What can you say about the three key figures of British post-war Trotskyism? Gerry Healy was a hyperactive pseud with a penchant for thuggery, rape and doing dodgy deals with unsavoury Arab regimes. Tony Cliff was flighty, excitable and an inveterate bandwagon chaser – qualities he imparted to the Socialist Workers Party. And there is Ted Grant. Founder of the Militant Tendency and with a reputation for super seriousness, of all of Trotsky’s British progeny it was he who came closest to disturbing the sleep of the great and the good. But for all that, it’s the repulsive Healy and the Mercurial Cliff who are most often recalled and discussed among the tiny circles of people who care about such things. Poor old Ted, the longest lived and most successful of them all merits nary a mention. Perhaps not recruiting enough celebrities or future Guardian journalists has something to do with it.
Ted Grant, best or worst of a bad bunch?
Socialist Wanker
Digesting some of the material about the collapse of the British SWP. Here are some of the links that are relevant beyond UK sectariana but of interest to those interested in Marxist theory and Trotskyist history more broadly. For those interested in the gory details, go to Jim Jepps’ ever-growing link list, from which a couple of the items below are pilfered, or to Mikey’s tabloid version. Apologies this is so un-chronological, with stuff from January through to April.
Leninism, vanguardism, party democracy, activist culture:
- Phil (A Very Public Sociologist): Life on the revolutionary treadmill; SWP, Rape, and Revolutionary Justice; Where now for the SWP?; British Trotskyism after the Cold War; the SWP, an obituary.
- Paul Cotteril (Though Cowards Flinch): The SWP meltdown, institutional legitimacy and the broader lesson for the left
- Lives running: Workers’ democracy and the politics of wrath
- Anna Chen: People’s Assembly and Nechayev’s Catechism: be very afraid …
- Soviet Goon Boy: Reflections on the SWP crisis; The bureaucratic imperative; From the vaults: “Democracy in the International Socialists”, 1975; Order prevails in Vauxhall; Building the leadership; The age gap, and why it matters; The uses of paranoia. Interesting reflections in some of these on the precedent from Gerry Healy’s WRP.]
- Corey Ansel: Sherry Wolf – Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
- Keith Watermelon: The SWP in crisis, what do socialists say?
- Ed Maltby and Martin Thomas: Politics without oxygen
- John Riddell: Party democracy in Lenin’s Comintern – and now
Tim Nelson: Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Party- Louis Proyect: A Reply to Alex Callinicos; Mike Gonzales and the ideological priesthood
- Norman Geras: Leninism forever?
- Paul LeBlanc: Leninism is unfinished (reply by Louis Proyect)
- Tom Walker: Lenin versus Leninism
- Gregor Gall: Democracy and the left
- Tendance Coatesy: The International Marxist Group and the SWP Crisis.
- International Socialists: Is Zinovievism finished?
Theorising Marxism and feminism:
- Camilla Power: ‘Feminism is a dirty word’. What would Marx and Engels think today?
- Radical Anthropology Group: SWP ‘expulsions’ for discussing rape – not for the first time! (1991)
- Yassamin Mather: Sexism: Macho culture and the lessons we can learn from the Middle East
Tony Cliff, founding figure of the British International Socialists. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The “IS tradition”:
- Captain Jack: The SWP and the IS tradition.
- JOAQUÍN BUSTELO: On The Two Souls of Socialism (2005)
- Roobin: Some thoughts on IS theory
The radical movement in Britain
- 10 years on, a comment on the British SWP, Mike Marqusee
- SPGB: An open letter
- Hatful of History: Is this a turning point for the British left?
Historical Materialism journal:
- Delhi HM committee: Disentangling the Delhi HM Conference from the SWP Crisis
- Ross Wolfe: Hysterical Materialism etc
From the archive of struggle no.75: anti-Stalinist Leninism in the 1930s (MIA special)
It’s months now since I’ve looked through the Marxist Internet Archive. Since I’ve last been there, loads of really good stuff is up. The below is just from November and December last year, and it covers a period from ca.1930 to ca.1940 which was pivotal in the development of the anti-Stalinist left.
