The Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain came into existence as the result of the “impossibilist revolt” of 1900–1904. The “revolt” was a movement of a few hundred socialists within the Social Democratic Federation, itself a social revolutionary party with a membership of only a few thousands. The absence of widespread support for any of these revolutionary movements in a country whose political tradition has remained predominantly constitutional accounts for the fact that the crisis inside the S.D.F., and with it the origins of the S.L.P. and the S.P.G.B. themselves have been consigned to obscurity in the history of British Socialism.

The Polish Peasant Party celebrated its sixtieth anniversary last year. Founded in July 1895 in the provincial town of Lwow, its influence was at first confined to the parts of Poland then under Austrian rule. From modest beginnings, however, it eventually came to play a vital role in Polish politics. The important part taken by the peasant in Polish cultural life over the last half century has been largely the achievement of the political peasant movement. It was to give the reborn Polish state one of its greatest political leaders, Wincenty Witos, who three times held the office of Prime Minister between the two wars; and Witos's successor as leader of the Peasant Party was Mr Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Prime Minister of the war-time Polish Government-in-Exile during some of the most crucial years in Polish history. Inflexibly opposed to the semi-authoritarian regime which ruled Poland during the 'thirties, the party likewise opposed the imposition of Communism on the country after the last war.

If there is any single series of events in American labor history which may be characterized as of momentous import, it is the unionization of steel. After a crushing defeat by the United States Steel Corporation in 1901, the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, A.F. of L., had eked out a precarious and meager existence. Unsuccessful organizing campaigns in 1919–20 and in 1933 left the Amalga-mated the mere shell of an organization. Average membership in 1935 was only 9,869; in that year, 84 local lodges had been disbanded, and only four new ones established. Not a single national organizer was in the field. Against this unpromising background the great drama that was to convert the citadel of antiunionism in the United States into a highly organized industry unfolded swiftly with the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization in the closing days of the year 1935.

The socialism of Charles Fourier (1772–1837) though primarily a French movement succeeded in exerting a not insignificant influence in early nineteenth century Britain. At first it did little more than modify the views of native pioneer socialists who imported a sprinkling of Fourierist ideas into their own writings – usually greatly modified and without acknowledgement of their origin. Gradually, however, Fourierism made more wholehearted converts and by the eighteen forties a group of enthusiastic disciples in London had succeeded in creating an embryonic movement, with mass meetings and a weekly journal. Though the movement died out after about a decade of active propaganda and even if it never achieved anything like the success it obtained in the United States (where no less than twenty-seven Fourierist communities were attempted), English Fourierism produced a fairly extensive literature and undoubtedly exerted an important influence on the general pattern of English socialist thought, having in this respect a probably more significant career than the more spectacular movement of the Saint Simonians.

Un registre de copies de télégrammes des archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères français jette des lueurs vives, par les textes qu'il contient, sur les conditions dans lesquelles furent discutées par Jules Favre et Bismarck les clauses du traité de Francfort. Il s'y révèle les hésitations des deux partenaires, l'un à recourir à la force prussienne pour avoir raison de la Commune, l'autre à tirer parti de la conjoncture défavorable pour la cause allemande. Les textes gravitent d'abord autour du sort du fort d'Issy, occupé par la Commune et dont la position commandait l'avenir du second siège de Paris, puis ils évoluent à propos de la question des prisonniers français en Allemagne, dont la réincorporation dans l'armée régulière devait faciliter la répression de l'insurrection algérienne et grossir les effectifs d'une masse de combattants forcément hostiles aux gardes nationaux dont la résistance retardait leur libération définitive. Sans la sommation du général prussien de Fabrice, sans le recours aux prisonniers, le sort de la capitale n'eût sans doute pas été différent, il eût été vraisemblablement prolongé.

Soit qu'on l'en blâme, soit qu'on l'en loue, on rapporte souvent au Marxisme la paternité de l'idée des oppositions de classes dans la société industrielle. Nous voudrions montrer ici qu'il y a là une vue excessivement schématique et que, s'il est vrai que c'est le Marxisme qui a donné à cette idée sa portée sociale, sa portée de propagande surtout, la notion des “antagonismes” immanents à la société contemporaine s'est formée bien avant les premiers manifestes du Marxisme. Nous utiliserons pour cela la littérature sociale française en prenant pour point de départ les oeuvres de Saint-Simon et en nous bornant à suivre l'évolution de cette idée dans la lignée de quelques auteurs qui se rattachent à son influence, jusqu'en 1848.

On pourrait résumer la situation des études en matière d'histoire sociale en Amérique Latine en disant que, s'il existe des travaux de valeur isolés, elles se trouvent généralement à la première étape de leur développement.

