Ralf Hoffrogge - Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement

Ralf Hoffrogge's newly translated study of Richard Müller and his role in the development of the German revolutionary movement during and after the First World War is extremely important for students of this period. Hoffrogge argues that historical studies of the period have been dominated by the role of the precursors of the German Communist Party (KPD), the Spartakist League, which was led until 1919 by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The domination of the KPD on the left from the 1920s onward and then the centrality of it to the story of East Germany meant that historians had every reason to emphasis its role.

Another aspect of this, was that those revolutionaries who did not fit into the narrative, or were critical of the KPD were written out of history. Richard Müller was one of these. Müller was an able and articulate trade union militant organising within the Berlin metal workers. A lathe operator within a crucial war industry he was able, together with his comrades, to build a powerful syndicalist movement. Initially not taking a position on the war, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards rapidly became the heart of growing discontent with the progress of the First World War, leading a number of strikes and protests.

By the end of the war, with the outbreak of the Revolution in Germany, Müller was a central figure in the revolutionary movement in Berlin. So much so, that with the creation of a network of workers and soldiers councils, Müller effectively became (briefly) head of the revolutionary state. Müller was a talented individual, and Hoffrogge ably documents his central role in the heady days of revolution and the months that followed. Müller fought to strengthen the role of the workers councils in the face of domination and betrayal by the "reformist" Social Democrats.

What becomes clear while reading this excellent book, is how unprepared revolutionaries were for events. While acknowledging the very real difficulties, one of the great criticisms of Luxemburg and Liebknecht was their failure to build an independent revolutionary party in the years before the German Revolution. Hoffrogge's book makes it clear how the lack of a clear-sighted party, rooted in revolutionary politics, was lacking. The author quotes a revealing account of the Revolutionary days, when revolutionary soldiers seized a large quantity of cash:

I found Comrade Vogtherr, the secretary of our caucus in the USPD, in distress. A group of soldiers had commandeered a whole truckload of banknotes and dumped the money in the USPD caucus room. Comrade Vogtherr asked me, "What should we do with it?" We didn't know either and finally we decided to put all of the money in a safe in the central bank. My job was then to ensure that the money was transported safely. So we brought the money to the Reichsbank and I would like to say now that we were absolute idiots for giving all of that wonderful money back to the capitalists. At the time we thought that we had the power and the bank belonged to us. That was a colossal mistake. Nothing belonged to us and - as before, the capitalists had the power.

This failure of revolutionary politics was a real limit for the movement, but it was also a failing for Richard Müller. For instance, he for "fear of economic collapse, energetically opposed so-called 'wild socialisation', and not only limited the powers of workers' councils to 'audit' their employers but also failed to give them a means to actually implement even that limited power against the inevitable resistance."

In the months following the failure of the January 1919 uprising, Richard Müller spent much time detailing out how a system of workers' councils might operate. While he emphasised the role of workers, from the bottom up, he was also guilty, as the above examples show, of not really understanding the role of the capitalist state, though Muller's politics were took much from Marx and others, including Lenin.

Muller's close links to the organised working class made it hard for the Communist Party to challenge him when he was critical. Muller even went to a meeting of the Communist International were Lenin helped broker a deal to heal the growing rift between Muller and others in the leadership. Sadly the distortions on the international Communist movement caused by the victory of Stalin sealed the fate for many of the best revolutionaries of Muller's era.

In his later life, Muller drifted eventually becoming a major Berlin landlord and living until 1943. Hoffrogge shows that Muller's actions as a landlord were hardly progressive and the KPD, rather gleefully, attacked him for his behaviour. In his later life Muller appears to have abandoned his revolutionary politics, perhaps though, this reflected the defeats he had suffered as well as his occasionally limited politics.

Hoffrogge's book is a detailed examination of how individuals make a real difference. He has rescued an individual who up until now was barely a foot-note in some of the best histories of the German Revolution, and that is reason enough to read, and learn from this book.

Related Reviews

Broue - The German Revolution 1919-1923
Fernbach - Selected Writings of Paul Levi
Reissner - Hamburg at the Barricades
Trotksy - Lessons of October
Hippe - And Red is the Colour of Our Flag

Oskar Hippe - ...And Red is the Colour of Our Flag

The life of Oskar Hippe is a fascinating one for Marxists and revolutionary socialists today. As a young worker in German during World War One, he became a socialist, becoming involved in anti-war protests as early as 1916. Later he would join the Spartakist League, the organisation setup by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, but not being based in Berlin for much of the period, following his conscription in the latter stages of the war, he missed some of the key debates and battles of the early German Revolution. Nonetheless his eyewitness accounts are unique,

On the eve of 1 May 1916, my brother-in-law told me that we would not got to work the next day, since the workforce would all be joining an anti-war demonstration on the Potsdamer Platz. We went there at the specified time. Ten thousand workers had gathered in the square, and Karl Liebknecht spoke to them from the platform of the Potsdam local station. I do not know how long Liebknecht had been speaking when the police arrived. They could not do anything at first; the crowd prevented them from getting up to the platform. More and more detachments were sent in, including mounted police who rode into the crowd with enormous brutality. For a time, the demonstrators put up resistance, and many policemen were knocked off their horses. 

Along with his unit, Oskar Hippe effectively mutinied and went home were he became centrally involved in the revolutionary movements in his home area of Halle. The book describes the scale of the revolution and the impact of the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, as well as the rapid emergence of the counter-revolutionary troops of the Freikorps.

As the 1920s developed, Hippe became an important activist in the German Communist Party (KPD). He was often targeted by the right and the authorities. Frequently blacklisted for trade union activity, the period becomes dominated by the struggles within the Russian organisation. Hippe describes the failure of the 1923 movement when revolution was perhaps on the cards, but the inexperienced Communist Party sounded the retreat on orders from Moscow. From then on his narrative becomes increasingly shaped by the battle with the Stalinist wing of the KPD.

The post-revolutionary period is also marked by the growth of the fascist movement. One thing that struck me reading the autobiography was that violence, or the threat of violence, was a daily reality for socialists. The socialists responded by arming themselves and being prepared to fight back, but it is notable that this violence was very much about defending and protecting the organisation, it's activists and allowing their planned activity to continue. This wasn't fighting for the sake of fighting, but in the interests of building socialist organisation. At the end of the 1920s Hippe breaks with the Stalinist KPD, and with many others works to build a new "Trotskyist" party. For some readers this may seem like a part of the book dominated by arguments among the left, but Hippe explains that this was about trying to keep the revolutionary tradition alive in a period where the rise of fascism is a real prospect, but with a huge and powerful German working class still unbroken.

With Hitler's victory, Hippe's group is forced underground and eventually he is imprisoned, serving many years of brutality and violence. Eventually he is let out and works on the northern coast of Germany, trying to make a few contacts with workers and discussing politics with captured prisoners of war. Hippe and his comrades bravery is outstanding in this period of difficult, dangerous underground work. This is no manual for this activity, but you get a sense of the dangers and difficulties, as well as the frustrations. Interestingly Hippe and his comrades believed that Fascism could not be over-thrown by German workers, who were now to weak, but would be over-thrown by defeat in a World War. It was an accurate, if pessimistic outlook.

Hippe then faced renewed persecution under the Stalinists. Initial hopes that a new mass socialist organisation could be built after the end of the war lead to a further period of splits, internal arguments and eventually underground work. Hippe once spent years imprisoned for being a "Trotskyist counter-revolutionary", and had to watch as others, including collaborators with the Nazi regime became senior figures in the East Germany state.

At the end of the book, Hippe's hope for the revolutionary over-throw of capitalism remain undiminished. It ends in 1979, though Hippe lived long enough to see the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hippe was an activist through the 1960s and early 1970s, saw the birth of a new movement and the emergence of a new left. Throughout he remained loyal to the central tenets of Marxism, and the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky, believing that the overthrow of capitalism had to be the act of the entire working class.

For those interested in the history of the left, as well as the German Revolution and the International Communist Movement this is a fascinating book, perhaps marred by what seems like a clunky translation. Hippe's account is perhaps unique and its worth trying to find this book.

Related Reviews

Pierre Broué - The German Revolution 1917-1923
Fernbach - In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi

Flora Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford

Flora Thompson's account of her childhood and early adult years in the semi-fictionalised hamlet of Lark Rise and then the village of Candleford is considered a classic of that peculiarly English book, that celebrates the countryside of yesteryear. But unlike much of that genre, Thompson's book is has much to recommend it. Firstly it is beautifully written. More importantly, while unashamedly sentimental, Thompson is not afraid of discussing the darker aspects of rural life. In this she is shaped by her father, whose political liberalism was unusual for Lark Rise. Take for instance, a near throwaway comment by Thompson when describing the celebrations as Lark Rise's labourers complete the harvest, they sang and shouted

Harvest home! Harvest home!
Merry, merry, merry harvest home!