The material here focuses on three overlapping currents in this anti-Stalinist left. The first is the POUM, the Spanish party whose name this blog’s is taken from, who fused the “left” and “right” opposition in Spain to the official Stalinist Communist party, to form a democratic mass movement of radical socialism, before being liquidated by the Stalinists in during the Spanish Civil War.
The second is the Trotskyist movement, Communism’s “left” opposition. While Trotsky supplied much of the intellectual justification for Stalin’s brutal misrule in the Soviet Union, his sharp critique of the degeneration of the Stalinist state made him a criminal in the dictatorship. His followers have formed one of the main planks of anti-Stalinist socialism globally. The material below focuses mainly on American Trotskyists, but particularly those who developed beyond the rigid and damaging orthodoxies of “official” Trotskyism.
Parallel to Trotsky’s Left Opposition, the Right Opposition called for a more democratic path to socialism, and was bitterly excluded from the Communist movement. Unlike Trotksyism, it leaves little organisational trace today, and so its history remains more deeply buried.
In the period from 1930 to 1940, these currents moved from composing a dissatisfied internal dissident streak within Stalinism, to a fully developed critical analysis of Stalinism. From 1940 to 1950, they several different interesting directions forward, some positively, others less so. Between them (along with anarchist, democratic socialist and left communist currents not represented here), they constitute a significant part of the heritage of anti-Stalinism that continues to be relevant to thinking about the task of reforging a radical movement today.
The POUM
Added to the Spanish-language Archivo Andreu Nin and English-language Andrés Nin Archive:
The Catalan Andreu (or Andres in Spanish) Nin i Pérez was a left dissident in the Communist Party, forming a left opposition group Communist Left of Spain (ICE), which merged with the Right Opposition party Bloque Obrero y Campesino, to form the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in 1935.
Added to the new Julián Gorkin Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL): (more…)
On this day in 1971: Socialism on Other Planets
brochure J. Posadas, La Ciencia Espacial Bro 790/2Close encounters and flying saucers also have a place in socialist theory. The posadists (supporters of Juan Posadas) in Latin America believed this concept was a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas led a group of the Trotskyist Fourth International in Argentina. He was especially interested in the Chinese and Russian space programmes, and wrote a pamphlet in 1971 called La Ciencia Espacial. He envisioned the extension of the socialist revolution to outer space. Many pamphlets by Posadas and the Posadists can be consulted in the IISH library.
See also:
• Pamphlets by Posadas
• Quatrième Internationale Posadiste collection
Poumisceral
Image via Wikipedia
Timothy Snyder’s new book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin is getting some attention. It sounds fascinating but flawed. Here are two sample reviews: by Neal Ascherson and by Richard J Evans. (More reviews, from automatically generated links, at the bottom of the page.) Also read this great piece by Snyder on totalitarian Belarus: In Darkest Belarus.
The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar has also gotten a fair amount of press, rather more surprisingly. Here’s reviews by Daniel Finn, Conor McCabe, and Chris Gray.
Other book reviews by Andrew Coates: Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty (on Stalinism’s “golden age”), John Holloway’s Crack Capitalism.
Mike McNair has had an interesting series in the Weekly Worker on Trotskyist entrism in the Labour Party over the years, which I keep meaning to link to. Here’s the final episode. Also in the WW: Jack Tansey defends left communism.
Sean Matgamna’s very belated obit for Ernst Mandel. Also from the AWL: Dale Street on How Stalinism crushed the Vietnamese Trotskyists, and Matgamna on what a revolutionary party is and is not.
Below the fold, From the Archive of Struggle no.53, mainly from Entdinglichung: (more…)
From the archive of struggle no.51
Image via Wikipedia
Some radical history notes:
Big Flame history blog: on some other radical history projects on the web.
Trotskyism: new blog on IS origins; new blog on IMG history.
Anarchism: Brighton SolFed on the IWA conference in Leon, Spain. An anarchist flow-chart by Division by ZerO. Celebrating 100 years of the CNT.
Labour history: A tale of two speeches – John Lewis to the CIO, 1937, Richard Trumka to the AFL-CIO, 2010.
Democratic socialism: Happy birthday, Oscar Wilde, Fabian anarchist.
