As stated in the Foreword, the manuscript of the present biography was completed in 1934. Three years after this work had been written, Professor E.H. Carr published his magnificent book, Michael Bakunin. The publishers were MacMillan & Company, of St. Martin’s Street, London. The book consisted of thirty-four exhaustive chapters. Unfortunately, it was published at the impossible price, so far as the workers were concerned, of twenty-five
shillings. No effort has been made to produce a popular addition. This militates seriously against the excellent research work of Professor Carr being popularized. Professor Carr’s study is a growth: for his Bakunin embodies chapters from his previous writings on Herzen.
The r... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I
The prophet of despair is ever with us ; and to him there is no silver lining to any cloud, no promise of sunshine after the storm, no people so fair and upright as to be able to act honorably unless force or fear are brought to bear upon them. To him the whole social horizon is shrouded in darkness, and not a ray of freedom’s sun is there to separate cloud from cloud. Humanity is inherently bad, and is for ever doomed to ‘be divided into dominated and dominators. Governments based on fraud and coercion, a representative system founded on legislative corruption, a poverty to offer the contrast to an equally immoral bestial luxury: these things are the ends of all being, the tombs of all aspirations, the alpha and omega of... (From: Marxists.org.)
It was impossible for the Communist International to destroy the Chinese revolution, the British General Strike, and two German revolutions, without developing a proletarian retreat in Soviet Russia. The fact that the Kulak problem still remains demonstrates the fallacy of regarding Soviet Russia as the workers’ fatherland.
The Trotskyist elements, down to their liquidation in 1935, maintained that Soviet Russia was still the socialist fatherland, notwithstanding the errors of Stalinism. But the Trotskyists clung to the idea of the reform of the Third International and of the official Communist Party in the Soviet Union until 1933. It was left to the anti-parliamentarian elements to proclaim correctly, years before, the death o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Owing to certain questions which I now put with some timidity to Christian evidence lecturers, I was invited to attend the Sunday Morning Adult School Meetings of the Peel Institute, in order to refind Christ. I accepted the invitation only to lose God instead.
In addresses delivered before the members of this local Quaker Brotherhood during the ensuing twelve months, I insisted that man was truly religious only in so far as his outwardly expressed views concurred with his inward outlook on life, and his beliefs were scientifically trained and cultivated. The earlier lectures maintained that the Bible records were historically untrustworthy. Also that the bodily resurrection and divinity of Christ were absurdities. But Theism was true, a... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
I.
From the rapidly growing spirit of unrest in the Labor Movement at home and abroad, and the bitter plaints to be heard in all countries at the historic failure of Parliamentary methods, it has been evident for some time past that the old principle of Trade Unionism would have to be consigned to the vortex of oblivion, together with the parliamentarism, constituting its political reflex, and the methods of alleged progressive procedure associated there- with, which have been relied on by various people to secure reforms as innumerable as the abuses begotten of the capitalist system. On the one hand, Irishmen, since the days of Parnell, have relied on the Home Rule proclivities of Members of the Westminster Playhouse for the accompli... (From: Marxists.org.)
Michel Bakunin was born in May, 1814, at Pryamuchina, situated between Moscow and Petrograd, two years after his friend, Alexander Herzen, first saw the light by the fires of Moscow. The future apostle of Nihilism was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor, who boasted a line of aristocratic ancestors. Economic conditions had decided that his natural destiny was the army. Consequently, at the age of fourteen, he entered the School of Artillery at St. Petersburg. Here he found, among a large minority of the students at least, an underground current of Liberalism which was only outwardly loyal and obedient to the behests of the Governmental despotism. Among themselves, these rebel students cherished the memories of the Decembrists of 182... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
October, 1907
In February, 1907, Karl Liebknecht published, in book form, an enlargement of a paper which he had read on the 28th of the previous November before the Mannheim Conference of the German Young Socialist Organizations. This work was entitled, Militarism and Anti-Militarism. On the 9th August following, this writing, together with its author, was indicted by order of the Imperial State Attorney in accordance with paragraph 138 of the law concerning the judicial procedure of the Imperial Courts. The indictment stated that:--
(1) Karl Paul August Freidrich Liebnecht, lawyer, of Berlin, is suspected of having set on foot a treasonable undertaking in the years 1906 and 1907 within the country: that of effecting a change in the ... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)
“The State! Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing sanguinary, insatiate monster. It even bites with stolen teeth. Its very bowels are counterfeit." —— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Communism in material production, anarchy in the intellectual. —— that is the type of a Socialist mode of production, as it will develop from the rule of the proletariat——in other words, from the Social Revolution, through the logic of economic facts, whatever might be the wishes, intentions, and theories of the proletariat.” ——Karl Kautsky
I.
The argument that Socialism involves State tyranny of a type with which the worker is not una... (From: Marxists.org.)
The present biography is a growth, as all serious work of this description must be. In its present matured form it has been reprinted, with but slight corrections and additions from the editorial columns of the Herald of Revolt, for 1911. This accounts for its being written in the first-person plural instead of the singular. To a large extent, however, the form of this biography has been decided by the “life" of Carlile we contributed to the columns of the Agnostic Journal for 1905-6. At that time we did not know so much about Carlile's political outlook as we know now. Neither were our own political opinions matured. We were simply sure that a free press was a necessity to progress. This led to our interest in Carlile’s c... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
The Socialism of William Morris
Slightly revised from a shorthand report of as lecture delivered at the Seamore Picture House, Glasgow, October 25th, 1915.
My subject tonight is “The Socialism of William Morris.” In ‘dealing with this subject, I may say a few things that will come as a surprise to many orthodox Socialists who may be present, and to strangers who know nothing about Socialism or the movement. What I shall say will not be from the standpoint of wishing to shock people, but from that of educating them. If what I say seems a little strange or new, therefore, my hearers should remember that, from time to time, we come up against facts and ideals which are strange. The strange, however,... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
In the 1907 pamphlet, the piety theme is developed in detail. The women characters of the Bible are listed by name and comment made, that their several stories “are included in the hope of inculcating in the woman’s mind the propriety of her ‘modest’ (!) retirement to the privacy of domestic life, performing, in an exemplary manner, the duties of a domestic serf, studying his desires like a subject, whilst extolling him for his strength of mind, and power of acquiring knowledge and enforcing his will. To these disgusting precepts, We find even the boasted savior of Christendom made, by priestly tradition, to lend his aid."
This passage stands: but it would interfere with the re-written text of the 1914 edition to ... (From: Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (1919 Edition).
Trade Unionism and The Class War was published first in 1911. It met with a great deal of criticism and received one complimentary notice. This was from “Dangle” in the Clarion! It was reprinted in 1914 in the Herald of Revolt. The present edition is revised. The introductory section is expanded into a chapter. The third section of the original pamphlet — which would have been the fourth as the essay now stands-treating with the question of representation is omitted. This properly belongs to the companion essay, Representation and the State, and will be embodied in it when that pamphlet is revised. Many persons object to the reasoning of this essay because they consider its logic ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
