Theory and Practice3. The Forerunners of Syndicalism Robert Owen and the English labor movement; The Grand National Consolidated Trade Union; William Benbow and the idea of the General Strike; The period of reaction; Evolution of the labor organizations in France; The International Workingmen's Association; The new conception of trade unionism; The idea of the labor councils; Labor councils versus dictatorships; Bakunin on the economic organization of the workers; The introduction of parliamentary politics by Marx and Engels and the end of the International. The permeation of the labor movement by Socialist ideas early led to tendencies which had an unmistakable relationship to the revolutionary syndicalism of our day. These tendencies developed first in England, the mother country of capitalist big industry, and for a time strongly influenced the advanced sections of the English working class. After the repeal of the Combination Acts, the effort of the workers was...
1. The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism THE WILL TO POWER AS A HISTORICAL FACTOR. SCIENCE AND HISTORICAL CONCEPTS. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ECONOMIC MATERIALISM. THE LAWS OF PHYSICAL LIFE AND "THE PHYSICS OF SOCIETY." THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION. THE EXPEDITIONS OF ALEXANDER. THE CRUSADES. PAPISM AND HERESY. POWER AS A HINDRANCE AND OBSTRUCTION TO ECONOMIC EVOLUTION. THE FATALISM OF "HISTORIC NECESSITIES" AND OF THE "HISTORIC MISSION." ECONOMIC POSITION AND SOCIAL ACTIVITY OF THE BOURGEOISIE. SOCIALISM AND SOCIALISTS. PSYCHIC PRESUPPOSITIONS OF ALL CHANGES IN HISTORY. WAR AND ECONOMY. MONOPOLY AND AUTOCRACY. STATE CAPITALISM. THE DEEPER we trace the political influences in history, the more are we convinced that the "will to power" has up to now been one of the strongest motives in the development of human social forms. The idea that all political and social events are but the result of given economic conditions...
SOCIETY AND ECOLOGY The problems which many people face today in "defining" themselves, in knowing "who they are"--problems that feed a vast psychotherapy industry--are by no means personal ones. These problems exist not only for private individuals; they exist for modern society as a whole. Socially, we live in desperate uncertainty about how people relate to each other. We suffer not only as individuals from alienation and confusion over our identities and goals; our entire society, conceived as a single entity, seems unclear about its own nature and sense of direction. If earlier societies tried to foster a belief in the virtues of cooperation and caring, thereby giving an ethical meaning to social life, modern society fosters a belief i... (From : Spunk.org.)
The village community consisted then, as it still does, of individual families. But all the families of the same village owned the land in common. They considered it as their common heritage and shared it out among themselves on the basis of the size of each family - their needs and their potential. Hundreds of millions of human beings still live in this way in Eastern Europe, India, Java, etc. It is the same kind of system that has been established in our time by Russian peasants, freely in Siberia, as soon as the State gave them a chance to occupy the vast Siberian territory in their own way. Today the cultivation of the land in a village community is carried out by each individual household independently. Since all the arable land is shared out between the families (and further shared out when necessary) each cultivates its field as best it can. But originally, the land was also worked in common, and this custom is still carried on in many places - at least on...