Thompson comments "The joy and pleasure of the labourers in their task well done was pathetic, considering their very small share in the gain". Later when discussing the elaborate (and extensive) feast given by the farmer to those who'd laboured on the harvest, a celebration that was even extended to any passing "tramp", Thompson has her father comment that

the farmer paid his men starvation wages all the year and through he made it up to them by giving that one good meal. The farmer did not think so, because he did not think at all, and the men did not think either on that day; they were too busy enjoying the food and the fun.

Running through all three books collected within Lark Rise to Candleford is the sense of change running. This manifests in many ways. The death of the old vicar of Candleford and the arrival of a new man, with modern ideas and sermons. The coming and going of fashions, a little behind the larger villages and towns with their more immediate connections to the cities. New names for babies, "wages rose, prices soared and new needs multiplied". This is the coming of the modern world, though its continuities are perhaps greater than Thompson suggests. Most importantly for the author  are the changing attitudes to women and work, and as she secures her first job working in the post office, she is overseen by a woman with a very modern attitude. Had this been a major town, her mentor would have been a suffragette, and probably a socialist. As it stood she was a individual woman with advanced ideas who ran the post office and managed the village smithy.

Thompson's story is fascinating, though I was more taken by the incidentally details and given small insights into rural life at the turn of the 20th century. Take this demonstration that the class struggle is sometimes hidden and sometimes open:

A new field had been thrown open for gleaning... Bob Trevor had been on the horse-rake when the field was cleared and had taken good care to leave plenty of good ears behind for the gleaners. 'If the foreman should come nosing round, he's going to tel him that the ra-ake's got a bit out of order and won't clear the stubble proper. But that corner under the two hedges is for his mother. Nobody else is to leaze there.'

Class differences run through this book. Thompson makes clear that the gentry are admired by the majority, forelocks are touched repeatedly. But the gentry are not part of village life. They are separate and keep themselves aloof. Its summed up well at the huge party thrown at a nearby country house for Queen Victoria's jubilee. The gentry show themselves, then quickly retreat from the fun and games and the ordinary labourers and their families show barely disguised relief when released from the need to mind their manners and behave properly.

There's  no open class struggle here. But its indicated... with resentment over low wages a common point. Thompson repeatedly suggests that no-one really starved because the village looked after each other, but frequently she mentions charity from the church and on occasion the workhouse.

Thompson's book is beloved no doubt because it is beautiful. Published in the midst of World War Two, its passing references to those (including her beloved younger brother) who died in the First World War must have helped its popularity. Reading it today I can't but help think that its precisely because it covers an era of enormous change in English society that it is so fascinating. Though ironically as she was writing it 75 years ago, this was precisely what Flora Thompson was noting too.

Related Reviews

Cameron - The Ballad and the Plough
Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage
Bell - Men and the Fields
Berger - Pig Earth

Tamás Krausz - Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography

In recent years there has been a intense discussion about the ideas of the Russian revolutionary Lenin. Some of this has its roots in the class struggle - the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement both threw up questions about the nature of revolutionary organisation. Others have attempted to re-examine Lenin to critique existing organisations and ideas. There have been some excellent books, articles and events debating these questions.

Tamás Krausz's important new biography must be seen as part of this debate. His work is very much an attempt to re-examine Lenin's ideas as part of a resolute defence of Lenin and his work. Krausz is clear that this is intended to take forward the revolutionary movement that can challenge and defeat capitalism.

The Lenin that comes through on these pages is far from the mechanical, doctrinal individual, whose personal single-mindedness somehow embodied the future authoritarian Stalinist state. Rather he rigorously applied the ideas of Marxism to the concrete situation, confident to update and alter his viewpoint depending on circumstances, and ever open to learning from workers. Indeed, Krausz highlights Lenin's own celebration of the importance of the workers' own spontaneity and self-organisation

Lenin considered the workers' soviet as the political arm of the uprising and an institution of the revolution. The soviets and similar popular organizations... were the product of the workers' autonomous agency. As Lenin wrote about the uprising of December 1905, 'It was not some theory, not appeals on the part of someone, or tactics invented by someone, not party doctrine, but the force of circumstances that led these non-party mass organs to realize the need for an uprising and transformed them into organs of an uprising.'

That said, Lenin's Marxism began with the concrete situation and ended with the need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. This comes through clearly throughout the book, but I found the discussion of Lenin's attitude to the National Question, particularly illuminating. Krausz says

Lenin always approached the role and character of national movements from a historical and class perspective. He did not support the struggle of each and every small country fighting the great imperialist powers. He also had a strictly imposed condition: the uprising of any class more reactionary than the bourgeoisie of the center countries is not to be supported. 

It is precisely this approach that allowed Lenin to become the leading revolutionary critic of war and capitalism during the First World War. Those who supported the war ended up siding with their own ruling class. But those who did not get the question of national liberation also failed the revolutionary movement. "Lenin considered national self-determination a fundamental issue of democracy that revolutionaries 'may not undercut!'." These debates continue to have a resonance today. Lenin, for instance, opposed the slogan of "No Borders", not because he wasn't for a world without borders, but because in the concrete situation, demanding the self-determination for oppressed countries meant the defacto creation of borders.

Another excellent chapter is on the nature of the early Soviet regime. Here Krausz describes how Lenin again saw everything through the lens of the defense of the revolution. "To Lenin, mass terror counted as the most extreme instrument of struggle against the enemy and was to be applied (and often demanded by him in vain) on a case-by-case basis". Given the way that under Stalin the Soviet Union's peasantry were forced into collectivisation, its interesting to read that

In April 1919, some peasants in certain parts of the country were going to be forced to join the collectives, rather than doing so of their own free will - a behavior categorically prohibited by Lenin in the name of the Council of People's Commissars. The peasant base formed the backbone of the Red Army, and 'Compulsory measures of any kind to make the peasants pass over to the communal working of the fields are impermissible. Non-observance of this will be punished with all the severity of revolutionary law'.

Krausz's treatment here of the Civil War and the suppression of the Constituent Assembly is refreshing - seeing Lenin (and the early Soviet state) actions through the question of the defence of Revolution. Lenin is often accused of celebrating revolutionary violence. But his approach was very different, Krausz notes how in the aftermath of the defeated 1905 revolution Lenin advocated the use of political terrorism if it took the movement forward, however, he quickly changed his mind after seeing how terrorist actions in response to counter-revolution made the situation worse.

Later, as it becomes clear that the Russian Revolution was isolated, Lenin was forced down even more pragmatic roads. Krausz explores in detail the years of War Communism and the NEP, seeing these as steps along particular routes attempting to deal with particular situations. Lenin and the leadership of the Bolsheviks had always been clear that without international revolution, the Russian Revolution would become isolated. The end of the First World War did lead to revolutionary upsurges elsewhere, and real hope in Russia that countries like Germany would overthrow capitalism, and the centre of revolution would move to Berlin. Unfortunately Krausz downplays this. His focus on Russia implies that the key moment for international revolution was the failed Red Army assault on Poland in 1919. And at times, Krausz suggests that there was limited potential for a Germany revolution and for Bolshevism to spread among western workers.

Lenin also mentions another defining trait - that a majority of the Western workers were not ready to seize power. However, he only sensed that they were subjectively ill-prepared for it, and he neither analyzed the causes nor sought the origins of this phenomenon. He understood that revolutionary Bolshevism could not penetrate the cultural traditions of the Western working masses, but he lacked a well-differentiated sociological analysis of the reasons for the inner stratifications of Western labor.

If Lenin really believed that "Bolshevism could not penetrate the cultural traditions of the Western working masses" then he gave no real sign of it in his writings. Krausz bases much of this on a description of a single visit by British workers to Russia in 1920 (though he fails to mention that in 1919 and prior to the First World War) there had been near revolutionary strike movements in Britain.

