Russell Blackwell

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Russell Blackwell
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Known forAnarchist and Trotskyist activism

Russell Blackwell was an American anarchist and former communist.

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Life

Russell Blackwell was a communist in the 1920s and a Trotskyist in the 1930s. [1] He left the United States to establish a Communist organization for children, the Pioneers, in Mexico, where he adopted the pseudonym Rosario Negrete. Working with Manuel Rodriguez, Blackwell founded the Mexico's first Trotskyist organization, Oposición Comunista de Izquierda ("Communist Left Opposition", or OCI) in 1933. Teachers Luciano Galicia and Octavio Fernandez withdrew from the Communist Party to join the group in 1934. The organization became the Liga Comunista Internacionalista in late 1934 and published Nueva Internacional, which published works by Trotsky and fundraised for artists. [2]

In the United States, following fallout in the Trotskyist Workers Party, a faction known as Oehler-Stamm broke off to found the Revolutionary Workers League. [3] Blackwell was a major personality in the League. The group sent Blackwell to become a POUM combatant at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. [4] In Spain, he converted to anarchism and was a member of the Friends of Durruti Group. Upon his return, he retreated into his family and cartography career in the 1940s. In 1954, he sought to return to activism with fellow anarchists and friends Sam and Esther Dolgoff with the founding of the Libertarian League. [5]

Related Research Articles

Anarchist communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trotskyism</span> Variety of Marxism developed by Leon Trotsky

Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working-class self-emancipation and council democracy. Trotsky also adhered to scientific socialism and viewed this as a conscious expression of historical processes. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Shachtmanism is the form of Marxism associated with Max Shachtman (1904–1972). It has two major components: a bureaucratic collectivist analysis of the Soviet Union and a third camp approach to world politics. Shachtmanites believe that the Stalinist rulers of proclaimed socialist countries are a new ruling class distinct from the workers and reject Trotsky's description of Stalinist Russia as a "degenerated workers' state".

Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth International Posadist</span> Trotskyist faction founded 1962 by J. Posadas

The Fourth International Posadist is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was founded in 1962 by J. Posadas, who had been the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International in the 1950s, and of the Fourth International's section in Argentina. Between their split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1962 and Posadas' death in 1981, Posadists developed a strain of communism that included several fringe ideas, which brought them into conflict with more mainstream left-wing groups.

Sam Dolgoff was an anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist from Russia who grew up, lived and was active in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grandizo Munis</span>

Grandizo Munis was a Spanish Trotskyist politician. He is considered to have become a left communist following his break with the Fourth International.

The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989.

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In the United States, anarchism began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.

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Anarchism in Russia developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.

Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and more thoroughly by Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of anarcho-collectivism based on the works of Mikhail Bakunin and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor movement, and by extension the Cuban labor movement, was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism.

The Friends of Durruti Group was a Spanish anarchist group commonly known for its participation in the May Days. Named after Buenaventura Durruti, it was founded on 15 March 1937 by Jaume Balius i Mir and Félix Martínez, who had become disillusioned with the policies of the CNT-FAI's leadership. During the May Days in Barcelona, they actively agitated among the anti-government forces, advocating for the formation of a "revolutionary junta", in close collaboration with Spanish Trotskyists. Following the suppression of the uprising, the group began published the newspaper El Amigo del Pueblo, in which they denounced the CNT-FAI for "collaborationism", resulting in their expulsion from the organisation. Their 1938 pamphlet Towards a Fresh revolution, which reaffirmed their proposals for a revolutionary junta, became an influential text within the anarchist current of platformism. But the group ultimately failed to make a broader impact within the Spanish movement and collapsed by the end of the war.

Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early twentieth century, as the Vietnameses started to fight against their colonial government along with the puppet feudal dynasty for either independence or higher autonomy. Some famous radical figures such as Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh became exposed to strands of anarchism in Japan, China and France. Anarchism reached its apex in Vietnam during the 1920s, but it soon began to lose its influence with the introduction of Marxism-Leninism and the beginning of the Vietnamese communist movement. In recent years, Anarchism in Vietnam has attracted new adherents.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Far-left politics in the United Kingdom</span>

Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.

Anarchism in Hong Kong emerged as part of the Chinese anarchist movement, when many anarchists sought refuge from the Qing Empire in the territory. It grew alongside the Chinese revolutionary movement, before the territory again became a safe haven for anarchists, following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. Since then anarchists have formed a part of the Hong Kong opposition movement, first to British colonial rule and then to the rising authoritarianism of the Government of Hong Kong.

The Libertarian Book Club and Libertarian League were two postwar anarchist groups in New York City associated with Sam and Esther Dolgoff.

The Anarchist Workers Association (AWA) was one of a number of class-struggle anarchist organisations that existed prior to the resurgence of anarchism in the United Kingdom during the miners' strike of 1984.

References

  1. Cornell 2016, p. 216.
  2. Alexander 1991, p. 607.
  3. Alexander 1991, p. 781.
  4. Alexander 1991, p. 782.
  5. Cornell 2016, pp. 215–216.

Bibliography

Further reading