Während die Literatur über den Marxismus unübersehbar geworden ist, wurde der Erforschung von Marx' Persönlichkeit und Lebensgang nicht die erforderliche Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet, und zudem ist der grösste Teil der biographischen Literatur unkritisch. Das ist um so auffallender, als die Kenntnis der Marx-Biographie unerlässlich für das Verständnis des Marxismus ist; E. H. Carr hat darauf nachdrücklich hingewiesen. Es ist nun kein Geheimnis, dass Marx' Biographie grosse Lücken aufweist; über wichtige Ereignisse und ganze Abschnitte seines Lebens sind wir ungenügend unterrichtet. Selbst der Briefwechsel mit Engels, die Hauptquelle der Biographie, ist ein Torso; man darf annehmen, dass einige hundert Briefe fehlen. Nicht nur quantitativ ist das ein entsetzlicher Verlust; zweifellos sind sehr viele wichtige Briefe vernichtet worden. Engels selbst gab Marx einmal den Rat, bestimmte Briefe zu vernichten, was Marx jedoch bei der Gelegenheit nicht tat.

Für die Kenntnis des Menschen Marx fehlen uns die wichtigsten Unterlagen. Wie war sein Verhältnis zur Familie, zur Mutter, zur Frau, zu Engels? Welche Motive und Einflüsse bestimmten die Wandlung seiner Beziehungen zu politischen Freunden und Gegnern? Rjazanov erinnert sich, Laura Lafargue einmal sein Bedauern darüber ausgesprochen zu haben, dass „Marx uns so wenig ‘Subjektives’, rein Persönliches hinterlassen” habe; sie habe ihm darauf die „Bekenntnisse” gezeigt, mehr nicht. Gerade viel intimes Material ist verloren.

The activity of the Communist League (Kommunisten-Bund), 1847–1852, and of its immediate predecessors – the League of the Just (Bund der Gerechten), 1838–1847, and the Communist Correspondence Committee (Kommunist. Korrespondenz Kommittee), 1846–1847 – was undoubtedly one of the most interesting stages in the large process of the formation of the international labor movement in its initial period. The history of these organizations is important from many points of view: it is important for the understanding both of the true roots of this movement, and of its search for organizational forms; and particularly for the light it throws upon the history of its efforts to develop a program and tactics. This is why research has so often turned its attention to this subject. And yet, in terms of completeness and scientific documentation, there is as yet no study providing a satisfactory survey of the life and activities of these organizations.

Aus dem Nachlass des am 16. März 1953 verstorbenen Historikers Paul Frölich veröffentlichen wir die nachfolgende Studie zu seinem unvollendet gebliebenen Werk: „Demokratie und Diktatur in der Französischen Revolution”.

Here begins a presentation of the evidence for the complexity of the great pre-Greek civilization, focused in Crete and bearing, from the dynasty of the Priest-King called Minos or the Minos, the name of Minoan. This Aegean civilization gave many gifts to the coming Greeks – to those who, using Minoan script to write proto-Greek, as Ventris and Chadwick have shown, established the Homeric civilization of Mycenae, and to those who, surviving the onslaught of the Dorian Greeks, finally established the comprehensive civilization of classical times. In this classical civilization even the initially destructive Dorians played a constructive part, but it was in the little land most influenced by the Minoan heritage, Attica, that Greece most characteristically became the Greece still transmitting to the rest of the world the remoter effects, at least, of the great epoch of the Priest-King. What will here be recounted is only a prelude, limited to the days before the Palace of the Minos was given to the flames, and may later be followed by themes developing the events of the Greek world proper; nevertheless, even a prelude may have a profound bearing on the coming symphony.

On the 27th May 1797 the High Court at Vendôme sentenced Babeuf to death and Buonarroti, then 36 years old, to deportation, but this being postponed there followed a long life of imprisonment and exile. Buonarroti led a mysterious life, and our knowledge about certain phases of his life and activities since Vendôme is incomplete. Buonarroti has, of course, always been known as one of the important actors of the conspiracy connected with the name of Babeuf, and as the author of a book, dealing with this conspiracy. This rare and famous book, published in 1828, was mainly regarded as the historical account of an eye-witness and participant of a post-thermidorian episode of the French Revolution. The book, however, was also a landmark in the historiography of the French Revolution, and did much for the revaluation and the rehabilitation of Robespierre and the revival of the Jacobin tradition under the Monarchy of July. By exposing the social implications of the Terror, and by a detailed account of the organisation and the methods and the aims of the conspiracy of 1796, the book became a textbook for the communist movement in the 1830's and fourties in France, and the fundamental source for its ideology. In fact, with the “Conspiration” started the Jacobin trend in European socialism.