A complete archive of issues from the fifth volume of the Workers' Dreadnought.
Including: Irish labour movement, workplace struggle notes, John Reed's account of the Russian revolution, deaths of conscientious objectors in prison, etc.
Including: engineers threaten to strike over conscription, Sinn Fein, Irish democracy, news, commentary etc.
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A short biography of May O'Callaghan, author of the Sinn Fein article enclosed within this Number:
Callaghan was born in Wexford. She studied Modern Languages at the University of Vienna and between 1901 and 1914 taught English and gave lectures on the Irish Literary Revival.
In 1916 she was writing letters on behalf of East London Federation of Suffragettes. This was a Socialist suffragette organisation that broke away from Women's Social and Political Union.
Along with Nellie Cohen (sister of Rose Cohen), between 1919 and 1921 she ran the office of the People's Russian Information Bureau (established by Sylvia Pankhurst). She was also working as the sub-editor of the Workers' Dreadnought at this time. In 1919 the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) was founded in the flat that she shared with Nellie Cohen and Daisy Lansbury.
In 1924 she travelled to Moscow where she stayed until 1928 and worked in the Translation Section of the Comintern Press Department.
In other words, she stood firmly in the authoritarian camp.
Including: Montessori education principles, shop steward movement in France, Sylvia Pankhurst on socialists and the war, oppositon to anti- sex worker legislation, Ireland, etc.
Including: "the longer the war drags on the greater is the danger that it may end with a capitalist peace", the betrayal of Ireland, National Workers' Committee Conference, etc.
Including: Serbian socialists and WW1, Sylvia Pankhurst on trade unions vs guild socialism, police seize issues of Dreadnought, news, etc.
Marx centenary issue, including: Marx in Fleet Street by Silvio Corio, abolition of the House of Lords by Sylvia Pankhurst, intellectual unionism, French working women, the Society of Nations by Charles Rappoport, etc.
Including: Marx in Fleet Street continued, Sylvia Pankhurst on Ireland & WW1, popular kitchens in Milan, etc.
Including: Thomas Mooney sentenced to death in San Francisco, Sylvia Pankhurst on evil and war, workshop notes, etc.
Including: dockers vs admiralty, Sylvia Pankhurst on Ireland and Russia, Stefan Zweig on the tower of Babel, etc.
Including: The Balkan states and the great powers, UK banking reform, Sylvia Pankhurst on empire and nationality (Ireland and Russia), Industrial Reconstruction Council, resolutions of WSF conference, etc.
Including: Russia, Sylvia Pankhurst on women and WW1, critique of Industrial Reconstruction Committee, etc.
Including: proletarian motherhood, Karl Marx and Daniel De Leon, Sylvia Pankhurst on WW1 and Russia, etc.
Including: Women's Co-Operative Guild congress in Bradford, international news, Sylvia Pankhurst and John Reed on revolutionary armies in Russia, workplace deathrates, etc.
Including: starvation in Finland, Bolshevik Russia, Japan and China, Sylvia Pankhurst on post-war industrial reconstruction, "And shall Tom Mooney Die?" song, etc.
Including: Labour Party conference (including a motion from Sylvia Pankhurst for Labour members to withdraw from government), rip off pricing for food in the East End, Tom Mooney sentenced to death, etc.
Including: report on aeroplane workers strike, telegrams from Russia, Sylvia Pankhurst on parliament and the elderly in the East End, international news, etc.
Including: Central European socialists correspond on WW1, Finnish socialists massacred, parliamentary updates, aeroplane workers strike ends, shop stewards vs the Industrial League, etc.
Including: Lenin speech, ill-treatment of conscientious objectors in Wakefield, Lansdowne Labour Committee critique by Sylvia Pankhurst, socialist education, international and UK news, etc.
Including: war munition workers strikes, Sylvia Pankhurst on socialism in Russia, socialist education and Montessori schooling, etc.
Including: Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, international news, Sylvia Pankhurst on land owners and the war, socialist education and The New School, etc.
Including: awful conditions in Belfast prison, Sylvia Pankhurst on the Brest Litovsk Treaty, women munition workers, socialist education: The New School continued from previous issue, etc.
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Ms Pankhurst's words on the betrayal of revolution by the Social Democrats of Russia are so blurred as to be unreadable.
The PDF is readable I think? For some reason the screenshots I take of the first pages are a bit blurry. Not sure what to do about that.
Opened it in a different Reader and it is clear now.
The words that resonate most today are those of Lloyd George:
The people who made the war for the purpose for which they made it are still there prosecuting the same sinister purpose.
No words to be read here from Comrade Pankhurst on the role of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in betraying proletarian revolution worldwide.
