - Wayne Thorpe - Detailed look at the thought of anarcho-syndicalist Pierre Besnard (1886–1947), placing it in the context of inter-war French syndicalism.
• Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution - Gregori Maximov - Account of the effects Russian Revolution on the Russian syndicalists and anarchists, and vice-versa, by a leading Russian anarcho-syndicalist of the time.
• The union makes us strong? - Anarchist Federation - A three-part critical analysis of the theory and practice of syndicalism published in the Anarchist Federation's Organise! magazine.
• Spain 1936, the end of anarchist syndicalism? - Subversion - Criticism of anarcho-syndicalism during the Spanish Civil War.

Other media

• Spanish Civil War and Revolution photo gallery, 1936-39. Photo gallery of anarchists and other workers who attempted a social revolution after the military uprising of the right-wing General Francisco Franco in July 1936.
• Living utopia (documentary). A unique feature-length documentary (90 minutes; Spanish with English subtitles) which chronicles the origins and evolution of the Spanish anarchist movement and its important role during the Spanish revolution (1936-1939).

Egalitarianism

• Mutual Aid and the Foraging Mode of Thought: Re-reading Kropotkin on the Khoisan - Alan Barnard - Article from Social Evolution & History 3/1: 3–21; inspired by Kropotkin, one of the world’s leading hunter-gatherer specialists explains anarchism and the Khoisan peoples.
• Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: the False Coin of Our Own Dreams - David Graeber - Necessary reading if you want to understand how everything connects up, reexamining a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange.
• Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - David Graeber - An attempt at outlining areas of research that might be explored in creating a body of anarchist social theory. If you’re an anarchist, you’ll find inspiration on every page.
• Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber - Book analysing the function of debt in human history from ancient civilisations to our modern-day economic crises. Arguably the best book on economics since Marx’s Capital – and easier to read!
• Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence - Article by Peter Gray from the American Journal of Play, 1, 476-522; argues that hunter-gatherers promoted, through cultural means, the playful side of their
  human nature and this made possible their egalitarian, intensely cooperative ways of living. If you’ve forgotten how to play, you’ve forgotten the meaning of life.
• Hunter-gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental, and Cultural Perspectives - Barry Hewlett and Michael Lamb (eds.) - Collection of contributions on the experiences of children in hunter-gatherer societies.
• Boiling Energy. Community healing among the Kalahari Kung - Richard Katz - Thrilling introduction to Bushman systems of ritual and belief, with a special focus on community healing through trance.
• The Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society - Richard Lee - The best ever introduction to ‘primitive communism’, not as a theory but a living reality.
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunter-Gatherers - Richard Lee amd Richard Daly (eds.) - An accessible, authoritative survey of world hunter-gatherer studies. Includes John Gowdy’s useful summary: Hunter-Gatherers and the Mythology of the Market.
• Ekila: Blood, Bodies and Egalitarian Societies - Jerome Lewis - Article from Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute - Brilliantly illuminating explanation of how and why beliefs concerning the potency of menstruation help maintain hunter-gatherer egalitarianism.
• Believing and Seeing. Symbolic meanings in Southern San rock paintings - David Lewis-Williams - Celebrating a girl’s first menstruation, the ‘Eland Bull Dance’ was traditionally the major ceremony staged by the Kalahari Bushmen. Lewis-Williams interprets Southern African rock art in the light of Bushman rituals of trance and initiation.
• The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx: Studies of Morgan, Phear, Maine, Lubbock - Karl Marx - Toward the end of his life, Karl Marx became increasingly fascinated by the anthropological research of his day, attempting to keep abreast of all the latest developments.
• [url=http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-iroquois-franklin-rosemont]Karl Marx and the Iroquois - Franklin Rosemont - Marx discovers ‘primitive communism’ in action and is inspired.
• The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia - James Scott - For two thousand years people in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia have fled the projects of the states that surround them — slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics and warfare. Scott evaluates why people would deliberately remain stateless.
• Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance - James Scott - ‘Everyday resistance’ consists of footdragging, non-compliance, pilfering, desertion, feigned ignorance, sabotage, flight etc. For a summarised version of Scott's groundbreaking argument, read Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.
• Primitive Communism, Barbarism and the Origins of Class Society - Lionel Sims - Excellent overview of world history in the spirit of Engels.
• Anthropology: Reclaiming the dragon (what was primitive communism?) - Lionel Sims - Article arguing that class society and patriarchy only arose ten thousand years ago and that for over a hundred thousand years we lived in more gender-egalitarian and anarchist/communist hunter-gatherer societies.
• The Forest People - Colin Turnbull - Book on the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti pygmies. If you don’t know anything about anthropology, start here. You will be inspired.
• A Black Civilization - William Lloyd Warner - The best-ever detailed description of an Australian Aboriginal system of kinship, ritual and belief.
• Egalitarian Societies - James Woodburn - An account of the conditions under which egalitarianism prevails.

Gender

• Male Daughters, Female Husbands. Gender and sex in an African society - Ifi Amadiume - If you thought gender was 'masculine' versus 'feminism', think again. African gender turns it all upside down!
• Women Like Meat. The folklore and foraging ideology of the Kalahari Ju/'hoan - Megan Biesele - Hunter-gatherer women don't fancy lazy men. If a man wants sex, he needs to make himself useful.
• Blood Magic. The anthropology of menstruation - Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb (eds) - Menstruation is still a taboo topic in western culture. In most other cultures, menstruation is considered a 'supernatural' force impossible to ignore.
• The Making of Great Men - Maurice Godelier - The classic Marxist study of initiation into 'Big Man' status, with all the accompanying patriarchal mythology.
• The Palm and the Pleiades. Initiation and cosmology in northwest Amazonia - Stephen Hugh-Jones - One of the most vivid and convincing studies of mythology as collective intelligence.
• The Elementary Structures of Kinship - Claude Lévi Strauss - Despite its flaws, this remains the most ambitious and successful study of the world's variegated systems of kinship and marriage.
• Our Women are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush - Wynne Maggi - How women can achieve liberation through collective action - an intimate account of the lives of Kalash women.
• The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia - Bronisław Malinowski - Don’t be discouraged by the lurid title. Malinowksi was a reactionary, but this book is today widely regarded as the finest ethnography ever published. When women have solidarity and power, both sexes benefit from a sexually liberated society.
• Those who Play with Fire: Gender, fertility and transformation in East and Southern Africa - Henrietta Moore, Todd Sanders and Bwire Kaare (eds) - The best anthropological introduction to the theoretical complexities of gender.
• To Hunt in the Morning - Janet Siskind - The title is inspired by the early writings of Karl Marx. The book describes how women in a Native American tribe go playfully on sex-strike to persuade their men to hunt and bring back the meat.

Human origins

• Hierarchy in the Forest. The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior - Christopher Boehm - Book explaining how consciousness and culture emerged out of a social revolution. If you read nothing else on human origins read this.
• The Cradle of Language - Rudolf Botha and Chris Knight (eds) - Book on the evolutionary emergence of language in Africa.
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals - Frans de Waal - Moral feelings and behaviour in our closest primate relatives.
• Primate Social Systems - Robin Dunbar - The best book ever written on the social and political arrangements of our closest living relatives, monkeys and apes, with everything explained in materialist terms.
• The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View - Robin Dunbar, Chris Knight and Camilla Power (eds.) - A representative selection of short, readable contributions on the origins of language and culture in human beings.
• The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life - Emile Durkheim - The most influential account ever written on why our ancestors invented rituals and beliefs about supernatural powers.
• The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State - Friedrich Engels - Although outdated in places, this remains necessary reading for anyone interested in the roots of women’s oppression.
• Early Human Kinship - Nicholas Allen, Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar and Wendy James (eds.) - Collection of original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics to provide a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society. Many of the chapters provide evidence that early human kinship was matrilneal.
• Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding - Sarah Hrdy - This book by leading evolutionary anthropologist and Darwinian feminist Sarah Hrdy is the best on human evolution this century, describing co-operative childcare as the secret of human origins and emotional modernity. If Engels were still alive, he would love it!
• Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture - Chris Knight - Evolutionary biology, archaeology, social anthropology and human origins from a Marxist perspective.
• The Human Symbolic Revolution: A Darwinian account - Chris Knight, Camilla Power and Ian Watts - How human evolution culminated in a revolution. With peer commentary and critique.
• As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind - Marek Kohn - A brilliant science journalist discusses the evolution of language and mind. Highly readable and informative.
• The Roots of Civilization: The cognitive beginnings of man’s first art, symbol and notation - Alexander Marshack - Ice Age art, with a special emphasis on the moon and lunar calendars.
• Rethinking the Human Revolution: new behavioural and biological perspectives on the origin and dispersal of modern humans - Paul Mellars, Katie Boyle, Ofer Bar-Yosef and Christopher Stringer (eds) - How human evolution culminated in ‘the human revolution’, now viewed as a process of accelerated change occurring in Africa during the Middle Stone Age.
• Religion And Anthropology: A Critical Introduction - Brian Morris - An anarchist anthropologist asks how and why people across the world construct and sustain their different faiths.
• Stone Age Economics - Marshall Sahlins - For hunter-gatherers, the whole point of possessing something is to be able to make a gift of it. The author explains how and why hunter-gatherers prefer to assume affluence and superabundance, not economic scarcity and competition.

General recommended reading

• Black Revolutionaries in the US: Communist Interventions, vol. 2 - Huge collections following the discussions and debates of black radicals in 20th Century America.
• Black particularity reconsidered - Adolph L. Reed Jr. - In-depth analysis of how the management of black dissent by the black American middle-class/professional elite helped restructure capitalism to its own advantage.
• A disgrace before God: Striking black sanitation workers vs. black officialdom in 1977 Atlanta - Case study of the betrayal of the African American working class by the Black political class brought to power by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960's.
• Black Autonomy: Civil Rights, the Panthers and Today - Interview with two anarchist ex-Black Panthers about their involvement in the civil rights movement, the Black Panther Party and the relevance of anarchism to black struggle.
• The Deacons for Defense: armed resistance and the Civil Rights Movement - Lance Hill - Book about the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a clandestine armed self-defense organization that operated in relatively rural areas in the 1960s. Includes discussion on pacifist ideology in the civil rights movement.
• Negroes with guns - Robert F. Williams - First-hand account of the attempts by an NAACP chapter to arm itself against police and racist groups in South Carolina.
• Radio Free Dixie - Timothy Tyson - Biography of Robert F. Williams which gets into his conflicts with the NAACP and other civil rights leadership including Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Martin Luther King, Jr - Martin Glaberman - Short article about MLK's legacy of non-violent tactics.
• Reflection on Doctor King - Lorenzo Komboa Ervin - Article on the distortion of MLK's legacy as a tool for disarming the black working class as well as propping self-serving community leaders.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defence

Maoist-influenced black power organisation, whose combination of community projects and militant image made it arguably the most important of all the Black Power groups at the time. It would eventually become subject to some of the heaviest repression in post-World War 2 America.

• The Black Panther Party for Self Defense - Short and clearly written introductory history of the Black Panthers.
• James Carr, the Black Panthers and all that - A look at the life of James Carr, a life-long gang member turned Black Panther who developed an anti-Leninist revolutionary criticism of the BPP and would eventually be assassinated in mysterious circumstances. The article, written as an afterword for his book, Bad, gives an excellent critical history of the Panthers and their relationship to the prison struggles and wider social movements of the 1960s.
• War against the Panthers: A study of repression in America - Huey P Newton - Analysis of the development and growth of the BPP, as well as the state's response to them, from leader Huey Newton.
• Seize the time: The story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton - Bobby Seale - Book on the BPP and Huey Newton, written by a co-founder of the party while he was in prison.
• Explaining the demise of the Black Panther Party: The role of internal factors - An anti-authoritarian analysis of the Black Panthers' demise.
• "No one ever asks what a man's role in the revolution is": Gender and sexual politics in the Black Panther Party 1966-1971 - Article by Trace Matthews on the gender politics of the Black Panthers in the context of competing ideologies, namely Black cultural nationalism and White feminism.
• Lumpenization: A critical error of The Black Panther Party - Essay arguing that the BPP's fetishisation of the lumpen class and their failure to reform the more criminal/ anti-social elements, as the Nation of Islam did, contributed to the party's demise.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers

Black workers' organisation formed in 1969, based largely in the car factories of Detroit, it was formed of different Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) such as DRUM (based at the Dodge Main factory), FRUM (based at Ford) and others, they took on both management and United Autoworkers Union in fighting against racism and for better conditions on the shopfloor.

• Detroit: I do mind dying - A study in urban revolution - Excellent book on the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and League of Revolutionary Black Workers. One of the most important books on the black liberation movement and American workers' struggles, includes interviews and accounts from participants. Highly recommended.
• 1968-1971: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers - A.Muhammad Ahmad - Short history of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The article includes other information about the car industry, race and struggle from 1910 onwards.
• DRUM: vanguard of the black revolution - Luke Tripp - A short history of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, detailing their beginnings as well as their opposition to the United Auto Workers union, written in 1969 by a founding member.
• Black cats, white cats, wildcats: Auto workers in Detroit, 1969 - Martin Glaberman - Introductory article and account of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and its activity in Detroit in the 1960s and 70s.
• The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement - Martin Glaberman - Analysis on the formation of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement.
• Dying from the inside: The decline of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers - Ernie Allen - A key account of the organizational issues of the LRBW taken from the book They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee: Seven Radicals Remember the 60s.

Nation of Islam

Islamic black separatist organisation which was one of the major actors in the early civil rights and black power movement.

• A proletarian critique of the Nation of Islam - Melancholic Troglodytes - Pamphlet looking at the Nation Of Islam's history and evolution, the way it exploits its membership and its promotion of anti-working class, sexist, homophobic and racist ideology.
• The transgression of a laborer: Malcom X in the wilderness of America - Ferruccio Gambino - Analysis of Malcolm X's development, from prison and the factory to the Nation of Islam, and his deviation from the traditional state-allocated path of ethnic leadership.

Other media

• The murder of Fred Hampton - Documentary depicting the brutal murder of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, killed in his bed by FBI agents. This film provides an excellent snapshot of the kind of repression faced by the Panthers.
• Finally got the news - Documentary about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Includes interviews with members, supporters and opponents, the film documents their attempts to build a radical black workers' organisation to take on both management and the union and fight to improve conditions for all workers, black and white.
• Eyes on the prize - 14-hour documentary series telling the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary people whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life.
• Black and Proud: The Soul of the Black Panther Era, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - Collection of soul songs from the era of the height of black power and with black power content.
• Radio Free Dixie - Excerpts from Robert F. Williams' radio show, Radio Free Dixie broadcast from exile in Havana in the 1960s. Includes speeches and some music, showing some of the cultural life of the movement.
• X - Spike Lee's biographical film about Malcolm X, covering his life from his time as a petty criminal, his political awakening in prison and eventual assassination. Starring Denzel Washington.
• Panther - Film by Mario Van Peebles about the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, focusing largely on the government's COINTELPRO programme of repression.

Key texts

• 1930-present: Labour unrest and the successive geographical restructuring of the world automobile industry - Beverly Silver – Excellent piece tracing the growth of workers’ power in the auto industry and the resultant outsourcing of industry to lower wage areas of the globe, where workers organised again and fought for better conditions, effectively spreading a militant workers' movement across the globe. In many ways, a shorter version of her must-read Forces of Labor.
• Detroit: I do mind dying; a study in urban revolution - Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin - Excellent book on the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and League of Revolutionary Black Workers and their struggles in the Detroit car industry. One of the most important books on the black liberation movement and American workers' struggles, includes interviews and accounts from participants.
• Punching out and other writings - Martin Glaberman - A great collection of the writings of former-auto worker Martin Glaberman, covering topics such as life on the production line, the unions and methods of struggle.
• Organized labor versus "the revolt against work" - John Zerzan - Article examining the role of unions in managing workers’ unrest, focussing in particular on the US car manufacturing industry from the 1930s to 1970s.

