Between the wars, the response of the British Labour Party and Trades Union Congress to the problem of the unemployed was extremely limited. Committed to gradualist philosophies, the leaders of the labour movement were unwilling to attempt genuine socialist remedies in office, and, in opposition, to provide a militant leadership for the protest movement. The National Unemployed Workers' Movement, begun in 1921 and not finally dissolved until after the outbreak of the Second World War, was the only body which attempted to mobilise unemployed discontent. After 1926, the Labour Party Executive and the General Council of the TUC consistently refused to have any contact with this organisation on the grounds that, like the National Minority Movement and the later Rank-and-File Movement, the NUWM was merely a subsidiary of the British Communist Party. This article is an attempt to show that by a process of induction the Labour leaders branded the unemployed movement as a whole on the basis of the known Communist allegiance of a number of its leaders, and to demonstrate that they allowed themselves to become so sidetracked by the issue of whether or not the NUWM was a Communist front that their own efforts on behalf of the unemployed suffered in consequence.

Über den Beitrag des Marxismus zur Erforschung der Geschichte ist bereits so viel geschrieben, daß die Literatur zu diesem Thema kaurn noch überschaubar ist; auf den Beitrag der Geschichtswissenschaft zur Erforschung des Marxismus, d.h. primär der Ansichten von Marx, wird kaum je eingegangen — was nicht so erstaunlich scheint. Daß der Marxismus nicht nur eine Theorie der Geschichte, sondern ebenso selbst ein historisches Phänomen ist; daß die Geschichtswissenschaft den Sinn der Marxschen Ansichten durch die Erforschung der Genese zu erhellen sucht; daß sie sich dabei nicht nur, aber in erster Linie auf Marx' eigene — sei es von ihm publizierte, sei es hinterlassene — Texte stützt; daß sie, soweit möglich, von den originalen Texten, d.h. dem von Marx selbst beschriebenen Papier — um diesen handfest-stofflichen Aspekt der originalen Texte einmal zu betonen — auszugehen hat: all das bedarf kaum der Erwähnung. Erwahnung. Dasselbe gilt wohl hinsichtlich der Regeln, gemäß denen bei der Auswertung der Texte vorzugehen ist. Die Geschichtswissenschaft hat die betreffenden Verfahren vor Marx, unabhängig von ihm ausgebildet; sie bedient sich ihrer generell. Daß es jedoch, was die Erforschung des Marxismus angeht, dennoch — hundert Jahre nach dem Tod von Marx — nicht überflüssig ist, besonders auf sie hinzuweisen, zeigt der Fall der Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844 (fortan: Manuskripte), die bekanntlich in der Diskussion der letzten fünfzig Jahre eine nicht geringe Rolle gespielt haben.

Der im folgenden erstmals vollständig publizierte Kommentar Marxens dokumentiert eine Wende in seiner Beurteilung der Arbeitswerttheorie Adam Smiths. Diese ist ihm seit dem Beginn seiner Beschäftigung mit der politischen Ökonomie präsent und provoziert ihn zu wiederholten Selbstverständigungen. Dabei steht das Verhältnis zwischen Smith und Ricardo im Mittelpunkt. Nach der prinzipiellen Übernahme der Arbeitswerttheorie läßt sich Marx zunächst von der Argumentation Ricardos gegen Smith leiten. Erst im vorliegenden Smithkommentar lÖst er sich von dieser Beurteilung und versucht, eine zentrale Problemstellung Smiths, die von Ricardo ausgeblendet wird, immanent nachzuvollziehen und begrifflich weiterzuentwickeln. Dies wird in das Manuskript von 1861–63 übernommen und findet schließhich im Kapital von 1867 seinen systematischen Ort in der Abhandlung des „Lohnfetischismus”.

Little is known about the role played by the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks in the so-called Far Eastern Republic, an independent state, at least in name, in Eastern Siberia during the early ̓twenties. Based mainly on material in the archive of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, this note wants to shed some light on the events in the area at the time. Unfortunately the author did not have access to a sufficient amount of material from Menshevik archives to detail the Menshevik contribution to the Far Eastern Republic, but we shall see how the Bolsheviks adopted from the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks the idea to form this kind of state, and how they subsequently gained a hold upon the Far Eastern Republic.

For nearly one hundred years miners and nationalisation have been synonymous. The miners supported a nationalisation resolution at the 1892 Trades Union Congress, and in 1893 Keir Hardie presented a brief bill to the House of Commons. This abortive excercise was repeated in 1907 and 1913. The 1914–18 war marks the demise of that form of nationalisation which sought to place the mines under a Government Department. The pre-1914 industrial unrest and the experience of the war radicalised the miners' conception of nationalisation. The ideas of The Miners' Next Step, of the debates within the Miners' Federation of Great Britain after 1906 and of Guild Socialism permeated official MFGB thinking on nationalisation. By 1919 and the Sankey Commission the MFGB was committed to a model of nationalisation which placed considerable emphasis upon workers' control. This model had two aims: first, to emancipate the coal industry from the wasteful exploitation of the coal-owners; and second, to emancipate the miner as a worker from his bondage. The present paper seeks to answer the question: why was this model of nationalisation abandoned by the MFGB in favour of the technocratic model of nationalisation formulated by Herbert Morrison?