While this is a disappointing it should not be used to completely rubbish Krausz's book. The author rescues Lenin as a practical revolutionary, constantly returning to the concrete situation, analysing, listening and learning from those around him. For many decades after the Russian Revolution, we were told there was "actually existing Socialism" in Russia. Lenin would have been appalled. As Krausz points out,

Lenin stated in his last public speech that the realization of socialism was not on history's agenda yet. Now was the time of the transitional period, of creating the historical-cultural preconditions for socialism

Tamás Krausz's books deserves to become a key text for those trying to change the world. As he points out, the discontented keep running into Lenin, which is why his work is endlessly debated. This is not an abstract debate, but one that Lenin would have approved of. Here's Krausz ably summing up why

certain authors have deliberately eliminated from Lenin's legacy the essential philosophical tenets and methodology that made him who he was. For one thing, they neglect his most important practical discovery, namely his precise theoretical interpretation of Marxist dialectics, its reconstruction, and his practical application of those dialectics. Lenin understood, even on the basis of its Hegelian roots, that dialectical materialism (and epistemology) incorporates the self-movement in things, phenomena, processes, as well as the conscious human activist to transform society. Thus it is not a matter of the historical dialectic of ideas, but rather the self-movement and self-creation of history through social classes and individuals. For Lenin, epistemology was not simply a matter of getting to know reality. It did not exist for its own sake. He aimed instead to seek out the truth, the solution to contradictions within things, and the struggles that resulted. He wanted to see a radical transformation of the world so that humanity could rid itself, by its own will, of the dominant powers. Lenin gave Marx's eleventh Feuerbach thesis a new urgency: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it'. In other words, history was not an abstract whole, an object of study for him, but a tool through which the elements and tendencies to be continued or transformed could be located in the midst of 'collapse'.

Related Reviews

Lenin - Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Nation - War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left and the Origins of Communist Internationalism
Cliff - Revolution Besieged
Cliff - All Power to the Soviets
Krupskaya - Memories of Lenin

Siobhan Brown - A Rebel's Guide to Eleanor Marx

Eleanor Marx's was one of the great socialist activists. She built unions, fought for women's liberation, was active in building solidarity with international struggles from the Paris Commune and Ireland to the anti-imperialist war in Sudan. A translator, a writer, an orator and an outstanding Marxist she ought to be one of the British left's greatest heroes. Yet all too often she is forgotten. Siobhan Brown's book, the latest in the excellent Rebel's Guides series, is a superb introduction to Eleanor Marx's life.

Brown packs an enormous amount in. From Eleanor's early life in the Marx household, to the years of solidarity work with refugees from the Paris Commune to the "busiest decade". The 1880s when Eleanor Marx helped build socialist organisation, wrote a highly important pamphlet on the "woman question", toured the US to argue for socialism and most importantly put herself at the heart of the mass strike waves that ushered in New Unionism.

We get a sense of Eleanor Marx as a thinker, and not just an activist. While touring the US, Eleanor made clear her absolute solidarity with the anarchists being framed for the Haymarket Bombing, but did not hide from comradely criticism. The pamphlet that she wrote with Edward Aveling, The Woman Question from a Socialist Point of View was more than an argument for equality. It was, says Brown, "a critique of capitalism as a system that places an extra burden on women, and working class women in particular, and that distorts relationships and sexuality."

Brown explains that the pamphlet built on Engels pioneering work which made clear the class roots of women's oppression and argued that ending women's oppression meant ending capitalism.

"She [Eleanor Marx] argued that while bourgeois women were competing with bourgeois men, working class women were not held down by working class men. She asserted that their interests lie together. Eleanor quotes Zetkin: 'And that is why the working woman cannot be like the bourgeois woman who has to fight against the man of her own class... With the proletarian women, on the contrary, it is a struggle of the women with the man of her own class against the capitalist class'."

Perhaps the most powerful part of these books are the sections on Eleanor Marx's involvement with the mass unions and strike waves that shook the country at the end of the 1880s. Brown points out that the workers involved in these, from Jewish tailors, to the Match Girls and the Dockers were often considered unorganisable. The tailors were in small workshops, the Match Girls considered easily replaceable, and the Dockers casualised and atomised. Yet all of these led powerful strikes that won significant victories and built powerful unions.

Brown gives us a flavour of Eleanor Marx's centrality to the new unions.

"As well as jumping on tables at meetings, Eleanor committed herself to the more mundane tasks that were required. Ben Tillett, a New Union leader, described how she did 'the drudgery of clerical work as well as more responsible duties', while Tom Mann said she was someone who, 'possessing a complete mastery of economics... was able, alike in conversation and on a public platform, to hold her own with the best."

The decline of the strike wave and union movement undoubtedly hit Eleanor Marx hard, and she committed suicide in 1898. But her legacy was tremendously important. Siobhan Bown ends her book by making the point that what Eleanor Marx demonstrated was that the best way to fight low pay, racism and women's oppression was through mass working class movements that challenged capitalism. But that ultimately capitalism had to be overthrown. This wonderful little book is a great way for activists, new and old, to learn the lessons of the past and be inspired for the struggles of the future.

Reviews of other books in the Rebel's Guide series, all published by Bookmarks

Campbell - A Rebel's Guide to Rosa Luxemburg
Orr - Sexism and the System; A Rebel's Guide to Women's Liberation
Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky
Bambery - A Rebel's Guide to Gramsci
Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin
Gonzalez - A Rebel's Guide to Marx

David Scott & Alexei Leonov - Two Sides of the Moon

I was reading this book while watching the first launch of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that many hope will return humans to the moon, mars and elsewhere. I'm skeptical that the political and economic interests exist in the United States for this to happen. In an era were private companies are expected to lead innovation in their pursuit of profit, I suspect that NASA's funding will dwindle. Orion may well prove to be a last hurrah.

Part of my reasoning lies in this interesting book by two astronauts. David Scott who flew with the one of the US's Gemini missions, and walked on the moon with Apollo 15. Alexei Leonov was the first person to walk in space and took part in the Apollo-Soyuz link up. Had things been different Leonov may well have been the first person to walk on the moon.

The book is structured around the authors' lives. Each taking turns to tell parts of their story. Much of the fascination comes from the great differences between the two experiences, particularly their lives within their respective space programs. The Russian's were bedeviled by bureaucracy and lack of funding, which contrasts enormously with NASA's lavish initial support and a much more happy go lucky approach from the astronauts.

Leonov was a close friend of Yuri Gagarin, and their are some emotional parts to his tale, particularly in the aftermath of his friends death. He is also an accomplished painter and its notable that his accounts are often more concerned with his amazement with what he can see, while Scott's could be over-bearing in technical detail and much more matter-of-fact.

Scott was to go to the moon, and this is perhaps the highlight of the book. Forty years later and despite having seen the footage from the various Apollo missions countless times and read dozens of accounts and reports, the sheer fact that humans walked on the moon still has the capacity to stun me. Scott and James Irwin underwent extensive geological and scientific training for the lunar mission and their accounts are punctuated with genuine excitement at particular finds. Their ability to make decisions about exploration shaped by a wider understanding of geology. Something to bear in mind when discussing whether exploration should continue by robot or manned craft.

But these stories are immersed in the wider context of the space race. The confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Scott is very partisan about the "benefits" of capitalism, over what is labelled communism. As he puts it when describing a discussion with a senator opposed to spending money on NASA, while at a meal with President Nixon,

"The unspoken political undercurrent to our discussion was the importance of the space programme in winning the Cold War. I did not say it directly to the senator grilling us, but underlying my thinking were very fundamental questions: 'Do you want us to win this race? Do you want to live in a free society? Or do you want to live under communism?'"

Scott's enthusiasm for science and exploration vanishes here, in the interests of simply winning an undeclared war with the Soviet Union. By contrast the parts of the book, particularly those by Leonov, which detail the interaction between Russian and US spacemen and the way that their shared experiences broke down barriers are illuminating. Leonov, for instance, bemoans how the ill-discipline of American astronauts missing breakfasts in the USSR meant he had to pay for the wasted food from his own pocket.

Leonov's is a victim of the collapse of the USSR. His encounters with senior politicians and figures in the USSR help expose the reality of that system and he undergoes his own political awakening. He never got to walk on the moon, though his spaceflights were important milestones. His tales, for instance of fighting off wolves while landing in Siberia, are a fascinating insight into the less well known side of the space race, as well as the tragedies. Those fascinated simply by space flight will enjoy the insights from both astronauts into the 1960s and 1970s space race.

But the book is damaged by being over-long and in places seems to drown in its own self-importance. Introductions by Neil Armstrong and Tom Hanks add little, and David Scott has added an extremely long list of acknowledgements which seems to include everyone he ever worked with. In part this is because the book is a defense of his actions in a number of run ins he had with NASA. But ultimately it all detracts from what is otherwise a readable book.