Key people, groups and publications

• League of Revolutionary Black Workers – Organisation of African-American radicals from the late-1960s/early-1970s, largely organised into various ‘Revolutionary Union Movements based in the Detroit car industry.
• Solidarity Motor Bulletins - Series of bulletins from UK libertarian socialist group, Solidarity, from the 1970s about the global car manufacturing industry, produced largely by and for car workers themselves.
• Mechanics Educational Society of America - Union which pioneered the organisation of skilled autoworkers, refused to sign the no-strike pledge and fought against CIO incursions into their organized shops.
• United Auto Workers - American labour union representing car industry workers.
• Martin Glaberman - American Marxist and Detroit car factory worker associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency. Wrote extensively on Detroit struggles, including criticisms of the unions and racism in the car industry.
• Ken Weller - British libertarian socialist, member of Solidarity and car factory worker. He was heavily involved in producing the Solidarity Motor Bulletins and wrote many important texts on car industry workers’ struggles.

Companies

• British Leyland
• Citroën
• DaimlerChrysler
• Fiat
• Ford
• General Motors
• Hyundai
• Nissan
• Peugeot
• Renault
• Seat
• Standard Triumph
• Toyota
• Volkswagen

Important struggles

• The US industrial workers’ movement - Chapter 3 of the brilliant Poor Peoples' Movements: Why They Succeed, How they Fail analyses the movement of industrial workers in depression-era America, particularly in the car industry, and the role of the unions from the sitdown strikes to the union no strike deals of World War II.
• The Flint sit-down strike, 1936-1937 - Jeremy Brecher – Excellent history of the legendary General Motors sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, where workers occupied the factories and won big concessions.
• Wartime strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II - Martin Glaberman - Glaberman’s brilliant examination of the American car industry workers’ wildcat strike wave, despite their own union's no strike pledge, during World War 2.
• 1968: Ford female employees win strike for equal pay in Dagenham - a short account of the largely successful strike by female Ford workers in the UK against pay inequality.
• 'Clasismo' and the workers: 'Sindicalismo de Liberacion' in the Cordoban automobile industry, 1970-1975 - James P. Brennan - In-depth study of radicalism in the Cordoban car manufacturing industry, with focus on the activities and fortunes on the revolutionary clasismo movement.
• Against the state as boss - Autonomous Assembly of Alfa Romeo - A fascinating and detailed first-person account of workers struggles at Italian state-owned auto manufacturer, Alfa Romeo from 1971-1972.
• The Lordstown struggle and the real crisis in production - Ken Weller - Fascinating pamphlet on workers’ informal resistance to the frenetic pace of work at a General Motors plant, and the later co-optation of the struggle by the auto workers union.
• Wildcat: Dodge Truck June 1974 - Detailed article by participants and eyewitnesses about the wildcat strike at the Chrysler truck plant in Michigan, 1974, and the roles of the workers, the union and the left.
• Autoworkers and the working class in Brazil - John Humphrey - Analysis of the strike waves of the late-1970s Brazilian working-class movement, and the important role which car factory workers played in it.
• Strike and police brutality at Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, 2005 – A look at the violent, month-long strike/lockout of HMSI workers in India in 2005, which ended with the employers giving into many of the workers' demands.
• Report and reflections on the UK Ford-Visteon dispute 2009: a post-Fordist struggle - A detailed account and analysis of the struggle of Ford-Visteon car manufacturing workers who occupied and picketed their plants after being sacked when their employers declared themselves bankrupt.
• Ssangyong motors strike in South Korea ends in defeat and heavy repression - Loren Goldner - Analysis and overview of the dramatic 2009 struggle at the Ssangyong Motors plant, which saw almost a thousand workers occupy the plant for 77 days.
• Auto industry strikes in China - Lance Carter – Excellent account and analysis of the hugely successful wildcat strike wave at mostly Japanese-owned auto factories in China, 2010.
• Struggles ‘Made in India’: on the series of factory riots, occupations and (wildcat) strikes in Delhi’s industrial south, 2014 - Article documenting material concerning eighteen factory struggles in Delhi’s industrial belt between early 2014 and mid-2015.

Workers’ stories

• Flint 1936-7: Diary of a sitdowner - Diary of a striking General Motors workers who occupied their factory during the sit-down strike of 1936-1937.
• The American worker - Great pamphlet from 1947 by Phil Singer and Grace Lee Boggs about life working in an auto plant.
• Organising at Fiat, 1969 - Speech by a worker from the Fiat Mirafiori plant outlining workers' organising efforts and lessons learned in the militant struggles running up to the hot autumn of 1969.
• An interview with workers at Fiat, 1970 - Three workers from FIAT Mirafiori in Italy describe the experiences of the Southern immigrant coming to work in the industrial cities of the North.
• Datsun: hell's battlefield - 1974 text by labour organiser Matsuo Kei about the condition of workers in Japanese Nissan plants.
• Anatomy of an industrial struggle: Chrysler factory at Tonsley Park in Adelaide 1976-1978 – A worker’s account of two years of struggle at an Australian Chrysler plant, including a detailed look at the role of the union.
• An account of car factory sabotage - A brief account of sabotage at a car manufacturers in Detroit by Eugene, a carburator assembler.

Managing the industry

• The red rose of Nissan - John Holloway - Following the opening of a new Nissan factory in Sunderland in 1986, John Holloway analyses changes in the British car industry over the previous two decades, in particular how workers' organisation at British Leyland was broken up to usher in a new age of "harmony" and increased exploitation.
• Workers' struggles and the development of Ford in Britain - Ferruccio Gambino – Interesting pamphlet looking at how the struggle between workers and bosses at British Ford factories shaped the company’s management strategies and development.
• [URL=https://libcom.org/library/solidarity-motor-bulletin-08-chrysler-workers-beware] Chrysler workers beware! - Excellent Solidarity pamphlet from ex-ex-about struggles of Peugeot workers in France in the 60s and 70s and how management tried to contain them with paternalism and later a mercenary force.
• The union-management GM strike, 1970 - Jeremy Brecher - A brief history of the interesting national strike of the United Auto Workers union at General Motors, organised in conjunction with management to allow workers to blow off steam.
• UAW scab union - auto industry bulletin from 1974 looking at the UAW union and how it was sabotaging and scabbing on struggles of its members at the time.
• 1980s-1990s: The Myths of the Toyota System - Nomura Masami - The myths of the Toyota system of management in the car industry, such as increased worker participation and ‘Just In Time’ production.
• The Second Industrialization of the American South - Will Barnes - Essay detailing the deindustrialization and relocation of global auto capital to the US South.

Other recommended texts

• Akron rubber workers' struggles, 1933-1936 - Jeremy Brecher - Account of rubber workers’ struggles in Akron, Ohio, centre of the American rubber industry, who, growing disillusioned with their unions inability to improve their situation, developed the sitdown strike.
• The 1934 Toledo Auto Lite strike - Ted Selander - One of the most important strikes in American history, remembered for its mass pickets and running battles between strikers and police/National Guard, recounted by a participant.
• What happened at Fords? - a detailed critical analysis of workers' defeat in a dispute at the Ford Dagenham plant in 1962-3.
• I love yellow monitors! The wildcat strike in Hyundai factory in Czech - An analysis of a wildcat work stoppage in Hyundai factory in Czech in December 2009 and its context.

Other media

• Rivethead - Ben Hamper – Novel written by an American car factory worker during shifts on the shop floor, Rivethead details the down and out memoirs of a line assembly worker for GM Motors over the 1980s.
• We Want Everything: A Novel - Nanni Balestrini - Nanni Balestrini’s fictionalized account of the Hot Autumn, in which a young worker from Italy’s impoverished south arrives at Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin, where he finds himself in conflict with the bosses and the entire capitalist system.
• Images from 1934 Autolite strike – Photo gallery of one of the most important and dramatic strikes in US history.
• 1932: the Ford Hunger March massacre – Photo gallery of an autoworkers’ demonstration in Detroit, where police and Ford security guards killed 4 and injured 60 when they opened fire on a protest organized by the Communist Party USA's Unemployed Council.
• Blue Collar – American crime drama starring Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor as two Detroit autoworkers who rob their corrupt union, finding themselves in conflict with both union and management.
• The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La Classe Operaio Va in Paradiso) – Fantastic Italian film from 1971 depicting a car factory worker’s radicalisation after an injury at work, resisting his condition as a tool in the production process and, as a result, the politics of the trade unions.
• Made in Dagenham – Film about the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike by women workers in protest at the company’s sexual discrimination and demanding equal pay.

A few sources in Chinese and other languages are listed at the bottom; the others are mainly limited to English. In the interest of space, we are not including articles, except the list of recommended articles on Libcom. Some books appear in more than one list.

1. Recommended blogs & articles on Libcom.org
2. Top books
3. Other websites (English & Chinese)
4. Documentary films
5. Fictional films
6. Books on modern Chinese history
7. Books on workers
8. Books on women
9. Books on rural China
10. Oral histories & memoirs
11. Fictional writing
12. Miscellaneous books

1. Recommended blogs & articles on Libcom

Nào (闹)
Blog about class struggle in China
* The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)
* Twenty-five years since the Tiananmen protests: Legacies of the student-worker divide
* The new strikes in China
* New foundations for struggle and solidarity: The culmination of development and privatization on a Guangzhou Island
* Black vs. Yellow: Class Antagonism and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement
* The student parliament: reflections on the Sunflower movement
* Four Years Later, Still a Graveyard of Chinese Youth

Chuǎng (闯) Journal #1: Dead Generations
* Sorghum & Steel: The Socialist Developmental Regime and the Forging of China
* Gleaning the Welfare Fields: Rural Struggles in China since 1959
* Revisiting the Wukan Uprising of 2011: An Interview with Zhuang Liehong
* No Way Forward, No Way Back: China in the Era of Riots
* The Future is Hidden within These Realities: Selected Translations from Factory Stories

Chuǎng (闯) Blog
History, capitalism and class struggle in China and its neighbors
* Working for Amazon in China, where the global giant is a dwarf
* Notes on a Factory Uprising in Yangon
* Aunties learning to fight: The 2015 Uniqlo strike in historical context
* Aristocratisation alongside enslavement: Railway restructuring & workers’ resistance in China since the 1980s
* Below the Winds: What Do the Island Disputes Really Mean to Vietnamese & Chinese Workers?
* Scenarios of the Coming Crisis: A Response to Aufheben’s “The Crisis: Afterword"
* Bicycle couriers in China’s own “logistics revolution”
* Women’s Day & the Feminist Five a year on
* Overcoming mythologies: An interview on the Chuang project
* The Guangdong Six and the rule of law (of value): Theses on the December 3 crackdown
* Comparing port strikes: Hong Kong vs. Shenzhen, 2013
* Should wives be shared or rationed?
* The capitalist transformation of rural China: Evidence from “Agrarian Change in Contemporary China”

Gongchao (工潮)
* Against the fetish of representation: class struggle in China beyond the leftist Grand Narrative
* 'I work beside my shit. I eat beside my shit': impressions from the dockworkers strike in Hong Kong
* Left dead-end street vs. destructive critique: China's counterinsurgency policies and how to respond
* 'We are no machines': workers' struggle in a Chinese electronics factory in Poland

Prol-Position / Wildcat
* China in crisis: reason to panic?
* Women Workers in China, 1949-2007
* China's migrant workers
* The generation of unhappy workers, 2007

Empire Logistics
"a collaborative initiative to research and articulate the infrastructure and ‘externalized costs'—human, economic, social and environmental—of the international goods movement industry..."
* Port trucker strike Ningbo, China

Spartacus Blog
"Monthly round-ups of news about the class struggle in East Asia."

Yiching Wu
* Cultural revolution at the margins: Chinese socialism in crisis
* Rethinking ‘Capitalist Restoration’ in China

Husunzi
* A Commune in Sichuan? Reflections on Endicott’s Red Earth
* The Battle for East Lake in Wuhan
* Homicide as a weapon of the weak in postsocialist China
* Notes on Class Struggle and Democracy in Hong Kong

Lance Carter
* Auto Industry Strikes in China
* A Chinese Alternative? Interpreting the Chinese New Left Politically

Ultra
* Swoosh
* Confusing History with Spectacle: A Critique of Bloom and Contend

Mouvement Communiste & KPK
* Workers' autonomy strikes in China

Aufheben
* Welcome to the Chinese Century?
* Class conflicts in the transformation of China

Eli Friedman
* China in Revolt

George Katsiaficas
* China's 1989 in a World of Uprisings

Tang Shui’en
* The Alternative Education of a Chinese Punk

Wang Shaoguang
* “New trends of thought” in the Cultural Revolution

Cajo Brendel
* Theses on the Chinese revolution

Peter Zarrow
* He Zhen and anarcha-feminism in China

Arif Dirlik
* Dimensions of Chinese Anarchism: An Interview

2. Most-recommended books about modern China in general
Top 5 - must-read
* Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, Third Edition. (New York: The Free Press, 1999) - on Libcom here.
* Sheehan, Jackie. Chinese Workers: A New History. (London: Routledge, 1998) - on Libcom here.
* Wu, Yiching. The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis. (Harvard University Press, 2014) - on Libcom here.
* Day, Alexander. The Peasant in Postsocialist China: History, Politics and Capitalism. (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
* Hershatter, Gail. Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century. (University of California Press, 2007)

Other top books in alphabetical order
* Anagnost, Ann. National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. (Duke University Press, 1997)
* Barlow, Tani. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. (Duke University Press, 2004)
* Dirlik, Arif. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. (University of California Press, 1991) - on Libcom here.
* Friedman, Eli. The Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China. (Cornell University Press, 2014)
* Gates, Hill. China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism. (Cornell University Press, 1996)
* Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. (University of California Press, 1966)
* Hsing, You-tien. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. (Oxford University Press, 2012)
* Hung, Ho-fung. China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
* Lee, Ching Kwan. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007)
* Pun, Ngai. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)
* Rofel, Lisa. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. (UC Press, 1999)
* Zheng Tiantian. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China (UMN Press, 2009)

3. Other recommended websites about China
With English content
Chuǎng (闯)
Gongchao (工潮)
China Study Group
China Labour Bulletin
LabourStart - China
China Dialogue
China Digital Times
Shanghaiist
Globalization Monitor
Asia Monitor Resource Center
SACOM
Engage Media

4. Documentary Films
* 24 City (2008)
* Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011)
* China Blue (2005)
* Demolition (2008)
* Disorder (2009)
* Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995)
* Ghost Town (2008)
* Last Train Home (2009)
* Meishi Street (2006)
* Out of Phoenix Bridge (1997)
* The Passion of the Mao (2006)
* Queer China, 'Comrade' China (2008)
* San Yuan Li (2003)
* Street Life (2006)
* West of the Tracks (2003)
* Women at the Wheel (2006)
* ?????? (1999)

5. Fictional films
* A Touch of Sin (2013)
* Beijing Bicycle (2001)
* Blind Shaft (2003)
* In the Heat of the Sun (1994)
* Platform (2000)
* Shower (1999)
* Still Life (2006)
* Unknown Pleasures (2002)
* The World (2004)
* ????? (2008)
* ????? (2014)

6. Recommended books on modern Chinese history in general
* Anagnost, Ann. National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. (Duke University Press, 1997)
* Andreas, Joel. Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class. (Stanford University Press, 2009)
* Barlow, Tani. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. (Duke University Press, 2004)
* Day, Alexander. The Peasant in Postsocialist China: History, Politics and Capitalism. (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
* Dirlik, Arif. The Origins of Chinese Communism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
* Dirlik, Arif. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. (University of California Press, 1991) - on Libcom here.
* Dirlik, Arif and Ming Chan. Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927-1932 (Duke University Press, 1991)
* Gates, Hill. China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism. (Cornell University Press, 1996)
* Hart-Landsberg, Martin and Paul Burkett. China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010)
* Hung, Ho-fung. China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
* Isaacs, Harold R. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (1938, online here)
* Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, Third Edition. (New York: The Free Press, 1999)
* Li Minqi. The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy. (Pluto Pres, 2008)
* Lin Chun. The Transformation of Chinese Socialism. (Duke University Press, 2006)
* Perry, Elizabeth. Shanghai on Strike Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford University Press, 1993)
* Perry, Elizabeth and Li Xun. Proletarian Power: Shanghai In The Cultural Revolution. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997)
* Wang Chaohua, ed. One China, Many Paths. (Verso, 2003)
* Wang Hui. China's New Order. China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition. (Harvard University Press, 2003)
* Wang Hui. The End of Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (Verso, 2010)
* Weil, Robert. Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism (Monthly Review Press, 1996)
* Wu, Yiching. The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis. (Harvard University Press, 2014) - on Libcom here.
* Zarrow, Peter. Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture (Columbia University Press, 1990)
* Zhao Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

