Factory bulletins from the early communist movement: Workers' Liberty 3/3

Austrian factory bulletin

This article was based on the experience of Workers Fight, from which AWL has developed and which worked inside the International Socialists (predecessor of the SWP) at the time. It was part of a drive to turn IS towards production of factory bulletins at the end of the 1960s. It has been abridged. It was written by Rachel Lever (Rachel Matgamna), Sean Matgamna and Harold Youd. Memory suggests that Rachel was the main author. SM.

The “turn to the class” by IS is currently using the methods of factory leafleting. Presented here is a short report of the experience of using this method on the

Pieces from communists involved in producing factory newspapers. Taken from the Funke, the paper of the party workers of the Berlin-Brandenburg district of the German Communist Party. 6 August 1925

It was about three weeks before the Reichstag election. In our district we discussed how we could mobilise factory nuclei for the struggle and also how we could utilise the election campaign for the activation of our nucleus work. In this connection we naturally came to speak of nucleus newspapers.

A big nucleus had just then started a newspaper for all the enterprises in our district, but we

Leon Trotsky discussed factory bulletins, and their place in the overall work of a revolutionary organisation, in a letter to his French comrades of January 1938.

I received your large packet of factory newspapers and leaflets, etc. Indeed, this is the only suitable way for a weak organisation with a small paper to approach the least educated masses while not only maintaining but continually deepening its theoretical understanding. A certain type of “democratic centralism” is necessary in the organisation of written propaganda and agitation as well. You approach the workers with the simplest

Factory Inspection

(called the Murder Commission)

When there was a factory inspection a few weeks ago the foreman Figge surpassed himself. No work was allowed to be done from morning to midday, in order that there should be no smell of poison gas or any sign of dirt. Then the Social Democrat Jumpertz appeared on the scene. He looked around and found everything as it should be. Thereupon Figge went to the telephone and a few minutes later the murder commission arrived. The CG factory known for its dirty condition was now a marvel of cleanliness before the eyes of the murder commission — the

This leaflet was written by Vladimir Lenin after November 7(19) 1895, in connection with a strike of about 500 weavers against bad conditions and new measures introduced by the factory management.

The weavers, by their solid resistance to the employer’s pressure, have proved that at a difficult moment there are still people in our midst who can uphold our common interests as workers, that our worthy employers have not yet succeeded in turning us for all time into the miserable slaves of their bottomless purses.

Let us, then, comrades, stand firm and steadfast and carry on to the very end, let

Abridged from Inprecor, the bulletin of the Communist International, February 1925

Factory newspapers are an innovation in the life of the Communist Parties of the West. They had their origin on the revolutionary soil of the Soviet Union in the form of wall newspapers. During the last year they crossed the boundary which separates the proletarian European East from the capitalist West, assuming the form of cyclostyled factory newspapers and becoming a form of agitation, propaganda and organisation which is really gaining in importance.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that factory