For Workers' Power

The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, Second Edition

Maurice Brinton, David Goodway

• Publisher: AK Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781849353830
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781849353847
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Anarchism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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 contents

• Contents
• The Identity of Maurice Brinton
• Introduction
• 1: Socialism Reaffirmed
• 2: The Belgian General Strike: Diary, December 28–31, 1960
• 3: Revolutionary Organization
• 4: The Commune, Paris 1871 (jointly 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 – and 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
• 38: Castoriadis’s Economics Revisited
• Paris: May 1968
• The Irrational in Politics
• The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1917–1921: The State and Counter-Revolution
• Index
• Copyright
• Friends of AK Press