7. Recommended books on Chinese Workers
* China, Anita, ed. China's Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy (M.E. Sharpe, 2001)
* Chan, Chris King-chi. The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in Global Factories. (2010)
* Friedman, Eli. The Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China. (Cornell University Press, 2014)
* Lee, Ching Kwan. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998)
* Lee, Ching Kwan. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007)
* Lee, Ching Kwan, ed. Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation. (London: Routledge, 2006)
* Liu Jieyu. Gender and Work in Urban China. Women workers of the unlucky generation. (Taylor & Francis, 2007)
* Lü Xiaobo and Elizabeth Perry, eds. Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspectives (M.E. Sharpe, 1997)
* Perry, Elizabeth. Shanghai on Strike Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford University Press, 1993)
* Philion, Stephen E. Workers’ Democracy in China’s Transition from State Socialism. (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008)
* Pun, Ngai. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)
* Rofel, Lisa. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. (UC Press, 1999)
* Sheehan, Jackie. Chinese Workers: A New History. (London: Routledge, 1998) - on Libcom here.
* Solinger, Dorothy. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)
* Yan, Hairong. New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)
* Zheng Tiantian. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China (UMN Press, 2009)

8. Recommended books on women in China
* Barlow, Tani E. The Question of Woman in Chinese Feminism. (Duke University Press, 2004)
* Brownwell, Su­san and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, eds. Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader (University of California Press, 2002)
* Dai Jinhua. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua, eds. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow (Verso, 2002)
* Gilmartin, Christina Kelley. Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s. (University of California Press, 1995)
* Gilmartin, Christina, Gail Hershatter, Lisa Rofel and Tyrene White. Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State. (Harvard University Press, 1994)
* Hershatter, Gail. Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century. (University of California Press, 2007)
* Hershatter, Gail. The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. (University of California Press, 2011)
* Honig, Emily and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s. (Stanford University Press, 1988)
* Liu Jieyu. Gender and Work in Urban China. Women workers of the unlucky generation. (Taylor & Francis, 2007)1
* Liu, Lydia H., Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. (Columbia University Press, 2013)
* Pun, Ngai. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)
* Rofel, Lisa. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. (UC Press, 1999)
* Yan, Hairong. New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China. (Duke University Press, 2008)
* Xinran. The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (Anchor, 2003)
* Zheng Tiantian. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China (UMN Press, 2009)

9. Recommended books on rural China
* Bramall, Chris. The Industrialization of Rural China. (Oxford University Press, 2007)
* Cao, Jinqing. China along the Yellow River: Reflections on Rural Society. Translated by Nicky Harman and Huang Ruhua. (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005)
* Chan, Anita, Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger. Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (University of California Press, 2009)
* Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao. Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants. (HarperCollins, 2007)
* Day, Alexander F. The Peasant in Postsocialist China: History, Politics, and Capitalism. (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
* Endicott, Stephen. Red Earth: Revolution in a Sichuan Village. (New Amsterdam Books, 1991)2
* Gao, Mobo C. F. Gao Village: A Portrait of Rural Life in Modern China. (University of Hawai’i Press, 1999)
* Hale, Matthew A. Reconstructing the Rural: Peasant Organization in a Chinese Movement for Alternative Development. (University of Washington, 2013)
* Han, Dongping. The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village. (Monthly Review Press, 2008)
* Hershatter, Gail. The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. (University of California Press, 2011)
* Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. (University of California Press, 1966)
* Hinton, William. Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village. (Random House, 1983)
* Huang, Philip C. C. The Peasant Family and Social Change in North China. (Stanford University Press, 1985)
* Huang, Philip C. C. The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988. (Stanford University Press, 1990)
* Manning, Kimberly Ens and Felix Wemheuer, eds. Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine (UBC Press, 2012)
* Tsai, Lily. Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China(Cambridge, 2007)
* Unger, Jonathan. The Transformation of Rural China. (M.E. Sharpe, 2002)
* Walker, Kathy Le Mons. Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path: Semicolonialism in the North Yangzi Delta. (Stanford University Press, 1999)

10. Oral histories & memoirs
* Chun Sue. Beijing Doll. (Riverhead, 2004)
* Cunningham, Philip. Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010)
* Gates, Hill. Looking for Chengdu: A Woman's Adventures in China (Cornell University Press, 1999)
* Hershatter, Gail and Emily Honig. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s. (Stanford University Press, 1988)
* Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. (Harper, 2001)
* Liao Yiwu. The Corpse Walker - Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up. (Knopf Doubleday, 2009)
* Ma Yan and Pierre Haski. The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese School Girl (HarperCollins, 2005)
* Rae Yang. Spider Eaters: A Memoir (University of California Press, 1997)
* Snow, Edgar. Red Star Over China. (Grove Press, 1968)
* Ye, Sang, Geremie Barme and Miriam Lang, eds. China Candid: The People on the People’s Republic. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
* Xinran. The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (Anchor, 2003)
* Zhong Xueping, Zheng Wang, Bai Di, eds. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era.(Rutgers University Press, 2001)

11. Recommended Chinese fiction translated into English
* Ba Jin. Family.
* Ding Ling. I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (edited by Tani E. Barlow and Gary J. Bjorge, Beacon Press, 1989)
* Han Shaogang. 2005. A Dictionary of Maqiao.
* Lu Xun. The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales (translated by Julia Lovell, Penguin Classics, 2010)
* Ma Jian. 2008. Beijing Coma.
* Mo Yan. 1995. The Garlic Ballads.
* Su Tong. Rice: A Novel (Harper, 1994)
* Wang Shuo. Please Don't Call Me Human.
* Wang Xiaobo. Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas (SUNY Press, 2008)
* Yu Hua. 2007. Cries in the Drizzle.
* Zhang, Eileen...

12. Miscellaneous books
* Chan, Anita, ed. Walmart in China (ILR Press, 2011)
* Dikötter, Frank, Lars Laamann and Zhou Xun. Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
* Dutton, Michael. Streetlife China. (Cambridge, 1999)
* Gladney, Dru. Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
* Harrell, Stevan. Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers. (University of Washington Press, 1994)
* Hsing, You-tien. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. (Oxford University Press, 2012)
* Hsing, You-tien and Ching Kwan Lee, eds. Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. (Routledge, 2009)
* Jones, Andrew. Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. (University of Hawai'i Press, 1995)
* Lipman, Jonathn. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (University of Washington Press, 1998)
* Litzinger, Ralph. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000)
* Mathews, Gordon. Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 2011)
* Mertha, Andrew. China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Cornell University Press, 2010)
* Osburg, John. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich (Stanford University Press, 2013)
* Qin Shao. Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013)
* Shapiro, Judith. China's Environmental Challenges (Polity Press, 2012)
* Yao Ching, ed. As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 2010)
* Yeh, Emily T. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Cornell University Press, 2013)
* Zhang Li. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population (Stanford University Press, 2002)

Expanded from Nao's recommended sources on China

• 1 See Prol-position's discussion of this book here.
• 2 See Husunzi's long critical review here.

Key texts

• Council communism: an introduction - libcom.org’s short history and explanation of the ideas and practice of council communism.
• Council communism - Mark Shipway - Easily-readable, but more detailed than the above, introduction to council communist theory.
• Workers’ Councils - Anton Pannekoek - Arguably one of the defining texts of council communism, Pannekoek explains how workers councils are organs of working class power and a means towards overthrowing capitalism.
• The Revolution is not a Party Affair - Otto Ruhle - Classic text outlining council communism's opposition to parliamentarism and political parties.
• The communist left in Germany 1918-1921 - Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier - Excellent history of the 1918 German Revolution and the turbulent years following it, with an emphasis on the role played by council communists.

Key people and groups

• KAPD - Communist Workers Party of Germany, 1920 councilist split from the Communist Party. Instrumental in defining the German-Dutch model of left communism.
• AAUD/AAUD-E - Factory organisations set up in the wake of the 1918 German revolution by members of the KAPD in order to challenge the traditional trade unions. The AAUD-E was a later split of the AAUD, which combined revolutionary political and economic functions (until then separated between the KAPD and AAUD, respectively) within a single organisation.
• GIK - Dutch left communist group set up in 1926 whose ideas were shaped by the outcomes of the 1917 Russian revolution and 1918 German revolution.
• International Council Correspondence - Council communist publication of the United Workers Party of America in the 1930s/early 1940s, edited by Paul Mattick.
• Anton Pannekoek - Dutch Marxist (and astronomer!); one of the founding theorists of the council communist tradition.
• Otto Ruhle - German left communist, participant in the 1918 German revolution and leading figure in the AAUD-E.
• Herman Gorter - Dutch poet, council communist and fierce critic of Lenin who helped found the KAPD.
• Paul Mattick - German council communist and participant in the 1918 German Revolution who wrote widely on the German and Russian revolutions and the Marxist critique of political economy.

History

• Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany - Pamphlet on the origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany, covering the 1918 revolution and its aftermath, and the activities of left and libertarian communists.
• The Dutch and German Communist Left - Philippe Bourrinet - Philippe Bourrinet's book on the history of Dutch and German left communist currents from 1900 to 1968, looking at their reactions and developments against various events of the 20th Century.
• A half-blind communist with a sharp eye for the future. Marinus van der Lubbe (1909-1934) and his Reichstag Fire - Interesting history of Marinus van der Lubbe, the young communist building worker who burned down the Reichstag, and was falsely denounced as a Nazi agent by the Communist Party.
• From left radicalism to council communism: Anton Pannekoek and German revolutionary Marxism - John Gerber - A look at the revolutionary movement in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century and the involvement of Anton Pannekoek in the shift of many workers towards council communism.
• The councilist movement in Germany (1914-1935): A history of the AAUD-E tendency - Article tracing the origins and theoretical development of the 'unitary' current of the General Workers' Union of Germany.
• Art as a weapon: Franz Seiwert and the Cologne progressives - Martyn Everett - An account of Franz Seiwert and the 'Cologne Progressives', a group or circle of artists who participated in the radical currents around the German council communist organisations AAU and especially the AAU-E.

Other recommended texts

• From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution - Otto Rühle - Written in 1924, this pamphlet charts the development of the Russian and German revolutions, and attempts to point forward from the failure of these two major events, analysing the role of the parties and the trade unions in their respective failures.
• Marxism and state communism: the withering away of the state - International Communist Group - A 1932 in which the Group of International Communists criticise Lenin's 'The State and the Revolution.'
• Theses on Bolshevism - Rudolf Sprenger - 1934 critique of the Bolsheviks, arguing they functioned ultimately as a movement of bourgeois revolution in a predominantly peasant country and therefore are not only unserviceable as a revolutionary model for the international working class, but also one of its heaviest and most dangerous impediments.
• The rise of a new labor movement - Henk Canne Meijer - Discussion of the problems facing the old labour movement, and the organisation and function of revolutionary groups.
• Anarchism and the Spanish revolution - Helmut Wagner - Article by German council communist Helmut Wagner in April 1937 criticising extensively the political developments in Spain during the civil war and within it the role played by the anarchists and their organisations.
• Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany - Pamphlet on the origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany, covering the 1918 revolution and its aftermath and activites and reactions of left and libertarian communists.
• The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against Bolshevism - Otto Ruhle - Council communist pamphlet from 1939 that points the finger at Lenin and the Bolsheviks for crippling the international workers' movement with authoritarian tactics and for developing a totalitarian and capitalist system of rule in the USSR.

Other media

• Gerd Arntz illustrations - A collection of working class and other assorted illustrations by German council communist artist Gerd Arntz.

Key texts

• Paris: May 1968 - Maurice Brinton's diary - A vivid and exciting eyewitness report by a member of Solidarity on the events in Paris in May 1968.
• Worker-Student Action Committees, France May '68 - Roger Gregoire and Fredy Perlman - In-depth look at the worker-student action committees formed during France May '68
• May-June 1968: A Situation Lacking in Workers' Autonomy - Mouvement Communiste - Detailed history and critical analysis of the May-June 1968 movement in France.
• Obsolete Communism: A Left-Wing Alternative - Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit - Excellent book on France 1968 by two participants, giving an account of the revolt as well as how it was co-opted with the help of the unions and French Communist Party.

Recommended reading

• 1968 : a chronology of events in France and internationally - Short chronology of the events which swept France in May and June 1968.
• General Strike: France 1968 - A factory by factory account - Analysis of the development, organisation and end of the mass strike in France 1968, with reference to case studies of particular factories.
• Impressions of May - Ngo Van Xuyet - Vietnamese revolutionary and émigré working in a Paris metal factory gives his first-hand account of the May 1968 uprising.
• Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement - An account written in the immediate aftermath of May 1968 of the Situationists' contribution to the Movement of Occupations that took place throughout the country.
• Parisian Metallurgists in May 1968 - Michael Seidman - Academic article showing how workers acted differently from the way they are usually portrayed in leftist and anarchist accounts of May 1968.
• May 1968 Documents - Situationist International - Documents produced by the Situationist International or groups the Situationists were involved with during the mass strike and revolt of May 1968.
• Football to the footballers! - Statement released by the Footballers' Action Committee after they had occupied the headquarters of the French Football Federation.

Other media

• France 1968 photo gallery - Photographs of the uprising and general strike in May 1968 in France.
• Paris 68 posters - Gallery of posters created during the France 1968 uprising.

Key texts

• All power to the councils!: A documentary history of the German revolution of 1918–1919 - An anthology collecting manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from the German Revolution—Rosa Luxemburg, the Revolutionary Stewards, and Gustav Landauer amongst others—introduced and annotated by the editor.
• Failure of a revolution: Germany 1918-1919 - Sebastian Haffner Written in a gripping, journalistic style, Haffner's account brutally captures the bloody repression of the Revolution.
• The communist left in Germany 1918-1921 - Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier Dauve and Authier's history of the Revolution and the turbulent years following it, with an emphasis on the role played by left communists.
• The German revolution, 1917-1923 - Pierre Broue Extensive account of the revolution and the years afterwards. Written from a Trotskyist perspective.

Other recommended reading

• Working-class activity and councils - Germany 1918‑1923 - Peter Rachleff - A survey of the main events and the limits of working class activity during the Revolution.
• Spartakism to National Bolshevism - the KPD 1918-24 - Solidarity An account of the emergence of the KPD (the Communist Party of Germany) in the early days of the German Revolution - as a break from the Social Democratic Party - through its decline and transformation into a tool of the Russian Bolshevik regime.
• Anti-Bolshevist Communism in Germany - Paul Mattick - Council communist Paul Mattick's reflections on the German Revolution, which he participated in, and the communist currents that emerged from it in opposition to Bolshevism.
• Germany 1918-19 - International Communist Current A history of the Revolution with a focus on the different organizations involved.
• Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany - Pamphlet on the origins of the movement for workers' councils in Germany, covering the 1918 revolution and its aftermath and activities and reactions of left and libertarian communists.
• Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21 - Wild Socialism examines the rise, development, and decline of revolutionary councils of industrial workers in Berlin at the end of the First World War. This popular movement spread throughout Germany, and was without precedent in either the theory or practice of the Social Democratic party and the trade unions allied to it.

Other media

• German Revolution 1918 photo gallery - Images from the German Revolution, including the Wilhelmshaven Revolt.

Key texts

• 1956: the Hungarian revolution - A short and clearly written history of the Hungarian workers' revolution against the state capitalist dictatorship.
• Hungary '56 - Andy Anderson - Excellent pamphlet, published by Solidarity. An invaluable guide to the events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956.
• Hungary '56: "the proletariat storming heaven" - Mouvement Communiste - Analysis of the Hungarian workers’ uprising, stressing the importance of the collective action taken by workers and critically examining the demands and programmes they put forward.
• Hungarian Tragedy - Peter Fryer An account of events in Hungary 1956 by Peter Fryer, then a columnist for the Daily Worker, the official paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Other recommended reading

• The Hungarian revolution: 1956 - Anonymous account of the events of the near revolution of 1956, containing interesting information from interviews with participants.
• United Nations report on the Hungarian uprising 1956 - UN special committee report on the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Examines the revolutionary workers councils established by Hungarian workers, and analyses the dangers they posed to both the Soviet bureaucracy and capitalism.
• Hungary '56 - Nick Heath - History of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, published as a special supplement of Anarchist Worker on the 20th anniversary in 1976.
• The Hungarian workers' revolution - Syndicalist Workers' Federation - Revised second edition of a pamphlet written by British syndicalists in 1957.
• Facing Reality - CLR James and Grace Lee Boggs's wide-ranging work written in the immediate aftermath of Hungary 1956.

