On 24 January 1936 Rose Karsner of New York City received a cablegram from Norway: “ Personally in Favour of Entry–leo.” The sender of the cablegram was the exiled Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, and the recipient was the wife of the most important “Trotskyist” leader in the United States, James Cannon. The Russian revolutionary thus gave his blessing to a new manoeuvre by which the American Trotskyists were to enter the Socialist Party of America for certain well-defined objectives.

To the French Left in May 1936, the electoral triumph of the Front Populaire – a coalition of the Communist, Socialist, and Radical Parties – signified nothing if not the victory of legal republicanism over the criminal machinations of domestic fascism. Consequently, embarrassment – not to mention confusion – was widespread, when the proletariat chose to greet this victory with a wave of sit-down strikes that was at once massive, spontaneous, joyful, and utterly illegal. It is true that the roots of the strikers' grievances went much further back than the political campaign of recent months. Five years of lowered wages, poorer working conditions, and the indifference of many employers to the lot of their men were behind the workers' monumental audacity. Nevertheless, the coincidence of the strikes with Leon Blum's accession to office was far from accidental.

To this day, the mere mention of Léon Blum and the Front populaire in French rightist circles can instantly transform a quiet conversation into a fine display of Gallic political passion. Startling at first, such violent reactions, so many years after the fact, become more intelligible when viewed in proper perspective. For, to the many Frenchmen who remain convinced that they lived under communism from June, 1936, to June, 1937, l'expérience Blum was indeed a “Nightmare in Red”.

Most histories of the nineteenth-century labour movement give some account of George Potter's conflict with the men the Webbs called the Junta; and it is generally recognised that one main bone of contention was control of the Bee-Hive newspaper. But there has been little real analysis of this quarrel, and even less of the eventual reconciliation. It is true that some of the old generalisations are no longer accepted. Nowadays, most labour historians agree that the Webbs, writing under Applegarth's influence, dismissed Potter too contemptuously. There is also some recognition of the fact that Raymond Postgate's Builders' History, although more accurate on Potter's early position in the labour movement, gives a completely false impression of his later career and the changes that took place in the Bee-Hive. But through it all, Potter has remained a rather shadowy figure, and in published works the Bee-Hive's own history has been surprisingly neglected. Even a recent work in which the author avowedly sets out to correct the record on Potter – B. C. Roberts's The Trades Union Congress, 1868–1921 – is in many ways unsatisfactory. Roberts does make an attempt to analyse the conflict, and on the whole he sums up Potter's aims and achievements more accurately than either the Webbs or Postgate did. But in trying to give Potter due credit for his part in founding the TUC, Roberts has over-estimated his contribution, and minimised his weaknesses. Above all, he has paid too little attention to the Bee-Hive itself. As a result, the consequences of the way in which the paper was founded and conducted, and the relationship between Potter's other activities and the Bee-Hive's successive changes of ownership, editorship and policy, are either disregarded or mistakenly interpreted. Potter's career in the labour movement, and the development of the Bee-Hive, were completely interwoven, and neither can be fully assessed without the other.

In the late eighteen-seventies, the German Social Democratic Party, while still healing the wounds of old battles between Lassalleans and Eisenachers, was confronted by foes who delivered attacks on two levels. On the one level, Bismarck and his supporters fought energetically to annihilate the party with the passage of the Socialist Law (October 21, 1878). After some initial faltering steps, the Social Democrats found a firm footing and struggled successfully to preserve their political existence. The movement was preserved, even though the party organization, its affiliates and its newspapers were suppressed. On another level, the Social Democrats faced an ideological challenge. Their political suppression broadly paralleled the emergence of a conservative socialism which flourished for a short time in a variety of forms. Whatever clothing it wore, conservative socialism aimed to undermine the growing appeal of Social Democracy to the working-men of Germany. A theory of State Socialism was the most attractive garment designed by conservative social thought. The response of the Social Democratic Party to the various facets of this conservative socialism is a significant chapter in the history of the German socialist movement.