Maybe this AI thing is useful after all:
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is often seen as a betrayal of the proletarian revolution worldwide because it forced the fledgling Soviet government to cede vast territories to Germany, essentially abandoning revolutionary movements in those regions and undermining the idea of international solidarity among working classes, ultimately fuelling scepticism about the Bolsheviks' commitment to global revolution.
The Thumbnail looks better, Fozzie.
OK good to know, thanks. It’s unnerving posting some of these with all the optimism about Russia…
For her saving grace, Sylvia at least saw the errors of her ways.
To Lenin, as representing the Russian Communist Party and the Russian Soviet Government.
We address you as representative of the Russian Soviet Government and the Russian Communist Party. With deep regret we have observed you hauling down the flag of Communism and abandoning the cause of the emancipation of the workers. With profound sorrow we have watched the development of your policy of making peace with Capitalism and reaction.
It’s unnerving posting some of these with all the optimism about Russia…
I had noticed that as well; the Dreadnought's position on Russia/Lenin certainly evolved over time. To be fair though, a lot of anarchists (e.g. Berkman and Goldman) were also initially optimistic about the Bolsheviks' coming to power. The Dreadnought captured events as they unfolded and contains a lot of useful primary sources that haven't been published elsewhere (e.g. the manifesto of the Unemployed Workers' Organisation), which is why the paper is worth a read.
Yes exactly adri, the discomfort is a salutory reminder that life and history is a messy business...
why the paper is worth a read.
As a contrast between the Marxist position and what Marx would have made of the takeover of bourgeois state power by the former Social Democratic Labour Party (excuse if that is not the correct title of the "Bolsheviks"), the paper is useful.
But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.
The centralised state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature—organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour... serving nascent middle class society...
Thinking about the already bourgeois nature of Imperial Russia, the country was state capitalist a long time before the Marxists coined the phrase:
'The [pre-Revolutionary] Russian government also participated directly in the economy, buying almost two-thirds of the country's metallurgical production in 1899. The government also owned vast tracts of land, numerous mines and oil fields, and extensive forests.'
Thank you, adri, for directing us to the Unemployed Workers' Organisation's Manifesto. We should note, and contrast, the economistic plea of these Marxists, i.e. social-democrats, for "Abolition of the Wage System" as a means of addressing the Unemployment Problem, with the invariant position of the communist party, dictatorship by the proletariat for the abolition of wage labour itself.
Fozzie wrote: history is a messy business
In what sense is history messy? To the extent that history is written by the victor? That is why someone has to shine the light of truth, to be the mess of history solved. Presumably that is the role of libcom.org. Or is it just here to record the victors of history, thus far?
In short, to publish this Number with no critical disclaimer is tantamount to playing into the hands of our enemy.
Perhaps this is wrong? Perhaps this site is just a library for academics? If so, may we be so bold as to call it out as a degenerated workers' state? :-)
I remember looking at the original copies in the British Museum newspaper archives in Hendon in the late 1980s. Already 70+ yrs old by then and printed on cheap paper, they were fragile and some were disintegrating. I wonder if they managed to digitise them all.
I think adding a disclaimer to each issue is probably too much aggro personally, but others are welcome to assist with that - or we could add a general disclaimer to the main Dreadnoight index page?
I would personally just rework the main intro page to better express the evolution of the paper so that people know. I think it sort of goes without saying that hosting/archiving something doesn't at all mean that one agrees with all its contents.
Often, in the past, libcom have attached introductions citing disagreement with the content of the articles published on the site. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty is such a pivotal moment between proletarian revolution and the bourgeois reaction to it that this Number deserves particular note as demonstrating the failure to call out the capitulation on the part of the Bolshevik regime. Hopefully our comments have served this purpose.
I went ahead and modified the index-page intro, if that's ok with everyone.
Very good. Just made one minor alteration:
Capitalised Communist, in "left-wing Communist".
Communism as a peculiar, social-democratic, period of capitalism is capitalised in writing.
This other—"Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution"—is neither left, nor right.
In this sense communism is always correctly written in the lower case. Whether this latter sense can be descried as libertarian communism is debatable. It is not unbounded freedom of the individual as individual freedom is relative to the necessity of the community of struggle to survive.
No idea what you're on about, as usual, so I reverted back to my revision and would appreciate it if you would not touch anything.
Who coined the phrase Left-Wing Communism?
“...The question arises: who is to exercise this dictatorship: the Communist Party or the proletarian class? ... Fundamentally, should we strive for a dictatorship of the Communist Party, or for a dictatorship by the proletarian class?...”