Other media

• Hungary 56 photo gallery - Photo gallery of the events in Hungary 1956.

Key texts

• 1962-1973: Worker and student struggles in Italy - Sam Lowry - Short, simply-worded history of the wave of strikes and occupations that gripped Italian factories and universities during the 1960s.
• States of emergency: Cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 - Robert Lumley - Complete text of the definitive book on Italy's mass social movements of the 1960s and 70s tracing their development, growth, co-option and decline. Highly recommended.
• The Workerists and the unions in Italy's 'Hot Autumn' - Steve Wright - A brief history of the Italian 'Workerists' in the 'Hot Autumn' of 1969, when unions succeeded in co-opting radical working class demands. Extract from the excellent and highly recommended book Storming Heaven.
• Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake - Red Notes - Collection of articles, speeches and letters from Italy at a time of intense class struggle, giving an insider's account of the social movement and its struggles against the established left.

Key people and groups

• Lotta Continua - Arguably the most important extra-parliamentary organisation of the 1970s in Italy.
• Potere Operaio - Autonomist Marxist group basing theory on the everyday life of workers and their refusal of work.
• Antonio Negri - Autonomist Marxist academic and leader of Potere Operaio, wrongfully imprisoned for alleged involvement in the Brigate Rosse urban guerrilla group.
• Mario Tronti - Highly influential Marxist philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of autonomist thought.
• Mariarosa Dalla Costa - Marxist feminist famous for arguing that women's unwaged labour is an essential part of capitalist reproduction, rather than merely an oppression imposed on women by men.
• Silvia Federici - Marxist feminist writer drawing the links between capitalism's need for women's unpaid labour and the subjugation of women under patriarchy.
• Sergio Bologna - veteran Italian autonomist intellectual and activist.
• Raniero Panzieri - Co-founder of the early operaist journal Quaderni Rossi, and translator of the second volume of Marx' Capital into Italian.

Workers' struggles

• Porto Marghera – the last firebrands - Booklet on the widespread class struggle in the chemical factories of the Italian industrial zone of Porto Marghera in the 1960s and 70s.
• Against the state as boss: Autonomous Assembly of Alfa Romeo - A fascinating first person account of workers' struggles at Italian state-owned car manufacturer, Alfa Romeo from 1971-1972.
• An interview with workers at Fiat, 1970 - Three workers from FIAT Mirafiori in Italy describe the experiences of the Southern immigrant coming to work in the industrial cities of the North.

Women's struggles

• Italian feminism, workerism and autonomy in the 1970s: The struggle against unpaid reproductive labour and violence - Patrick Cuninghame - Article about the autonomous women's movement in Italy in the 1970s, with particular focus on Wages for Housework and Lotta Femminista.
• Fighting For Feminism: The Womens Question in an Italian Revolutionary Group - A set of letters from the Lotta Continua newspaper discussing the relationship between feminism, Marxism, the women's movement, and Lotta Continua.

Community struggles

• Take over the city - Community struggle in Italy, 1973 - Excellent article about community struggles across Italy, including rent strikes and occupations of empty housing.
• The working class struggle against the crisis: self-reduction of prices in Italy, 1975 - Bruno Ramirez - Bruno Ramirez's analysis of "the refusal to comply with price increases of essential services", also known as 'self-reduction'.

Strategy of tension

• Strategy of tension - A short introduction to the government's "strategy of tension" program, to use fascist groups to carry out terrorist attacks which would then be blamed on anarchists and the left.
• Operation Gladio - A short introduction to Operation Gladio, the secret neofascist army set up with NATO support to combat internal subversion.
• Secrets and bombs: The Piazza Fontana bombing and the strategy of tension - Detailed, book-length history of the strategy of tension.

Other media

• Hot Autumn photo gallery, Italy 1969 - Photos of strikes, demonstrations, occupations and mass assemblies of workers and students from Italy's 'Hot Autumn' of 1969. Also includes photos from the funeral of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who had been murdered by police earlier that year.
• Antonio Negri: a revolt that never ends - Documentary about the life and ideas of Italian Marxist Antonio Negri. With interesting footage from Italy in the 1960s-70s explains his development from the 'Operaisti' through his trial for supposed involvement in the Red Brigades up to today.
• Accidental death of an anarchist - Dario Fo - Dario Fo's best known play, based on the events surrounding Giuseppe Pinelli's death after he was arrested on suspicion of planting a bomb in Piazza Fontana, Milan, in 1969.
• The Unseen - Nanni Balestrini - Novel looking at the Italian Autonomia movement of the 1960s-70s through the eyes of a single working-class protagonist, from high-school rebellion, squatting, setting up a free radio station to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment.
• Two Short Stories - Nanni Balestrini - The first story, Let a thousand hands reach out to pick up the gun, is a montage of newspaper reports of the death of Mara Cagol, one of the founders of the Red Brigades. The second, FIAT, is a first-hand account of work (or its refusal) at the infamous FIAT plant in Turin, Italy.
• 'La classe operaia va in paradiso' (The working class goes to heaven) - Excellent film from 1971 depicting a factory worker's realisation of his condition as a "tool" in the process of production and his struggle against work, alienation and his own trade union.
• 'Lavorare con lentezza' (Work slowly) - Film by the Wu-Ming Collective against the backdrop of 1970s Bologna, in which two young men become involved in the city's famous radical pirate radio station, Radio Alice.

Logic

Formal Logic

• forallx - P.D. Magnus - An introductory text for those with no background in logic. Readers can expect to learn the basics of sentential logic, quantified predicate logic, formal semantics for said logics as well as how to develop proofs.
• Philosophical Devices - David Papineu - An introduction to set theory, other worlds, probability and meta-logic. Again for those with no prior background.
• Logic for Philosophy - Theodore Sider - Although it can work as an introductory text to formal logic, its scope (completeness, modal logic, etc) makes it more of an intermediate text.
• An Introduction to Modal Logic - M.J. Cresswell and G.E. Hughes - The book deals primarily with system T, S4, S5 and modal first-order logic. Some may find its scope limited, however the book is extremely thorough; providing many theorems, axioms, etc for each system before moving on to the next and explaining faults or shortcomings in other systems.

Classical/Ancient Philosophy

Introduction

It should be noted that during the period when most of Classical philosophy was formulated the divisions applied to various areas of modern and contemporary philosophy (e.g. the division of moral philosophy into theories of virtue ethics, deontology or consequentialism) did not exist in a very pronounced manner; treatises can be mostly about politics, but also deal with some metaphysics in certain areas, etc.

Political Philosophy

• The Republic - Plato - A treatise on how the Polis came about, why philosophers are the better candidates for ruling, the sacrifices they have to make and how his mode of government would satisfy everyone's "telos". Contained in this is also his "theory of forms".
• Politics - Aristotle - Aristotle discusses the various modes of government which were around him at the time, the various ways in which they succeed and fail. Specific emphasis is given to the Athenian model of democracy.
• The Constitution of Athens - Aristotle -

Ethics/Moral Philosophy

• Euthyphro - Plato - A dialogue including Socrates (before his trial) and a man named Euthyphro. Topics covered by the two center around knowledge (in general and of the gods and their intentions) and how this affects decision making.
• Socratic Dialogues - Plato -
• Nichomachean Ethics - Aristotle - A classic of virtue ethics. Aristotle discusses what virtue is, how to achieve it, as well as how and when people in disparate (economic and political) conditions can achieve virtue.

Epistemology

• Euthyphro - Plato - A dialogue including Socrates (before his trial) and a man named Euthyphro. Topics covered by the two center around knowledge (in general and of the gods and their intentions) and how this affects decision making.
• The Republic - Plato - A treatise on how the Polis came about, why philosophers are the better candidates for ruling, the sacrifices they have to make and how his mode of government would satisfy everyone's "telos". Contained in this is also his "theory of forms".

Metaphysics

• Phaedo - Plato -
• Metaphysics - Aristotle -
• The Republic - Plato - A treatise on how the Polis came about, why philosophers are the better candidates for ruling, the sacrifices they have to make and how his mode of government would satisfy everyone's "telos". Contained in this is also his "theory of forms".

Modern Philosophy

Introduction

The period known as "Modern philosophy" marks any philosophy written from the 16th century up to the late 19th and sometimes early 20th century. This guide will treat the modern period as taking place between the 16th and 19th century. Historically, modern philosophy is preceded by the period known as "medieval philosophy", however, this period is usually of importance to specialists and it's of little value to new students of philosophy. Further, many of the worthwhile arguments of medieval philosophy appear in the texts of modern philosophers.

EPISTEMOLOGY

• Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes
• Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanging, David Hume
• A Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
• Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegel

METAPHYSICS

• Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes
• Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
• Leviathan -Thomas Hobbes - The originator of the "social contract". This book discusses Hobbes ideas regarding what the 'state of nature' of humanity was, why humans enter into an agreement of government and the role of the state.
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume - An essential treatise of classical empiricism. Hume explains his ideas concerning the nature of thought and outlines what would later be called "the problem of induction".
• Ethics, Benedict Spinoza

ETHICS/MORAL PHILOSOPHY

• An Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, David Hume
• Ethics, Benedict Spinoza
• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant
• The Principles of Morals and Legislation - Jeremy Bentham - Bentham applies the ethical theory of Utilitarianism to government and outlines how the principle of utility is to be measured.
• Utilitarianism - John Stuart Mill - A primer of utilitarianism. Mill explains what the theory consists of, how it differs from "Epicurianism", what the main principle is, how it works alongside justice and how it's to be applied.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

• Leviathan, -Thomas Hobbes - The originator of the "social contract". This book discusses Hobbes ideas regarding what the 'state of nature' of humanity was, why humans enter into an agreement of government and the role of the state.
• Two Treatises on Government, - John Locke - The bulk of Locke's ideas are contained in the second treatise, the first being a response to another philosopher. In this he builds on/reacts to Hobbes' conception of the state of nature, the role of government and proposes one of the most famous arguments in favor of private-property.
• On The Social Contract - Jean Jacques Rousseau - Building on the tradition set by Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau outlines what he believes to be right form of government. Arguing in favor of both direct and (various forms of) representative democracy.
• Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Jean Jacques Rousseau
• The Principles of Morals and Legislation - Jeremy Bentham - Bentham applies the ethical theory of Utilitarianism to government and outlines how the principle of utility is to be measured.
• On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
• Considerations on Representative Government - John Stuart Mill - Although the book is mostly concerned with justifying representative democracy, in certain parts (particularly chapter 3) Mill airs out his grievances with the representative system and proposes an argument for direct participation.
• Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx
• The German Ideology, Karl Marx

Contemporary Philosophy

Introduction

Towards the end of the 19th century a split happened in philosophy and two main camps were created: One became known as the "analytic" side of philosophy and was marked by a commitment to formal logic, empiricism and (at least initially) concern with philosophy of languge; the other become known as the "continental" side of philosophy (the name being a bit of a misnomer since many analytic philosophers came "from the continent", that is, Europe and because Europe isn't the only continent!) and was marked by criticisms of philosophy and, among other things, a penchant for system building. Some philosophers dispute the notion of dividing philosophy into an "analytic" and a "continental" side (e.g. Richard Rorty and Brian Leiter), but, because the division is generally accepted, it will be applied here. Thus, unless there's disagreement, the contemporary philosophy section of this guide will have an analytic and, as people contribute, a continental section. In the meantime, for readings in continental philosophy refer to Philosophy- a further reading guide.

Metaphysics

• Consciousness Explained - Daniel Dennett
• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory - David Chalmers
• The Mystery of Consciousness - John Searle

Ethics/Moral Philosophy

(Meta-ethics)

• Principia Ethica - G.E. Moore
• Natural Goodness - Phillipa Foot
• The Possibility of Altruism - Thomas Nagel
• Modern Moral Philosophy - G.E.M. Amscombe
• Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy - Bernard Williams
• Language, Truth and Logic - A.J. Ayer

(Normative ethics)

• Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy - Phillipa Foot
• Utilitarianism: For and Against - J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams
• Moral Saints - Susan Wolf
• The Idea of a Female Ethic - Jean Grimshaw

Political Philosophy

• A Theory of Justice - John Rawls - Rawls devices a famous argument defending liberalism and favoring contractarianism as a way of establishing a just society. Readers can expect to be acquainted with his “veil of ignorance” concept, his idea of reflective equilibrium and, all in all, the way in which contemporary political philosophy works. Anyone interested in engaging in any type of contemporary political philosophy must be familiar with the ideas presented here (although, perhaps, not with the entire book).
• Anarchy, State and Utopia - Robert Nozick - Nozick’s propertarian (“libertarian” in political philosophy circles) response to Rawls. He sets forward his argument defending private-property and advocating a minimal state.
• Equality of What? - Amartya Sen
• Why Not Socialism? - Gerald Cohen - Although this text is technically a political philosophy text, it is written in a very accessible manner. Like the title suggests, it is Cohen’s attempt to show that, contrary to the common arguments people give, humans don’t have to be egoists and that when put in certain situations, like Cohen’s camping trip, they immediately assume basic socialist principles regarding how to divide labor, use tools and enjoy the fruits of what they produce.
• On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice - Gerald Cohen - Although written before, Why Not Socialism?, this essay can be taken to be the supplement to it. Here Cohen assumes the more distinctive manner of establishing principles for justice common to contemporary political philosophy and which were at work behind the scenes through much of, Why Not Socialism? He shows why his version of egalitarianism, known as “Luck egalitarianism”, is most just, why it should be advocated and how it covers the basic points of other forms of egalitarianism advocated by other philosophers.
• Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality - Gerald Cohen - In this book Cohen targets the arguments of Nozick in his, Anarchy, State and Utopia, and shows, among other things, that (1) Nozick is not as much concerned with liberty as he is with property, (2) his famous maxim that, “just steps lead to just conclusions” is mistaken and (3) his arguments allow for a left interpretation (“world ownership” as opposed to “private ownership”) which undermines his right-wing enterprise. Cohen also attacks what he takes to be the Lockean assumptions of Marxists regarding labor and value.
• The Philosophical Foundations of Private Property - Alan Carter - Carter examines the most famous arguments used to justify private-property and finds them all unconvincing. Throughout the text he makes clear why a system of usufruct (equal access) regarding that which may fall under the tile of "property" avoids all the philosophical problems private-property does not. Philosophers whose arguments are addressed include Locke, Bentham, Nozick and Kant (among others).
• Anarchism: Some Theoretical Foundations - Alan Carter
• A Radical Green Political Theory - Alan Carter
• Arguing for Equality - John Baker

Key texts

• DAM rank and filists! The Communication Workers Group - Subversion - Article by an-ex member of the rank and file Communication Workers Group, looking at their experiences, making suggestions for future workplace organising, rejecting the CWG's rank and filism.
• The national US Postal Service wildcat strike, 1970 - Jeremy Brecher - Short history of the successful nationwide illegal wildcat strike of American postal workers: the first major strike of federal government workers.
• Sorting out the postal strike - Joe Jacobs - Analysis of the 1971 UK postal workers' strike, which was the country's first national postal strike in history.
• The 1978 Postal Wildcat - Michael Braun - Summary of the 1978 American postal wildcat, which was the biggest strike by federal employees in the US since the 1970 postal strike.

Industry struggles

• Scabs! part one and part two - Phinneas Gage - Excellent two part article by a postal worker on a wildcat strike by employees of a private mail contractor, and the difficulty the union had in going beyond 'bargaining unit unionism'.
• Waves of Struggle, The Winter Campaign at the Post Office in Edmonton - Phinneas Gage - Article on the creativity and militancy of Canadian postal workers in their 2011 dispute, which started before and ended after the official strikes were called.
• The committee in action - Phinneas Gage - Great article by a postal worker describing worker organisation at Canada Post and the ups, downs and risks of organizing.
• Royal Mail deal: a post mortem - A postal worker writes up an account of the 2009 UK postal workers' strike, which saw 18 days’ strike action before being called off by the union.
• Comments on the recent summer postal strike - by a striker, 2007 - A postman looks at developments and future implications in the suspension by the union of the 2007 strike.
• 2003: Postal workers wildcat strike - Short history of the largely successful wildcat stoppage of thousands of postal workers in the UK, and the developments which led to the strike.
• Self-organisation and action in the US post office - An account of sabotage, solidarity and wildcat strikes at a large postal sorting office in the US by a mail handler.

