XI: Industrial Achivements Syndicalisations in Alcoy XII: Achivements in the Public Services Water, Gas and Electricity in Catalonia The Barcelona Tramways The Means of Transport The Socialization of Medicine CHAPTER XI INDUSTRIAL ACHIEVEMENTS According to the last census which preceded the Civil War and Revolution, 1.9 million people were employed in industry in Spain out of a total population of 24 million. At the top of the list we find 300,000 wage earners in the Ñclothing industry" but one must bear in mind that more women were employed than men. In second place was the textile industry which exported large quantities of cloth, even to Britain. It also employed 300,000 workers, men and women. But among the latter were included those employed in the manufacture of wom...
From the standpoint of one who thinks himself capable of discerning an undeviating route for human progress to pursue, if it is to be progress at all, who, having such a route on his mind's map, has endeavored to point it out to others; to make them see it as he sees it; who in so doing has chosen what appeared to him clear and simple expressions to convey his thoughts to others, -- to such a one it appears matter for regret and confusion of spirit that the phrase "Direct Action" has suddenly acquired in the general mind a circumscribed meaning, not at all implied in the words themselves, and certainly never attached to it by himself or his co-thinkers. However, this is one of the common jests which Progress plays on those who think themsel... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the International Institute for Social History Speech by William D. Haywood at Meeting Held for the Benefit of the Buccafori Defense, at Progress Assembly Rooms, New York, March 16, 1911. Comrades and Fellow Workers: I am here to-night with a heavy heart. I can see in that Raymond Street jail our comrade and fellow-worker Buccafori in a cell, a miserable cell, perhaps 4 1/2 feet wide, 7 feet long, sleeping on an iron shelf, wrapped up in a dirty blanket, vermin-infested perhaps; surrounded by human wolves, those who are willing to tear him limb from limb, those who will not feel that their duty to the political state is entirely fulfilled until Buccafori's heart ceases to beat.... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
This manuscript was provided to Anarchy Archives by the author. The Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism by Murray Bookchin One of the most persistent of human frailties is the tendency of individuals and groups to fall back, in times of a terribly fragmented reality, onto obsolete, even archaic ideologies for a sense of continuity and security. Today we find this not only on the right, where people are evoking the ghosts of Nazism and deadly forms of an embattled nationalism, but also on the "left" (whatever that word may mean anymore), where many people evoke ghosts of their own, be they the Neolithic goddess cults that many feminist and ecological sects celebrate or the generally anti-civilizational ambiance that exists among young middle-class ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Written: August 1874; Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971. Bakunin was above all preoccupied with the theory and practice of revolution and wrote very little about how the everyday practical problems of social reconstruction would be handled immediately following a successful revolution. Nevertheless, these problems were intensively discussed in Bakunin’s circle and among the anti-authoritarian sections of the International. In “Ideas on Social Organization”, Guillaume discusses the transition from capitalism to anarchism – a synthesis of “Bakuninist” ideas on how this transition could be effected without the restoration of authoritarian institutions.” Its value li... (From : Marxists.org.)
Chapter 3: Organic Society Introduction In Bookchin’s view, society and culture must be understood by examining not only what they are at present but their origins and subsequent development over the course of history. Thus, to rescue a tradition of freedom in support of his ecological society, he traces a “legacy of freedom” that has run as an alternative libertarian undercurrent through Western history. In his 1982 book The Ecology of Freedom he gave particular attention to what he calls “organic society” — that is, the preliterate band and tribal cultures that preceded recorded history in Europe and America and that persisted far longer in other parts of the world. Insofar as a number of its features hold relevance for the creation of an ecological society, organic society is part of the “legacy of freedom.” Perhaps the most important of these features is the relatively egalitarian n...
On the Case of Ettor and Giovannitti Coooper Union, New York Dedicated to the World's Workers, In Behalf of Ettor and Giovannitti, By the Speaker PRICE FIVE CENTS Published By The ETTOR-GIOVAKNITTI DEFENSE COMMITTEE NOBLE FIGHTERS FOR THE WORKERS' CAUSE The pathway to civic liberty and Industrial freedom is marked with blood, its miles are the cross, stake, gibbet, guillotine, scaffold, and the firing squad. Shall the electric chair be added to that bloody list.- ARTURO GIOVANNITTI JOSEPH J. ETTOR In a prison cell, accused by capitalists' agents of a crime committed by a policeman. Ettor and Giovannitti organized the 85,000 Lawrence textile workers, whose wages averaged less than six dollars per week. The bosses were defeated, the mill work... (From : Archive.org.)
Part I. The First Fruits (1825–1905) Chapter 1. Russia at the Beginning of the 19th Century; Birth of the Revolution The enormous size of the country, a sparse population whose disunity makes it an easy prey for invaders, Mongol domination for more than two centuries, continual wars, varied catastrophes and other unfavorable factors caused the enormous political, economic, social and cultural backwardness of Russia in relation to other European countries. Politically, Russia entered the 19th century under the rule of an absolute monarchy (the autocratic “Czar”) which was dependent on an enormous landed and military aristocracy, an omnipotent bureaucracy, an extensive and pious clergy, and a peasant mass consisting of 75,000,000 souls — primitive, illiterate and prostrate before their “little father,” the Czar. Economically, the country had reached the stage of a type of agra...