Leslie Thomas - This Time Next Week

The death of Leslie Thomas' parents in the early part of the Second World War meant that he and his brother were wrenched from their lives in Newport and entered into the world of the Barnado's homes. The author himself left his sick brother in the back of an ambulance, being told that he would see him the next morning. 18 months later he ran away from the home to find his brother spending days walking the 60 miles to find him. His brother had only just been informed of his mother's death. Presumably the institutions didn't prioritizes it. The young boy had thought he'd been abandoned when his mother didn't reply to his letters and his brother never got them.

Despite this bureaucratic ineptitude (and occasionally because of it), Thomas' life in the home is by terms achingly funny and beautifully poignant. The cast of characters, many of them in no position to teach a class of self confident boys reads, are remembered in brief little snatches of commentary. Thomas' writings brilliantly portray the men and women, who clearly had made immense sacrifices themselves to look after the orphans. The boys, as boys do, let no chance go to waste. One master, with the innocent surname Allcock, instantly earns the nickname "no balls". A piece of schoolboy genius from which few teachers could recover.

I love this book in part for its wonderful writing, but also because it meant a lot to my father. Reading it brings some wonderful, and some sad memories. So forgive me if this review doesn't go on further.

James Gleick - Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton's copious papers began to appear at auction houses in the early 20th century. By 1936 when interest had waned somewhat, a trunk went up for sale at Sotheby's containing manuscripts with some 3 million of Newton's words. John Maynard Keynes bought much of them, and helped to uncover an Isaac Newton that few had guessed at in the 2 hundred odd years since his death. The documents inside helped expose Newton "the alchemist; the heretical theologian" rather than the rational, mechanical scientist of tradition.

The great strength of James Gleick's short biography is that it helps us understand the whole Newton. Both the man who hide away from the world, jealously guarding his knowledge and discovery, almost fearing to publish, but who made enormous breakthroughs in mathematics and physics and the Newton who spent much of his life trying to work out how to turn base metal into gold; rigorously studied the Bible to convince himself that the question of the theological Trinity was a "fraud" and engaged in long protracted polemics and feuds with other great thinkers.

Indeed, Gleick's description of Newton's approach to theological questions demonstrates Newton's scientific method. Newton "compared the Scriptures in the new English translation [of the Bible] and in the ancient languages; he collected Bibles in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French. He sought out and mastered the writings of the early fathers of the church." Newton tested his ideas, searched for evidence and examined it until he could come to his own conclusions. In this case, his conclusion was heretical, without a special dispensation from the king he would never have been able to take his mathematics seat at Cambridge because Newton couldn't bring himself to take the holy orders required. When he got the dispensation, he didn't move on, rather he "perfected his heresy through decade of his life and millions of words."

Newton wanted to understand the universe, and god was part of that. As Gleick explains, "if we could decipher the prophecies and the messages, we would know a God of order, not chaos; of laws, not confusion. Newton plumbed both nature and history to find out God's plan. He rarely attended church."

Gleick's book looks at this aspect of Newton's life but doesn't neglect the more well known parts. His invention of calculus, which he hide from the world for decades, until his feud with Liebniz. His work on tides, which apparently he did from first principles, without ever seeing the sea. His discoveries in optics, and most of all, his work on gravitational attraction. Newton wrote millions of words on these topics, from his earliest years he was an obsessive list maker, note taker, writer and doodler. His brain seems to have been on fire constantly. His fame came late. But when it did, Newton seized it, protected it and fought those who challenged him. Newton ended up very rich, heirless and world renowned even if, for much of his life, words or notation did not yet exist for the ideas he was inventing and the thoughts he was having.

Yet for all its strength, this book didn't feel adequate. I enjoyed reading it, in fact this is the second time I've done so. James Gleick peppers the book with literary quotes, poetry and Newton's own words. But it is too short, and I didn't feel like I'd got to understand Newton, merely that I'd been introduced to him and his ideas and I needed a deeper, longer biography. Nevertheless this is an excellent place to start.

Related Reviews

Sobel - Galileo's Daughter
Jardine - Ingenious Pursuits

Gregory N. Flemming - At the Point of a Cutlass

At the heart of this book is the near unbelievable story of the "capture, bold escape and lonely exile of Philip Ashton". It is an amazing story of pirates and castaways, but around it, Gregory N. Flemming has woven the fascinating story of the Golden Age of Piracy, as well as conflicts between Spain and England, the slave trade, the radical preaching tradition and buried treasure. It's a book that is both historically informative and an entertaining read, and one that puts paid to many myths that have developed about piracy.

Philip Ashton was a cod fisherman who was captured by the Pirate Edward Low in June 1722 off Nova Scotia. Low was to gain infamy because of his successful piracy career and because of his violence. This was such that eventually his own crew rebelled against him, but not before Low had captured many vessels, run the Royal Navy a merry chase, and murdered many men. As Marcus Rediker has argued, pirates in the Golden Age were both attempting to escape the violence of the Atlantic shipping industry and enriching themselves. Surprisingly though, they tended to organise in far more democratic ways than existing ships. Rather than the rigid hierarchy of merchant or naval vessels, pirate crews elected and deselected their captains, a fate that was to eventually befall Low.

This view of piracy is the backdrop to Flemming's book. It helps to explain why, when Philip Ashton refused to sign the ships' articles (effectively signing up to a life of piracy) Edward Low was so angry with him. For Ashton signing up, might mean escaping the threat of violence from the pirates, but would mean the end of a rope if their ship was captured.

The pirate, Edward Low

Ashton eventually escapes by marooning himself on an island. With no clothes, tools or weapons he barely survives, until a rather improbable episode with a passing Scotsman gives him the tools to live on. Ashton survives two years on the island, eventually meeting a group of logging workers fleeing the violence of the Spanish - English conflict. Then, in yet another awful coincidence, Ashton is nearly captured by some of the same pirates he escaped from years before. Eventually Ashton makes it home, where an unusual local minister writes down his story. In the puritanical world of north-eastern America, novels are frowned upon, but stories that suggest the positive input of a benevolent god quickly become bestsellers. Because of this, while Ashton himself returns to a quiet life of fishing (though Flemming wonders how he felt every time a large ship appeared on the horizon) his story lives on, inspiring many, even on the other-side of the ocean. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, appears to have read and drawn inspiration from it.

The story of piracy, sea battles and the castaway alone would make this an enjoyable and recommended read. What really adds to the story is the historical background. At times Gregory Flemming has perhaps included a little too much detail. That said, the book paints an detailed picture of the Americas, whose Atlantic coasts were crisscrossed by networks of trade - slaves, fish, furs and wood. This creates a political and economic battleground for the European powers within which piracy flourishes (and is at times actively encouraged). But we also see the beginnings of the United States as an economic power in its own right.

Such conditions - the danger, violence, poverty and potential riches - meant that piracy would inevitably arise. Sometimes that meant that men like Edward Low with his taste for killing and torture would also exist. But without the lives of men like Philip Ashton, who daily risked their lives for a boat load of cod, Low could not have existed and nor could the wider Atlantic economy. Gregory Flemming's book is an excellent introduction to the subject and the period, which is both entertaining and illuminating.

Related Reviews

Linebaugh and Rediker - The Many Headed Hydra
Rediker - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Rediker - Villains of all Nations

Dick Gregory - N*****

Until I picked up this old autobiography, I knew nothing abut Dick Gregory. Today he is relatively well known in the United States for his comedy, his social activism and his long record. Gregory's autobiography, written with the US sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, is an insightful look at the life of someone growing up black in 1950s America, and the early years of the Civil Rights moment.

The book is poignant. At times Gregory's descriptions of his childhood, the family's poverty and his mother's desparate hard work to try and keep the family alive will bring tears to your eyes. But Gregory also describes the sheer normality of vicious racism that went along with this. As a young man, Gregory was an accomplished runner. Such is the reality of racism in the US in that period, that it is actually atheletics that brings him into contact with the Civil Rights movement. He is angered that his running record isn't recorded in the local newspaper, because it was a race for blacks. He joins a protest march, and quickly becomes a key figure.

In the army, Gregory learns that he is an accomplished comedian. Youtube has a few of his early stand-up routines, sand 50 years later they sometimes still work. In his biography he describes how he combined an act that didn't ignore racism, at the same time as learning how to deal with it. Gregory's early efforts in showbiz cost him money and friends, but he does eventually break through. With fame though, comes responsibility, and as a prominant black figure, he eventually gets pulled into the Civil Rights movement as a leading figure. Despite being followed by the media everywhere, the police still brutally beat him (away from the cameras) and Gregory gets pulled further into activism.

