General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pluto Press, 1989 (Translated by John Beverly Robinson (1923))

This year marks the 200^th anniversary of Proudhon’s birth, the person who first used the word “anarchist” in a positive light. This was in his 1840 book What is Property? so making anarchism as a named socio-economic theory and movement 170 years old next year.

A series of letters sent to the Weekly Worker on anarchism and Marxism. Most were printed as they were sent, although letter one was cut in half (letter two, which aimed to include the material cut when the first one was published was not if I remember correctly). The letters end up, as usual, discussing the Russian revolution and the Makhnovists).

First Letter

Dear Weekly Worker

Two letters sent to the RCG’s paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! a few years back in response to a disgraceful review of an anarchist pamphlet and their lies on the Makhnovist movement. Neither was published, unsurprisingly.

First Letter

Dear FRFI

Two letters on why class analysis is important for anarchism, as well as trying to dispel common misconceptions of what such an analysis means and implies.

First letter

Dear Freedom

It seems to me that Tavis Reddick (Freedom 6th April) totally misses the point in his comments on class struggle. I will ignore the comments on "those who would divide . . . may be seeking to rule" as the slanderous nonsense they are and concentrate on the key issue, namely the importance of class analysis and struggle.

The Anarchist Past and Other Essays

Nicholas Walter

David Goodway (editor), Five Leaves Publications, 2007 (£9.99)

Basic Bakunin

new edition 2002

Anarchist Federation

May 1st is a day of special significance for the labour movement. While it has been hijacked in the past by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, the labour movement festival of May Day is a day of world-wide solidarity. A time to remember past struggles and demonstrate our hope for a better future. A day to remember that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Our account of past struggles is not simply a history lesson. Nor is it an attempt to mire the current struggle and movement in past controversies. Rather it is an attempt to contribute to a movement which must look to the future. To do so, we must understand the past in order to avoid repeating previous mistakes and dead-ends. To move forward we must reject those ideologies which failed in the past but which linger on like the undead in our midst.

Some will dismiss our leaflet by saying that it is "old news," that "lessons have been learned" and so on. This does not stop them praising the Bolshevik revolution and urging us to repeat it! Nor does it stop them justifying and rationalising Bolshevik actions, so creating the atmosphere in which such actions will be repeated. Nor does it stop them using the same slogans as before, such as "nationalisation under workers' control," a "workers' government" and so on.

Kropotkin argued that every "new economic phase demands a new political phase." This meant "if we want the social revolution, we must seek a form of political organisation that will correspond to the new method of economic organisation. . . . The future belongs to the free groupings of interests and not to governmental centralisation; it belongs to freedom and not to authority." ¹