The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:
This issue includes articles on and by the Federalist wing of the First International, to mark the birth of revolutionary anarchism at the St. Imier Congress of the First International in 1872, as well as articles on and by Camillo Berneri and Errico Malatesta. We also discuss the formation of the 1922 syndicalist International Workers’ Association and include its first Information bulletin, itself an excellent introduction to the ideas of syndicalism. Malatesta is also subject of an article on national self-determination in light of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We end by a long critical review of a Marxist collection about the First International, exposing its assumptions and prejudices.
Our next issue will be a special on Peter Kropotkin to mark the 180th anniversary of his death. This will include, along with rare articles, letters and new translations, accounts of his ideas by Rudolf Rocker, Camillo Berneri, Errico Malatesta and Gaston Level.
Contributions from libertarian socialists welcome on these and other subjects!
This issue’s editorial and contents are:
Editorial
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the 1872 St. Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association which saw the creation of revolutionary anarchism as a specific tendency. To mark this event, we present a summary of events leading up to the conference by Robert Graham plus a selection of the key documents of the federalist wing of the International which shows the actual politics of the libertarians in a clear light. With that in mind, we include a lengthy critique of a book by a Marxist academic seeking, but failing, to do justice to the Association 150 years on.
We then move onto the 100th anniversary of the founding of the syndicalist International Workers’ Association, a body still going strong today and uniting syndicalist unions and groups across the globe. We include its first Information Bulletin as it remains an excellent introduction to the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism.
Next, we move onto veteran Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta who was a member of the First International and saw the birth of the Third International and the syndicalist IWA. Ninety years after his death, we reprint an article on his attempts to fight cholera in Naples as well as a selection of articles by one of the greatest thinkers and activists the anarchist movement has ever seen. Wayne Price uses Malatesta’s writings on war and self-determination as inspiration for what anarchists should do as regards Russia’s imperialism in Ukraine.
Finally, we include texts by another Italian anarchist, Camillo Berneri who was assassinated by the Stalinists during the May Days in 1937. These texts are a taster for the first English-language collection of his texts due to be published by Freedom Press later this year, a collection we hope will show his importance for modern-day anarchists.
Our next issue, due out on the 11th of November, will be a Kropotkin special to mark his birth in 1842.
If you want to contribute rather than moan at those who do, whether its writing new material or letting us know of on-line articles, reviews or translations, then contact us:
blackflagmag@yahoo.co.uk
Contents
The Birth of Revolutionary Anarchism
Reports and Resolutions
- Report of the Brussels section
- Resolution on Collective Ownership
- Resolution on War
- Resolution on Resistance Societies
- Discussion on Resistance Societies
Articles, Manifestos and Letters
- The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future — César De Paepe
- Organisation and General Strike — Michael Bakunin
- Programme — International Alliance of Socialist Democracy
- Policy of the International — Michael Bakunin
- Manifesto — Parisian Sections of the International Workers’ Association
- Letter to Albert Richard — Michael Bakunin
Circular to all the Federations of the International Workers’ Association — Jura Federation
The Revolutionary Movement in Italy — Michael Bakunin
The Hague Congress
- The Spanish Federal Council to the Belgian Federal Council in Brussels
- Report of the Jura Federation Delegate — James Guillaume
- General Conclusion from the Hague Congress — Pierre Fluse
Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress — International Workers’ Association
The St. Imier Congress of the International — Max Nettlau
Documents of Working Class History: Syndicalist Methods Outlined in 1869
The Founding Congress of the International Workers Association
- Information Bulletin of The International Working Men’s Association
- Resolution on War and Militarism
The Anarchists versus the Plague: Malatesta and the Cholera Epidemic of 1884
- The First Of May, Commonweal, 1 May 1893
- Resistance Societies, May 1, 1897
- Organisation, L’Agitazione, June 1897
- Anarchism and Syndicalism, Freedom, November 1907.
- An Anarchist Programme, Unione Anarchica Italiana, July 1920
- On Bolshevism
- The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Anarchy
- The Third International
- What is the Third International
- At Last! What is the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’?
- The Authoritarian Psychosis of the Socialist Party
- The First International
- Anarchist principles as formulated in 1872 at the Congress of St. Imier
Camilo Berneri — Emma Goldman
- State and Bureaucracy
- Marxism and the Extinction of the State
- The State and Classes
- Abolition and Extinction of the State
- Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State Socialism
Malatesta on War and National Self-Determination — Wayne Price
Review: Workers Unite! The International 150 years later
Parish Notices
Manifesto — Spanish Regional Federation of the International Workers’ Association