New and not so new archival material below the fold. (more…)
Poumerast
In this issue, some Trotskyist stuff, and then some Orwellia, and finally some dispatches from the real world.
From the Archive of Struggle no.46
I’ve been down on Alan Woods lately, for his support of the soft-Stalinist authoritarian populist regime of Hugo Chavez, which in turn has supported the repression of the working class in the Islamic Republic of Iran. So, in the spirit of ecumenicism, I have been spending time at his website, and am dedicating this special edition of From the Archive of Struggle to Woods and his guru Ted Grant.
On James Connolly and the Easter Uprising
*Ted Grant: Connolly and the 1916 Easter Uprising [1966]
*Ted Grant and Alan Woods: James Connolly and the Easter Uprising [2001]
*Fightback: Ireland: Easter then and now – Socialism the only way out! [2010]
On Trotskyism and Stalinism:
* Ted Grant: Stalin Versus Marx [1946]
*Ted Grant: New Purges in Russia [1946]
*Ted Grant: Stalin Liquidates Two Republics [1946: on the roots of the Chechen conflict]
*Ted Grant: Opposition at C.P. Conference—Reformist policy criticised [1947]
*Ted Grant: Stalinist land programme wins peasants – Chiang’s conscripts roped to prevent escape [1949: on the Chinese revolution]
*Ted Grant: The General Strike and the “Communist Party” [1971]
*Ted Grant: Jan Sling arrest—“Communist” Party apologies [1972]
*Alan Woods: Introduction to the Indonesian edition of The Revolution Betrayed [2010]
*International Marxist Tendency: For the Fifth International [2010]
On British politics:
*Ted Grant: The I.L.P. at the Crossroads [1945]
*Ted Grant: Tories in Conference—A bankrupt policy [1948]
On German politics:
*Ted Grant: German Workers Vote Labour—Demonstrate Opposition to Nazism [1946]
Down with the revisionists, running dogs, etc!
Alan Woods is under attack again not from a Brazilian right wing analyst as was the case two weeks ago, but from loud-mouthed TalCual editor/publish Teodoro Petkoff, who dedicates an editorial to the Welshman…
Like in the Brazilian article, Petkoff referred to Woods as the latest of Chavez’ “political advisers” and the man who got Chavez to admit that he was a Marxist-Leninist … like Petkoff once was when he was a 60-70s guerrilla.
What Petkoff does is amplify the Brazilian piece, adding trinkets such as calling Heinz Dieterich — a “German charlatan” — and Chavez “catching measles” from the “heavy brick of Hungarian Marxist, Istvan Meszaros.” Alan Woods is quickly dismissed as one of that “handful of castaways who left the shipwreck of the USSR … a solitary soul looking for a sponsor … without a refreshing or new idea.”
Here’s Wikipedia on Petkoff, ex-Stalinist turned liberal social democrat. I can’t find the article on-line, but just Woods’ reply (see here). I’m a bit of a fan of Istvan Meszaros, and would like more politicians to read his work. Any readers who can provide more info on all of this, please do.
Meanwhile, as already reported, Woods’ Iranian comrades have deserted his micro-movement, due to his apologies for Chavez’s support for the tyrannical regime in Iran. Here is the newly launched website of the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency. Here is a website, KarlMarx.Net, which is associated with the IRMT and their supporters. Among the documents are something very interesting by Pat Byrne (who I think is from the Alliance for Green Socialism) on the origins of the slate system for leadership voting in Leninist parties (also published at Tendance Coatesy, with better formatting to make it more readable, and by A Very Public Sociologist), and a Marxist reply by John Gandy to Woods’ series on anarchism mentioned here. There is also an interesting document on the split in the IMT from the Learning from Our Past group here.
Also read: David Osler’s review of Richard Gott on the Bolivarian revolution.