Thomas T. Meadows, an experienced British diplomat in China during the nineteenth century and author of The Chinese and Their Rebellions, wrote: “Of all nations that have attained a certain degree of civilization, the Chinese are the least revolutionary and the most rebellious.” Meadows had ample opportunity to make such a remark since he was witness to some of China's fiercest rebellions, those committed by the Taipings, the Nien and Moslem groups during the time of his tour. These revolts, although mass-based and widespread, were put down with particular ferocity by the Qing monarchy. Meadows's remark directs attention to the delicate question of when does a rebellion become a revolution? In the case of these movements, they did not become revolutions because there was no transformation either in the structure of Chinese society or in the system of political power. These incidents may have been “revolutionary situations”, but they did not have “revolutionary outcomes”.

Die fortschreitende Publikation der neuen MEGA gibt der Marx-Engels-Forschung starke Anregungen. Die Bände der Zweiten Abteilung ermöglichen es uns, das Hauptwerk von Marx eingehender zu untersuchen und tiefer zu verstehen. Zugleich wird in vielen interessanten Abhandlungen, die von den Bearbeitern veröffentlicht werden, eine Reihe wichtiger Fragen sowohl der Entstehungsgeschichte als auch des theoretischen Gehalts des Kapital geklärt, wodurch unser Wissen darüber ebenfalls erweitert wird.

Although much has been written about the history of the German Communist Party, little is known about who actually belonged to it or supported it. Yet knowledge of the social composition of German Communism is an important, in many ways crucial, factor in assessing the role of the KPD in the development of the German workers' movement during the Weimar Republic. Aside from a census of party members conducted by the national leadership in 1927, and voting returns in elections, there are no national sources on which to base an analysis of the social structure of the Communist movement in Germany. Local and regional sources, though sporadically preserved and until now little exploited, offer an alternative way to determine the social bases of German Communism. This article contributes to the history of the KPD by attempting to analyze one source about support for German Communism in a major industrial city. In October 1923 the KPD staged an insurrection in Hamburg, resulting in the arrest and conviction of over 800 persons. A social analysis of these known insurrectionaries can indicate some of the sources of support for the KPD and suggest some of the ways in which the KPD fit into the history of the German working class and workers' movement.

Ende 1910 machte man sich in Wien Gedanken darüber, wie sich die Sozialdemokratie auf den dreißigsten Todestag von Karl Marx vorbereiten solle. Gustav Eckstein berichtete Karl Kautsky am 27. Dezember:

Für Freitag Abend bin ich zu einer „Marxisten-Konferenz” geladen, bei der die Situation besprochen werden soll, die sich aus der Freigabe von Marx' Schriften ergeben wird. Braun teilte mir mit, daß geplant sei, entweder eine internationale Aktion oder wenigstens eine der deutschen Marxisten zur Neuherausgabe von Marx' Schriften einzuleiten: und da Hilferding und ich jetzt gerade hier sind, soll Freitag eine Konferenz darüber stattfinden, an der Goldendach, Renner, Max Adler, Braun, Bauer, Hilferding u. ich teilnehmen sollen. Natürlich erwähnte ich nichts von Dietz' Plan und werde davon auch ohne Ihre Einwilligung nichts erwähnen.

Few problems in modern Russian history are more complex or more bewildering than that of political Masonry (politicheskoe masonstvo) and its contribution to early-twentieth-century oppositional politics. A decade and a half ago Nathan Smith observed that “Available firsthand evidence about the [political Masonic] movement […] is incredibly limited and raises as many questions as it answers.” That observation is still valid as the origins, structure, composition and activities of the conspiratorial political Masonic organization remain among the best-kept secrets of Russia's past. Indeed, political Masonry was first mentioned in the historiography on the February Revolution only in the early 1930's. Then, for nearly three decades, scholars simply ignored the problem altogether. This was partially due to a paucity of sources; but equally important was the fact that the subject conjured up images of that pernicious Jewish-Masonicconspiracy theory so popular among right-wing émigré circles. During the 1960's historians once again turned their attention to political Masonry, although infrequently and usually only in passing. Since that time a number of treatments have appeared, yet none takes account of all the available evidence. Moreover, many historians continue to reject out of hand all efforts to deal with political Masonry, dismissing them as attempts to perpetuate the Jewish-Masonic-conspiracy myth, while other scholars reject the suggestion that the political Masonic organization played a crucial role in the overthrow of the Russian Monarchy and the establishment of the Provisional Government in 1917.