Review: For Workers' Power -
The Selected Writings of Maurice
Brinton
Edited by David Goodway
Oakland: AK Press, 2004.
The British libertarian socialist group Solidarity was truly a
seminal organization. Inspired by the ideas of the French group
Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity went beyond S ou B to produce a
remarkable journal and pamphlet series that laid the ground for the
ultra-left in Britain in the 1970s and had an influence in the
working class of which many groups today can only dream. The
publication of For Workers' Power, a selection of writings by
Maurice Brinton, one of the main
writers for the group who recently passed away is long overdue and
required reading for serious revolutionaries.
Brinton had been a supporter of the Trotskyist grouping led by
Gerry Healy in the 1950s. Along with many others, Brinton left the
group, but continued to meet with the former members. As Brinton's
friend Ken Weller put it, usually when a Trotskyist group has a
split, the new organization writes a document explaining how the
group they just left has betrayed Trotskyism and how their new group
is the embodiment of orthodox tradition. Weller noted, the conclusion
they came to was the problem wasn't that Healy had betrayed
Trotskyism, but that he really was a Trotskyist.
Of all the groups they examined, the one they found most
attractive was the French group Socialisme ou Barbarie, led by
Cornelius Castoriadis. The group began to produce the Agitator in
1960, which was renamed Solidarity for Workers Power the
following year, and continued until 1977, when the magazine was
renamed Solidarity for Social Revolution.
Choosing a selection of Brinton's work was not an easy task...
Much of the value of Solidarity's material was that it was applied to
specific situations and especially its labour coverage. While this
makes for exciting contemporary reading, there is often little of
value in small industrial disputes in London in 1965 forty years
later. Brinton's editor, Dave Goodway, who also contributes a useful
biographical essay, has done well to focus on material which is still
germane today, including his writings of political organization and
theory.
From its beginnings, Solidarity was a very different organization
from the traditional left. To begin with, Brinton not only broke with
theoretical orthodoxies, he also wrote with humor and in clear and
simple language sadly lacking from much of the turgid leftist press.
This is indicated in Brinton's report on the Belgium general strike
of 1961 (included here), which details including how the strike was
defeated went beyond the usual leftist cheerleading and then
complaints of betrayal by the leadership. Brinton also examined the
role of the leftist organizations in the defeat of the strike; all in
crisp, witty prose.
In the early articles of the journal included here, Brinton was to
develop a devastating critique of the vanguard party. In
"Revolutionary Organization" he argued:
What should the activity of the revolutionary organization be?
Whilst rejecting the substitutionism of both reformism and
Bolshevism, we should also reject the propagandist approach of
organizations such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We
consider it important to bring workers information and reports of the
struggles of other workers - both past and present - reports which
emphasize the fact that workers are capable of struggling
collectively and rising to the greater heights of revolutionary
consciousness.
Needless to say, Brinton and Solidarity rejected the idea that
this consciousness should be brought to the workers by them or any
other saviors, or that it was the duty of the revolutionary
organization to act as the vanguard leadership and to rule over the
workers
In addition to a range of short pieces, For Workers' Power
contains several of Brinton's longer pieces: His eye-witness account
Paris 1968, his account of Reich's concepts of sexual repression The
Irrational in Politics, and his classic The Bolsheviks and Workers
Control. In it, using the Bolsheviks' own words, Brinton effectively
shows the role of the "vanguard of the working class" in crushing
soviet power in Russia: An account which has never been successfully
answered.
In terms of his selection of material, Goodway has also performed
a service to the reader by focusing on Brinton's earlier material
(there is nothing after 1983 even though Solidarity continued until
1992). In the later period of its existence Solidarity's contribution
diminished, partly due to its being overtaken by other currents, and
partly due to the evolution of its thought away from the class-based
analysis of its early year.
Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles, and no excuse to not
purchase this very valuable and long overdue collection.
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