Also read: LabourStart’s news from Iran: Journalist who wrote about and defended union workers gets long jail term 2010-04-07 [Radio Free Europe]; IFJ Urges Iran to Release Detained Journalists 2010-03-22 [IFJ]; ‘New minimum wage rate spurs widespread indignation’ 2010-03-16 [Iran Labor Report]; ‘Forcing hunger on Iranian workers in the new year’ 2010-03-16 [Iran Labor Report]; Worker Protest in the Age of Ahmadinejad 2010-03-16 [Middle East Report]; Where Life Reeks of Death: Working Women and Child Laborers2010-03-07 [Iran Labor Report]; Union Leaders Under Attack 2010-03-07 [Iran Labor Report]; Workers’ Protest in Isfahan 2010-03-07 [Iran Labor Report]; IFJ Condemns Closure of Newspapers in Iran 2010-03-06 [IFJ]; ‘Kaleidoscopic’ Worker Protests Grow in Iran 2010-02-26 [In These Times].
Down with the revisionists, running dogs, etc! Part 2
Moving on from Ted Grant to his evil twin Gerry Healy, possibly the most destructive force ever on the British far left. Or, rather, to Healy’s disciple Corin Redgrave, whose death recently I’ve only touched on in passing. Read: Corin Redgrave: Traitor to Marxism; Gerry Healy and the WRP; The Daily Telegraph, Corin Redgrave and a Libel Case; Corin Redgrave, authoritarian figure; Corin Redgrave: scenes from a political life; and What has the Left got to be so smug about?. And, from the archive, No One Likes Us, We Try Not To Care.
The girl with the dragon tattoo
Talking of Trots, Marko follows Nick Cohen, Max Dunbar and Christopher Hitchens in reviewing dead Swedish Trot Stieg Larsson, the “man who wasn’t really all that left-wing.”
Orwellia
Having already posted this, here is another Orwell Prize nominee, Madame Miaow, on George Orwell. Recommended.
Meanwhile in the real world
Tolpuddle guides go on strike; Kyrgyzstan: colour revolution and permanent revolution; U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves; The Rights of Mother Earth: Bolivia Births a New Revolution; The harvest of death in Canada; India’s coalfire workers.
Poumunk
Colin Ward
[…] UK anarchist Colin Ward has died. His Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) is both very short and quite good, and his appeal as a writer was widespread, his many, generally pithy writings emphasising the practical dimensions of Anarchy in Action. (Revolution by the Book has an extract from Anarchy in Action here; AK Press is also publishing Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader later this year.) In addition to being the author of numerous books and pamphlets, Ward edited Anarchy zine for its first 100 issues (1961–1970), criticised by some as being reflective of anarchism’s absorption by the middle class.
OBITUARIES – 20: COLIN WARD, Paul Anderson, GAUCHE, February 17, 2010 | Colin Ward, RIP, Jesse Walker, Reason, February 17, 2010 | Colin Ward: pioneer of mutualism, Next Left, February 14, 2010 | Colin Ward Presente!, Dan Cull Weblog, February 14, 2010 | Colin Ward, Rob Ray, libcom, February 13, 2010 | Colin Ward, Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves Blog, February 12, 2010.
See also : Anarchism in Action: Methods, Tactics, Skills, and Ideas, Second Edition (draft), Complied and Edited by Shawn Ewald.
Marxism etc
Bob versus the Moonbats: marxism necessary but not sufficient.
Some items of interest from The Commune: Beyond the party-state, beyond the big bang; El Alto, bastion of social struggles in Bolivia; Readings on the Paris Commune from Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin and the Situationists; The early Russian revolution: Laurat in wonderland (this is part 1 of a text on Lucien Laurat’s book L’Économie Soviétique: Sa Dynamique, son méchanisme, by João Bernardo of Passa Palavra; the original in Portuguese is here, with part 2 here, presumably awaiting translation).
Half a century of the New Left Review: Coatesy has a long and fascinating critical elegy, and Entdinglichung reminds us of the 1960 edition. Michael Weiss has a different take.
Trottishness etc
The departure of Lindsey German from the British SWP is raising some interesting discussions of party democracy in the UK left blogosphere. Among the contributions are these: “When Zinoviev is in the majority he is for iron discipline, when he is in the minority he is against it“; “Once Tiberius is dead I, Sejanus, will rule as Emperor in Rome”; “It was the best times, it was the worst of times”….; United fronts or just fronts?; The examination of the conscience (or lack thereof). Odd how it brings out the erudition in bloggers with these titles.