Related tags

• Communication Workers Group - Militant rank and file network of postal workers from the late 1980s, initiated by anarcho-syndicalists in the UK.
• Royal Mail - Content about workers' struggles, privatisation and events related to the Royal Mail.
• CWU - Content about the Communication Workers' Union, the main trade union representing postal workers in the UK.
• CUPW - Content about the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the main trade union representing postal workers in Canada.
• Post strikes 2009 - Content about the 2009 UK postal strikes against 'modernisation'.

Other media

• Signed, sealed and delivered: 1978 strike against mandatory overtime, speedups and hazardous working conditions - Documentary on the results of the 1978 American postal wildcat and the struggle of 200 workers to get their jobs back.
• The Canadian postal workers wildcat strike 1965 - Documentary on the victorious 1965 Canadian postal workers' wildcat, in which workers in more than 30 cities walked off the job against the wishes of their employers, the government and their union.
• Images from 1970 U.S. postal strike - Pictures from the two week wildcat strike at the post office in the US.
• Don't be an overtime addict - Paul Petard - Booklet produced by the anarchist cartoonist and postal worker Paul Petard in the early 2000s, when he was working at a Post Office in London.
• Post office - Charles Bukowski - Bukowski's classic novel on trying to keep his sanity against the everyday grind of delivering mail around Los Angeles.

Key texts

• The Bolsheviks and workers' control: the state and counter-revolution - Maurice Brinton - Amazing pamphlet exposing the struggle that took place over the running of workplaces between workers and the new Russian state.
• The Bolsheviks come to power - Alexander Rabinowitch - Seminal account of the Russian Revolution between July 1917 and the overthrow of the provisional government in October.
• Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution - Rod Jones - Pamphlet about the Russian workers' struggle to create socialism not in political party programmes but through confronting the concrete reality of everyday life. In particular covers the activity of the factory committees.
• The unknown revolution, 1917-1921 - Volin - Extensive work on the Russian Revolution, its usurping by the Bolsheviks and on workers' rebellions against the new dictatorship.
• The strategy and nature of Bolshevism - Final chapters of Gabriel and Dany Cohn-Bendit's book Obsolete Communism, the Left-Wing Alternative, dealing with the theory and practise of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution.

Key people and groups

• The Bolsheviks - Revolutionary socialist party which came to power in the 1917 Russian revolution. Important figures included Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
• Gavril Miasnikov and the Workers' Group - Gavril Miasnikov was a Russian metalworker and veteran Bolshevik activist who was expelled from the party in 1922 for demanding workers' control of industry and a free press. He then set up the Workers Group of the Russian Communist Party aka The Workers' Group. Repeatedly arrested and imprisoned by the Russian Communist Party and he was eventually executed in 1945.
• Workers' Opposition - Faction in the Russian Communist Party who opposed the bureaucratisation of the party, though never fully broke with Bolshevik ideology.
• Nestor Makhno - Ukrainian anarchist and commander of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine aka 'The Makhnovists', an independent anarchist army which fought both the old Tsarist regime and the new Bolshevik one (see reading list below).
• Gregori Maximov - Russian anarcho-syndicalist sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks but saved by the solidarity of Russia's metalworkers union. The editor of several anarcho-syndicalist newspapers he was eventually expelled from Russia.

Other recommended texts

• My Disillusionment in Russia - Emma Goldman - An account of her experiences in Russia during the revolution, providing a picture of the rampant opportunism of the Soviet government and the feeling of betrayal on the part of many revolutionaries.
• The Russian Tragedy - Alex Berkman - Analysis on the failure of the Russian revolution, written in 1922.
• The third revolution? Peasant resistance to the Bolshevik government - Nick Heath - Excellent article on the wave of rebellions of rank-and-file Russian workers and peasants across the country in 1919-1921 against the Bolsheviks. Contrary to Bolshevik claims, these rebellions were not reactionary but in support of the revolution's original aims: socialism, and workers' and peasants' self-management.
• Trotsky, the Left Opposition and the Rise of Stalinism: Theory and Practice - John Eric Marot - Demolition of the popular myth that Trotsky and his Left Opposition within the Bolsheviks were a heroic attempt to defend working class interests against Stalinism.
• Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group - Paul Avrich - Informative article about Miasnikov and the Workers' Group, a dissident breakaway faction from the Bolsheviks.
• Russian anarchists and the civil war - Paul Avrich - Avrich discusses the position of anarchists during the Civil War in Russia, including Makhno in the Ukraine and the repression of anarchists in Russia itself.
• Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution - Gregori Maximov - An account of the effects Russian Revolution on the Russian syndicalists and anarchists, and vice-versa, by a leading Russian anarcho-syndicalist of the time.
• The Hunt for Red October: Ten Days That Didn't Overthrow Capitalism - Wildcat - Article debunking theories both for and against the October Revolution in Russia against the events of 1917-1921, including the council communist, Trotskyist and 'left communist' positions on the revolution.
• Social origin and educational level of the chief Bolshevik leaders in 1917 - Information from a questionnaire filled out by members of the Bolshevik central committee in 1917, regarding the social background of the so-called leaders of the Russian working class.
• Red Petrograd: revolution in the factories 1917-1918 - S.A. Smith - Well researched and detailed study of the factory-level impact of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd, dealing in particular with implentation of workers' control by the factory councils.

Kronstadt

In 1921 there was a mutiny and rebellion of sailors and workers in the Russian port town of Kronstadt against the autoritarianism of the new Bolshevik government. The uprising in the town of Kronstadt, famous for its radicalism in both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions was declared 'counter-revolutionary' and 'a White (Tsarist) plot' by the Bolsheviks.

• 1921: The Kronstadt rebellion - Short and simply written introductory text into the events at Kronstadt.
• The Kronstadt uprising of 1921 - Ida Mett - Fantastic history of the Kronstadt uprising, dispelling Bolshevik misinformation about the rebellion and includes many original sources from the uprising itself.
• Kronstadt Izvestia - Archive of the Kronstadt rebels' publication, written and published at the time of the uprising, outlining their demands and events as they happened.
• The Kronstadt Revolt - Ante Ciliga - Short account written by the Croatian Marxist at the time of some of Trotsky's writings on the subject, which faces many of the major issues.
• The Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 - Lynne Thorndycraft - Excellent article including information which demolishes the lie put forward by the Bolsheviks at the time (and repeated by their supporters today) that the workers and sailors of Kronstadt had, between 1917 and 1921, turned from solid revolutionaries to backward self-seeking peasants.
• Kronstadt '21 - Victor Serge - Excerpt on the Kronstadt rebellion from Memoirs of a Revolutionary by an ex-Bolshevik. Despite remaining remaining in the camp of those claiming Kronstadt as 'a tragic necessity', he is honest enough to describe the facts of the situation in their own damning terms.

The Makhnovists

Between 1918 and 1921 in the Ukraine, the anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine aka 'The Makhnovists' battled against both the 'White' armies of the old Tsarist regime and the 'Red' armies of the new Bolshevik one.

• 1917-1921: The Ukrainian Makhnovist movement - Short and simply written introduction to the revolutionary movement in the Ukraine.
• History of the Makhnovist movement, 1918-1921 - Peter Arshinov - The definitive book on the subject of the Makhnovists. Highly recommended.
• Nestor Makhno in the Russian civil war - Michael Malet - Excellent essay examining the Makhnovist movement, from its military history to its ideology and organisational structure.
• Kontrrazvedka: The story of the Makhnovist intelligence service - Vyacheslav Azarov - Interesting study of the Makhnovists' intelligence service during the Russian civil war.
• Anti-Semitism and the Makhnovists - Michael Malet - Essay demonstrating that - despite false allegations - Makhno was not anti-Semitic and that incidents of anti-Semitism among the Makhnovists were less than in rival military forces, including the Bolshevik Red Army.
• Who are the Makhnovists and what are they fighting for? - Statement written by the Cultural Educational Section of the Makhnovist Army in April 1920.
• Manifesto of the Makhnovists - Manifesto of the Makhnovists, written in 1918 by Nestor Makhno.

Other media

• Reds - Film written, directed, produced and starred in by Warren Beatty, who plays the American communist and writer John Reed as he experiences first-hand the Russian revolution. Also starring Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman.

Key texts

• Situationists - an introduction - Short and clearly-written introduction to the Situationists.
• Spectacular Times - Larry Law - Series of small humourous 'pocketbooks' providing excellent brief introductions to situationist ideas.
• Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord - Seminal analysis of 20th Century consumer capitalism. Arguably the most important text of Situationist thought.
• The Revolution of Everyday Life - Raoul Vaneigm - Excellent text, written in Vaneigem's typically poetic style, attacking the alienation of capitalist life not only at work but also in our 'free' time.
• Critique of the Situationist International - Gilles Dauve - Excellent overview of Situationist thought, analysing both their theoretical strengths and weaknesses.

Key people and groups

• Situationist International - Libertarian Marxist group whose ideas heavily influenced the events of May 1968 as well as those of non-Leninist revolutionaries for years to come.
• Guy Debord - Writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International.
• Raoul Vaneigm - One of the most prominent members of the Situationist International.

Other recommended texts

• Internationale Situationniste - Archive of issues of the Situationist International's journal.
• On the poverty of student life - Classic essay analysing the alienation inherent in student life and the university in general.
• Preliminaries on councils and councilist organization - René Riesel - A look at workers' councils and the historical contexts in which they were created, challenging some aspects of the standard anarchist analysis of the events in Spain during the 1936 Revolution.
• The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy - Guy Debord - Interesting text on the 1965 riots in Watts, Los Angeles, developing into a wider criticism of the civil rights movement in general.
• Militancy: the highest stage of alienation - Organisation des Jeunes Travailleurs Révolutionnaires - A critique of the role of the political militant, it's misery and arrogance.
• Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement - Situationist International - Written in the aftermath of May 1968, a highly interesting account of their contribution to the movement of occupations that took place throughout France during the largest wildcat strike in history.
• May 1968 Documents - Situationist International - Documents produced by the Situationist International or groups the Situationists were involved with during the mass strike and revolt of the glorious May 1968 in France.

Situationist-influenced texts

• On the poverty of hip life - Contradiction - A critical look at the hippy counter-culture.
• Strange defeat: The Chilean revolution, 1973 - Pointblank! - Article written in October 1973 about the coup in Chile which deposed elected left-wing leader Salvador Allende.
• Self management and the Spanish revolution - Point Blank - A Situationist take on the militias and workers' councils during the Spanish Revolution.
• On the poverty of Berkeley life and the marginal stratum of American society in general - Chris Shutes - Situationist-influenced text containing critiques of Berkeley radicalism, the marginal worker, 'natural' commodities (e.g. crafts, food, medicine), the car, jogging, bureaucratic reform, Reaganism, the Black Panthers, criminality, culture/aesthetics, feminism, therapy, Robert Crumb, global class struggle in the 1970s and 80s and South Africa in particular - plus more.

Other media

• How to talk like a Situationist - Humorous piss-take of Situationist stereotypes.
• King Mob poster and image gallery - Posters, stickers and images produced by British Situationist-influenced group King Mob.

Key texts

• 1936-1939: The Spanish civil war and revolution - Short history and overview of the events that took place in the Spanish civil war and revolution.
• Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell - Classic account of Orwell's experiences in the civil war and its betrayal by the Spanish Communist Party.
• Anarchists in the Spanish revolution - Jose Peirats - A lifelong member of the CNT gives his account and analysis of the Spanish civil war.
• The tragedy of Spain - Rudolf Rocker - Excellent book analysing the Spanish civil war by a leading anarcho-syndicalist.
• Workers' power and the Spanish revolution - Tom Wetzel - Historical article and analysis of the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, and in particular the activities of the Spanish anarchists within it.
• The CNT in the Spanish Revolution - Jose Peirats - Extensive, three volume work by chronicling the history of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT - "National Confederation of Labour"), the anarcho-syndicalist union and largest workers' union in Spain at the time during the Spanish civil war and revolution 1936-9.

Key people and groups

• CNT - Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, an anarcho-syndicalist union founded in 1910 which during the civil war boasted 1.5 million members and was easily its most influential organisation.
• FAI - Federación Anarquista Ibérica, an anarchist political organisation active both within and out of the CNT.
• Friends of Durruti - Anarchist group founded during the civil war opposing the CNT's participation in the Republican government.
• Mujeres Libres - Anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation active within the Spanish CNT before and during the Spanish revolution.
• POUM - Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, an anti-Stalinist communist political party which was severely repressed by the Spanish Communist Party. George Orwell served as a member of one of their militias.
• Buenaventura Durruti - Legendary anarcho-syndicalist rail worker, CNT member and military leader, killed during the Spanish civil war.

Other recommended texts

• 1936-1939: the Spanish Civil War - Augustin Souchy - Excerpt from his autobiography, Beware! Anarchist: A Life for Freedom, recounting his time in Spain.
• Spilling the Spanish beans - George Orwell - 1937 essay on the lies in the British press obscuring the revolutionary character of events in Spain in favour of a simple story of 'democracy vs. fascism'.
• Was there a Spanish revolution? - Enric Mompo - Essay on the nature of the Spanish civil war summarizing the historical background of the military uprising and that immediately after, spontaneously formed committees and workers patrols replaced the state throughout most of Spain, providing “irrefutable proof of the socialist character of the Spanish Revolution”.
• The Tragic Week in May: the May Days Barcelona 1937 - Augustin Souchy - Account of the fighting in Barcelona in May 1937 when the Communists consolidated their hold on power and turned decisively against the anarchists and revolutionary workers.
• We the anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937 - Stuart Christie - Excellent history of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, which played a key role in the Spanish civil war and revolution, from 1927 to 1937.
• The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-39 - Agustin Guilamòn - In-depth study of the hugely important anarcho-syndicalist CNT militants who opposed their union's collaboration with the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War.

The revolution

• The anarchist collectives: workers' self-management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939 - Sam Dolgoff - First book in English devoted to the experiments in workers’ self-management, both urban and rural, which constituted one of the most remarkable social revolutions in modern history.
• Collectives in the Spanish Revolution - Gaston Leval - Detailed account of worker-controlled agriculture, industry and public services in revolutionary Spain during the civil war.
• Industrial Collectivisation during the Spanish Revolution - Deirdre Hogan - Article focusing on the collectivising of industry which took place in the urban centres of Spain.
• An account of agrarian collectives in Aragon - Augustin Souchy - An account of the workings of rural agricultural collectives in Aragon, revolutionary Spain, 1936-39.
• La Révolution Espagnole: The collectivized CNT taxis - Article from the POUM's newspaper La Révolution Espagnole in 1936 on the CNT's collectivised taxis during the Spanish civil war.

The civil war

• Battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 - Antony Beevor - Excellent military history of the Spanish civil war by a mainstream historian.
• The Spanish civil war: Revolution and counterrevolution - Burnett Bolloten - Exhaustive account of the period from 1936 to 1939.
• Story of the Iron Column: militant anarchism in the Spanish civil war - Abel Paz - History of the legendary Column who fought fascism and resisted attempts to turn them into a regular military outfit.
• A Day Mournful and Overcast... An account of the Iron Column - Personal account of a liberated prisoner's experience as a fighter in the Iron Column prior to its incorporation into the Communist-run Republican army.
• A soldier returns - letter from an American fighter in the Durruti Column - Letter from an American trade unionist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World about his experiences as a fighter in the International section of the anarchist Durruti Column.
• The Foreign Legion of the Revolution - Interesting article focusing on the activity of exiled German anarcho-syndicalists in Spain, both in the lead up to and during the Civil War and Revolution of 1936.
• International volunteers in the POUM Militias - Andy Durgan - Written by the historical consultant for Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom, the article also contains a list of international volunteers in the POUM militia.

