Moments of the New

"We have followed the coherence of the self-negation process of capital from striking workplaces to occupying workplaces; from occupying workplaces to operating workplaces; and from operating workplaces to modifying workplaces.  This process must finally lead, in the case of the factory type of workplace, to the negation of the factory as a whole and to the negation of the factory as such, a process which can only go on in the context of larger changes in the deployment of society - of social objects and of objective wealth - outside the factory. The 'negation of the factory' may at first mean its physical destruction, its dismantling and reconstruction elsewhere, and perhaps producing a different or modified product.  This would be the case, for example, with factories involved in waste production, such as those of the enormous armaments industries which could not be turned to the arming of the proletariat.  It might mean the dismantling of certain factories and the dispersal of their components to various sites where new factories, of a kind that would have never been built under capitalism, are under construction by the council power, for example, as part of the de-urbanization process.  Ultimately it must mean the determinate negation of the factory as such; the supersession of the old specialized factory altogether, to be replaced by a new kind of unitary complex at the productive nucleii of the communes, that is, of the new types of settlement-pattern, neither (both) urban nor (and) rural, which are bound to emerge out of the revolutionary process, as the synthesis of city and countryside, that is, as the supersession of their historical antithesis and contradiction."

from Negation of the Negation (downloadable version available at http://home.teleport.com/~rasputin/eLibrary-v1_4.htm)

A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Workers' Councils


Paris, France: 1871

• The Commune: Paris 1871 - by P. Guillaume and M. Granger (Solidarity Pamphlet #35)
• Theses on the Paris Commune - by Debord, Kotanyi, Vaneigem (18-march-1962)
• The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State - by Mikhail Bakunin
• The Commune of Paris - by Peter Kropotkin
• The Paris Commune - edited by Stewart Edwards (October 1993)
• The Civil War in France (March-May 1871) - by Karl Marx

Russia: 1905

• Peter Kropotkin on the 1905 Revolution

Mexico: 1910-1919

Russia: 1917-1921

• The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control: 1917-1921
• October 1917: A Lost Opportunity for Socialism?
• The Workers' Opposition - by Alexandra Kollantai (London Solidarity Pamphlet #7)
  

Ukraine: 1918-1921

• Notes on the Makhnovista, Nestor Makhno, and the Russian Civil War in the Eastern Ukraine
• Manifesto of the Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (January 1, 1920)
• The Makhnovshchina & Revolution in Ukraine
• The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays - by Nestor Makhno
• History of the Makhnovist Movement - by Peter Arshinov
• The Unknown Revolution - by Voline
• The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control - by Maurice Brinton
• Freedom and Revolution: The Bolshevik Experience - published by Red & Black Revolution
• 
  

Seattle, Washington USA: 1919

• Seattle General Strike Project
• The Seattle General Strike of 1919
• Unsettling Events: Tacoma and the Seattle General Strike
• The Seattle General Strike of 1919 - by Howard Zinn
• The Industrial Workers of the World in the Seattle General Strike - by Colin M. Anderson
• 
  
• 
  

Germany: 1918-1921

• The German Revolution
• Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany

Italy: 1920

• The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920 - by Paolo Spriano (Pluto Press, 1975)
• 
  

Kronstadt: 1921

• The Complete Edition of  Isvestiia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Soldiers, and Workers of the Town of Kronstadt
• Kronstadt Isvestiia - Number 1 (March 3, 1921)
• The Kronstadt Commune of 1921 - published by The Red Menace (London, 1989)
• The Kronstadt Commune - by  Ida Mett
• The Kronstadt Revolt - by Ante Ciliga
  

England: 1926

• Theses on Mass Worker and Social Capital - by Guido Baldi (Radical America, May-June 1972)
  

Shinmin Province, Manchuria: 1929-1931

Spain: 1934-1936

• The Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action - by Eddie Conlon  (1986)
• Spain

Asturia: Miner's Revolt 1934

• The Asturian Uprising: Fifteen Days of Socialist Revolution - by Manuel Grossi (Socialist Platform, London - 2000)
• 
  

Korea: 1945

Poland: July-August,  1944

• The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler - by Zygmunt Zaremba (Socialist Platform, London - 1997; 45 pages) [An account of the 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis by a leading participant. Includes for the first time in English the political programme adopted by the Commune.]

East Germany: 1953

• When the Workers Rose Up Against Stalinism

Poland: June 1956

Hungary: October-November 1956

• Hungarian Workers' Councils in 1956 - (Columbia University Press, 1990)
• Hungary 1956 - edited by Bill Lomax   (St. Martin's Press - New York, 1976)
• Hungary 1956 - by Andy Anderson   (published by London Solidarity  and Black & Red, 1957)
• Hungary 1956 and the Political Revolution

 China

• Theses on the Chinese Revolution - by Cajo Brendel  (London Solidarity Pamphlet #46 - 1974)

France: May-June 1968

• The Beginning of an Era (Part 1 of 2) - translated by Ken Knabb
• The Beginning of an Era (Part 2 of 2) - translated by Ken Knabb
• The Mass Strike in France May-June 1968 - by  ICO  (Root & Branch Pamphlet #3)
• Student-Worker Action Committees: France May '68 - by Fredy Perlman and Roger Gregoire  (Black & Red, Detroit)
• Paris: May 1968 - by Maurice Brinton  (Solidarity, 1968)
• Enrages and Situationsts in the Occupation Movement - by Rene Vienet
• The Mass Strike in France May-June 1968 - by ICO (Root & Branch Pamphlet #3)

Czechoslavakia: "Prague Spring" 1968

• Reform  and Counter-Reform in Bureaucratic Power - Internationale Situationiste #12 (September 1969)

Poland: 1970-1971

Chile: 1971

Portugal: 1974-1975

• Portugal: The Impossible Revolution? - by Philip Mailer (w/intro by Maurice Brinton)
• Ubu Saved from Drowning: Worker Insurgency and Statist Containment in Portugal and Spain, 1974-1977
• 
  

Besacon, France:

Iraq: 1991

Denmark: April 1998

• Mass Strike in Denmark

Bolivia: 2000

Algeria: 2001