Uncle Hugo
From SlackBastard:
And finally, um, for reasons best known to himself, but perhaps related to the recent departure of significant sections of the International Marxist Tendency, Uncle Hugo’s best mate Alan Woods has attacked Bakunin In Defence of Marxism.
The last link is worth clicking on, as it gets you an English translation of The Third Chavez by Demétrio Magnoli in O Estado de Sao Paulo, apparently “Brazil’s main bourgeois paper”. I found it quite perceptive, and Woods’ reply too tedious to bother with.
Karl Marx created the 1st International, Friedrich Engels participated in the founding of the 2nd, Lenin established the 3rd, Leon Trotsky founded the 4th and Hugo Chávez has just raised the banner of the 5th. “I take responsibility before the world, I think it is time to rally the 5th International and dare to make the call,” he said in a speech lasting five hours, at the opening session of the extraordinary congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to the applause of 772 delegates in red shirts.
The congress was held in November. Then Chavez imposed energy rationing in the country, devalued the currency and introduced a dual exchange rate, nationalized a supermarket chain, suspended cable TV broadcasts and unleashed a bloody crackdown on student protests. […]
Chavez is living his third incarnation, which is also the last. The first Chavez emerged after the failed coup of 1992, in the guise of nationalist and anti-American warlord mesmerized by the image of an imaginary Simón Bolívar. Under the influence of Argentine sociologist Norberto Ceresole, that original Chavismo flirted with anti-Semitism and dreamed of the establishment of an authoritarian, fascist-style state, which would reunify Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador in a restored Great Colombia.
A second Chávez could be discerned in outline in the spring of the first term in 1999, after the break with Ceresole, when the Leader drew close to Heinz Dieterich, a German Professor of Sociology in Mexico who came out of obscurity to formulate the concept of “socialism of the 21st century.” Chavismo reinvented itself and acquired left-wing collaborators, formed an alliance with Cuba and engaged in the project of building a state capitalism that was presented as a long transition towards a kind of socialism untainted by the Soviet legacy.
Brandishing a copy of The State and Revolution by Lenin, the Chavez of the extraordinary congress of the PSUV announced his conversion to the programme of the destruction of the “bourgeois state” and the building of a “revolutionary state.” This third Chavez was already implied in 2004, when the Leader got to know the British Trotskyist Alan Woods, and was fully manifest by the time of his defeat in the referendum of December 2007, shortly after the break with Dieterich. The PSUV is a result of Chavismo of the third period, as is also the proclamation of the 5th International.
The uses and abuses of history cont.
Bob posts on the Holocaust against the Roma and Jewish partisans in Greece, with lovely music. Chris Ford responds to Red Maria on Stepan Bandera (which I linked to here, to Will’s consternation). Graeme writes on an overlapping topic here.
Poumic
Stalinism and anti-Stalinism
At AVPS, an interesting discussion on what actually “Stalinism” is. At Coatesy’s place, Lindsey German and the Trotskyist Tradition, on democratic centralism, the SWP and Trotky’s ambiguous legacy. From Michael Ezra, some real Stalinists, those who defend North Korea.
Found via Bermuda Radical, here is Paul Kellog on Slavoj Zizek’s failed encounter with Leninism. (“The net effect of Žižek’s analysis is not to resurrect Lenin, but to resurrect Stalin – an utterly irresponsible project given the nightmare of Stalinism from which we have only just emerged. The article will offer some suggestions for a more fruitful approach to “resurrecting” the political legacy of Vladimir Lenin.”)
Albert Camus
Lettrist discusses Camus The Stranger here. Meanwhile, an intriguing snippet from a Romanian magazine, via Eurozine:
Radu Cosasu writes that Albert Camus was “neither communist nor anti-communist”, a nuance difficult to digest for those “incapable of seeing the Left as anything but communist” (issue 310); and Sever Voinescu explains why such nuances are impossible for the moment in Romania: the country “never had an anti-communist Left; at most, and emerging just now, it has a Left that is indifferent to communism”.