Women's struggle

• Women in the Spanish revolution - Solidarity - Excellent pamphlet by Liz Willis of Solidarity on the conditions and role of women in and around the Spanish Civil War and revolution of 1936-1939.
• History and actuality of anarcha-feminism: lessons from Spain - Marta Iniguez de Heredia - A look an anarcha-feminism in practice, using women's activism during the Spanish civil war as a case study.
• Free women of Spain - Martha A. Ackelsberg - In-depth book on the free women of Spain, Mujeres Libres.
• “Separate and equal”?: Mujeres Libres and anarchist strategy for women's emancipation - Martha A. Ackelsberg - History of Mujeres Libres, a women's anarchist organisation, which aimed to end the “triple enslavement of women, to ignorance, to capital, and to men.”

Other media

• Spanish Civil War and Revolution photo gallery, 1936-39 - Photo gallery of anarchists and other workers attempting social revolution in Spain 1936.
• Spanish Civil War and Revolution poster gallery, 1936-39 - Archive of posters from the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, 1936-39.
• Living Utopia - A unique feature-length documentary chronicling the origins and evolution of the Spanish anarchist movement and its important role during the Spanish revolution. In Spanish with English subtitles.
• Land and Freedom - Ken Loach's 1995 film of an unemployed Communist who leaves Britain to fight in the Spanish civil war.
• For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway - Novel of a young American who goes to Spain to fight for the International Brigades. The book shows Hemingway's obvious bias in favour of the Stalinist Communist Party version of events but is still an excellent read.

Key texts

• Unions - an introduction - libcom.org's clear and concise guide to unions, their function and how we think workers should relate to them.
• Red flags torn: a brief sketch of some problems with unions - Ed Goddard - article briefly explaining some of the problems inherent in the official trade unions and the need for workers to take control of their actions out of the hands union bureaucrats.
• Unions: a revolutionary critique - Red and Black Notes - brief text advancing a communist anti-union position, looking at the way unions serve to nullify dissent and channel struggle in "acceptable" directions.
• Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle - Solidarity Federation - excellent short book, which includes a useful critique of the unions in chapter 1 and proposes a revolutionary alternative.
• The origins of the union shop - Tom Wetzel - article about the limitations of union closed shops and how they helped unions act as a tool of discipline of workers instead of a tool for defending their interests.

Case studies

• Organized labour versus "the revolt against work" - John Zerzan - excellent article examining how unions often participate in the exploitation of workers, focussing in particular on the US car manufacturing industry from the 1930s to 1970s (the author much later on in his life wrote a lot of terrible stuff, but we promise this is good).
• Institutionalization from below: The unions and social movements in 1970s Italy - Robert Lumley - chapter of Robert Lumley's excellent book on the mass struggles in Italy in the 1960s-70s detailing how the unions re-gained control of the social movements and channelled them into "representative" politics.
• "The fight of our lives": an analysis of the UK pensions dispute - Steven Johns - a detailed look at the struggles in 2011-12 in the UK over pensions, and the role the unions played in this.
• 1970-1972: The Lordstown struggle and the real crisis in production - Ken Weller - highly interesting pamphlet on workers' struggles against the frenetic pace of work at a General Motors plant, and the co-optation of the struggle by the auto workers union.
• Wildcat: Dodge Truck June 1974 - detailed article by participants and eyewitnesses about the wildcat strike at the Chrysler truck plant in Michigan, 1974, and the roles of the workers, the union and the left.
• Anatomy of an industrial struggle: Chrysler factory at Tonsley Park in Adelaide 1976-1978 - detailed account by one of the workers of two years of struggle at a plant and the role the union played in it.

Other recommended texts

• Between a rock and a hard place: thoughts on militant workers as reps - Phil Dickens - Interesting article by a shop steward evaluating the difficulties in being a radical union activist.
• On rank-and-file action, trade union representation and building confidence - Phil Dickens - A brief note on why forms of action taken at the behest of trade union structures cannot be equated with rank-and-file led organisation and direct action.
• “Just and peaceful labor relations”: Why the U.S. government supported collective bargaining - Nate Hawthorn - brief account of some of the history of the capitalist state’s sponsorship of contracts for unions in the United States, with an emphasis on the reasoning that politicians and judges gave for their support of collective bargaining.
• Thinking about unions: association and representation - Joseph Kay - Interesting article looking at the tensions inside unions between their ability to bring workers together in struggle and their role as representatives/mediators of that struggle.
• Better than we know ourselves: a ruling class view of the trade unions - Article adapted from the May 2012 article of Black Flag magazine which examines the trade unions from the perspective of the bourgeoisie.
• Trade unions: pillars of capitalism - Internationalist Perspective - Interesting series of articles debating the nature of unions and how we should relate to them.
• Unions and political struggle - Mouvement Communiste - French libertarian communist group Mouvement Communiste's analysis and critique of the trade unions.

More information

• Unions archive - libcom.org's unions tag containing all our content about the nature of unions and trade unionism.

Key texts

• Feminism is for everybody – bell hooks – A brief introduction to feminist theory.
• Revolutionary Feminism, Communist Interventions vol. 3 - Huge document of texts written by communist, anarchist and radical feminists on women's oppression and capitalism.
• Socialism, anarchism and feminism - Carol Ehrlich - Essay arguing that to be effective, feminism must not simply be socialist (opposed to capitalism), but also anarchist - opposed to all forms of domination.
• The power of women and the subversion of the community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James - Influential 1972 pamphlet that used a feminist reading of Marx to challenge Left orthodoxy on the role of women, their labour and their struggles.
• The problem with work: feminism, marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries - Kathi Weeks - Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation.
• Sex, race, and class - Selma James - A classic text exploring the interplay of sex, race, and class, arguing that capitalism and the Left have mystified the real relationship between these categories.
• States of injury - Wendy Brown - Brown investigates how a sense of injury came to form the basis of identity, and how this gives rise to a politics of representation and deference to the state in place of a politics of freedom.
• Theorizing patriarchy - Sylvia Walby - Walby critically analyses the feminist accounts of six key social structures: paid employment, household production, culture, sexuality, violence and the state. She proposes a 'dual systems' analysis of capitalism and patriarchy which synthesises Marxist and radical feminisms.
• Gender, power and struggle - Polite Ire - A great collection of introductory writings about the construction of gender roles, rape culture and the relevance of gender to the state and class struggle.
• Moving towards solidarity – Laurie Penny - A powerful explanation of the need for feminism to be trans-inclusive.
• Combahee River Collective statement - An important 1977 text widely considered to have laid the groundwork of intersectional feminism.
• Sex work: Solidarity not salvation – bounce - Article by a radical sex worker outlining the difference between sex worker inclusionary and exclusionary politics, and explaining how abolitionist approaches harm sex workers.
• Dohball's women/feminism reading guide - An additional reading guide compiled by a libcom poster, divided into intro and further reading.

Key people and groups

• Mujeres Libres - Anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation within the Spanish CNT union in the 1930s, active in the Spanish Revolution.
• GDDD - I gruppi di difesa della donna, largest of the women's groups in the Italian resistance to fascism, numbering 70,000 at their height, who organised strikes and took part in armed struggle.
• Mariarosa Dalla Costa - Marxist feminist famous for arguing that women's unwaged labour is an essential part of capitalist reproduction, rather than merely an oppression imposed on women by men.
• Silvia Federici - Italian Marxist feminist writer drawing the links between capitalism's need for women's unpaid labour and the subjugation of women under patriarchy.
• Emma Goldman - Anarchist, feminist and birth control advocate, described as "one of the most dangerous women in America".
• bell hooks - Pioneering Black intersectional feminist.
• Selma James - American feminist and libertarian socialist, widow of CLR James and founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign.
• He Zhen - Account of a central revolutionary feminist in early 20th-century China.

Other recommended texts

• Free women of Spain - Martha Ackelsberg - Book on the Mujeres Libres [Free Women].
• History and actuality of anarcha-feminism: lessons from Spain - Marta Iniguez de Heredia - Exploration the significance of the Mujeres Libres [Free Women] for the relationship between anarchism and feminism.
• Women in the Spanish revolution - Solidarity - Liz Willis writes on the conditions and role of women in and around the Spanish Civil War and revolution of 1936-1939.
• The door to the garden: feminism and Operaismo - Mariarosa Dalla Costa - Brief history of Italian Marxist Feminism.
• Anarcho-feminism - two statements - Two statements regarding anarcho-feminism from 1971 by Chicago anarcho-feminists and the Black Rose Anarcho-Feminists respectively.
• "No one ever asks what a man's role in the revolution is": Gender and sexual politics in the Black Panther Party 1966-1971 - Trace Matthews - Article on the gender politics of the Black Panthers in the context of competing ideologies, namely Black cultural nationalism and White feminism.
• Fighting For Feminism: The Womens Question in an Italian Revolutionary Group - A set of letters from the Italian Lotta Continua newspaper discussing the relationship between feminism, Marxism and the women's movement.
• No God, no boss, no husband: The world’s first anarcha-feminist group - An account of the first anarchist-feminist group in Argentina during the 1890s.

Women's struggles

• "You've Struck a Rock." Gender and Transformation in the US and South Africa - M. Bahati Kuumba - Article about women's involvement in the US civil rights movement and South African anti-apartheid struggles.
• Italian feminism, workerism and autonomy in the 1970s: The struggle against unpaid reproductive labour and violence - Patrick Cuninghame - Article about the autonomous women's movement in Italy in the 1970s, with particular focus on Wages for Housework and Lotta Femminista.
• Wages against housework - Silvia Federici - "They say it is love, we say it is unwaged work" - Italian autonomist Silvia Federici on the role of the housewife.
• ‘A spontaneous loss of enthusiasm’: workplace feminism and the transformation of women’s service jobs in the 1970s - Dorothy Sue Cobble - An analysis of the gendered dynamics in the class struggle in the 1970s US service sector.
• The Grunwick strike - A. Sivanandan - An essay written during the middle of the Grunwicks strike in Willesden, north-west London. A predominantly east African Asian women workforce went on strike against poor conditions and for union recognition.
• Witches, midwives, and nurses: A history of women healers - Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English - A history of the struggles over healing and caring labour, and how women were repressed to make way for the rise of modern medicine, which nonetheless argues that medical science could be a liberating force.
• The importance of dealing with Occupy's misogyny problem - Sasha Wiley - An account of some misogynist dynamics within the Occupy movement and the need to challenge them.

Other media

• Union maids (video) - Three women union activists tell their fascinating stories of organising in 1930s America, recounting their conflicts with bosses, police as well as their struggles against racism and sexism.
• Mothers strike (video) - A documentary that portrays the living conditions of the striking women in Walbrzych, Poland in 2010, their struggle against local authorities, conflicts with welfare institutions and their attempts at self-organizing.

Key texts

• Work - an introduction - libcom.org's, clear, short introduction to work, what is wrong with it, and what we can do about it.
• Work and the free society - Anarchist Federation - A more detailed pamphlet from the AF analysing work in capitalist society, explaining its history and suggesting how work could be organised in a free society.
• Useful work versus useless toil - William Morris - The British libertarian socialist artist writes on the difference between socially useful work and useless work only necessary under capitalism.
• A ballad against work - Kamunist Kranti - A pamphlet about and against work from an Indian libertarian communist group.

Unwaged work

• Wages against housework - Silvia Federici - Autonomist Marxist feminist Silvia Federici on wages and housework.
• Women, the unions and work, or… what is not to be done - Selma James - Excellent critique of the structural position of unions, work, and unwaged labour from a feminist perspective. By Selma James (1972).
• The problem with work: feminism, marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries - Kathi Weeks - In this book, Weeks challenges the presupposition that work is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique.

Workplace organising

• Workplace organising guide - libcom.org's guide to organising in your workplace.
• Faceless resistance: everyday resistance at a Swedish bakery - Tales of work and struggle at a large bakery facing closure.
• An account of setting up workplace assemblies - A ceramics worker recounts how workers at his plant won the right to hold meetings in work time.
• Workplace activity - libcom.org's archive of accounts of people organising in the workplace.

Anti-work

• Office worker's survival guide - Steven Johns - Helpful guide with suggestions on how to navigate the workplace hazards of stress, repetitive strain injury (RSI) and mindnumbing boredom to a happy work life, and perhaps a slightly better world.
• The right to be lazy - Paul Lafargue - In this text, Lafargue argues for the working class's right to be lazy, and says that productivity is the bosses' problem, not ours.
• In praise of idleness - Bertrand Russell - The Nobel prize-winning writer and socialist on why more of us should be lazier.
• Sabotage - libcom.org's archive of tales of shirking, sabotage and rebellion.

Work stories

• The American worker - Paul Romano - An excellent piece describing the working life of a US auto worker.
• Working: people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do - Studs Terkel - Landmark work by Studs Terkel speaking to people working in a multitude of jobs and their feelings on them.
• My first job: what was yours? - Siobhan Breathnach - Excellent account of working in the food industry, with dozens of comments by libcom.org users talking about their first jobs.
• Shirking 9 to 5: diary of a reluctant temp - Steven Johns - An agency worker recalls several years' temping in London, trying to help his co-workers and do as little work as possible.
• ‘Bout to explode: a day in the life of a precarious worker - Juan Conatz - Interesting first-person account of a day in the work life of a sleep deprived day laborer.
• What's it like to work at McDonalds? - McDonalds Workers' Resistance - Short article on what it's like to be a McDonalds employee.
• Workers' report: general conditions and the conditions for generalisation at Hackney Street Cleansing Department - A report about working life in refuse collection, recycling and street cleaning department of Hackney Council, including conflicts and co-operation in the workforce.
• A “zero-hours” contract… for thousands and thousands of hours - Jack Staunton - A call centre worker writes on his work compiling government market research surveys.

Management techniques

• Origins of the job structure in the steel industry - Katherine Stone - This text analyses how workers' control in the US steel industry in the 19th century was broken up by the employers using Taylorist management techniques, leading to the job structure which remains in place today.
• Proletarian management and informal workplace organisation - Kampa Tillsammans - Interesting article about informal workplace organising, management tactics and suggestions for workers to build power on the job.
• The stopwatch and the wooden shoe: Scientific management and the Industrial Workers of the World - Mike Davis - Mike Davis on the introduction of Taylorist management techniques to break up workers solidarity, and the response of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union.

To download any of these films, install uTorrent or Transmission. Search using The Pirate Bay and click the magnet or arrow to start the torrent.
Arranged alphabetically in order of the nationality of the director (or creator in the case of TV shows with multiple directors).

American

Brad Anderson

• The Machinist (2004) - Christian Bale stars as a factory worker whose insomnia has left him emaciated, and whose colleagues turn against him when he was involved in a workplace accident causing one worker to lose an arm.

Shari Springer Berman

• American Splendor - Adaptation of Harvey Pekar's comic series, which he wrote whilst working as a file clerk in a hospital.

Herbert J. Biberman

• Salt of the Earth (1953) - Film based on the 1951 miners' strike in New Mexico, and starring many of those involved, it shows how miners and their families all take part in the long hard struggle against the mining company. Made in 1953, it was originally banned as part of the 'Red Scare'.

Kathryn Bigelow

• Strange Days (1995) - An enjoyable if flawed sci-fi action movie, part of which seeks to investigate the nature of voyeurism via memory implants.

Lizzie Borden

• Born in Flames (1983) - Sci-fi flick about a post-revolutionary social democratic NYC in which gender and race issues have not been solves. In mockumentary style, it follows two women's guerrilla groups, one majority white and one majority POC.

James Bridges

• The China Syndrome - A nuclear reactor almost goes into meltdown, whilst a team of reporters are on site covering a story.

Steve Buscemi

• Trees Lounge - A mechanic, sacked for stealing out of the till, drinks his sorrows away over one summer in a Bukowski-esque anti-tale.

John Carpenter

• Escape from New York and Escape from LA - Bakunin with an eyepatch is forced to save the world.
• They Live - A special pair of sunglasses reveal billboards and adverts aren't what they seem.

Coen brothers

• Barton Fink (1991) - Film about a playwright working in Hollywood in 1941 exploring high and low culture, fascism, World War II and working conditions in the creative industries.
• The Big Lebowski - The Dude is a loafer that would have made Paul Lafargue blush. When a case of mistaken identity ruins his rug, he is dragged into something far bigger.

Laurie Collyer

• Sherrybaby (2006) - Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a young drug addict who leaves prison to collect her child from family members who have been looking after her.

