The Workers' Dreadnought

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westartfromhere wrote: Very good. Just made one minor alteration [to the introduction]:

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.

Weekly suffragette and later left-wing communist newspaper founded by Sylvia Pankhurst, first appearing as the Woman's Dreadnought in March 1914 and then as the Workers' Dreadnought in July 1917. Among other major historical events, the Dreadnought captured the outbreak of revolution in Russia and briefly supported the Bolsheviks/Russian Communist Party before the anti-working-class nature of the latter became more apparent to Pankhurst. Over time, the paper then took a more critical stance towards Lenin and the so-called "workers' state" in Russia, as evidenced by Pankhurst's open letter to Lenin published in November 1922.

Should not the introduction to these journals above distinguish between proletarian revolution (strikes, demonstrations, desertion, mutiny, sabotage, free association...) and the seizure of political power under the guise of social-democracy? To ignore this distinction is akin to conflating the spontaneous uprisings of the working class with the bourgeois Peace Treaties that conclude these battles between the classes. Is it fair to apply Lenin's derogatory term, "Left-Wing" Communist, at all? The newspaper proclaimed itself for "International Socialism". Let's take it at its words.

We suggest the following:

Weekly suffragette and later newspaper of "International Socialism" founded by Sylvia Pankhurst, first appearing as the Woman's Dreadnought in March 1914 and then as the Workers' Dreadnought in July 1917. Amongst other major historical events covered, the Dreadnought captured and supported the seizure of state power by the majority ("bolshevik") faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (renamed by itself as the All-Russian Communist Party after the seizure of power) before the anti-working-class nature of the regime became apparent to some observers. Over time, the paper then took a limited critical stance towards Lenin and the so-called "workers' state" in Russia, as evidenced by the open letters of Herman Gorter and Sylvia Pankhurst to Lenin published in 1921 and 1922, respectively.

What's not to understand?

Weekly suffragette and later newspaper of "International Socialism" founded by Sylvia Pankhurst, first appearing as the Woman's Dreadnought in March 1914 and then as the Workers' Dreadnought in July 1917. Amongst other major historical events covered, the Dreadnought captured and supported the seizure of state power by the majority ("bolshevik") faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (renamed by itself as the All-Russian Communist Party after the seizure of power) before the anti-working-class nature of the regime became apparent to some observers. Over time, the paper then took a limited critical stance towards Lenin and the so-called "workers' state" in Russia, as evidenced by the open letters of Herman Gorter and Sylvia Pankhurst to Lenin published in 1921 and 1922, respectively.

The question posed was, What is not understandable about the draft of the introduction below?

Weekly suffragette and later newspaper of "International Socialism" founded by Sylvia Pankhurst, first appearing as the Woman's Dreadnought in March 1914 and then as the Workers' Dreadnought in July 1917. Amongst other major historical events covered, the Dreadnought captured and supported the seizure of state power by the majority ("bolshevik") faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (renamed by itself as the All-Russian Communist Party after the seizure of power) before the anti-working-class nature of the regime became apparent to some observers. Over time, the paper then took a limited critical stance towards Lenin and the so-called "workers' state" in Russia, as evidenced by the open letters of Herman Gorter and Sylvia Pankhurst to Lenin published in 1921 and 1922, respectively.

I am also in the faction which feels it's better if introductions can be brief and to the point.

Yes agreed with Fozzie. The introduction is fine. Lots of people use the term left communist or left wing communist to refer to themselves. Adding obscure nitpicking to introductions just makes them unintelligible even to people who might use this site regularly, let alone people just trying to learn about Pankhurst without a lot of backgroun.

If all here are happy to exclude mention of "the seizure of state power by the majority ("bolshevik") faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party"—and Dreadnought's reaction—in the intro, leave it so.

There were so many different political parties in the period subsequent to that seizure of power but by the time that reaction had finished its bloody work there remained only one, the All-Russian Communist Party.

'In February 1922, the Dreadnought group established the Communist Workers' Party'. (Wikipedia.)

The last scan above is from 11 March 1922. The scanned material from it gives no hint of a new party.

The paper went on until June 1924 (Wikipedia).

The above scans exclude this explicitly left-communist period of the paper.

Work on this archive is ongoing, with a new issue being added virtually every day. Today's was March 1921. If someone wants to start adding more of the 1922 issues, then so much the better.

Heh :-)

Thanks for doing that. I’ve been using the weight 2. Can’t remember why, but it must be because I had the same issue and it fixed it.

Another thing would be to use the same weight number as the Volume of the edition maybe.

Yes that is probably it adri. There are about 150 issues in the archive now, so I'd say changing the weighting on them all individually might be a too much aggro. And it all makes sense as it is. If it's something you feel strongly about please go for it though!

Not necessarily very legible issues of Workers Dreadnought (all?) up to 1924 (mis-labeled as Woman's Dreadnought after the name had changed), here:

https://archive.org/details/pub_workers-dreadnought

And here, though you have to sign up for it (and eventually pay for?), which I did not do:

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/womans-dreadnought

Thanks ZJW, that is good to know!

Not sure, but II think it’s the new “child order” function. See top of page. I was using that to add lone articles to the issues they came from. Didn’t expect it to do that!

Ah ok I can see “child order” at the top of the page. Hmm. I think we need input from someone who knows more.

I can get your latest issue in the right place though. (Edit - I have now done that, but there may be a delay in it actioning).

I can give guidance on weights if needed, I'm just not sure if there is a specific question?
But basically, child pages of articles are sorted first by weight, then alphabetically.
So generally the simplest way of trying to sort anything is just making sure the titles go in alphabetical order, then you don't need weight.
Otherwise, if this cannot work for some reason (e.g. a title containing the number 10 starts going under 1 instead of under 9, then you can start adding weights, to ensure 10 goes under 9 and so on).
Sorry if you know this already, not trying to be patronising, just thought I would try to give some general guidance!

That's weird. I just tried both here and in another "book" making child pages, and it didn't change the weights of any pages.
Just tried making the weight of 4.19 zero, and that seems to have stuck. But don't know how all of the others could change.
Unless someone went into the admin panel to move some around manually.
If this problem occurs again we can have a deep dive into it

Hi Steven - the specific issue occurred when I used the "child order" page to add some orphan articles to the issue they were printed in. That seems to have re-weighted everything.

I had to use the child order page to do this because "book outline" only shows the very first few characters of a book or article. So you can't see issue numbers using that.

Okay great thanks for explaining. Have sent you a private message with info about alternative methods!

Something that might simplify it would be having each volume as a child page, then sorting each issue within that. Would you be okay with that? Then at least if something went wrong at some point again, it wouldn't affect every page and would be simpler to fix.

Thanks Adri - good to know. We are getting there!

I believe that this is now a complete* archive of the Dreadnought thanks to Adri? Great work!

(*possibly some issues are missing the odd page).

Have just made this the front page article on the site, as that is really something to celebrate, great work kids!