It is, perhaps, all too easy for the student of German political history to adopt the device of speaking of events in the capital city as if they could be taken to represent developments occurring on a national scale. But it is far less accurate to use Berlin in this way than it is to use, for example, Paris or London. For one must keep in mind that the federal structure of Germany was by no means a mere legal fiction. Local political issues and the local organizations of the national parties retained considerable importance throughout the Weimar period. Indeed, one could well argue that in a number of instances, especially in the early years of the Republic, local political struggles were decisive for the formation of national policies.

The American revolution, with its accompanying changes in the economic, social and political life of the thirteen colonies, failed to alter the Negroes' “outsider status”. In this article the struggle for political rights will be considered as a factor in changing that “outsider status.” It seems justifiable to single out for special treatment a period of less known political action aimed at improving – or sometimes simply defending – the Negro's status as a citizen.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries militant and class-conscious European and American workers have generally supported democratic and socialist movements and parties. Workers attracted by antidemocratic and reactionary organizations and regimes have usually come from the dregs of their class, from Marx's famous Lumpenproletariat (true, the leadership has often included disappointed ex-Marxists). At times, however, this generalization must be qualified. Today, for example, the trade unions that favor Peron in Argentina include the kind of activist worker usually to be found in Social Democratic and Marxist movements. During the final decade of the Second Empire a somewhat similar attitude towards an anti-democratic regime emerged among some French workers. In the 1860's a significant minority of workers, often better educated than the average and with a long record of service to the working class, urged support of the Second Empire and often became devoted followers of Napoleon III. This article examines the motives and the activities of such Bonapartist inclined workers.

Seit der vollständigen Veröffentlichung der Marxschen Frühschriften ist es gesichertes Ergebnis der Forschung, daΒ der philosophische Ansatz des jungen Marx fundamental von dem verschieden ist, was der späte Engels im weltanschaulichen System des “Anti-DÜhring” (1877/78) als Marxismus formuliert hat. Iring Fetscher hat diesen Gegensatz vorläufig abschlieΒend dargelegt. Chronologisch differenziert wurde dieses Bild durch Hermann Bollnow, der gezeigt hat, daΒ sich Engels, der bei der “Deutschen Ideologic” (1845) zur völligen Identität der Auffassung mit Marx gelangt war, bereits in seinen “Grundsätzen des Kommunismus” (1847) in Richtung auf den “Anti-Dühring” von Marx entfernt hat – wenn auch erst in einem MaΒe, daΒ nur die feinsten interpretatorischen Mittel dem auf die Spur kommen können. Alfred Schmidt hat dann nachgewiesen, daβ der Kritik der politischen ökonomie des mittleren und späten Marx ein nicht-ontologischer Materialismus zugrundeliegt, während Engels' “Naturdialektik” zwar um die Gefahr der Ontologie weiΒ, jedoch nur unzureichend gegen sie gesichert ist und in den entscheidenden Aussagen in einen metaphysischen Materialismus abgleitet. Die DifFerenz zwischen Marx und Engels ist also bisher in den prinzipiell-philosophischen Fragen untersucht worden. Wir wollen an Hand der Auseinandersetzung, die Marx und Engels mit Darwin geführt haben, die DifFerenz auf einem anderen Felde darstellen und dabei zu zeigen versuchen, wie sich die unterschiedlichen philosophischen Ansätze auf ein Randproblem – und um das handelt es sich hier natürlich – ausgewirkt haben. Die bisherige Literatur über die Beziehung von Marx und Engels zu Darwin, auch in anderer Hinsicht ungenügend, ist nicht bis zu dem Punkt vorgedrungen, an dem eine Differenz zwischen Marx und Engels sichtbar wird.

Seit einigen Jahren hat eine grössere Anzahl von Forschern der Geschichte des Bundes der Kommunisten viel Aufmerksamkeit zugewandt. Ihrer Arbeit ist eine ganze Reihe beachtlicher Spezialstudien zu verdanken.1 Das gröksste Verdienst dieser Publikationen ist es, dass in ihnen ausserordentlich reichhaltiges Material über die polizeiliche Verfolgung des Bundes zusammengetragen wurde, und zwar vor allem aus dem Deutschen Zentralarchiv II, Merseburg, dem Brandenburgischen Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam und dem Sächsischen Landeshauptarchiv, Dresden. Wir erhielten so eine wohl erschöpfende Darstellung des Kesseltreibens gegen den Bund der Kommunisten, das auf direkten Wunsch des an Verfolgungswahn leidenden Friedrich Wilhelm IV. veranstaltet wurde und bei dem die deutschen Regierungen und Polizeibehörden einträchtig zusammen-arbeiteten. Der Verlauf des Kölner Kommunistenprozesses von 1852 wurde durch die Wiedergabe zeitgenössischer Presseberichte im Detail vergegenwärtigt. Mit den Winkelzügen, Provokationen und Fälschungen der Polizei sind wir vertraut, und auch unsere Kenntnis der Hintergründe dieser Verfolgungsaktion wurde durch die Mitteilung amtlicher Schriftstücke wesentlich erweitert.

