Continuing our collection of historical sources and political documents from the 1910s, especially those related to World War I, I'm happy to announce that the Fair Use Repository now features the complete text of two manifestos from British labor organizations taking on the outbreak of World War I.
On August 1, 1914, the British Section of the International Socialist Bureau published the Manifesto to the British People, written by J. Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, arguing that Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of the sudden, crushing attack made by the militarist Empire of Austria upon Servia, it is certain that the workers of all countries likely to be drawn into the conflict must strain every nerve to prevent their Governments from committing them to war.
In September 1914, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress issued a Manifesto to the Trade Unionists of the Country, supporting the war, praising the Labour Party's role in the government's military enlistment campaign, urging working-class men to enlist voluntarily in order to demonstrate to the world that a free people can rise to the supreme heights of a great sacrifice without the whip of conscription,
and calling on the government to ensure that enlisted men receive at the hands of the State a reasonable and assured recompense, not so much for themselves as for those who are dependent upon them,
and to take a liberal and even a generous view of its responsibilities toward those citizens who come forward to assist in the defence of their country.
The manifestos are taken from versions reprinted in the wartime anthology, Labour in war time (1915), by George Douglas Howard Cole; I initially put them up in order to fill out the references made to each of the two manifesto's in Guy Aldred's That Economic Army, which refers to each of them in the course of Aldred's analysis of economic conscription,
and how it had turned virtually all of English politics and civil society towards support of the war machine.
posted 9:16 am by Rad Geek | no comments
I'm happy to follow up our earlier announcement with an announcement that the Fair Use Repository now features the complete text of all the articles from the November 1914 issue of Mother Earth.
Most of the issue is occupied with Anarchist responses to, and debate over, the outbreak of World War I: Kropotkin on the Present War reprints Peter Kropotkin's letter to Gustav Steffen, supporting the French government's fighting in World War I; Alexander Berkman's In Reply to Kropotkin calls Kropotkin to task and argues that Anarchists should oppose all sides in all government wars. Goldman and Berkman followed this argument with a reprint of Chapter I of Kropotkin's own Wars and Capitalism, written in 1913, in which Kropotkin had skewered the French government's motives and argued that wars were the product of imperial capitalism and that the reason for modern war is always the competition for markets and the right to exploit nations backward in industry.
In addition to the exchange over Kropotkin's letter, this issue also features That Economic Army, an article by Guy A. Aldred originally printed in the London Spur, which traces how the state and capital, during wartime, deformed the entire economy to draw not only men, but entire industries, into collaboration with the war machine, out of economic interest.
Alongside the discussion of the war, Vol. IX. No. 9 also features:
The Persecution of Margaret Sanger by Harry Breckenridge, a defense and a call for working-class solidarity with Margaret Sanger and the Woman Rebel, then facing Federal prosecution for obscenity
(for distributing articles on birth control and scientific information about sexual health).
Black Friday of 1887 by M. B.,
a slashing review of the Socialist journalist Charles Edward Russell’s discussion of Haymarket in his memoirs, and a commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs hanged 11 November 1887.
My Lecture Tour by Alexander Berkman, an announcement of Berkman's upcoming lecture tour of the Midwest, with talks on War--At Home and Abroad,
Unemployment and War,
War and Culture,
The War of the Classes,
Is Labor Justified in Using Violence?
Crime--In and Out of Prison,
and The Psychology of Crime and Prisons.
Emma Goldman Dates by Emma Goldman, an announcement of Emma Goldman's upcoming lectures in Chicago on anti-militarism, Anarchism, and a lecture series on drama , as well as announcing dates for upcoming lecture series elsewhere in the Midwest.
I'm happy to have this issue of Mother Earth available in full. More issues should be coming soon.
Read, cite, and enjoy!
posted 11:15 pm by Rad Geek | 1 comment
