The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:
This issue marks the founding of the International Working People’s Association (IWPA) in Pittsburgh in 1883. As well as numerous articles by members of the IWPA, we debunk claims – by Marxists and others – that it was something other than anarchist. We also show the links between “the Chicago Idea” and the Federalist-International and the ideas championed by Bakunin and Kropotkin.
While having the positive outcome of sharing the ideas of the IWPA with current activists, debunking such claims are an example of Brandolini's law (“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it”) and so time consuming. It needs to be done, for the false notion that the Chicago Anarchists were “Marxists” – for example –has been repeated by American Leninist parties (it is ironic to see Trotskyists do something even Stalinists could not bring themselves to do).
Such claims also bring to mind these comments:
Just as I admire and trust the single-mindedness and devotion of the real historian in his search for every detail that will complete the historical picture, but feel unable to follow in his footsteps, so I despise the phoneys who pose as serious historians, cluttering their texts with footnotes and source references to impress the reader that their facts are well founded, and am moved to expose them with the very sources they allege to be summarising. (V. R., “Anarchism and the historians”, Anarchy No. 46, December 1964).
In short, always check the references because there are certain writers who assume – sadly, correctly in the main – that no one will and so just write what they think or hope is true rather than factually based comments. This does not mean that the conventional wisdom is correct – anarchists know that as regards anarchism, it is often not – but challenging it should rest on more than wishful thinking.
We then, with the help of the Marie Goldsmith Project, recall the sadly somewhat forgotten contributions of Marie Goldsmith, a leading scientist and anarchist. Then we turn to German anarchists Max Baginski and Rudolf Rocker before ending with a review by Wayne Price and the news that there is finally a book of Camillo Berneri’s writings.
Original translations which appear in Black Flag: Anarchist Review eventually appear on-line here:
https://anarchistfaq.org/translations/index.html
Our remaining issue for this year aims to include an account of Trotsky’s (limited) opposition to Stalinism as well as articles on and by Guy Aldred, Maurice Brinton, amongst other people and subjects.
Contributions from libertarian socialists are welcome on these and other subjects! We are a small collective and always need help in writing, translating and gathering material, so please get in touch if you want to see Black Flag Anarchist Review continue.
This issue’s editorial and contents are:
Editorial
We start with the International Working People’s Association founded in 1883. As well as summarising its ideas, we also debunk claims that they were not, in fact, anarchists at all. We place the “Chicago Idea” within the context of the Federalist-wing of the International and show the similarities between it and the ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin. As we show, the very thing – the cult of dynamite – used to portray them as “anarchists” is alien to the anarchist tradition while the labour activism which is used to suggest they are “syndicalists” or “Marxists” is what makes them anarchist.
It is not hard to conclude that those who claim the IWPA was not anarchist are simply expressing their ignorance of anarchism, a failure to read The Alarm and other writings or lack a wider understanding to place what they do read into the right context. We include a large selection of writings from IWPA members, mostly from The Alarm, which show their anarchist politics. While we doubt that this will stop historians or Marxists from suggesting the IWPA was anything other than anarchist, it will help anarchists and other seekers of the truth debunk such nonsense.
We then move on to Marie Goldsmith who, like Kropotkin, was a noted scientist as well as an anarchist. All the articles published in this issue of Black Flag – which focus on the lessons of the Russian Revolution – were translated as a part of the Marie Goldsmith Project, led by Søren Hough. It is an independent research initiative established to bring this remarkable – but largely forgotten – anarchist scientist’s ideas into the twenty-first century (see their website https://mariegoldsmith.uk/). We are excited to work with the Project to make Goldsmith's writings accessible to the public, first in our Kropotkin issue of late last year (volume 2, number 3) and now in this issue.
We return to America with German-American anarchist Max Baginski. Not as well-known as his colleagues Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, he was an important member of the American movement for decades and helped make Mother Earth such an influential and important journal. We reprint a selection of his writings from Mother Earth on a wide range of subjects, including how he could – like Goldman – combine an appreciation of Max Stirner with advocacy of syndicalism. We hope his writings will be of interest to anarchists today.
Rudolf Rocker is next. Born 150 years ago and best known for his classics Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1938) and Nationalism and Culture (1937), Rocker was another important German anarchist who spent most of his life in exile. He played a key role in the East London Jewish labour movement and – after his imprisonment and then expulsion during the First World War – the anarcho-syndicalist movement during the German Revolution. He led the rejection of Bolshevism in the global Syndicalist movement and played an important role in the syndicalist International Workers’ Association. Here we reprint a few of his lesser-known articles.
We end with Wayne Price’s review of a new book on libertarian socialism and the good news that a collection of writings by Camillo Berneri has been published by Freedom Press. We included articles by Berneri in our Summer 2020 issue and his views on Kropotkin in our Winter 2023 one, so readers will know his importance as a thinker. We include an article not included in that book, a defence of the POUM published a few days before his assassination by Stalinists. We hope that comrades will find the book of interest and will support a long-standing anarchist publisher.