Victor Serge
Not sure if I’ve already linked to this: Victor Serge: Revolution in life and literature, found via Marxist Update. Here is a snippet from a Jonathan Ree piece on JM Coetzee:
Susan Sontag would have agreed with Coetzee about the political significance of literature. The novel, as she remarks in her last, posthumous collection At the Same Time (Hamish Hamilton), exists to recall us to a sense of the interminable diversity that is the basis of what she calls “politics, the politics of democracy.” In a substantial essay on Victor Serge, she praises him for having combined political militancy with a serious engagement with the art of writing. As a mature novelist, she says, Serge was able to deploy “several different conceptions of how to narrate,” elaborating a capacious “I” as a device for “giving voice to others.” It was through his narratorial doubles that he liberated himself from what he called the “former beautiful simplicity” of the fight between capitalism and socialism, so as to produce books that were “better, wiser, more important than the person who wrote them.”
Poumtang
Resources for critical thought:
Kronstadt and its revenges… an anarchist dissection of the corpse of Trotskyism today.
Platypus: Review of Dave Renton’s Dissident Marxism.
Platypus: Review of Perry’ Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism.
Andrew Flood: Towards an anarchist history of the Chinese revolution.
Paul LeBlanc: Marxism and revolutionary democracy (review of Simon Pirani and Soma Marik).
Paul LeBlanc: Trotsky lives! (on Robert Service).
Larry Gambone: Principled Bakuninism in Latin America.
Declaration against re-intensified oppression in Cuba. [Spanish source, and signatories.]
International Communist Tendency: Kronstadt 1921: The beginning of the counter-revolution.
On Arthur Koestler: Christopher Hitchens, Louis Menand, Bernard Avishai, Christopher Caldwell.
Iain McKay: anarchist-communist critique of mutualism.
Libertarian communist forum in Moscow.
Catalunya: Amadeu Casellas announces new hunger strike.
Heather Gautney: Which Anarchism? Which Autonomism? Between Anarchism and Autonomist Marxism.
Workers’ Liberty
Some features from the Alliance for Workers Liberty, some new, some from the archive, below the fold. I have already included some of these in my From the Archive of Struggle series, but, hey, you can’t have too much of a good thing! Also, further down, a small number of other articles, including Eric Lee on Trotsky and some recent pieces from Against the Current.
From the archive of struggle, no.41: Anarchist poster special
Today’s feature is the Just Seeds Visual Artsts’ Co-op.
Rafael Baca
Nuestro Mas Hermoso Sueño es tu Peor Pesadilla/Our Most Beautiful Dream is Your Worst Nightmare
Favianna Rodriguez
El Maíz Es Nuestro
Brains, Brilliancy, Bohemia: Art & Politics in Jazz-Age Chicago.
Favianna Rodriguez
Rio
Lapiztola
Emiliano Zapata silkscreen
Ben Rubin
Emma Goldman
From the archive, below the fold: (more…)
Poumnik
Rosie on Orwell as Autumn and war advance. AWL’s Jim D on SWP’s Keith Flett on Derry 1969. Photography and memory. The posthumous life of Leon Trotsky. WWII and the socialist project today. Radical thinkers?
From the archive of struggle, no.28
Acknowledgments, as always, to Comrade E. Mostly English above the fold, other languages below. Browse the whole series here.
La Bataille Socialiste:
* Socialist Party of the US “Justice Triumphs in Spain” (1938)
Norman Thomas at Archive.org:
*Why I am a socialist – Thomas, Norman, 1884-1968. A pamphlet from the leading American socialist in the midst of the Great Depression HX15.
*What’s the matter with New York; a national problem – Thomas, Norman, 1884-1968
*Justice triumphs in Spain! : a letter about the trial of the P.O.U.M. – Thomas, Norman, 1884-1968. Allen, Devere,; 1891-1955. The US socialist party weighs in on the trial of the POUM leaders in Republican Spain JN8395.O27
*Democracy and Japanese Americans [pdf]. New York: Post War World Council, 1942.