For those who've read about the Civil Rights movement, Gregory's slightly oblique look at the struggle will be fascinating. He's not really a leading figure, though a key part of it. But he describes the March on Washington, and the murder of school girls in Alabama with passion - these are not remote incidents, but ones that he sees pulling more people into the struggle. Gregory has his own tragedies. Since this is autobiography, at times he over-emphasises his own importance, but mostly he inspires because he is honest - about his fears, about his guilt and about why he gets motivated. At the end of the book Gregory writes with hope:

You didn't die a slave for nothing, Momma. You brought us up. You and all those Negro mothers who gave their kids the strength to go on, to take that thimble to the well while the whites were taking buckets. Those of us who weren't destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we're ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. N*****.

Sadly, we still have a long way to go. But people like Gregory were a key part of starting the Civil Rights movement. He remains active today, and his story should continue to inspire a new generation. 

Tony Cliff - Trotsky 1927-1940: The Darker the Night the Brighter the Star

The last thirteen years of Leon Trotsky's life, documented in this fourth volume of Tony Cliff's biography, are among some of the hardest of the Russian revolutionary's life. The book starts with Trotsky in internal exile, having been defeated by Stalin's faction. It ends with his murder in near political isolation. Having led millions of revolutionary workers, created and then led the Red Army to defeat the hostile imperialist powers in the Civil War, by the end of his life Trotsky finds himself isolated, with a few hundred followers in the newly formed Fourth International.

There is little in this book that deals with Trotsky's actual life. Cliff does document how Trotsky's family suffered. Children and grandchildren, even those with no interest in politics, are imprisoned, murdered and denied medical treatment by Stalin. In a brief passage dealing with Trotsky's personal feelings, Cliff quotes the anguished statement made by Trotsky and his wife after their son is murdered by Stalin's thugs.

But the vast majority of this book deals with the political activities and writings of Trotsky. Trotsky was a lifelong revolutionary, a committed Marxist. To attempt to write a biography of him that dealt with this period and didn't concentrate on his political activity would be impossible. In fact, in March 1935 Trotsky himself wrote:

"I think that the work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life - more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other."

What was this work? Much of it involved writing. Trotsky was prolific, producing pamphlet after article, followed by books and an endless stream of letters to his friends and comrades. Cliff argues that some of Trotsky's writings during this period are some of the finest Marxist writings ever produced. From Trotsky's extraordinary work The History of the Russian Revolution which details the transformation of the Russian economy, the growth of the revolutionary movement and the day-to-day struggles of the Bolsheviks during 1917, to his extraordinary analytically clear writings on Germany, Spain and France in the 1930s.

The chapters on France, Germany and Spain in Cliff's book are worthy of particular mention. In order to comprehend the brilliance of Trotsky's analysis, Cliff gives us a detailed overview of the situation in these three crucial countries during the 1930s. In particular Cliff details the rise of Fascism and the struggles to stop it. Trotsky's writings on Germany are among the most useful today. He argued that a United Front between the two mass left wing parties, the Communists and the Social Democrats could provide a strong enough movement to defeat Hitler's Nazis. But he also saw this method as winning masses of workers to revolutionary politics. Unfortunately, as Cliff argues, Trotsky had no forces to put this strategy into effect. The German Communists dutifully followed the Moscow line - Social Democrats were no better than the Fascists and the Communists had to resist both. The left, divided was defeated.

Cliff concludes:

"Neither the Communist Party nor the Social Democratic Party paid any heed. If Trotsky’s analysis and proposals for action had been accepted, the subsequent history of the century would have been completely different. Trotsky’s analysis of German events was particularly impressive in view of the fact that the author was removed from the scene of the events by a considerable distance. Still he managed to follow the day-to-day twists and turns. Reading Trotsky’s writings of the years 1930-33, their concreteness gives the clear impression that the author must have been living in Germany, not far away on the island of Prinkipo in Turkey."

But Trotsky wasn't always right. Tony Cliff argues that Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, particularly as outlined in his book The Revolution Betrayed, remains the starting point for any Marxist analysis of Stalin's Russia. But Cliff argues that Trotsky failed to understand that the bureaucracy that had arisen was a new class, with a new set of collective interests. Instead of simply being a managerial force in society, they were directing and shaping Russian society in their interests. This analysis of Russia as a degenerated workers' state was further weakened when the Red Army invaded Eastern Europe. These socialist societies were claimed, by some of Trotsky's followers after his death, as degenerated workers' states yet their had been no workers revolution to create them.

Cliff, briefly outlines his own explanation for Soviet society post 1920s, as State Capitalist. This is not, Cliff is quick to point out, to denigrate Trotsky's work, but to build on it. Cliff also critically discusses the Fourth International, the international grouping that Trotsky set up. Cliff had been a member of this, but here he tries to explain why the International didn't take off. Cliff asks if Trotsky had a choice whether he should setup the Fourth International. He rejects the approach of those who thought Trotsky could have entered a "watchtower" simply commenting on events. Instead he insists that

"if in these impossible circumstances Trotsky made some mistakes in the way the Fourth International was built – its over-ambitious structure, mistaken perspectives, including the semi-messianic spirit affecting it, let that be. Without trying to build a revolutionary party Trotsky would not have written his brilliant articles and essays at the time, analysing the situation and putting forward the strategy and tactics necessary for working class advance. Without the effort of building the revolutionary international, Trotsky’s contribution to Marxism, which kept it alive and preserved it from ossification, would not have been achieved."

But Cliff concludes that:

"struggling to build the Fourth International, which Trotsky did from 1933 onwards, was not the same as formally declaring its existence, which he did in 1938. The former was absolutely necessary, whilst the latter was almost certainly a mistake."

Volume four of this brilliant biography ends then at a difficult moment. Trotsky's death leaves a tiny number of isolated and weak revolutionary organisations dedicated to keeping the flame of Bolshevism alive. The Second World War and the Holocaust confirm the barbarity of capitalism and the continuing need for socialist revolution. Yet the revolutionary organisations that can led that struggle seem weaker than ever. Yet the great achievement of Trotsky, when many of his contemporaries gave up in the face of Stalin or were murdered on his orders, was to keep that flame alive. The last few chapters of this biography are particularly sharp, in part because they document Tony Cliffs own initial work developing Trotsky's ideas. That today we have, in however small a way, revolutionary organisations in many different countries is in large part because of the work of Leon Trotsky and those he inspired.

Related Reviews

Cliff - Trotsky 1: Towards October
Cliff - Trotsky 2: Sword of the Revolution
Cliff - Trotsky 3: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy

Chanie Rosenberg - Fighting Fit: A Memoir

Many members of the British Socialist Worker's Party and its sister organisations will be familiar with Chanie Rosenberg. She is one of the group's longest standing members, who helped, alongside her husband Tony Cliff, found the International Socialist tradition. In this short memoir, Chanie says that she hopes "to show that we revolutionaries are people like anyone else.. what happens between the evening meeting and the weekend paper sale?"

It is an excellent reason for writing such a book, but Chanie's life has been far from normal. She grew up in a Jewish family in racist South Africa, moved to Palestine to live on a socialist kibbutz in the 1940s but found her eyes opened to the racist nature of that state, and then began to engage in illegal, underground work agitating as part of a small Trotskyist organisation. Chanie and Tony Cliff lived in extreme poverty during these years. Moving to England things improved as Chanie was able to work as a teacher, and in doing so became central to some of the major struggles in the 1960s as teachers began to organise. Chanie played a central role in the rank and file of the teachers' union, and was blacklisted for her activity. Nonetheless she clearly, and rightly, remains proud of the victories they won.

Chanie's second great love is art. When she retired she took up sculpture, and has exhibited in the Royal Academy ("I wish the 'Royal' but could be removed, but that might need to wait for the revolution" she says). But her interest in art and culture is also reflected in her writings and articles. Included in this short volume is an illustrated reprint of Chanie's pamphlet on the Russia artist Malevich and his life and times.

Malevich and Revolution examines the evolution of the artists work, and vividly brings home the provocative, challenging nature of these "avant-garde" artists living in pre-revolutionary Russia.

"They walked the Moscow streets provocatively in fancy dress, with flowers, algebraic or other motifs pained on cheeks, or masks, and violently coloured shirts.... Malevich [wore] a red wooden spoon, the symbol of Futurism, in his lapel...They tried in this way to drag the established poets and painters our of their ivory towers... into the streets, to reconcile art and society."

Chanie Rosenberg's treatment of Malevich's work is fascinating, comparing him to another "giant" of 20th century art, Picasso, she writes that Malevich

Kasimir Malevich - The Knife Grinder (1912)

"had one important circumstance missing in Picasso's life - the actuality of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Picasso, who was a Communist, had an intellectual's orientation to the new society, but not the reality of the revolution... and this difference influenced the direction of their artistic efforts enormously."