Ivan Dixon

• The Spook Who Stood by the Door (1973) - The CIA hires a token black agent, who then uses his skills to help the militant black power movement. With a soundtrack by Herbie Hancock.

Bill Duke

• Deep Cover - Focusing on the role of the police in the war on drugs, an undercover cop begins to enjoy the rewards.

Ava DuVernay

• Selma (2014) - Dramatisation of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 for voting rights for African-Americans.

Ryan Fleck

• Half Nelson - A radical inner city school teacher battles his demons with crack cocaine whilst trying to inspire his class.
• Sugar - Miguel has dreamt all his life of leaving the Dominican Republican to play baseball professionally but he soon discovers it isn't all it's cracked up to be.

John Ford

• Grapes of Wrath (1940) - Classic film adaptation of Steinbeck's superb book depicting dispossessed peasant farmers from Oklahoma migrate to California to become wage labourers.

John Flynn

• Rolling Thunder - A tortured Vietnam veteran returns home to suburban America but nothing will be the same again.

John Frankenheimer

• Seconds - When an middle aged man trades his identity and his face, he only realises what he's given up when it's too late.

William Friedkin

• Sorcerer - Remake of Wages for Fear.

Brian Goodman

• What Doesn't Kill You - A small time criminal struggles to pay the bills and support his family.

Colin Higgins

• 9 to 5 (1980) - Comedy three female office workers realise their dream of overthrowing their sexist, egotistical and bigoted bosses.

Albert Hughes

• Dead Presidents - A black Vietnam vet joins a political organisation funding itself with armed robbery, based on the story of Haywood T. Kirkland.

John Huston

• Treasure of Sierra Madre - Film adaptation of B.Traven's novel.

Patty Jenkins

• Monster (2003) - Crime drama based on the real story of a sex worker who was executed for killing six men.

Mike Judge

• Office Space - When Peter sees an hypnotherapist, he inadvertently begins a refusal of work while his friends at the company are going to be made redundant and want revenge.

Jeremy Kagan

• Katherine (1975, a.k.a. The Radical) - Low-budget TV movie based on the life of Diana Oughton of the Weather Underground urban guerrilla group, starring Henry Winkler of Fonzie fame.

Barbara Kopple

• Harlan County USA - Documentary of the 1976 Brookside strike and the subsequent agreement.

Stanley Kubrick

• Spartacus (1960) - Historical epic about the Spartacus slave rebellion.
• The Killing - The robbery on a racetrack has been meticulously planned, but a scheming wife could end up getting someone killed, if they can pull it off.

Spike Lee

• Do the Right Thing - Film set in a New York neighbourhood, where class and racial tensions collide on the hottest day of the summer.
• Malcolm X - Biopic on the life of black power leader, Malcolm X, from his childhood through to his conversion to Islam in prison and his eventual split with the Nation of Islam.
• Summer of Sam - Broad look at the white community in the South Bronx of 1977, with punk, disco and the serial killer Son of Sam raging over a summer.

Sidney Lumet

• Network - When a news reporter is thrown off the air for voicing subversive opinions, the network see in him an opportunity to increase ratings.

Adrian Lyne

• Jacob's Ladder - A Vietnam veteran suffers delusions from the alleged drug trials administered during the war.

Michael Mann

• Heat - Work is the obsession for criminals and police alike, in this melancholy noir.
• Collateral - One night with a taxi driver, whose fare is a hitman directing him to his jobs around the city.

Andrew Niccol

• In Time - Time has replaced capital, and life runs out for those with nothing left on their clock.

Jeff Nichols

• Take Shelter - A construction contractor struggles with the recession and his worsening grip on reality.

Mike Nichols

• Silkwood - Based on the true story of Karen Silkwood, who raised concerns about radiation from the nuclear plant she worked at and was found dead in suspicious circumstances.

Kimberly Peirce

• Boys Don't Cry (1999) - Powerful dramatisation of the real story of Brandon Teena, a young trans man who was brutally murdered by a group of male acquaintances after they discovered he had female genitalia.

Kevin Reynolds

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - Riproaring action flick about England's legendary folk hero, Robin Hood, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

Martin Ritt

• Norma Rae - Inspired by a speech, a factory worker begins to organise at her workplace, based on the story of Crystal Lee Sutton.

Mark Romanek

• Never Let Me Go (2010) - A love triangle develops between three friends coming-of-age in a dystopian England.

George Romero

• Dawn of the Dead - 4 people hold up in a shopping centre as the zombies have taken over, and try to return to normality
• Land of the Dead - The zombies begin organising against the last remaining human city in the US.

Stuart Rosenberg

• Cool Hand Luke (1967) - A petty criminal refuses to conform to a brutal prison system and inspires his fellow inmates.

Gary Ross and Francis Lawrence

• The Hunger Games (2012-2015) - 4-part film series of action film adaptations of the sci-fi novels of the same name by Suzanne Collins, where a teenage girl takes on a dystopian United States' dictatorial government.

Richard Sarafin

• Vanishing Point - A car courier races across the country to make an impossible delivery, with an ending that symbolised the death of the hippie movement.

Tom Savini

• Night of the Living Dead 1990 - Improved remake of the civil rights film with zombies, which places the damsel in distress of the original, Barbra, as a strong leader.

John Sayles

• Matewan - The story of the Battle in Matewan, 1920, where miners fought private police.

Paul Schrader

• Light Sleeper - An ageing drug dealer is faced with finding legitimate employment.
• Blue Collar - 3 workers strapped for cash decide to rob their ineffectual union.
• American Gigolo - A gigolo for the wealthy becomes embroiled in scandal when he falls for a senator's wife.

Martin Scorsese

• Taxi Driver - Damaged Vietnam vet cum taxi driver battles with New York, and himself.
• After Hours - A chance date for an office worker turns into a nightmare trying to get back home in time for tomorrow's shift.
• Bringing Out the Dead - An overworked and conscientious ambulance driver begins to slip into insanity.

David Simon

• Generation Kill (2008) - TV miniseries dramatising the journalistic account of a Rolling Stone journalist embedded in a US military unit in Iraq.
• The Corner (2000) - TV miniseries looking at the lives of poor working class people in Baltimore against the background of the war on drugs.
• The Wire (2002-8) - Widely considered the best TV show ever made, The Wire examines the major institutions of American society over five series, revealing the flaws of the police, the courts, the prisons, the media, politicians, organise crime and more.

Tarsem Singh

• The Fall - A stuntman lies in the hospital bed, paralysed from his first film, where he befriends a small girl and loses himself in fantastical storytelling.

Gary Sinise

• Of Mice and Men (1992) - Film adaptation of Steinbeck's book which follows two farm labourers who dream of owning their own land.

Mario Van Peebles

• Panther - Film depicting the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and the American government campaign against them. Based on real events but unfortunately with a big dose of Hollywood exaggeration, particularly at the end of the film.

Fred Zinneman

• Behold a Pale Horse (1964) - Film loosely based on the life of anarchist guerrilla Sabate, it depicts an exiled Republican bandit who returns to Spain while police set a trap.

Various

• Into the West (2005) - TV miniseries which tells the story of the birth of modern America from the perspective of Native Americans, and working class white and black people.

Argentinian

Santiago Grasso

• Empleo - A man makes his way to work, finding people being used as objects.

Héctor Olivera

• La Patagonia Rebelde - Based on anarchist Osvaldo Bayer's book, this is the true story of the massacre of FORA organised labourers in the 1920s.

Australian

Gillian Armstrong

• My Brilliant Career (1979) - At the dawn of the 20th century a young woman in the Australian outback dreams of becoming a writer.

Belinda Cheyko

• City Loop (2000, originally known as Bored Olives) - A group of bored pizzeria workers seek pleasure over the course of the night.

Andrew Dominik

• Killing Them Softly - The Boston mob sends a hitman to kill those responsible for a card game robbery during the 2012 presidential election.

John Hillcoat

• Ghosts of the Civil Dead - Both prison guards and prisoners are manipulated into a riot to secure funding for a new maximum security complex.

David Michod

• Animal Kingdom (2010) - The gritty story of a teenager in a criminal family, and a detective who thinks he can save him.

George Miller

• Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - The defining films of what the apocalypse will look like, petrol has become the only commodity in a world of fast cars and dangerous roads.

Michael Rymer

• Angel Baby - A man released from a mental institution struggles to stay healthy with a baby on the way and his first job in years.

Stephen Wallace

• Stir - Written by an inmate involved, Stir shows what provoked the 1974 Bathurst Jail riots.

Belgian

Chantal Akerman

• Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) - Film which follows a single-mother and sex worker as she monotonously goes through the tasks of housework and daily reproduction in real time.

Agnes Varda

• Cleo From 5 To 7 (1961) - A young woman walks round Paris as she waits for the results of a medical examination – a finely observed study of anxiety and the search for hope.

British

Andrea Arnold

• Fish Tank (2009) - A volatile 15-year-old girl lives with her mother in East London council estate, and her mother's boyfriend becomes attracted to her. Trigger warning for domestic violence and underage sex.
• Red Road (2006) - A female CCTV operator in Glasgow spots a man from her past and begins to monitor him. Trigger warning for sexual violence.

Roy Battersby

• Leeds United! (1974) - This film tells the story of the 1970 wildcat strike by around 30,000 mostly female textile workers in Leeds, who battled the employers and their own union.

Alan Bleasdale

• Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) - 6 part TV miniseries looking at the lives of intermittently-employed casual Liverpudlian tarmac workers.
• GBH (1991) - 7 part TV miniseries with a fictionalised account of Derek Hatton of Militant running Liverpool Council in the 1980s.

Charlie Chaplin

• Modern Times (1936) - Chaplin plays a factory worker overwhelmed by the machinery of his workplace, and depicts the impact of the great depression on working people.
• The Great Dictator (1940) - A satirical spoof on Hitler produced during World War II, as Chaplin portrays both anti-Semitic dictator and his doppelgänger, a Jewish barber. Contains one of the most memorable speeches in film history.
• The Immigrant (1917) - A silent romantic comedy in which Chaplin plays a migrant to the US who is accused of theft on his voyage.
• The Kid (1921) - Chaplin's first full-length film, where his "Tramp" character adopts a child abandoned by his unwed mother and they become partners in crime.

Alan Clarke

• Scum - Nihilistic drama set in a young offenders institute.
• Elephant - Experimental short about the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Nigel Cole

• Made in Dagenham (2010) - Dramatisation of the 1968 strike by female workers at Ford's plant in Dagenham, Essex, for pay parity with men.

Paddy Considine

• Tyrannosaur - A bitter alcoholic finds salvation in a woman who seems to be perfect on the outside, but harbours an unhappy secret.

Bill Douglas

• My Childhood (1972) - Autobiographical first part of a trilogy set in Scotland in the 1940s. Set in a mining village with material and emotional poverty, this is about as far from Hollywood cinema as you can get.

Terry Gilliam

• Brazil (1985) - Dystopian epic in which a low level state bureaucrat who escapes the drudgery of his job into flights of fancy, becomes embroiled in a real adventure when he attempts to resolve a financial irregularity.

Mark Herman

• Brassed Off (1996) - Comedy drama about the difficulties faced by a colliery brass band when its pit is facing closure.

Duncan Jones

• Moon - The moon has been colonised, and is manned for 3 years. Sam Bell is coming to the end of his contract when he begins to experience hallucinations.

Mike Leigh

• Naked - A drifter meets similarly lost souls whilst living on the streets of London.

Ken Loach

• Ae Fond Kiss… (2004) - Sparks fly in Glasgow when an Asian man begins a relationship with a white woman.
• Cathy Come Home (1966) - Hugely influential, documentary-style feature length TV special highlighting issues of homelessness, unemployment and social services. Housing charity Shelter was set up in its wake.
• Kes (1969) - A young English working class boy spends his spare time caring for his pet kestrel.
• Land and Freedom (1995) - Loose adaptation of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, following the [url =/tags/poum] POUM [/url] fighting in the Spanish Revolution.
• Sweet Sixteen (2002) - Determined to have a normal life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager tries to save money for a home.
• Riff Raff (1991) - Comedy following the everyday lives of a construction worker, his girlfriend and an unemployed pop star.
• The Navigators (2001) - Film following five railway workers affected by the 1995 privatisation of British Rail and how this changes their lives.
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) - Against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence, two brothers fighting the resistance to the British, but take two different paths.

Steve McQueen

• 12 Years a Slave (2013) - Powerful dramatisation of the tale of Solomon Northup, a free African-American who was kidnapped into slavery.

Shane Meadows

• This is England, This is England '86 and This is England '88 - Documenting a group of skinheads as they grow up in a northern town.
• Dead Man's Shoes - A Gulf War veteran returns his home town to dish out revenge to local gangsters responsible for an unknown crime.

Sam Mendes

• Jarhead (2005) - A realistic look at the daily life of US troops in the first Iraq war, and the boredom and isolation they face.

Lewis Milestone

• Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) - Dramatisation of the famous mutiny against authoritarian Capt Bligh.

Gary Oldman

• Nil by Mouth - Life for an extended family on a South London council estate.

Tony Richardson

• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe's novel.

Ridley Scott

• Alien - Space workers are hunted down by an unnatural force.
• Blade Runner - Four androids look to extend their lifespan whilst being hunted by a policeman, in a dystopic Los Angeles.

Martin Stellman

• For Queen and Country (1988) - Denzel Washington stars as a discharged British paratrooper who returns from the Falklands, re-enter civilian life and faces poverty, racism and discrimination.

Matthew Warchus

• Pride (2014) - Utterly superb dramatisation of the story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners: a group of gay men and lesbians based on London who collected money to support miners on strike 1984-5.

Canadian

Gary Burns

• Waydowntown - Office workers bet their salaries who can last the longest without stepping outside, using Calgary's skywalks to get around.

Chilean

Gonzalo Justiniano

• Candy or Mint (1990) - Niki and his friends are members of the marginalised underclass living on the outskirts of Santiago. During Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy (1988-1990), they forge a path from drug- and drink-fuelled nihilism and petty crime into the world of market-driven illegality and Niki begins a seemingly predestined relationship with the middle-class "loca", Manuela.

Pablo Larrain

• Fuga - The manuscript of a composer is rediscovered by students. They learn how he came to wrote it, and how it was sent him to an asylum.
• Tony Manero - A man obsessed with the character from Saturday Night Fever is due to enter a television contest to crown the best Manero impersonator, whilst Pinochet's disappearances carry on in the background.

Chinese

Tsai Ming-liang

• Rebels of a Neon God - A pair of friends make their living robbing arcade machine chips.

Li Yang

• Blind Shaft - Two men killing miners for compensation find a conscience.

Jia Zhangke

• Unknown Pleasures - Two unemployed friends chain smoke and wander about.

Danish

Nicolas Winding Refn

• Pusher trilogy - Interconnected stories of drug dealers falling from grace in Copenhagen.
• Drive - A single mother falls for a moonlighter who'll do anything to protect her.

Thomas Vinterberg

• The Celebration (1998, aka Festen) - At a big celebration of a bourgeois family, a secret emerges. Warning for discussion of themes which some find triggering.

Dutch

Paul Verhoeven

• Starship Troopers (1997) - Argentinian Aryans fight bugs in space.
• Total Recall (1990) - Sci-fi action classic, in which a construction worker in a dystopian future goes to have memories implanted of a trip to Mars, where there is an ongoing rebellion.

Finnish

Aki Kaurismäki

• Shadows in Paradise - A binman falls in love with a supermarket checkout girl he sees on his rounds.

French

Jacques Becker

• Le Trou - Four tight knit prisoners have been preparing their breakout for months when a new cellmate is added. Can they trust him?

Jean-Louis Comolli

• La Cecilia - Based on Giovanni Rossi's memoirs of the little known Colonia Cecilia, the Brazilian emperor offers land to anarchists to create a commune. But tensions grow as they try to shake off the beliefs of the old world.

Henri-Georges Clouzot

• Wages of Fear - A group of destitute men in South America agree to drive explosives across the country in a bid to escape.

Catherine Breillat

• Fat Girl (2001) - Controversial film centring on the relationship between two sisters, 15 and 12 years, and their attitudes to sex - it is a cruel though perhaps honest depiction – the result is dark and disturbing.