Irish Labour and Working Class History:
*Robert Jackson Alexander, ‘Ireland’, International Trotskyism, 1929-1985 (1991)
* Ken Coates “A Note on Workers’ Control”
* The Red Menace: Review: Anti-Parliamentary Communism in Britain, 1917-1945 (1989)
* Nick Heath: Anarchists who turned to the Bolsheviks
* Nick Heath: Jacob Abrams, Jacob aka Jack Abrams (1883 – 1953)
* The Communist Left in Germany 1918-1921 (1976)
* Walter Benjamin: The life of students (1915)
* James Goldwasser: Ret Marut: The Early B. Traven (1993)
* Julius Jacobson: Reflections on Fascism and Communism (1983)
* John Goodwillie: Family Tree of the Irish Left (1983)
* John Goodwillie: Glossary of the Left in Ireland, 1960 to 1983 (1983)
Marxist Internet Archive:
Added to the Maurice Brinton Internet Archive:
*For Workers’ Power, 1965
*Review: What is Class Consciousness?, 1972
*Review: Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis, 1972
*The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1970
*Socialism Reaffirmed, 1960
*Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1975
Added to the Barta Archive:
*Letter From Bucharest to Trotsky, May 1936
Added to the Tony Cliff Archive:
*Trotsky: 3. Fighting the rising Stalinist bureaucracy 1923-1927 (1991) (Volume 3 of Cliff’s political biography of Trotsky)
*Trotsky: 4. The darker the night the brighter the star 1927-1940 (1993) (Fourth and final volume of Cliff’s political biography of Trotsky)
*“Life in Revolutionary Barcelona” by Manolo Gonzalez
*“Beer and Revolution: Some Aspects of German Anarchist Culture in New York, 1880-1900” by Tom Goyens (2009)
*“Chavistas open fire, injure eight protestors in Caracas” by Peter Gelderloos (2007)
*“Dreams, Demands, and the Pragmatic Pitfall: The Barcelona Bus Drivers Strike” by Peter Gelderloos (2009)
*“Anti-patriotism” by Han Ryner (1934)
When Skateboards will be free
This week, BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week is the touching, amusing memoir of growing up on the American far left, When Skateboards Will be Free, by American-Iranian Said Sayrafiezadeh. Episode 2, this morning and repeated just after midnight, covers the Party deciding he and his single mother should move to Pittsburgh. This is the American SWP, portrayed perfectly. The title refers to his mother not letting him have a skateboard – until after the revolution, when they’ll be free.
Related: Gary Younge “Memoirs of a teenage Trot”, on being a WRP member in the 1980s.
Previously: Trotsky on TV/Trotsky on Book of the Week.
Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service talk Trotsky
From National Review Online’s Uncommon Knowledge TV show. Each episode is around 6 minutes. Pretty good from the superficial listen I’ve had.
• Trotsky with Hitchens and Service 1: Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service introduce Leon Trotsky, “one of the half-dozen outstanding Marxist revolutionaries.”(Background stuff. Skip it if you are among the initiated.)
• Trotsky with Hitchens and Service 2: the defeat and exile of Leon Trotsky.
• Trotsky with Hitchens and Service 3: What if Trotsky, rather than Stalin, attained control of the Soviet Union?
• Trotsky with Hitchens and Service 4: Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service talk about Trotsky’s “moral moments.” (On anti-fascism and the 1930s)
• Trotsky with Hitchens and Service 5: Trotsky today – scrutinizing the modern romantic view of Leon Trotsky.
(Twitter version: The Hitchens/Service series: 1: http://ow.ly/jygc, 2: http://ow.ly/jygo, 3: http://ow.ly/jyhv, 4: http://ow.ly/jyhO, 5: http://ow.ly/jyhW. “Christopher Hitchens is a journalist and author. His most recent book is God Is Not Great. Robert Service is a historian who has published major biographies of Lenin and Stalin. His most recent book, Comrades!, is study of communism as a worldwide movement. His upcoming work, Trotsky, will be published in November 2009.”)
ADDED: Lesley Chamberlain “Twilight in Mexico” in WSJ on Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude (published in the UK as Stalin’s Nemesis, which I blogged about here, when it was Radio 4’s Book of the Week. More from Bookhugger, Ardmayle, The Tablet. More later today about the current Book of the Week, which also has a Trotskyist theme. ).