Trade unionism has always involved the settlement of industrial disputes by negotiations between workers' representatives and employers. On occasions in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries demands made by workers or employers were granted without question by the other side; at other times the demands were rejected out of hand and this was acquiesced in by the other side. In between these extremes lay a number of possible outcomes. Demands were sometimes conceded after strikes or lockouts or they were moderated and then accepted. The precise outcome depended upon the state of the labour market, and hence the degree of labour organization, and the cost position of the employers. These factors not only varied over time but differed in their intensity between industries and firms at any one point of time. The extreme situations occurred at high and low levels of employment. In the competition for labour, which a high level of employment implies, employers readily gave way to collective demands but as commodity markets deteriorated and the volume of production declined, they at first resisted claims which would have increased labour costs and then deliberately set out to cut wages, lengthen hours and intensify work. Workers commonly resisted initial attempts to reduce labour costs so that a spate of strikes and lockouts ensued. At the onset of the depression in 1819 and at the first suggestion of wage reductions the Lancashire miners, the North Staffordshire potters and the Nottingham framework knitters all responded by striking. The Glasgow cotton spinners resisted wage cuts in 1837 as did the London building workers and miners and textile workers in the midlands and north in 1841 and the typographical workers in 1846. Frequently, however, these disputes resulted in compromise settlements which were superseded by other compromises as trade conditions got worse.

La lettre de Pierre Kropotkine à Max Nettlau, l'historien distingué de l'anarchisme, que nous publions ici fut écrite dans la première partie de l'année 1902. Elle traite surtout de l'individualisme et ainsi jette de nouvelles lumières non seulement sur les idées politiques de Kropotkine mais aussi sur les idées morales qu'il développa en grande partie dans La Morale anarchiste, L'Entr'aide, L'Ethique et Spravedlivost' i nravstvennost' [Justice et moralité]. Parlant de l'individualisme et critiquant l'étroitesse de l'individualisme bourgeois (qu'il met en contraste avec son propre conception d'individuation), Kropotkine touche inévitablement d'autres problèmes – révolution, liberté, syndicalisme – qui intéressent non seulement ceux qui étudient ses idées mais aussi tous ceux qui s'occupent de questions sociales.

A letter from Dmitrii Blagoev, Bulgarian Social Democrat and later leader of the Communist Party of Bulgaria, has been preserved in the archive of A. N. Potresov at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. In reply to an inquiry fromD. Kol'tsov, who was preparing a Russian edition of Alphonse Thun's well-known history of the Russian revolutionary movement, Blagoev wrote twelve pages describing his activity in 1883–85 as a member of the first significant Social Democratic circle in Russia. Kol'tsov published extracts from the letter in his edition of Thun, including the Social Democratic program which Blagoev had published in Bulgaria subsequent to his expulsion from Russia in 1885. Kol'tsov's pen, however, struck out some of the more interesting biographical passages, and corrected Blagoev's good, if somewhat erratic Russian. It is particularly interesting to note Blagoev's references to the intellectual bases for a socialist Weltanschauung in the middle 1880's: Lassalle, Lavrov and Chernyshevskii appear beside Marx in the posts of honor. No less interesting is the question which Blagoev raised in this letter – whether the lack of clarity of Socialist views in 1885 was connected in any way with the rise of Economism among workers and socialist intellectuals in the Russian capital during the closing years of the last century. Literature on the Blagoev circle is not lacking, but there is a shortage of sound studies on the relationships between Marxism and indigenous Russian political philosophies between 1880 and 1895.