Excerpt from Vladimir Lenin’s, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Including: London bus girls strike, Australia anti-war movement, news from Russia, independent working class education, discharged soldiers demand land, etc.
Including: agitation against the embargo preventing employment of munitions workers without government approval, poison gas, international news, votes for women, etc.
Including: London police strike, international news, the co-operative movement by Sylvia Pankhurst, India supplement, socialist education in Austria, patriots attack socialist rally Woolwich, tube strike, etc.
Including: Extensive report by Sylvia Pankhurst on Trade Union Congress meeting in Derby, socialist education, etc.
Including: agricultural labour for discharged soldiers, shop stewards conference in Birmingham, Sylvia Pankhurst on prospects for peace, changes to legal system in Russia,
Including: report on inter-allied Labour and Socialist Conference in London, workshop notes, etc.
Including: Catherine Breshovsky - grandmother of the Russian Revolution, Sylvia Pankhurst's review of the week, capitalism and the counter-revolution by J.T. Walton Newbold, etc.
We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue, but reproduce it for reference.
Attachments
VOL V No 28 Saturday October 5th 1918.pdf
(12.11 MB)
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Including: news from Russia, Sylvia Pankhurst on WW1 peace negotiations, Walton Newbold on the German revolution, UK parliament and workplace news, etc.
Including: John Reed on Eugene Debs, "the lust of victory is postponing peace" by Sylvia Pankhurst, marxist industrial unionism, IWW in court in Chicago, women and industry after the war, etc.
Including: prospects for peace, French socialist congress, Sylvia Pankhurst on Alexander Kerensky and international news, etc.
Including: Sylvia Pankhurst in court for sedition in Derbyshire, Sylvia Pankhurst on parliament allowing women to be MPs, first Labour Women's Conference in London, etc.
Including: consternation at revolutionaries attending Labour Party rally at the Royal Albert Hall, rally in Derbyshire following Sylvia Pankhurst sedition trial, Feminism in Fiction book review, labour movement in Greece, revolution spreads to central Europe, Russia, Irish prisoners, etc.
The post-Armistice issue, including: government policy triggers unemployment and low pay, release political prisoners and conscientious objectors, Russia, war and revolution by J.T. Walton Newbold, Sylvia Pankhurst on Armistice, Doushan Popovitch obituary, etc.
Including: Labour Party conference, Russia, the need for a shop stewards co-ordinating body in London, etc.
NB: Pages 1127-1130 missing.
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Including: build up to UK election, women munitions workers protest, socialism in France, "Socialism our Goal" by Sylvia Pankhurst, Bolsheviks vs the press, Fritz Adler, etc.
Including: British soldiers vs Russians in the Arctic, Kropotkin arrested by the Bolsheviks, Socialist Labour Party and the election, "We did not stop it" - Sylvia Pankhurst on WWI, Russia, Lenin and Trotsky biographies, etc.
Including: general election, South Africa socialist conference, John Reed on intervention in Russia, etc.
Anti-parliamentary article published in Workers' Dreadnought on the day of the 1918 British general election.
'No, I'm not going to vote', said a poor woman in a 'bus, 'the British Government would take the blood from your heart'. In those bitter words she summed up her attitude towards the empty political balderdash, which now issues in prolific streams from the mouths of Parliamentary candidates and their supporters, and all but fills the newspapers.
We hope nothing from this election, save that it may serve to spur the workers on to abolish Parliament, the product and instrument of the capitalist system, and to establish in its place Councils of Workers' Delegates, which shall be the executive instruments for creating and maintaining the Socialist community. The Parliament which is now being elected cannot possibly be fitted to cope with the great and important changes that are impending.
The Coalition is the Party of Capitalist reaction, the Liberal Party is but a weaker embodiment of the same thing. As for the Labour Party -- if all, and more than all, its candidates were elected, even if, by reason of their numbers, it could capture the reins of Government, it would give us nothing more than a wishy-washy Reformist Government, which, when all the big issues that really matter came to be decided, would be swept along in the wake of capitalist policy. The list of Labour Party candidates presents a curious medley of ex- Liberals, ex-Tories, Jingo Trade Unionists of narrow outlook, middle-class pacifists, with a small sprinkling of Socialists. It would be impossible to secure decisive action from such an assemblage on any really vital question.
Mr Sidney Webb, whose ideas, long discarded by the awakened rank and file in the workshops, still holds the executive in thrall, has foisted upon the Party the tame, middle-class reformism embodied in that document, ridiculous as coming from a workers' party, which is called 'Labour and the New Social Order.' The pettifogging reforms there laid down will change nothing; they will leave the poor still poor, the rich still rich. When every one of those resolutions has been enacted, still we shall have with us men and women dwarfed in every faculty by chronic want: the class that is lectured and patronised, written about and legislated for, and for whom charities are arranged, the parents, whose children it is said to be necessary to 'protect' from their 'ignorance'.