While her discussion of Malevich's art is interesting, the way young, fledgling revolutionary society attempts to promote and develop art and artists as part of their transformation of society is equally fascinating. The Bolsheviks were keen to promote art as part of wider society, freeing artists from the need to produce art in order to live, instead living in order to produce art.

This short volume should be read by anyone with an interest in the history of revolutionary socialism, particularly that of the IS tradition. But Chanie Rosenberg's life will fascinate everyone who has an interest in ordinary people who have tried to change the world. Chanie has fought her whole life for a socialist society that will free ordinary people, economically, politically and culturally. The second half of this book is an inspiring example of how revolution can do that.

Related Reviews

Birchall - Tony Cliff: A Marxist for his Time
Dewar - The Quiet Revolutionary

Tony Cliff - Trotsky 1923-1927: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy

Of the four volumes of Tony Cliff's biography of Leon Trotsky, I suspect that this one was the hardest to write and it may well be the hardest to read. The first volume Towards October dealt with the early years of Trotsky's revolutionary life. His work in small political organisations, followed by the 1905 revolution which Trotsky helped to lead. It's a work that captures Trotsky's political brilliance and his organisational genius as he led the St. Petersburg Soviet through advances and retreats.


Volume two, Sword of the Revolution also deals with an inspiring period, that of the Russian Revolutions of 1917 as well as Trotsky's time in exile. Here again Cliff stresses the role of Trotsky in organising the insurrection, as well as his brilliance during the Civil War.

By contrast volume three deals with the defeat of Trotsky's ideas. This defeat cannot be separated by the isolation and defeat of the Russian Revolution itself and the triumph of an entirely different set of ideas - those of Stalin and the notion of Socialism in One Country.

Cliff discusses the various political forces ranged against Trotsky, those individuals around Stalin - particularly Kamenev and Zinoviev - and the growing strength of the bureaucracy. Cliff argues that Trotsky never abandoned a revolutionary outlook. Stalin on the other hand, retreated into the idea that socialism could survive alone in Russia in the midst of a capitalist sea. The struggle between these two viewpoints became the core debate in Russian politics, being reflected in, as well as shaping wider discussions on foreign policy, agrarian questions and the economy. As such much of this book is devoted to the factional struggles within the Communist Party.

Trotsky did badly in these battles. It clearly wasn't his natural territory, despite being politically and intellectually head and shoulders above his opponents, he wasn't able to break through. Towards the end of the book Cliff asks why this was, and can only conclude that it was the very isolation of the revolution and the retreat of the international working class movement that was hampering Trotsky. As Cliff writes;

"One should have a sense of proportion about the strengths and weaknesses of Trotsky's stand in the years 1923-27. While his strategic direction was correct, he made a number of serious tactical blunders and compromises. The point is not that had he been firmer he would have been able to beat Stalin, but that he would have laid firmer bases for the growth of the Opposition, not allowing the 1923 Opposition to wither on the vine, not disorienting his followers in the foreign Communist Parties."

But during a period of retreat, Trotsky's mistakes had far greater consequences than in a period when the working class was moving forward, "not a few mistakes were committed by the Bolshevik leaders during 1917 and the period of the civil war. But the sweep of the revolution repaired the errors. Now the march of reaction exacerbated the impact of every error committed by Trotsky."

The isolation of the revolution led to a number of serious problems for Trotsky. One of these was the lack of a cadre who understood what the party had been through and who Trotsky was. When Stalin and his cohorts argued that Trotsky had disagreed with Lenin and quoted him out of context, or pointed to his errors, many Communists were disorientated. But many of those who understood the past were gone. Support amongst Old Bolsheviks for Trotsky and the Opposition to Stalin was significant, yet in 1922 there were only 10,431 party members who had joined before February 1917. By 1927 the figure was less than half of this.

Some of the core chapters of this book also look at Trotsky's attempts to understand the failures of the wider struggles in the international working class. Cliff retells some stories familiar to readers of this blog, he looks at the defeat of the 1923 German Revolution, the British General Strike and the Chinese Revolution. Cliff argues that these were important, because in all cases, their victories could have helped end Russia's isolation. More importantly the incorrect analysis applied to the events by Russian revolutionaries, and Stalin in particular stemmed from the weakness of their own politics. Even today Trotsky's analyses from afar are often head and shoulders above anyone else.

The period of transition between the revolutionary era and the Stalin era was a slow drawn out process, but one that has concrete roots in economics and international politics. Cliff's analysis is beautifully clear and he is not afraid of criticising his subject. In fact I was quite surprised at how weak and compromising Trotsky was at times. In fact for a period of 18 months in the aftermath of the defeat of the 1923 Opposition, Cliff says that Trotsky effectively abstained from fighting inside the party leadership. He even remarks that Trotsky sat reading novels during Central Committee meetings.

Nonetheless, eventually Trotsky did come out fighting. He made a compromising alliance with Kamenev and Zionviev. When they proved inadequate in the face of Stalin's onslaught, Trotsky along with many of his supporters and other Oppositionists were drummed out of the Communist Party. Trotsky spent the rest of his life keeping the flame of international revolution alive in the face of Stalinist lies and slander. As Tony Cliff concludes:

"After 1927, when Trotsky grasped the enormity of Stalin's crimes, and called him the 'gravedigger of the revolution'. when the bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev fell apart - from then onwards Trotsky became completely uncompromising."

The story of his final years of struggle is in volume four of Cliff's biography.

Related Reading

Cliff - Trotsky Volume One: Towards October
Cliff - Trotsky Volume Two: Sword of the Revolution
Hallas - Trotsky's Marxism
Lewin - Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivisation

Cathy Porter - Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography

Alexandra Kollontai's life matches almost exactly the rise, and then fall of revolutionary Russia. She was born to a well-off, upper middle class Russian family, but her life was shaped by the socialist politics of the early twentieth century. Cathy Porter's detailed and readable biography traces Kollontai's life, from her early engagement in underground revolutionary politics, on to her role as a central committee member of the Bolsheviks. Along the way she traces the development of Marxist parties, the crisis of socialist politics during World War One and the Russian Revolution. Kollontai was an early opponent of Bolshevik politics in the early 1920s, eventually her critical engagement with the building of a revolutionary society was used against her with the rise of Stalin's bureaucracy. In fact it was only Kollontai's fame in Russia and abroad that saved her from the purges. She died in the 1950s, one of the few old-Bolsheviks to have survived so long, having made a decision to remain quiet for the sake of her own life.

Today Kollontai is remembered for her writings about the position of women under capitalism, and the potential for a socialist society to transform this. She was one of the first Marxists to explore how human sexuality might be transformed under a classless, equal society. Her articles and theories were often popular, if sometimes lacking a grounding in what was really happening. Both the right and left wing of the revolutionary movement seem to have on occasion dismissed her as idealistic.

Porter's book traces Kollontai's development as a Marxist as well as her growing concern with the position of women in Russia's backward economy. From early on, Kollontai fought for the Russian revolutionary movement to take work amongst women workers and peasants seriously. In this she was often derided or ignored as this was seen to be a distraction from the more important task of developing revolutionary politics and ideas. Kollontai also faced the sexism of the early socialist movement, and after her exile to Germany, the entrenched ideas of the German socialist parties.

One of the most interesting chapters in this biogrpahy is the section where Porter looks at Kollontai's experiences in Germany. A popular and passionate speaker, she toured the country speaking to crowds of workers, trying to win them to the German SPD. In this she was enormously successful, though the party's bureaucrats where often less sure of her arguments around the emancipation of women.

In early 1911 Kollontai spoke in the industrial town of Grossenhain; describing the aged Party secretary, she recounts:

His tone changed sharply when she enquired about women's activities. When women worked men suffered he said. 'The house becomes a pigsty, the children die... and what does a woman look like when she works in a factory? You expect love to survive when a man's wife looks like a witch?" A crowd of women gathered around her after the meeting and took her to the station. 'Silly old fool,' they said. 'We're stronger than he knows'.

Such attitudes certainly prevailed within the German Party and women like Kollontai fought hard to change them, by creating women's organisations and sections. Inside Russia underground socialist organisation made it even harder for women to organise. In addition the male dominated revolutionary organisation often saw incipient "feminism" within attempts to struggle for women's liberation. Kollontai herself was often accused of feminism, and not keeping to the party line, but in reality she and her comrades were fighting hard against the middle-class women's movement that saw all women, irrespective of class, being part of the same fight for suffrage.

