A remarkable pamphlet by Maurice Brinton exposing the struggle that took place over the running of workplaces between workers and the new state in the Russian Revolution.
In doing so not only does it demolish the romantic Leninist 'history' of the relationship between the working class and their party during these years (1917 - 21) but it also provides a backbone to understanding why the Russian revolution failed in the way it did.
Buy The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control now
From this understanding flows alternative possibilities of revolutionary organisation and some 26 years after the original was written this is perhaps its greatest contribution today. For this reason alone this text deserves the greatest possible circulation today and we encourage you to link to it, download the text or otherwise circulate it.
The text of this pamphlet was scanned and HTML'd by a number of anarchists to mark the 79th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1996. It's original author was not an anarchist, but belonged to the sister groups 'Solidarity' and 'Socialism or Barbarism' (France) which were libertarian marxist. The text was scanned from the 1975 Black & Red (Detroit) addition. As far as we're aware Solidarity no longer exist, the address given in the original text for contacting them was Solidarity (North London) 123 Lathom Road, London, E.6
The Russian Revolution in is entirety from 1905 to 1917 continues to be one of the great periods of history for the struggle for freedom by the working class against the capitalist class. Now that Leninism is finally dying it is up to anarchists and other libertarian communists to rescue the positive and negative lessons of that great revolution from the distortions of the left and the right. The book is a vital contribution to writing the real history of the revolution.
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Comments
a pdf version of this would be very nice
http://zinelibrary.info/bolsheviks-and-worker-control
zabalaza FTW!
There is a new, over-priced but don't tell the publishers i said that, print edition.
http://oooabooks.org/
20 bucks does seem a bit ridiculous
Well, 20 bucks is only the list price... hopefully amazon will discount it at some point. The publishers website offers free shipping too, so that helps a little. I got the new print edition to replace my old 70s Black Rose copy, and it is a much better looking and feeling book. The type is easier to read too. You can find the old Black Rose edition cheap used, but it honestly is hard to read, I'm glad I got the new one. Glad to see this book back in print!
Wanna puke.....Scroll down and read how early on into the revolution the Bolsheviks saw the need for directorships rather than workers control .....
On the Question of the Trade Unions and their Organization
1 April 1920
....
5. CURRENT TASKS OF THE TRADE UNIONS
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/party-congress/9th/01.htm
Resolved: April 1, 1920
First Published: Spravochnik partiinogo robotnika 1,38-40
I've added a pdf of the original printed in 1972 by Solidarity (4.88 MB)