For Workers' Power: The Selected Writings

by Maurice Brinton, David Goodway

Maurice Brinton was the most influential member of the British Solidarity Group (1961–1992), which sought to inspire a mass movement infused with libertarian socialist politics. Disavowing the political orthodoxy of the times, Brinton sought to use the past as a guide, but not an anchor, in his visionary writings. Solidarity’s influence on the ’60s New Left, and today’s libertarian Global Justice Movement is a testament to their salience. Tactfully edited by David Goodway, For Workers’ Power includes articles, essays and pamphlets as well as Brinton’s classic works The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control , May ’68 and The Irrational in Politics . Maurice Brinton lives in London with his wife. Editor David Goodway is a professor of social history in Leeds.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Labor

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923, Bombay – 10 March 2005, London) was an Anglo-Greek neurologist and libertarian socialist intellectual. Under the pen-names Martin Grainger and Maurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for the British group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s. As a neurologist, he produced the accepted criteria for brainstem death, and wrote the entry on death for Encyclopædia Britannica.[1]

1. Goodaway, David; Lewis, Paul (24 March 2005). "Obituary: Christopher Pallis (Maurice Brinton): An irreverent critic of the Bolshevik revolution". The Guardian. London, England: Guardian Media Group.

Reviews

[Daithi Coombes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a must read for anybody that's stuck between communist, socialist and anarchist parties.

Clear, very easy language, passionate, writings and letters from a revolutionary that gave the Trotsky movement in England the middle finger and moves to unite scientific socialism with anarchism. He repeatedly claims he is not an anarchist but a libertarian socialist. I can't see the difference between anarchism and libertarian socialism.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most coherent arguments for libertarian socialism and insightful critiques I've yet come across. Brinton was a strong advocate for workers self-management as opposed to a more nebulous 'workers control.' Includes his classic 'Bolsheviks and Workers Control, 1917-1921' which I believe should be read by everyone on the left.

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of essays on various themes of interest to 1960s and 1970s far-left, of which eyewitness reports (from Belgian general strike, from revolutionary Portugal, and from '68 Paris) are perhaps the best part. Texts on the history of the 1917 Russian revolution, despite the handicap of limited if any grasp of Russian, are quite fact-based interpretations of then-state-of-the-art research.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

See http://libcom.org/tags/maurice-brinton