Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Photographs
- Chapter One The Early Years in Sheffield, 1888–1917
- Chapter Two The Shop Stewards' Movement, 1917–1919
- Chapter Three Towards Bolshevism, 1919–1920
- Chapter Four The Communist Party and the Labour Movement, 1920–1926
- Chapter Five The Comintern and Stalinism, 1926–1928
- Chapter Six The ‘New Line’, 1928–1932
- Chapter Seven Towards Left Reformism, 1932–1936
- Chapter Eight Popular Frontism and Re-appraisal, 1936–1965
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Chapter Three - Towards Bolshevism, 1919–1920
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Photographs
- Chapter One The Early Years in Sheffield, 1888–1917
- Chapter Two The Shop Stewards' Movement, 1917–1919
- Chapter Three Towards Bolshevism, 1919–1920
- Chapter Four The Communist Party and the Labour Movement, 1920–1926
- Chapter Five The Comintern and Stalinism, 1926–1928
- Chapter Six The ‘New Line’, 1928–1932
- Chapter Seven Towards Left Reformism, 1932–1936
- Chapter Eight Popular Frontism and Re-appraisal, 1936–1965
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
After the war Murphy was only just able to survive on the meagre unemployment benefit he received by selling some furniture and books and with financial support from his mother. However, freed from the constraints of work, he was able to throw himself into fulltime activity as chair of the Sheffield Workers' Committee and assistant secretary of the National Administrative Council of the SS&WCM. He also became active in the Sheffield branch of the Plebs League, which organised study classes among trade unionists, and gave two weekly Labour College lectures on Marxist economics and industrial history. In addition, after being elected an executive committee member of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), he went on to play a central role in reshaping the party's policy and in conducting socialist unity negotiations with other revolutionary groups that eventually led to the formation of the British Communist Party.
Of major significance during this period of 1919–1920 was his political evolution from syndicalism to communism, as he combined his own wartime shop steward experiences with the events in Bolshevik Russia to develop a new form of revolutionary socialist politics. This involved three main features: an appreciation of the soviet as the chief agency of socialist revolution and the need for the working class to conquer state power; the central role of a vanguard political party; and the relationship between revolutionary socialists and the Labour Party. He also further developed his wartime analysis of the trade union bureaucracy.
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- Information
- The Political Trajectory of J. T. Murphy , pp. 54 - 86Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1998