Over the last sixty years many radicals have had their eyes opened by the writing of Maurice Brinton. The most prolific writer of the British Solidarity group, which existed from 1961 to 1992, his work slaughtered countless sacred cows of standard leftist thinking. For Brinton, “actually existing socialism” did not, in fact, exist. He wrote with passion, clarity, and consistency on behalf worker self-activity and self-management and to decry those who reinforced passivity, apathy, cynicism, pecking orders, and alienation among workers. This oppressive behavior was, to him, as prevalent among state socialists and communist parties as it was among capitalists, because it enabled rulers, and would-be rulers, of every political stripe to deceive and manipulate those in whose name they claimed to act. Today, when a new crop of so-called democratic socialists are seeking state power, allegedly on behalf of working people, Brinton’s work is more relevant than ever.
Table of Content
CONTENTS
Introduction by David Goodway
1. Socialism Reaffirmed
2. The Belgian General Strike: Diary, December 28–31, 1960
3. Revolutionary Organization
4. The Commune, Paris 1871 (with Philippe Guillaume)
5. Introduction to Paul Cardan, The Meaning of Socialism
6. Preface to Paul Cardan, The Meaning of Socialism
7. Introduction to Paul Cardan, Modern Capitalism and Revolution
8. The Balkanization of Utopia
9. For Workers’ Power
10. Preface to Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Commune
11. The Russian Anarchists – Kropotkin
12. France: Reform or Revolution
13. France: The Theoretical Implications
14. The Events in France
15. Capitalism and Socialism
16. Capitalism and Socialism: A Rejoinder
17. A Question of Power
18. Solidarity and the Neo-Narodniks
19. Introduction to Murray Bookchin, On Spontaneity and Organization
20. Preface to Pierre Chaulieu, Workers’ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society
21. Wilhelm Reich 1
22. Wilhelm Reich 2
23. The Sexual Revolution
24. As We See It
25. As We Don’t See It
26. The Malaise on the Left
27. Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
28. The Ulster Workers’ Council General Strike
29. Portuguese Diary 1
30. Portuguese Diary 2
31. Introduction to Phil Mailer, Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?
32. Introduction to Paul Cardan, Redefining Revolution
33. Introduction to Cornelius Castoriadis, History as Creation
34. Suddenly This Summer
35. Making a Fresh Start
36. About Ourselves 1
37. About Ourselves 2
38. Castoriadis’s Economics Revisited
39. About Ourselves 3
40. About Ourselves 4
***
Paris: May 1968
The Irrational in Politics
The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control
Suicide for Socialism?
About the author
David Goodway worked for the School of Continuing Education, University of Leeds, from 1969 until 2005. He was then Helen Cam Visiting Fellow in History at Girton College, Cambridge until 2007. He has edited several works exploring anarchist politics, including For Anarchism: History, Theory, and Practice and Against Power and Death: The Anarchist Articles and Pamphlets of Alex Comfort. He is also the author of Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward.
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