1920s

Lenin's famous manual of reformism, "Left Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder(1920), which directed Communists to work within parliament and existing labour unions, was partly a response to British anti-parliamentarism.

From; A Long Way From Home, Claude McKay; Pluto Press, London 1985. Originally published in 1937.

The Workers Opposition began to form in 1919, as a result of the policies of War Communism, which set a precedence for the domination of the Communist Party over local party branches and trade unions. During the civil war, the Workers Opposition began agitating against the lack of democracy in the Communist Party as a result of the centralising actions of the party’s bureaucracy.

This version is taken from: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mhuey/HOME.html Copyright © 1992, 1998 by Scott Zenkatsu Parker.
The author permits the unlimited duplication, transmission, and distribution of this text with the proper citations for academic, educational, and non-commercial use only.

I

“You are workers, labourers, continue the strike for final victory, for a new society where there will be neither poor nor rich, a society without weapons or uniforms, where reigns joy, respect for the human being, where nobody will have to kneel because there will be neither those in cassocks nor superiors”
- Antonio Soto at the last general assembly of the Patagonian strikers.

"The Mexican revolutionary syndicalists: their form of organization - anarchosyndicalist; their leadership - artisan and professional; their numbers - 150 000; their goals - the seizure and operation of the means of production and the onset of worldwide proletarian revolution; their means - revolutionary war against capitalism by workers' militias and the general strike."

Ernesto Bonomini was born on 18 March 1903 at Pozzolengo in Italy. From a very young age he became interested in socialist ideas and became an active antimilitarist. He trained as a tailor, in which trade he was expert.

With the fascist repression against the workers’, socialist and anarchist movements, Ernesto was forced to emigrate to France in 1922.

The strikers confronted the shared hostility of governments, employers and union leaders alike. The text also deals with how the racism prevalent in the labour movement affected the conduct and outcome of the strike.

"THIS IS A STRIKE that has vanished from history. In August 1925, the seamen of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand walked off their ships in protest against a ten per cent wage cut. It was one of the few genuinely international strikes, directed against a powerful international cartel. One would have expected it to be widely debated. Yet, newspaper coverage apart, history has largely been silent.