Porter quotes Trotsky's "jaundiced" comments on Kollontai, "During the war she veered sharply to the left.... Her knowledge of foreign languages and her temperament made her a valuable agitator. Her theoretical views have always been somewhat confused however." Nonetheless, as the war lead to revolution, Kollontai became a leading member of Bolshevik organisation in Petrograd.

She was part of the Bolshevik central committee that agreed the insurrection in October 1917. Porter describes 1917 as being happiest of Kollontai's life. In the midst of revolution, Kollontai talents as a speaker and organiser came to the fore. She spoke to mass meetings and, was delegated to the Petrograd soviet to represent a unit of male soldiers. A perfect example of the way that class struggle begins to transform peoples ideas.

Readers who are inspired by the Russian Revolution, will find Porter's accounts of the period and Kollontai's involvement fascinating. Here are some brilliant accounts of mass meetings and debates within the working class. There are detailed accounts from Kollontai's own diaries of the pressures on the leading revolutionaries;

Trotsky had collapsed from fatigue the previous day; that afternoon, after three astounding days charged with an almost electrical tension, and after a particularly fraught argument with a Socialist Revolutionary, Alexandra was overcome by dizziness. She was prevented from falling by a Red Guard, who offered her a rouble for bread. She was grateful, but refused; but he insisted on taking her address, and later that evening crept into her flat, left some bread there for her, and crept out again before she could discover his name to thank him.

After the seizure of power, Kollontai was appointed the head of the Commissariat of Social Welfare. Her work was blocked by a strike of civil servants, but her struggles to attempt to help those in need, impoverished by war and economic chaos are central points to the book. Her attempts to create communal kitchens, orphanages and the like are met with hostility, both from representatives of the old order, such as priests, but also from workers themselves who often believed the Bolsheviks were out to "nationalise the family" and take children from their parents.

The years of economic collapse, famine, disease and civil war that followed the successful insurrection helped undermine the basis of Soviet Power. During this period argument raged about the way forward for the revolution. Always a free thinker, Kollontai was often in opposition to leading Bolsheviks and she was an early member of the Workers Opposition. Her thoughts and writings about the potential for sexual liberation flourished in this period, though again they were often at odds with other leading revolutionaries, who were more concerned with trying to drive forward attempts to stabilise the Russian economy and strengthen the basis for Soviet rule. Kollontai argued that women must be central to a developing economy;

Her chief hope therefore, was that women's continued involvement in production would have a dramatic effect on their consciousness and confidence, and would help to free them from the vestiges of fatalism and ignorance which so tenaciously clung to them from the past. Women's release from the private family was not only an essential precondition of their liberation; of equal importance in her opinion, was the fact that all the labour hours women spent on housework were unproductive and of no value to the revolution. It was only when women contributed these labour hours to social production in the factories that the material conditions for creating socialism could be said to exist.

Despite these confused ideas, which downplay the existing economic role of women, Kollontai was at the heart of Bolshevik attempts to try and dramatically transform the role of women's lives in the early Soviet state. Her speech at the Party congress in 1919 had led to a "flood of complaints" from women that their work was being undermined, leading to the establishment of the Zhenotdel. Much of Kollontai's work over the next few years was associated with this organisation. Zhenotdel took on many tasks, involving women in factory inspections, ensuring that pregnant women were adequately protected and taking up issues such as prostitution, venereal disease, education and child care.

The Zhenotdel delegate, with her red headscarf and shabby clothes was soon a familiar and popular figure in every village and town in Russia, as she trudged from house to house, often taking abandoned children into her own home, and when necessary, picking up a rifle and leaving for the front.

During the Civil War Kollontai travelled the length and breadth of the front on agit-trains, speaking to large and small crowds on station platforms and in cold halls. She rallied women to the revolution and to the war, helping in no small way to enable the Red Army to win.

But the rise of Stalin and the isolation of Russia further undermined Kollontai's ideas. As an old-Bolshevik, who had briefly joined the Menshevik party, she was particularly vulnerable and she was driven out of the Party leadership. Stalin used Kollontai in a diplomatic role, further leading to her isolation. Kollontai herself understood that she was threatened, returning in 1930 to Russia from Stockholm were she was a diplomat, she wrote "How can you oppose the apparatus? How can you fight, or defend yourself against injury? For my part, I've put my fight into a corner of my conscience and carry out as well as I can the policies dictated to me."

She even went so far as to write participles criticising old Bolsheviks Kamenev and Zinoviev who had been put to death by Stalin.

Kollontai's life was dedicated to the emancipation of working people. She was one of the few to try and grapple with what socialist transformation might mean for the relationships between people, freed from economic chains. She was not by any means always correct at particular points, and in places her ideas were often idealistic given the concrete situation. Nonetheless, her life spanned an incredible period of history, and her importance to the genuine revolutionary movement, is demonstrated by the way that her death barely warranted a mention in the pages of Pravda despite her years of work.

Cathy Porter's 1980 biography of Alexandra Kollontai is a must read for anyone trying to understand revolutionary history and the ideas at its heart. Her detailed accounts of life in exile, of the German movement, and the early days of Soviet power are fascinating. The exploration of Kollontai's ideas has rarely been done better and the book is a brilliant tribute to one of the socialist movement's most important figures.

Related Reviews and Reading

Cathy Porter in Socialist Worker on Alexandra Kollontai and International Women's Day
Tony Cliff: Alexandra Kollontai: Russian Marxists and Women Workers

Krupskaya - Memories of Lenin
Smith - Red Petrograd; Revolution in the Factories: 1917 - 1918
Davis - A Rebel's Guide to Alexandra Kollontai

Roger Hutchinson - The Soap Man: Lewis, Harris & Lord Leverhulme

Part history and part biography, The Soap Man is an impressive account of the clash of two modes of production. Lord Leverhulme the industrialist of Port Sunlight fame was a classic example of the capitalist who believed that organised correctly and benevolently the system could bring happiness, wealth and employment for all.

Having made his fortune creating a model (or so he thought) community near Liverpool whose workers toiled in his soap factories, Leverhulme's gaze turned elsewhere. In 1918 he bought the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The act of purchase wasn't simply about owning the land. The old semi-feudal laws that still existed in the Isles meant that Leverhulme effectively became the owner of everything on the Island, towns, roads, people. The new Laird was determined that Lewis would be remodelled in the image of Port Sunlight. He dreamed of technology and capitalism reinventing the Island, creating enormous amounts of wealth and dragging the people of Lewis out of the dark ages.

Roger Hutchinson speculates that Leverhulme wasn't so much the benevolent capitalist as a clear thinking man of money who recognised, at least in part, that the gigantic turmoil that had shaken Russia at the end of World War One would have its echo even in far flung bits of Britain. His desire to improve the lot of the workers, was less about helping them and more about stemming the tide of revolution. But he also viewed the islands with pounds signs in his eyes. In Leverhulme's vision the old crofting way of life should be destroyed so that the true wealth of the island, as a source of wood, a base for fishing and growing industrial quantities of fruit, could make him even wealthier. There would, naturally be a trickle down effect and the people of the island would benefit, as would the thousands of other workers that would stream into the cities and towns that would spring up on the beautiful island.

The problem was, that the people of the island, in particular the returning soldiers and sailors wanted nothing more than a piece of land to call there own. The 1886 Crofters Act had indeed promised them this and offered, for the first time, in a bleak and difficult history, security of tenure that their ancestors could only have imagined. Free from eviction they would be free to farm as they wanted.

Leverhulme couldn't see this. To him, these were backward people, living the lives of savages and this needed to be uprooted. To the crofters and their representatives, who initially welcomed him with open arms. his schemes were interesting, but not for them. They wanted land. Hutchinson has unearthed some extraordinary accounts of the clash between the people and their landlord.

The seen is early in the morning, a large group of people, Leverhulme is at the centre. He speaks in English through an interpretater. Most of the assembled group only speak Gailec. Many of them had taken part in raids only the day before to seize land for their families.

Speaking through an interpretor to a crowd of crofters, Leverhulme derides their way of life:

"The fact is, your fishing is presently carried on is a hit or miss. I want to make it a hit every time. How can I do that? Well everytime you now put to sea you blindly hope to strike a shoal of herrings. Sometimes you do. Oftener you don't. But there shoals are there if you only know the spot. and that is were I can help you. I am prepared to supply a fleet of airplans and observers who will scan the sea in cricles around the island. An observer from one of these planes cannot fail to notice a shoal o herrings over which he passes. Immeiately he sends a wireless message.... the boats are headed for that spot and next morning they steam back to port loaded with herrings......"