The acceptance of Webb's new social order will neither empty the prisons, which are filled by poverty's crimes, nor deprive the rich Theosophists of the opportunity to develop the gentler side of their natures by visiting the slums. Webb and the majority of the Executive, the Parliamentary candidates, and the prominent personages in the Labour Party, are struggling hard against a philosophy, growing fast amongst the rank and file -- a philosophy which it is found convenient to call Bolshevism; but which, of course, is simply Socialism. Says Webb in The Daily News of December 10th:- "The essence of Bolshevism is a contempt for Parliamentary institutions; the loss of faith in Democracy as we understand it; reliance on 'direct action' by the wage-earners themselves; the supersession of the House of Commons by 'Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils,' from which all but the manual workers are excluded; and the dictatorship of the Proletariat.' This is the revolutionary epidemic which is now spreading westward over Europe. (...)"
Webb for a political generation has been called a Socialist. Was he really a Socialist in his youth? If he has ever had a glimmering of the vision of Socialism he must surely realise that, under Socialism, we shall all be the proletariat, that there will be but one class. In the transition stage, when people who employ others and live on incomes they have not earned still remain, surely it is but wise to concentrate the voting strength in the hands of those who are workers. It is right to do this, if only as a symbol that honour is due to the worker, not to those who live as parasites on the wealth produced by others. If in the transition stages the Webbs, as well as the Northcliffes and Rockefellers, should be deprived of votes surely their practice in wielding the pen still gives them more than their share of influence.
The tide of Socialism, bringing all power to the workers, is sweeping over Europe and waves of Socialist thought, of working-class longing, are rising to meet it in this country; Webb and those who are holding the reins of power in the Labour Party shrink from it, fearfully trembling. Unconscious lackeys of the capitalist system, instinctively they fear that system's fall. Is there no spirit in their souls to answer to the call of Socialist fraternity? It seems not.
Published in Workers' Dreadnought, 14 December 1918. Taken from the Antagonism website.
Comments
Including: modern war by Arthur Finch, poetry by Eva Gore Booth, WWI, etc.
Special Russian number, including: The structure of the Soviet state, the chief task of our times by Lenin, Soviet decrees, education and the Russian soviets, impressions of Russia by Albert Rhys Williams, etc. We do not agree with much of the contents of this issue, but reproduce it for reference.
Including: Against conscription, Russia, President Wilson visits London, stop the blockade of Germany and Austria, engineers and shipbuilders win 47 hour week, general election, etc.
Including: printing tram tickets in Russia, workers council in St Etienne, the Discharged Soldiers Federation, German Working Women in Wartime, Sylvia Pankhurst on revolution and housing, demobilisation muddle, women's movement in South Africa, etc.
Including: Maxim Gorki, dockworkers demand pay rise, Sylvia Pankhurst on the League of Nations, new UK government, Trotsky's speech on the Red Army, work and fatigue, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents but reproduce this issue for reference.
Including: Guy Aldred on conscription, globalisation and India + Burma, Sylvia Pankhurst on the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, protest outside Wandsworth prison for conscientious objector, etc.
Including: port of London strike, Irish parliament, Hands Off Russia conference, general strike in Belfast, Isle of Man internment camp, labour movement in India, etc.
Including: Clyde shipbuilders strike: police attack strikers, Lenin to American working men, how Liebknecht died, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but reproduce it for reference purposes.
Including: "Ireland, Marx and Internationalism" by Captain White, Russia, London shop stewards meetings by Sylvia Pankhurst, International Labour Conference, strikes, a union for soldiers, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but reproduce it for reference.
Including: America and Mexico, Edward Garnett on European politics, The League of Nations by Sylvia Pankhurst, Russia, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but reproduce it for reference.
Including: the miners' demands, a soldier's account of WWI, Crossley Motors strike, David Ramsey trial, Lenin on the cause of famine, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but reproduce it for reference.
Including: death of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknect, a soldier's account of WWI part 2, London cooks and waiters strike, Dreadnought writer W.F. Watson on trial, Sylvia Pankhurst on recent workers' defeats, etc.
Including: Guy Aldred on the torture of conscientious objectors, a soldier's account of WWI part 3, Russia, David Ramsey found guity of sedition, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but reproduce it for reference.
Including: Bolsheviks at the Berne conference, a soldier writes about WWI part 4, Lenin on the international revolution, the divide between German and Russian socialism, the possibilities for strikes, etc. We do not agree with all of the contents of this issue but republish it here for reference.
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