If you want to contribute rather than moan at those who do, whether its writing new material or letting us know of on-line articles, reviews or translations, then contact us:
Contents
Anarchy in the USA: The International Working People’s Association – Iain McKay
• Manifestos, reports and others
o Manifesto of the International Working People’s Association, October 1883
o “The Black Flag”, The Alarm, 29 November 1884
o “Metal Workers”, The Alarm, 27 June 1885
o “Thanksgiving!”, The Alarm, 12 December 1885
o “The American Group: Large Mass-Meeting of Workingmen and Women”, The Alarm, 6 March 1886
o “The International, A Mass-Meeting of Working People to Consider the Jay Gould Railway strike”, The Alarm, 20 March 1886
o To The Workmen, The Committee of the Central Labor Union
• Albert Parsons
o “The International”, The Alarm, 4 April 1885
o “What Anarchy Means”, The Alarm, 7 March 1885
o “Anarchy”, The Alarm, 16 May 1885
o “Typographical Unions”, The Alarm, 13 June 1885
o “Selfishness”, The Alarm, 27 June 1885
o “The Wabash Strike”, The Alarm, 22 August 1885
o “Anarchy vs. Government”, The Alarm, 22 August 1885
o “Legislation”, The Alarm, 17 October 1885
o “Liberty and Wages”, The Alarm, 28 November 1885
o “Pennsylvania”, The Alarm, 6 February 4, 1886
o “Ohio”, The Alarm, 20 February 1886
o “The Church”, The Alarm, 20 March 1886
o “Expropriation”, The Alarm, 20 March 1886
o “The Knights of Labor”, The Alarm, 3 April 1886
o “Parsons’ Plea for Anarchy”, New York Herald, 30 August 1886
o “A Correction”, The Knights of Labor, 11 December 1886
• August Spies
o “An Anarchist and the Ministers of the Congregational Church”, The Alarm, 9 January 1886
o “Anarchism”, The Alarm, 6 and 20 February 1886
o Address to the Court (Extracts), 7 October 1886
• Adolph Fischer
o Address to the Court, 1886
o “A Chicago Anarchist on Anarchy”, Liberty, 26 February 1887
o Letter to Lloyd and Salter, 4 November 1887
• Lizzie M. Swank
o “Abolition of Government”, The Alarm, 23 January 1886
o “‘Timid’ Capital”, The Alarm, 20 March 1886
o “Peacemakers”, The Alarm, 24 April 1886
o “What Are ‘American Institutions’?”, The Commonweal, 16 July 1887
o “A Word on Martyrs’ Mistakes”, The Alarm, 11 February 1888
o “The Vital Question”, The Commonweal, 29 June 1889
o “The Vital Question Again”, The Commonweal, 28 September 1889
o “Something in a Name”, The Commonweal, 28 December 1889
• Others
o “Private Ownership”, The Alarm, 1 November 1884
o “The Indians”, The Alarm, 8 November 1884
o M.H., “The Steet Car Strike”, The Alarm, 11 July 1885
o J.H., “What ls Socialism?”, The Alarm, 9 January 1886
o Dyer D. Lum, “Communal Anarchy”, The Alarm, 6 March 1886
o Frédéric Tufferd, “What Is Property?”, The Alarm, 24 April 1886
o Dyer D. Lum, “The Knights of Labor”, Liberty, 19 June 1886
o Lucy E. Parsons, “We are all Anarchists”, The Advance and Labor Leaf, 12 March 1887
o “The Proudhon Library”, The Alarm, 10 March 1888
Marie Goldsmith: Scientific Luminary, Anarchist Militant – Søren Hough
• “Problems of Tomorrow I: The Reasons for our ‘Maximalism’”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 15 July 1919
• “Problems of Tomorrow II: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 15 November 1919
• “Problems of Tomorrow III: Some Economic Milestones”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 15 April 1920
• “The Truth about Kronstadt”, Les Temps Nouveaux, April-May 1921
• “Marxist Utopia”, Golos Truzhenika, September 1925
• “A few words on a confusing notion”, Plus Loin, 15 September 1925
• “On the Subject of ‘Revision,’” Dielo Trouda, November 1925,
• “On the Subject of ‘Revision’ (Continued)”, Dielo Trouda, January 1926
Max Baginski (1864–1943) – Rudolf Rocker
• “Without Government”, Mother Earth, March 1906
• “Aims and Tactics of the Trade Union Movement”, Mother Earth, June and July 1906
• “Stirner: The Ego and His Own”, Mother Earth, March 1907
• “The Anarchist International,” Mother Earth, November, 1907
• M.B., “Everlasting Murder”, Mother Earth, April 1911
• “Communism the Basis of Liberty”, Mother Earth, May 1911
• “A Bankrupt Labor Paradise”, June 1911
• M.B., “The Right To Live”, January 1912
• “Syndicalist Tendencies in the American Labor Movement”, Mother Earth, February 1912
• “State Socialism at Work”, Mother Earth, July 1912
• “The Troubles of Socialist Politicians”, Freedom, May 1913
• “How we shall bring about the revolution”, Mother Earth, June 1913
• “Michael Bakunin (1814-1914)”, Mother Earth, May 1914
Rudolf Rocker 1873-1958 – Colin Ward
• “Anarchism and Political Action”, Germinal, December 1906 (Views & Comments, October 1958)
• “The History of Parliamentary Action in the Modern Labour Movement”, Freedom, January 1920
• “The History of Parliamentary Action in the Modern Labour Movement”, Freedom, November-December 1924
• “The True Nature of the State”, Freedom, October 1926
• “‘Proletarian Dictatorship’ and Counter-Revolution”, Freedom, June 1927
• “Socialism and the Principles of the International Working Men’s Association”, Vanguard, May-June 1933
• “The Communist Party and the Idea of Dictatorship”, Dyelo Truda, January-February 1935
• “On German Social Democracy”, Dyelo Truda, February 1935
• “Social Rights and Freedoms: Their Vital Worth to us”, The World Scene from the Libertarian Point of View (1951)
A Guide to Anarcho-Syndicalism and Libertarian Socialism -- Wayne Price
Camillo Berneri, Revisited
• Camillo Berneri, “In Defence of the POUM”, L’adunata dei refrattari, 1 May 1937
Parish Notes
“Anarchy and Communism”, Le Drapeau Noir, 16 September 1883