1919 - strikes, struggles and soviets

On 21 January, 1919, Dail Eireann held its opening session and the Irish Volunteers drew their first mortal blood since 1916 at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary. These facts have set the seal for subsequent historians of the first months of the year. Yet such an emphasis is the product of subsequent events rather than of judgement of contemporary news. The first Dail and Soloheadbeg were, in their time, isolated incidents in a period that was more notable for industrial unrest. The Belfast engineering strike began within days of those two nationalist events and, before the end of the month, Peadar O...

It is February 1917. A large crowd are gathered to hear socialists and pacifists denounce the war. As the speeches start the snow begins fall... The hundreds who assembled that snowy night, looking like a scene out of Dr Zhivago, were not in Petrograd 1917 but in Waterfoot, Rossendale. The rally held that snowy evening was to support the candidature of Albert Taylor, a local anti-war trade union leader and member of the British Socialist Party (BSP) in a parliamentary by-election; the campaign on his behalf (he had been imprisoned at the request of the Liberal party agent) was a coalition of...

The following abridged article is by Morgan Philips Price, the Russian correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. First published in the US magazine Class Struggle in May 1919, it describes the foreign policy of all the ruling classes in Europe towards Russia after the October revolution. One of the most deadly weapons wielded by the ruling classes of all countries is their power to censor the press; for thereby they are able to create under the pretext of military necessity an artificial public opinion with the object of hiding their foul designs. Never was this fact more clearly demonstrated...

Fellow workers of Britain, "The air of Europe is quivering with revolution”! And not alone the air, but the whole land-owning and capital class of this country are quivering with fear at the unforeseen results of the European War. Immediately following the armistice the Prime Minister proclaimed the speedy dissolution of the Government, hoping that in the psychological moment of victory and the resulting disturbance to the public mind, the capitalist class would snatch another victory at the polls. Obtaining a new lease of power they would be enabled to re-establish their system of society on...

(Soon after Debs made this speech, Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Ruxemburg were murdered by German reactionaries) Upon his release from the Kaiser’s bastile – the doors of which were torn from their hinges by the proletarian revolution – Karl Liebknecht, heroic leader of the rising hosts, exclaimed: “The Day of the People has arrived!” It was a magnificent challenge to the Junkers and an inspiring battle-cry to the aroused workers. From that day to this Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and other true leaders of the German proletariat have stood bravely at the front, appealing to the workers to join the...

“If America had not turned her back upon the world ...” The Wilson Day speeches last December were built around this theme: that what “lost the peace” and started Europe on the path to fascism and the Second World War was the fact that America became “isolationist” and rejected Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. The corollary theme is: this time a real world-wide organization of the United Nations will enforce democracy, outlaw war, and sprinkle benevolent pints of milk over a “better world.” Any attempt to make these post-war aims specific, or to include lesser powers in the discussion, is...

The revolution that has just begun can have but one outcome: the realization of Socialism! The working class, in order to accomplish its purpose, must, first of all, secure entire political control of the state. But to the Socialist political power is only a means to an end. It is the instrument with which labor will achieve the complete, fundamental reconstruction of our entire industrial system. To-day all wealth, the largest and most fruitful tracts of land, the mines, the mills and the factories belong to a small group of Junkers and private capitalists. From them the great masses of the...

“I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.” Primo Levi “It is necessary, with bold spirit and in good conscience, to save civilisation. We must halt the dissolution which corrodes and corrupts to roots of human society. The bare and barren tree can be made green again. Are we not ready?” Antonio Gramsci A rapid and intensive development of modern, industrial capitalism took place north eastern Italy, especially in the area in and between Genoa, Milan and Turin, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth. The first electric power station in...

We can say: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, You are no longer in the circle Of the living But you are present amongst us, We sense your mighty spirit, We will fight under your banner, Our fighting ranks shall be covered By your moral grandeur! And each of us swears If the hour comes, If the revolution demands it, To perish without trembling Under the same banner As that under which you perished. Trotsky, speaking just after the deaths of Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in January 1919. The editing and typographical re-arrangement is ours. Click here for original speech on Marxist...

Introduction: In 1919 it looked to many - to Lenin and Trotsky, for instance - as if the capitalist system was breaking down and that a working class revolution was beginning, at least in Europe. There was tremendous working class militancy all across Europe. Short-lived Soviet Republics were set up in Hungary and Bavaria. In Ireland, the big majority of the M P s elected in the General Election at the end of 1918 had seceded from the British Parliament, and met in Dublin as an Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann. They pronounced themselves the elected government of the Irish Republic proclaimed in...