Christine Edzard

• Little Dorrit (1987) - Critically acclaimed two-part screen adaption of Dickens’ teeming novel of corruption, capitalism and greed.

Marin Karmitz

• Blow for Blow (1972) - Film about a wildcat strike at a textile plant in rural France. Produced in a democratic manner, the film mixes actors with real workers playing themselves and falls somewhere between being a documentary and a work of fiction.

Louis Malle

• Viva Maria! (1965) - Comedy adventure starring Brigitte Bardot. Two women meet in Central America in 1907 and become revolutionaries.
  Jean Vigo
  • Zero for Conduct (1933) - Featurette by the anarchist director depicting the bureaucratic and repressive school system. The film was swiftly banned in France until 1946.

  German

  Fatih Akin

  • Head On -Two people of Turkish descent in Germany hospitalised for attempted suicide decide to have a sham marriage, to free Sibyl from her conservative Muslim family.

  Slatan Dudow

  • To Whom Does the World Belong - The trials and tribulations of an unemployable Berlin family.

  Werner Herzog

  • Strozeck (1977) - In Berlin, an alcoholic man leaves prison, joins an elderly friend and the prostitute and tries to realise history of leaving Germany and moving to Wisconsin.

  Phil Jutzi

  • Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness - A family struggle in poverty in Weimar Germany, finding salvation too late.

  Fritz Lang

  • Metropolis - An industrialist's son swaps places with a worker and agitates for insurrection, having fallen for a schoolteacher.

  Volker Schlöndorff

  • Coup de grace - The Russian Revolution is on the doorstep of a Prussian army camp in Latvia, as sexual tensions grow.

  Margarethe von Trotta

  • Marianne and Julianne (1981, aka The German Sisters) - Based on the real life sisters associated with the Baader- Meinhof group, von Trotta explores the complexity of the sister’s relationship and of women’s resistance and revolt.

  Henner Winckler

  • Lucy - A teenage mother has to decide whether she wants the responsibility of bringing up a child.

  Hong Kong

  Fruit Chan

  • The Longest Summer - British soldiers made redundant after the handover of Hong Kong decide to rob a bank.

  Johnnie To

  • Life Without Principle - Austerity noir, following different people's lives affected by the economic crisis.

  Wong Kar-wai

  • In the Mood for Love - A couple, whose respective spouses are cheating with one another, deny themselves from doing the same, in a seductive account of conservative 1960s Hong Kong.

  Hungarian

  Miklós Jancsó

  • The Red and the White - Scenic look at the reprisals by both communists and White Guards during the Russian Revolution.

  Icelandic

  Dagur Kári

  • Noi the Albino - A truant teenager falls in love with a girl in a diner and dreams of escaping his seaside home.

  Irish

  Joe Comerford

  • Traveller (1981) - On a smuggling journey into Northern Ireland a young woman traveller tells her husband of her father’s violent sexual attacks. Trigger warning.

  Jim Sheridan

  • The Field (1990) - West Coast tenant farmer Bull McCabe (Richard Harris) asserts a moral right to a field he has created and worked for years, as he refuses to accept the idea that there can be a market in land.

  Italian

  Guido Chiesa

  • Working Slowly - Film set amongst the youth movement in 1970s Bologna, with the refusal of work, sexual freedom and cultural provocations it entailed. Made with the collaboration of the Wu Ming Foundation, it covers the radical pirate radio station Radio Alice and the 1977 rebellion.
  • Johnny the Partisan - Story of an English literature student who escapes into the mountains to join the Italian resistance of fascism.

  Sergio Corbucci

  • The Great Silence - Bleak Western set in a snowy blizzard. A mute gunslinger tries to defend a town from outlaws.

  Giuseppe De Santis

  • Bitter Rice (1949) - A good example of Italian neorealist filmmaking, Bitter Rice begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. In an effort to escape the law two small-time thieves hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley.

  Vittorio De Sica

  • Bicycle Thieves (1948) - Story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.

  Marco Tullio Giordana

  • One Hundred Steps - The true story of Giuseppe Impastato, a communist anti-mafia campaigner in Sicily, set against the backdrop of Italian politics in the 1970s.

  Sergio Leone

  • Duck, You Sucker (1971, aka A Fistful of Dynamite) - Superb spaghetti Western, in English, where an IRA explosives expert gets involved with a group of amoral Mexican bandits amidst the Mexican Revolution.

  Marco Leto

  • Black Holiday (1973, aka La Villeggiatura) - A liberal professor of law is interned on a prison island at the time of Fascism, where he finally gets a political education from the working class prisoners.

  Daniele Luchetti

  • My Brother is an Only Child - Story of two brothers in a working class Italian family, one who becomes a Communist while the other decides to become a fascist.

  Giuliano Montaldo

  • Sacco and Vanzetti - Film about the famous trial and execution of Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, framed for robbery and murder in America. Starring Gian Maria Volonte.

  Ermanno Olmi

  • Il Posto - A school leaver enters into the world of work whilst falling in love for the first time.

  Elio Petri

  • The Working Class Goes to Heaven - Operaismo inspired film of a Stakhanovite factory worker turning radical. The star, Gian Maria Volonte, was a real member of the Italian Communist Party.
  • Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion - Dramatic, psychological crime film in which Gian Maria Volonte plays a top police officer who murders his girlfriend and plants obvious clues to test whether other officers would charge him for his crime.

  Roberto Rossellini

  • Rome, Open City - Classic film about a working class Italian partisan, fighting fascism during the last days of the Nazi's occupation of Rome.
  • Paisan - Film split into six different episodes covering all of Italy towards the end of the Second World War, from the Americans landing in Sicily to the Venetian resistance to fascism in the north.

  Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

  • Padre Padrone (1977) - A classic film based on fact, a boy aged six is taken from school into the mountains where he works alone for years as his father’s shepherd – until he breaks free.

  Lina Wertmuller

  • Seven Beauties (1975) - A controversial film of a man’s ignoble survival in World War II - a mix of farce and satire, of some interest and very unpleasant.

  Iranian

  Jafar Panahi

  • Offside (2006) - A female fan tries illegally to slip into the Iranian football team’s 2005 World Cup qualifying tie against Bahrain.

  Marjane Satrapi

  • Persepolis - Adaptation of the comic, a girl growing up begins to question the Iranian revolution.

  Jamaican

  Perry Henzell

  • The Harder They Come (1972) - A memorable story of poverty, drugs, corruption and an inevitable confrontation with authority - and possibly the best soundtrack ever!

  Japanese

  Hideo Gosha

  • Red Lion / Akage (1969) -"Gonzo (Toshiro Mifune), a member of the Imperial Restoration Force, is being asked by the emperor to deliver official news to his home village of a New World Order. Wanting to pose as a military officer, he dons the Red Lion Mane of Office. Upon his return, his attempt to tell the village about a brand-new tax cut is quashed when the townfolk mistakenly assumes that he is there to rescue them from corrupt government officials. He learns that an evil magistrate has been swindling them for years. Now, he has to help the village, ward off Shogunate fanatics, along with the fact that he can't read his own proclamations."

    Yuujii Makiguchi

    • Virgin Breaker Yuki (1976) - (trigger warnings for rape/torture). This film depicts prostitutes and anarchists in Kyoto just after the Peace Preservation Law was passed in 1925.

    Masaki Kobayashi

    • Harakiri - When his son-in-law is killed begging for charity, Tsugumo visits the lord responsible to commit suicide. But only after he's told his story.
    • Samurai Rebellion - A clan lord orders a marriage between his mistress and the son of one of his swordsmen. When the lord changes his mind, the couple would rather die than be apart and his men are on their way.

    Eiichi Kudō

    • Castle of Owls - The Toyotomi clan has declared peace. To stimulate business, a weapons merchant hires a ninja to assassinate its leader. But he begins to question whether his code is more important than his happiness.

    Akira Kurosawa

    • Ikiru (1952) - A bureaucrat struggles to find meaning in life when he discovers he has a terminal illness.

    Yasujiro Ozu

    • Late Spring (1949) and Early Summer (1951) - A very moving film of a young woman who gives up her independence to take care of her aging father.

    Masahiro Shinoda

    • Samurai Spy - With the new shogun, war has ended. But the clans still vie for power and spies wander amongst them in Shinoda's Cold War allegory.

    Hiroyuki Tanaka

    • Kanikosen - Film adaptation of Takiji Kobayashi's The Cannery Ship. Crab fishermen attempt to take control of the ship out at sea.

    Mexican

    Guillermo del Toro

    • Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - In the fascist Spain of 1944, the stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer in a remote outpost escapes into an intriguing fantasy world.

    Norwegian

    Bent Hamer

    • O'Horten - As a train driver finishes his last day before retirement, he wonders what to do with the rest of his life.
    • Factotum - Faithful adaptation of Bukowski's novel, as well as some of his short stories.

    Palestinian

    Hany Abu-Assad

    • Paradise Now (2005) - The film follows two Palestinian childhood friends who had been recruited to perform suicide bombings in Tel Aviv.

    Polish

    Wojciech Has

    • Petla - An alcoholic tries to quit drinking over 24 hours.

    Alek Wasilewski

    • Lucky Day Forever - Prole 514 hopes to win the lottery, never having to work again. But when he does, is he any happier?
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    Romanian

    Radu Mihaileanu

    • Live and Become (2005) - It's 1980 and the black Falashas in Ethiopia have been recognised as Jews and given the right to go to Israel. This film tells the story of one Christian boy who goes in the place of a Jewish woman's son who died, and faces racism in Israel.

    Russian

    Yakov Protazanov

    • Aelita - Communists travel into space to help Martians with their revolution.

    Senegalese

    Ousmane Sembène

    • Black Girl (1966) - About a a girl from Senegal hired by a wealthy French family to nanny but is then mistreated and effectively enslaved in their home, with tragic consequences.

    South African

    Neill Blomkamp

    • District 9 - Alluding to the District Six evictions in apartheid and the more recent Blikkiesdorp settlement, District 9 sees aliens come to Earth. But when they arrive, they are a minority group just like any other, and are hated by both black and white in South Africa.
    • Elysium (2013) - In 2154, the rich live on Elysium, an enormous luxurious space station, while the poor and working class scrape by on a dystopian Earth. One man, played by Matt Damon, goes on a mission for equality in this action blockbuster.

    Bronwen Hughes

    • Stander - The embellished story of Andre Stander, a cop who turned bank robber, set in and around the Soweto uprising.

    South Korean

    Lee Chang-dong

    • Peppermint Candy - As Yongho stands on a track waiting for a train, he has a series of flashbacks to explain what has driven him to suicide; heartbreak, compulsory military service, the police force and bankruptcy.

    Park Chan-wook

    • I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay (2006) - Romantic comedy in which a female production line worker begins to believe she is a robot and is committed to a psychiatric institution.
    • Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002) - A deaf factory worker made redundant and his anarchist girlfriend kidnap his boss' daughter for a ransom.

    Park Kwang-su

    • A Single Spark - The story of Jeon Tae-il, a textile worker who self immolated in protest of poor conditions.

    Shin Dong-il

    • Bandhobi - A Bangladeshi worker trying to retrieve his stolen wages receives help from a schoolgirl.

    Yoo Young-sik

    • Anarchists (2000) - Action film set in 1924 Shanghai as a group of Korean anarchists embark on a campaign of propaganda by deed against the Japanese occupation of Korea.

    Spanish

    Vicente Aranda

    • Libertarias - The Mujeres Libres battle in the Spanish Revolution, with liberated sex workers and a nun in tow. Trigger warning, features a rape scene.
    • Riders of the Dawn (1990) - Marian dreams of owning the spa resort where she works. But her life, as well as everyone else's, is changed with the Asturian uprising of 1934 and later civil war.

    Fernando Arrabal

    • The Tree of Guernica - Irreverent take on the Spanish Civil War set in the Basque region of Guernica, where both communists and Francoists await the fighting.

    Fernando León de Aranoa

    • Mondays in the Sun - A group of shipworkers made redundant try to come to terms with the death of the shipping industry, a lack of jobs and financial troubles.

    Luis Bunuel

    • The Exterminating Angel (1962) - Macabre comedy in which bourgeois guests at a dinner party find themselves incapable of leaving the room, and descend into base savagery.

    Jose Luis Cuerda

    • Butterfly’s Tongue (1999) - It’s Spain 1936, a young boy grows to like his teacher and develop a thirst for learning – however war is coming and with it fear and betrayal.

    Álex de la Iglesia

    • 800 Bullets - Former stuntmen operate a theme park on the sets they filmed their spaghetti westerns on. When a real estate mogul buys up the land and threatens to send in the riot police, they decide to wait for them.

    Victor Erice

    • The Spirit of The Beehive (1973) - It’s rural Spain 1940 – seen mainly through the eyes of a seven year old girl – the adults behaviour is constricted with fear and memories of crushed dreams too painful to be voiced. The girl and her sister watch the 1931 classic movie ‘Frankenstein’ which ignites her imagination, and could lead her into danger.

    Swedish

    Per Åhlin

    • Journey to Melonia (1989) - Animated film about a beautiful paradise island, Melonia, which is under threat from the industry island Plutonia, which is governed by two greedy managers who keep small children as their slaves in the factories.

    Roy Andersson

    • Songs from the Second Floor (2000) - A look at different aspects of modern life and work through a series of disconnected vignettes.

    Pernilla August

    • Beyond (2010) - Drama dealing with the destiny which many of the Finnish guest workers who came to Sweden to work in textile factories, mills and forestry during the 1960's and 70's, centered on a young woman's experiences growing up in a home riddled with abuse and alcoholism.

    Peter Birro

    • Take up the Struggle (2008) - 4 episode miniseries chronicling the coming of age of 4 different youths growing up in the Swedish working class port town of Gothenburg.

    Lena Ewert and Lasse Westman

    • Comrades, our enemies are well-organized (1972) - The story of a wildcat strike in the iron ore fields in the far north of Sweden in December 1969.

    Lukas Moodysson

    • Together - Comedy set in 1970s Stockholm, in which a woman leaves her violent husband and moves, with her children, to the Tillsammans ('Together' in Swedish) commune where her brother lives.

    Göran Hugo Olsson

    • The Black Power Mixtape (2012) - An award winning compilation feature documentary that displays the story of the African-American community 1967-1975, the people, the society and the style that fueled a change. Told with sparkling, beautiful and deep footage, lost in the archives in Sweden for 30 years.

    Niels Arden Oplev

    • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009, aka Men Who Hate Women ) - Film series about a young hacker and a journalist battling corrupt officials, industrialists and anti-Semites.

    Gabriela Pichler

    • Eat Sleep Die (2012) - When the forceful young Muslim Swedish/Balkan "take-no-shit" factory worker Raša loses her job, she faces the system of unemployment. With no high school diploma, no job Raša finds herself on collision course with society and its contradictable values and expectations.

    Jan Troell

    • Everlasting Moments (2008) - Based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a Swedish working class woman in the early 20th century, who wins a camera in a lottery and goes on to become a photographer.

    Thomas Vinterberg

    • Dear Wendy - In a mining town, a group of misfits create a pacifist gun club. They make a rule never to draw their guns, but when the police become involved, they find it difficult to keep to their promise.

    Bo Widerberg

    • Ådalen '31 (1969) - During a strike strike-breakers are being transported to Sandviken, where they are assaulted by the strikers. The military are sent in. On the 14th May 1931 there is a confrontation between demonstrators and the military who open fire and five people are killed and five injured.
    • Joe Hill (1971) - Biopic on the life and death of the legendary Swedish/American agitator Joe Hill.

    Thai

    Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

    • Headshot - A disgraced cop joins a secret organisation targeting politicians and businessmen.

    Turkish

    Yilmaz Guney and Serik Goren

    • Yol (1982) - Following the 1980 military takeover Turkey is depicted as an open prison with soldiers regulating everyday life. From a closed prison five inmates are paroled for a week – the film follows their separate journeys home and shows how medieval customs and religion are equally enslaving.

    Yugoslavian

    Bahrudin Čengić

    • Role of My Family in World Revolution (1971) - After World War II, a group of partisans go to stay with a wealthy family. The family soon begins to forget their old ways.

    Želimir Žilnik

    • Early Works (1969) - Inspired by Marx's Capital, three men and a woman decide to try to wake socialist conscience within the working class and peasantry, without much success.