Additions to MIA Jack Fitzgerald Archive
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Recent additions to this archive:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fitzgerald/index.htm
Quote:The Social Democratic Federation: Does it deserve the support of the working class?, October 1905
An Explanation, March 1913
The Imperialist Victory, January 1919
The Economics of Marx, March 1924Click the title to read the article.
Just added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
Socialism and anti-parliamentarism, January 1928
Three new added, including his speech at the Paris Commune Anniversary Meeting (which the Party used to hold in those days) in 1905 which happened to be at the time that the 1905 Russian Revolution. Fitzgerald comments that as soon as he heard that the students were involved he knew it was a “middle class” (bourgeois) revolution. The one from 1912 shows that we have consistently held the position from the start that socialism has to be a worldwide system.
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
The Commune in Paris, April 1905
Socialism must be international, February 1912
Answer to correspondents on industrial unionism, February 1914Exchange of correspondence (or, rather, polemics) with a Henry Dight, a defender of Bolshevism and of their view that Marx wanted to smash the state not capture it, which shows that we were on to their distortions from the earliest days:
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
Those Misrepresentations of Marx Turn Up Again October 1920
Mr. Dight says this is the “The Kybosh” November 1920
Dight’s Dilemma May 1922
Who Should Wear the Caps and Bells? July 1922List of book reviews that he did:
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
Review of James Connolly Labour in Irish History, June 1914
Review of Croce Historical Materialism and the Economics of Marx, August 1915
Review of William Paul The State: Its Origin and Function, February 1918
The Centenary of Marx, May 1918
Some Errors of A Syndicalist (Robert Dell), March 1920
A Gloomy Professor (Stephen Leacock), May 1920
Lenin and Kautsky on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, July 1920
A trio of “intellectuals” (Achille Loria), July 1920
Review of Rudolf Steiner,The Threefold State), December 1920
Review of Max Beer The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx, November 1921
Old Anarchy Writ New (Robert Dell), March 1922
Review of Marx The Class Struggles in France, October 1924
Review of Kautsky Foundations of Christianity, November 1925
Review of Bukharin The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, January 1928
Review of Eden and Cedar Paul translation of Capital , March 1929Yourself (and Darren) are doing a great job in documenting and cataloguing a variety of SPGB writers and thinkers.
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive.
Includes debates on “socialist industrial unionism” with the SLP and the IWW. Also one with TA Jackson, then in the ILP, in which Jackson puts arguments we still hear from Trotskyists and other reformists.
Emigration, June 1906
The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Labour Party, August 1906
Debate on Industrial Unionism, October-November 1906
The Socialist Party and Trade Unionism, February 1907
The Rout of the Railway Men, December 1907
Bounteous Bournville, October 1908
Why This Resignation? The I.I.P. and its Leaders, May 1909
Mr. Garvey’s difficulties, June 1909
Labourism versus Socialism. A Debate, December 1909
Who supplies the brains?, February 1910In Fitzgerald’s ‘The Socialist Party of Great Britain and The Socialist Labour Party’ appears:
‘The International Congress was held at Amsterdam in 1904. While these congresses have never been purely Socialist congresses (as they allow organisations, that can by no stretch of language be called Socialist, to be represented thereat), yet this remains the only regular international gathering whereat the majority of Socialist parties are represented. This of course is well known to the various national parties, and a steadily growing section are endeavouring to ensure that future congresses shall be Socialist and nothing else.’
I have seen similar intimations before, but what can this ‘a steadily growing section’ possibly refer to? The SPGB had no minimal program. What party of the Second International also had no minimal program, or what faction of what party advocated having no minimal program? Otherwise, what might ‘Socialist and nothing else’ mean?
( If I am not mistaken, the US SLP by this time had no minimal program, but De Leon held that other countries with member parties in the International contained the remnants of feudalism, and so he had no objection to these parties outside of the US advocating reforms. (Including of course the UK SLP)).
Similarly, in the January 2004 Socialist Standard (in a review of the pamphlet by the group ‘Antagonism’ which attempted a Pannekoek/Bordiga synthesis), with asterisks marking my emphasis:
‘The Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia put the clock back in the sense that **before the First World War the radical wing of the international Social Democratic movement was making progress towards positions similar to those of the Socialist Party in Britain** but, after 1917, most of those involved were side-tracked into supporting the Bolsheviks. For many this was only a temporary dalliance, but […].
Who? Luxemburg/Panekoek/? ? In what way similar? They opposed craven opportunism it’s true, but apart from that did their radicalism not consist of supporting extra-parliamentary poltical activity (mass strikes and the like), an abomination unto the SPGB?
Fitzgerald was referring to the anti-revisionist wing of international Social Democracy and by “Socialist and nothing else” he meant that non-Marxists should be excluded from future congresses like in particular the ILP in Britain (which was against invoking the class struggle and based its “socialism” on the Sermon on the Mount) and Jaurès in France who was little more than a leftwing bourgeois democrat. It was not a reference to advocating socialism “and nothing else”. Things didn’t turn out as he, writing in 1906, expected. In fact it got worse as the Labour Party, which didn’t even claim to be socialist, was admitted. That was why the SPGB decided not to be represented at future congresses, ie dropped out of the Second International.
As to the 2004 article, Luxemburg and Pannekoek would be the sort of individuals envisaged but many other, anonymous socialists. Incidentally, up to the outbreak of WW1, the mass extra-parliamentary action they envisaged was to extend or democratise the franchise ( even in Russia) and not to get socialism. I don’t know why you say that would be “an abomination” to us? We have often said that workers living in a state without political democracy should struggle for it. But how else could they do this except by extra-parliamentary mass action?
The following articles have been added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fitzgerald/index.htm
November 1911: Asked & Answered: Prices and Values.
November 1914: Birds of a feather.
March 1915: The Confusion of the “Clarion” “Economists”.
June/July 1915: Capitalist economics.
March 1918: Working Harder for the Capitalist.That completes all the articles in the Socialist Standard signed by him
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