Alternative histories
Harry Barnes remembers his father (beautiful piece). Histomatist defends Trotsky. Martin remembers to remember Bastille Day (and Casablanca). Rosie is underwhelmed by Katyn. Dennis Healey remembers the Italian campaign but can’t remember who wrote Lili Marlene. Ed Walsh reviews Leo Panitch’s call for a renewal of socialism. Conor McCabe remembers the 1955 Irish/Yugoslav soccer international. The Irish Left Archive retrieves the Anarchist Worker of 1979. Bataille Socialiste remember Marceau Pivert with Orwell in Spain. Bataille Socialiste rescue the legacy of Charles Allegier. Entdinglichung archives The Left. Hillel Ticktin and Adam Buick debate Trotskyism.
Poumahoola
Galician metal workers on the barricades. Interview with Venezuelan anarchists of El Libertario.
Tragic presents:
Antisemitism, Human Rights and Acceptable Jews in Buenos Aires.
Alternative histories:
Yugoslav “self government” by Dan Jakopovich. Otto Bauer on film. Notes on the Portuguese revolution. A little theory by Malatesta.
Iconography/iconoclasm:
Lenin’s butt remodelled. The equivalence of totalitarianisms: no Che on Polish t-shirts.
Fascism and anti-fascism:
Don PalabraZ is a Subversive Historian. mister word’s latest post recalls the day in 1938 Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling for the heavy-weight boxing title. Curiously, despite being championed by a dead incestuous coprophiliac dicktator, and acting as a mouthpiece for the Nazi regime, Schmeling was:
Compassionate and Modest
…On Kristallnacht, Schmeling took an enormous risk and hid the two teenage sons of a Jewish friend in his Berlin hotel room. The boxer claimed to be sick and did not allow any visitors. When the opportunity presented itself, Schmeling smuggled the two boys out of the country. Henri Lewin, who became a Las Vegas hotelier, credits Schmeling with his life; characteristically, the modest Schmeling made no mention of this episode in his own autobiography.
Below the fold – From the archive of struggle, no.24: (more…)
Marxist theory
1. Hal Draper’s piece on Israel posted by angelus novus at Contested Terrain (and linked to here) has prompted a very thoughtful, intelligent response by Mira Vogel, posted at Engage and Greens Engage, two excellent British left-wing anti-racist sites.
2. Larry Gambone has a couple of recent articles of interest, most notably his dissection of the myth of Lenin’s “libertarian” State and Revolution (a myth that Draper contributed to).
3. Via Bermuda Radical (a bit Pabloite for my liking), I came across Sebastian Lamb’s critique of J Sakai and his theory of “settler” racism – useful.
4. I also recently found the Notes and Commentaries, a very interesting communist blog. This article, on sectarianism and the party, is especially good. (Again, Draper is a key reference point.)
5. Principia Dialectica lay into Amadeo Bordiga and his cult here.
Below the fold: From the archive of struggle, no.22
History, etc
News from the frontline of the workers’ struggle:
- Beat the heat in California: solidarity with agricultural workers.
- Against the murder of militants in Chavez’s Venezuela.
On Thomas Paine:
- Snowball: Permanent Revolutionary (be sure to follow links to Peter Linebaugh)
- Martin: Hero of the Enlightenment
Solidarity Federation: Direct Action new issue, includes:
- Looking back at the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike (Dave Douglass)
- If Voting could Change the System . . . the libertarian case for direct democracy (Albert Meltzer)
From the archive of struggle, no.22:
From the New International, April 1941 [Via Ent.]
- Max Shachtman: Labor and Strikes in Wartime
- Albert Glotzer: German Society and Capitalism
- Dwight McDonald: The American War Economy
- Henry Judd: Eton Brahmin
- The Editor’s Comment
- Editorial Notes
- Henry Foster: Into the Night of Confusion
- C.D.E.: Total War and the Revolution
From Socialist Appeal, January/February 1936 [Via Ent.]
- Hal Draper: The Case Against Sanctions and “Neutrality Legislation”
- Albert Goldman: Toward Socialist Clarity
- From Our Viewpoint
- Rudolph C. Olson: To Pay Dues Is Not Enough
- Georg Mann: Mistakes At Columbus
- A. Morrison: A United Front Against War And Fascism
