Marxism and anarchism

Workers' Control of Industry in Bolshevik Russia

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...

The Origins of Work’s Control of Industry in Revolutionary Russia

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...

No to physical attacks on the SWP!

At least twice in early December, anarchist students at Sussex University have carried out physical attacks on Socialist Workers Party stalls. Sussex Autonomous Students (sussexasn.tumblr.com) report: “A few days ago the SWP turned up to one of the Sussex 5 Solidarity demos. They brought a mass of placards and papers, which they proceeded to distribute from the obligatory stall. We binned their placards, turned over their stall and burnt their papers.” AWL supporters at Sussex report that a second, similar incident took place at the demonstration against management repression and in support of...

Freedom bookshop

The anarchist and radical East London bookshop Freedom, linked to the Freedom Press publishing house founded in Whitechapel by Peter Kropotkin in 1886, was firebombed on the morning of Friday 1 February. No-one was hurt, but the store’s stock, and the archives of the Freedom newspaper, were badly damaged. It is not yet known who carried out the attack, but Freedom has previously suffered attacks by Nazi groups due to its links with anti-fascist activism. The shop has launched an appeal to help pay for repairs. Hip-hop artist Skribbo has released a mixtape, featuring Workers’ Liberty member The...

The Poverty of Philosophy: notes for study sessions

Click here to download pdf . "Our conception first outlined..." In Paris (late 1843 to early 1845) Marx met organised socialist workers for the first time. They won Marx over. He became a communist, though still philosophically a follower of Feuerbach. He also (August 1844) established his working relationship with Engels, who had moved ahead politically faster than Marx. Marx and Engels wrote a Feuerbachian communist critique of the left-wing German philosophers, "The Holy Family". In it, they defended Proudhon, with whom Marx had been on friendly terms, against the Germans. Marx was expelled...

Anarchism, the anti-cuts movement and working class politics: a reply to the Anarchist Federation

For the full text of AFed's article 'The Anti-Cuts Movement and the Left', see www.afed.org.uk/org/org77.pdf . All other AFed publications referred to in this article can be found on www.afed.org.uk. For Pete Radcliff's article on AFed's attempt to disrupt Nottingham May Day, see here The Winter 2011 issue of the Anarchist Federation's (AFed) magazine Organise! carries a long article detailing some of the history of the Nottinghamshire Save Our Services campaign. As well as providing a sometimes valuable narrative of events, AFed take the opportunity attack their political opponents in the...

Victor Serge and the question of Kronstadt

The question of Kronstadt defines much of the debate between anarchism and Marxism in the 20th century. On the one hand apologists for the Bolsheviks cheerlead the destruction of the naval garrison at Kronstadt retrospectively, whilst those in an anarchist tradition see it as the final nail in the coffin of soviet democracy and the consolidation of the dictatorial rule of the central committee of the Bolshevik party. Certainly anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman abandoned the October revolution and argued for the destruction of the newly instituted workers’ state. For nearly...

Six points in reply to Iain McKay

A response by Martin Thomas to Iain McKay's bulletin, "The AWL versus anarchism" , circulated at AWL summer school 2011. 1: "Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta were not so naive as to believe that anarchism could be established overnight..." Certainly sometimes they wrote that the road to an anarchist society would be long. But always, as far I know, they insisted that anarchists should dispute, resist, and disrupt moves by workers to create a strong, centralised, democratic authority of their own - a workers' state or semi-state - during or after the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist...

Anarchism without trade unions: fresh wave or utopianism?

By Ira Berkovic Yves Coleman’s article in Solidarity 224 Five things Trotskyists Should Know About Today’s Young ‘Anarchists’ is a little difficult to get to grips with, much like the politics of the people — “today’s young ‘anarchists’” — whose corner Yves has chosen to fight. The mirroring of content and form is a neat trick, but it doesn’t make a fruitful exchange particularly easy. Yves objects to a recent series of articles (presumably Martin Thomas’s review of Lucien Van Der Walt and Michael Schmidt’s book Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism), which...

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