A wonderful gallery at Libcom. Here’s just a taste – go enjoy the real thing.
Through the eyes of a corpse
Anarchist histories
Lady Poverty on Rudolf Rocker and anarchism’s liberal roots.
SolFed publish Bob Holman’s history of anarcho-syndicalism in Merseyside. Jim Dick is mentioned, a student of Spanish free educationalist, who later formed a life partnership with Nellie Ploschansky, who was close to Rudolf Rocker and his sons in London. Nellie and Jim crossed the Atlantic after WWI and joined the free school movement there, and crop up in Paul Avrich‘s oral histories of immigrant anarchism and the free schools.
Against Leninism
Sticking with anarchism, the image above is lifted from Phil Dickens’ “Communism through the eyes of a corpse“, a critique of Marxism-Leninism.
From the archive of struggle
Poumuccino
- Today’s post is mainly anarchist.
- History notes: E
xchange on Black Flame between Spencer Sunshine and the authors, in recent Anarchist Studies. /
George Fontenis RIP. / Anarchist Publications of the May Fourth Era by Daniel S. S. Cairns / Guy Alfred Aldred (1886 – 1963) by Martin Robb (more on Aldred to come soon at Poumista) / Wayne Price: the Korean war 60 years on. / Frank Mintz on Bakunin, Kropotkin and the Spanish libertarian workers movement (in Spanish).
- New site: Libertarian Communist Webzine. Includes: Durutti: A New World in Our Hearts / Cool photo of Freedom Press, London / AF North: Why we are not on the Left / The Proletarian Condition / The IWW by David Bailey / Nestor Makhno 1889 – 1934 / In memory of Leah Feldman / Rosa Luxemburg on Living Marxism / May Day by Grethe Christensen / YouTube music Spain in 1936.
Consumerism: New books and stuff to buy: WORK: A 2011 Calendar by Justseeds and AK Press (see images to the right). / Dancing with Dynamite: States and Social Movements in Latin America. / Argentina’s anarchist past: Paradoxes of Utopia. / Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937. / Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism. / The Third Revolution?: Peasant and worker resistance to the Bolshevik government. / Loads more.
Theory: Sam Haraway on Kropotkin and capitalism.
Cuba: A letter to those who still look to Cuba.
Below the fold, From the Archive of Struggle no.54 (more…)
Anarchist histories
Anarchist histories from Ian Bone. (Plus, below the fold, From the Archive of Struggle no.34, anarchist special, and some new books from AK Press.)
FELICIA BROWNE – ONLY PHOTO OF SPANISH CIVIL WAR FIGHTER
KRONSTADT VIDEO
SPANISH ANARCHISTS SHOULD HAVE ELIMINATED COMMUNISTS IN JULY 1936
Ethel MacDonald writing from Barcelona.
ANARCHIST MEDALS
One for Leah Feldman.
MALATESTA FILM 1970?
(more…)
From the archive of struggle, no.25: The anarchist library
From Paul Stott’s site, I have found a new website, the Anarchist Library, which aspires to be “the largest resource on the web for downloadable Anarchist books and publications”, quite an ambition given how many resources there are of this nature already out there. The archive, however, is just a couple of weeks old, and already it has loads in it. My pick after the fold, with particular highlights in bold. (more…)
John Cornford
The Marxist Internet Archive, as I noted here, are undertaking the wonderful task of adding Brian Pearce’s regular column, Constant Reader, from the 1950s, to their great collection. A couple of items caught my eye. This is from March 1959:
John Cornford’s warning
A useful book on this subject is ‘John Cornford: A Memoir’, edited by Pat Sloan (1938). It consists of selections from the writings of the young man to whom the socialist movement in the universities in that period owed more than to anybody else, together with contributions by people who knew him.
Cornford was killed in action in December 1936, fighting with the International Brigade in Spain. His writings while in Spain suggest that, had he lived, his Marxist approach would have brought him into conflict with Stalinism.
For Cornford the struggle in Spain was ‘a revolutionary war’.
‘In Catalonia at least the overwhelming majority of the big employers went over to the fascists. Thus the question of socialism was placed on the order of the day.’
The Communist Party should ‘force recognition from the government of the social gains of the revolution’.
Cornford feared that the party was ‘a little too mechanical in its application of People’s Front tactics. It is still concentrating too much on trying to neutralize the petty bourgeoisie – when by far the most urgent task is to win the socialist workers…’
And this is from the following week:
Cornford and the anarchists
An error crept into one of my quotations from Cornford last week – an error which it is particularly worth correcting, as it weakens the point of the passage quoted.
It was not the ‘socialist’ but the ‘anarchist workers’ that Cornford thought the Spanish communists should concentrate on winning.
Though he had no time for anarchism, Cornford saw that the main body of militant workers in the principal industrial region of Spain, around Barcelona, were anarchists, and, being a sincere communist, that meant for him that the party’s task was first and foremost to get among those workers, establish close ties with them, and win them for Marxism.
The line actually taken by the Stalinists was first to stick a label on the anarchist workers (‘uncontrollables’, the 1937 equivalent of ‘Left adventurists’), then to work up a pogrom spirit against them among the followers of the Communist Party, and finally to attack and decimate them, using an armed force recruited among former policemen and the middle class.
Very relevant to what we were talking about here.
Poumista 