Bakunin closed his stormy career at Berne, on the 1st July 1876. He had founded the social democratic alliance and been expelled from the Marxist International. It was decided at his funeral to reconcile the social democrats and the anarchists in one association. Fraternal greetings were exchanged between the Jura federation, assembled at Chaux-de Fonds, and the German social democratic congress at Gotha. At the eighth international congress, at Berne, in October, the social democrats and the anarchists met and expressed the desire that all socialists should treat each other with mutual consideration and complete common understanding. A banquets conclude this congress. Caferio, the disciple of Bakunin, drank to Marxism and the German social... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I
The prophet of despair is ever with us ; and to him there is no silver lining to any cloud, no promise of sunshine after the storm, no people so fair and upright as to be able to act honorably unless force or fear are brought to bear upon them. To him the whole social horizon is shrouded in darkness, and not a ray of freedom’s sun is there to separate cloud from cloud. Humanity is inherently bad, and is for ever doomed to ‘be divided into dominated and dominators. Governments based on fraud and coercion, a representative system founded on legislative corruption, a poverty to offer the contrast to an equally immoral bestial luxury: these things are the ends of all being, the tombs of all aspirations, the alpha and omega of... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Left Opposition rose in the Soviet Union, and took shape as a distinct grouping in 1923, headed by Trotsky. At that time, the Soviet Union was passing through what Trotsky termed, “ the scissors crisis.” This was the crisis of the relative prices and therefore exchange values of manufactured articles and agricultural products. The problem was to bring prices in both sectors into harmony. Inability to solve this problem developed a crisis of unemployment, need, and resulting proletarian discontent which reflected itself in the Communist Party in the expression of dissatisfaction on the part of the members. The NEP had been put into effect in 1921. This had eliminated the atmosphere of War Communism from Russian economy, but i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Owing to certain questions which I now put with some timidity to Christian evidence lecturers, I was invited to attend the Sunday Morning Adult School Meetings of the Peel Institute, in order to refind Christ. I accepted the invitation only to lose God instead.
In addresses delivered before the members of this local Quaker Brotherhood during the ensuing twelve months, I insisted that man was truly religious only in so far as his outwardly expressed views concurred with his inward outlook on life, and his beliefs were scientifically trained and cultivated. The earlier lectures maintained that the Bible records were historically untrustworthy. Also that the bodily resurrection and divinity of Christ were absurdities. But Theism was true, a... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
I.
From the rapidly growing spirit of unrest in the Labor Movement at home and abroad, and the bitter plaints to be heard in all countries at the historic failure of Parliamentary methods, it has been evident for some time past that the old principle of Trade Unionism would have to be consigned to the vortex of oblivion, together with the parliamentarism, constituting its political reflex, and the methods of alleged progressive procedure associated there- with, which have been relied on by various people to secure reforms as innumerable as the abuses begotten of the capitalist system. On the one hand, Irishmen, since the days of Parnell, have relied on the Home Rule proclivities of Members of the Westminster Playhouse for the accompli... (From: Marxists.org.)
Michel Bakunin was born in May, 1814, at Pryamuchina, situated between Moscow and Petrograd, two years after his friend, Alexander Herzen, first saw the light by the fires of Moscow. The future apostle of Nihilism was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor, who boasted a line of aristocratic ancestors. Economic conditions had decided that his natural destiny was the army. Consequently, at the age of fourteen, he entered the School of Artillery at St. Petersburg. Here he found, among a large minority of the students at least, an underground current of Liberalism which was only outwardly loyal and obedient to the behests of the Governmental despotism. Among themselves, these rebel students cherished the memories of the Decembrists of 182... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
We do not believe in treasuring every word that a man writes, even though he enjoy and merit the repute of being a thinker. Consequently we do not propose to publish, in full, the letters sent by our Japanese comrade to Albert Johnson, the veteran Anarchist of California. The following excerpts tell the simple story of Kotoku's scholarship and earnestness in the cause of truth, even whilst jailed and under the doom of his coming execution.
Tokio, November 25, 1904: "I feel very happy to inform you that this picture (Peter Kropotkin) was reproduced from that which you sent me, and is published from Heimin Shimbun office, a Socialist weekly. I have been prosecuted on the charge of publishing a treasonable article and sentenced to five mont... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)
“The State! Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing sanguinary, insatiate monster. It even bites with stolen teeth. Its very bowels are counterfeit." —— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Communism in material production, anarchy in the intellectual. —— that is the type of a Socialist mode of production, as it will develop from the rule of the proletariat——in other words, from the Social Revolution, through the logic of economic facts, whatever might be the wishes, intentions, and theories of the proletariat.” ——Karl Kautsky
I.
The argument that Socialism involves State tyranny of a type with which the worker is not una... (From: Marxists.org.)
With the living, imitation is held to be the sincerest form of flattery; the dead we cannot flatter. But we can serve our fellows, and attain to the true heights of our own being by imitating the virtues of the dead warrior. The battle which his dead spirit bids us fight is a hard and unpopular one, but it is a battle which will result in victory for the free; a battle in which freedom’s sons will endure privations, oft-times want the necessaries of life, and suffer the contempt, if not the actual persecution, of the world; a battle in which, however, the sense of helping that cause that lacks assistance, of righting the wrong that needs assistance, of raising the intellectual capacity of the human race, of showing the workers the pat... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
The Socialism of William Morris
Slightly revised from a shorthand report of as lecture delivered at the Seamore Picture House, Glasgow, October 25th, 1915.
My subject tonight is “The Socialism of William Morris.” In ‘dealing with this subject, I may say a few things that will come as a surprise to many orthodox Socialists who may be present, and to strangers who know nothing about Socialism or the movement. What I shall say will not be from the standpoint of wishing to shock people, but from that of educating them. If what I say seems a little strange or new, therefore, my hearers should remember that, from time to time, we come up against facts and ideals which are strange. The strange, however,... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
In the 1907 pamphlet, the piety theme is developed in detail. The women characters of the Bible are listed by name and comment made, that their several stories “are included in the hope of inculcating in the woman’s mind the propriety of her ‘modest’ (!) retirement to the privacy of domestic life, performing, in an exemplary manner, the duties of a domestic serf, studying his desires like a subject, whilst extolling him for his strength of mind, and power of acquiring knowledge and enforcing his will. To these disgusting precepts, We find even the boasted savior of Christendom made, by priestly tradition, to lend his aid."
This passage stands: but it would interfere with the re-written text of the 1914 edition to ... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (1919 Edition).
Trade Unionism and The Class War was published first in 1911. It met with a great deal of criticism and received one complimentary notice. This was from “Dangle” in the Clarion! It was reprinted in 1914 in the Herald of Revolt. The present edition is revised. The introductory section is expanded into a chapter. The third section of the original pamphlet — which would have been the fourth as the essay now stands-treating with the question of representation is omitted. This properly belongs to the companion essay, Representation and the State, and will be embodied in it when that pamphlet is revised. Many persons object to the reasoning of this essay because they consider its logic ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