Alan Martin "a prominent raider" who had been organising the occupation of land. spoke next. In Gaelic, for a long time. Leverhulme's translator explained the speech, which finished like this.

"This will not do. This honey mouthed man would have us believe black is white and white is black. We are not concerned with his fancy dreams that may or may not come true. What we want is the land and the question I put to him now is; will you give us the land?"

To which Leverhulme answers, "No. I am not prepared to give you the land."

A former serviceman, MacLeod spoke next at length, his speech finished like this:

"Lord Leverhulme, you have bought this island. But you have not bought us. We refuse to be the bondslaves of any man. We want to live our own lives in our own way, poor in material things it may be, but at least it will be clear of the fear of the factory bell; it will be free and independent"

 Here, summed up is the clash between two modes of production. On the one hand a way of life that brings little riches, but has existed for hundreds of years, that provides for the needs of people and would give happiness. On the other is the desire to exploit the natural resources of Lewis in the interest of making money. Leverhulme's cannot understand why the crofters won't accept his changes, because he viewed 20th century capitalism as the pinnacle of human achievement.

At one point, he refuses his personal piper holiday leave, because the man wanted to go home to his croft and plant potatoes. He explained that with his wage labour on the estate he could buy all the potatoes he wanted. When the farmer went home unofficially to do his work, Leverhulme sacked him. A further example of this is the response of a few crofters who were taken to Port Sunlight to see the bright opportunities offered by capitalism. While polite to Leverhulme during their visit on their return they described Port Sunlight as having "nothing but slavery there".

Leverhulme was seeing the world through rose tinted glasses. The fishing off Lewis was not as good as he imagined. The opportunities to grow soft fruits like raspberries for export was limited by the prevailing weather on Lewis. But Leverhulme was a man used to getting his way; nature could be bent by modern technology and economics.

Leverhulme may be portrayed as a kindly philanthropist. But in reality he was a ruthless capitalist. He was also unused to resistance and the refusal of the Islanders to accept his schemes. Their continued occupation of the lands, their anger at his behaviour and their natural cynicism towards landlords frustrated Leverhulme. But so did the British Government, who found Leverhulme's semi-feudal behaviour an embarrassment. As economic crisis arrived and Leverhulmes plans became even more untenable. He gradually withdrew from the islands and the crofters gradually got their way.

Today, Hutchinson tells us, the islands are owned by a myriad of landlords. But there are many memorials to those who occupied land and refused to let the dream die. Their hope that they could obtain "security of their children's children at peace on the soil of thei island" was to a certain extent realised.

This short book is a wonderful piece of history well deserved of its accolades. There is probably no better guide to the history of Lewis and Harris and visitors to the Outer Hebridies could do far worse than read this on their travels. As a record of a unique period of Scottish social history it deserves a wider readership.

Related Reviews

Richards - The Highland Clearances

Ian Birchall - Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time

As readers of this blog may well have gathered over the years, I am an active member of the British Socialist  Workers Party. I've been a member for twenty years now and was attracted to the organisation for the way that it combined a serious examination of the world, with a commitment to trying to change it.

The SWP comes from very small beginnings and its founder, Tony Cliff, spent almost all of his life trying to build socialist organisations. The vast bulk of his life was devoted to the SWP and its forerunner, the International Socialists. My own personal recollections of Cliff are limited. By the time I joined he was entering the last stages of his life, and while he lived until 1999, it was clear that he was slowing down. I heard him speak on a number of occasions, at both public and internal party events. As many accounts in this biography attest, Cliff's speaking style was a wonderful mix of hard politics, quirky jokes, Marxism and mixed metaphor. He was entrancing, but political strong. Even by the time of the mid-1990s when I heard him in his eighties, he could hold an audience of workers and students spell bound.

To those outside of the world of revolutionary socialist politics, the idea of reading a 560 page biography of a little known Marxist might seem a little strange, not least if that Marxist was active in building revolutionary organisation in an era which was distinctly un-revolutionary.

But Tony Cliff's contribution to both the worker's movement, Marxist theory and the various political organisations around the globe, that, like the SWP continue to fight for socialist politics was an important one.

Cliff was born in 1917 to a Jewish family in Palestine. Early in his life he was branded a "communist" by a teacher for asking why there were no Arabs in his class. In his teens he became attracted to radical politics, and joined small revolutionary organisations influenced by Trotskyist ideas. One of the most interesting chapters of Ian Birchall's biography is this section on Cliff's early life. In part this is because for most socialists in the UK, or indeed much of the world, being active is not about clandestine politics but mostly because Birchall has managed to unearth a great deal about Cliff's early life. Only a handful of those who knew him then remain alive. It's testimony to his personality that they all, even when their politics have radically changed, remember him with warmth and affection.

Coming to the UK Cliff joined the small Trotskyist movement. His commitment to building organisations was clear, but so was his desire to both understand Marxist theory and apply it to the world around him. For me, his key theory, State Capitalism, seemed obvious. I'd been brought up by a German mother, who'd watched the wall being built and we heard the stories of families divided and repressed by the East German state. But in the post-war period, when Russia still loomed as a socialist alternative to western capitalism, a Marxist theory that argued that this was not genuine socialism and nor was it the "degenerated" socialist state that Leon Trotsky had described, was a shock to many. Today these arguments might seem of the order of counting angels on a pin, but the clarity of such politics was crucial in enabling Cliff to build a core of activists and thinkers who went on to build the forerunners of the SWP.

There is no point here re-counting the different stages of Cliff's life. He was, surprisingly for a foreigner, oddly influential in the workers movements of the 1960s though some of his writings. He had a rare ability to put complex points across clearly, with reference to the lives of ordinary people, or through the use of amusing metaphors. In fact for me, it is mostly through his writing and speeches that I remember Cliff. I was not of the era who remember him for his regular phone calls, nor was I someone who'd heard him speak hundreds of times.

Birchall's book does not fail to criticise Cliff. Cliff was a adept user of the "bending stick" method of revolutionary politics. As the world changes, revolutionary organisations needs to rapidly adapt to changing situations and this means winning an argument with the membership about a new course. Cliff was swift to change direction, quick to break with former favourites who he felt didn't fit the new course and likely to find new favourites. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but clearly from Birchall's biography there are many, former key-activists who still remain burned by the way their were treated. It is testament to Cliff's stature that many of these people felt happy to speak to his biographer. Including, surprisingly ex-Labour MPs and members of Tony Blair's cabinet. The latter stating how much they learnt from Cliff (though clearly not enough).

More interestingly, this is more than a biography. In quoting at length from Cliff's speeches and writings, Birchall gives us a glimpse of different periods of recently British political history. The section on 1968, for instance, when Cliff argued for a turn to student work and spent days winning arguments with leftist students at the London School of Economics is a fascinating insight into the period. (For more on this I'd recommend this short piece.) But Birchall also takes time to explain some of Cliff's ideas - I've mentioned State Capitalism, but his arguments around Deflected Permanent Revolution (the way that revolutions in former colonies were deflected by their nationalistic leaders down a different road from socialism) and the theory of the Arms Economy, that helped explain the long boom after World War II were important to new generations of Marxist thinkers.

Most importantly though I think Birchall helps us understand Cliff's method, and through that the general Marxist method. Since the Russian Revolution one figure looms high amongst those who fought to retain the essential core of revolutionary socialism - that working people must emancipate themselves - that was Leon Trotsky. Since the Second World War a few revolutionaries continued this work and Tony Cliff was probably the most important of this. His vision and his hope that working people on the late 20th century could still overthrow capitalism and build a new world inspired thousands. Today as we face economic chaos and environmental crisis that need is still there. Cliff helped build the beginnings of the socialist organisations that can be part of that transformation. His life and his works remain essential reading for all of us who want to take that struggle forward.

Related Reading

Given the nature of socialist politics, Ian Birchall's book has been the subject of intense debate, discussion and need I say, polemic. Sadly some of this reflects the worst of the socialist movement. Some of the most useful reviews are below, chosen more for their political insights, rather than their polemic.

Splintered Sunrise - The Most Unforgettable Person I've Ever Met in my Life
Interview with Ian Birchall, by Joseph Choonara
John Palmer - A Revolutionary with a Revolution
Two Reviews by Nigel Harris and Christian Høgsbjerg

Related Reviews

Cliff - Trotsky; Towards October
Cliff - Trotsky; The Sword of Revolution
Cliff - Lenin; All Power to the Soviets
Cliff - Lenin; Revolution Besieged 
Tony Cliff & Donny Gluckstein - Marxism and Trade Union Struggle, The General Strike of 1926