Until the late 1920s, anarchism was still a significant presence in Chinese radical thinking and activity, and till the middle of the decade, gave serious competition to the Communists. The essay discusses the nature of the anarchist movement in China, anarchist criticism of Bolshevik Marxism, and anarchist revolutionary strategy and activity during 1921–1927. It argues that while anarchists were quite innovative with regard to revolutionary strategy, their repudiation of organized power deprived them of the ability to coordinate revolutionary activity on a national scale, and what success they achieved remained local and short-lived. Indeed, the Communists were able to make better use of anarchist tactics than were the anarchists themselves. Anarchist critique of power rested on a denial of a center to society (and history). While this undercut the anarchists' ability to organize the revolutionary movement, it is also revealing of a basic problem of socialist revolution: the problem of democracy. In ignoring the anarchist critique of power, the successful revolutionaries deprived themselves of a critical perspective on the problem of socialist revolution, and were left at the mercy of the new structures of power that they brought into existence. Hence the importance of recalling anarchism.

The 27th of January 1941 was a memorable day in the bizarre history of the Amsterdam International Institute of Social History during the German occupation. Within the scope of activity of his “Office for the Occupied Territories”, NSDAP Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg placed the Lieutenant-Commander and Nazi publisher Eberhard Kautter “in charge” of the IISH: “It is your duty to be responsible for the organizational supervision and the deployment of those staff members who qualify for the utilization of the institute. Your mission is to be carried out in agreement with the head of the Netherlands work group of the task force from my office, Oberbereichsleiter Schirmer.” On the same day, the bustling chief of the self-named Einsatzstab (task force), in his function as “Commissioner of the Führer for the Supervision of all Mental and Ideological Training and Education”, approached Robert Ley, the Reichsorganisationsleiter of the NSDAP and head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF – German Labor Front). He had a letter sent to him that Eberhard Kautter had drafted already in early January and had obviously withheld until Kautter had been named to the post of IISH administrator. Rosenberg reminded Ley that, in a decree from 29 January 1940, Hitler had entrusted him with all of the preparations for the establishment of a Hohe Schule (Supreme School), that was to be the “central site of National Socialist research, instruction and education”. Thus, he was “setting up a number of branch institutes of the Supreme School”. Among these was an “academy”, the task of which would be to work out the close connection between the “National Socialist Weltanschauung” and the “practical way of structuring life” both for the present and the future. Now he was contacting him, since Ley was also interested in “the relationship between Weltanschauung and social structuring” in his function as Reichsleiter of the DAF and had certainly run up against similar problems within the scope of the extensive “economic-statistical work” of his office.

The social composition of female RSDRP members (who constituted between 11% and 15% of the total party membership) prior to 1917 is analyzed using prosopographic methods. The analysis reveals that women social democrats tended to come from higher social classes, and to have a higher educational attainment, and professional occupations. Thus, it is misleading to characterize the RSDRP as a “workers' party”, for only its male contingent was composed mostly of workers.

The analysis of the process of radicalization reveals the cultural barriers whioch these women had to overcome before they would join the party. Breaking free from their role in society meant, for them, leading fuller lives as women and an oppurtunity to dedicate themselves to the people.

Historians have traditionally overlooked the role of women in Russian Social Democracy. This article, based on archival as well as published sources, examines the radicalization of E.D. Kuskova (1860–1958), a long neglected participant in the Russian Marxist movement during its formative years.

Kuskova was attracted to radicalism by its promise of a fulfilling life of service to society, and as an escape from the traditional, confining roles for women in prerevo-lutionary Russia. She came to Social Democracy after concluding that it provided a more satisfactory Weltanschauung and a more accurate diagnosis of Russia's socio-economic ills than did its ideological alternatives.

Comparisons between the English and German labour movements have a long tradition in historiography. In Germany they were primarily discussed in the context of the “German Sonderweg”, a debate which was opened in the 1920s and continues in the 1980s. The article presented here analyzes the methodological problems of Sonderweg comparisons of labour history and confronts the major arguments with the results of empirical research. It concludes that many old Sonderweg arguments can not withstand this confrontation. Nevertheless, the article proposes that the debate should be continued, since empirical research focuses on new aspects and supports the diagnosis of two different paths of labour history.

Critics of E. P. Thompson have questioned his emphasis on the ties between radicalism and trade unionism in early nineteenth-century England; historians have likewise described the 1818 strikes as simple wage disputes in which the radicals played a negligible role. This essay challenges these assumptions about the 1818 strikes and radicalism. In the summer of 1818, when a wide range of grievances touched off the strike wave, the radicals rallied to the side of the trades and sometimes served as leaders of the strikes; that summer the radicals and striking trades also drew upon and contributed to a shared repertoire of old and new tactics and forms of action.

Historical truth, like other kinds of intellectual understanding, proceeds through argument and discussion. Thus, we should be grateful to Jonathan Zeitlin for his rigorous responses to a body of scholarship which he categorizes as “rank-and-filist”. Although much of Zeitlin's argument is unexceptional, its proposal to consign as erroneous and irrelevant the scholarship that fits his “rank-and-filist” paradigm requires some examination. Most troubling are the procedures he uses to make his case; the prescriptive advice he offers though not without merit is also highly problematic. I shall discuss these objections in a moment. But first we must define the problem as Zeitlin sees it.

Tito rose to lead the Yugoslav Communist Party by stressing his loyalty to Lenin. As a “Left” critic of “Right Liquidationism” his views coincided with the Left turn in the Comintern which climaxed with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. During the “imperialist” war, Tito, like Lenin, wrote only of the armed uprising and the proletarian revolution; for him this began with the German invasion of April 1941. However, Tito's experiences in Moscow during the height of the purges enabled him to get the measure of Stalin. Twice he emerged unscathed from accusations of Trotskyism, and in his writings began to explore the differences between Leninism and Stalinism.

Labor history continues to progress. It continues, too, to transform itself from a field staffed by enthusiasts and partisans into a discipline peopled with scholars sympathetic to their subject but also highly conscious of the methods, theories and interpretive frameworks within which they work. The last few years in particular have witnessed a considerable intensification of scholarly controversy within labor history and a growing sophistication of debate. To some extent the discussion parallels the ongoing conversation among social historians about the boundaries of social history, the power of primarily social explanation and the role of language, culture and politics in social history. Unfortunately, however, the stepping up of debate in labor history coincides with a dip – temporary, one hopes, but perhaps more long-term – in the fortunes of labor movements themselves. This conjuncture seems to have produced a sense of pessimism and malaise as the sentimental accompaniment to many of the debates within labor history.

Few theoretical paradigms in labour history are so deeply entrenched as “rank and filism”. It was only to be expected, therefore, that a frontal assault on its assumptions would provoke a vigorous reaction. The responses to my article by Richard Price and James Cronin thus offer a welcome opportunity to clarify the theoretical claims of “rank and filism” and reassess its empirical plausibility as an interpretation of British labour history. But as in any clash between rival theoretical perspectives, the points at issue in this debate extend beyond factual disagreements to the meaning of basic concepts and the standards of proof involved in their assessment, and neither party fully recognizes itself in the account of their ideas presented by the other. No accumulation of discordant facts can conclusively disprove a theory, as students of scientific revolutions have demonstrated, but readers will have to judge for themselves whether the counter-evidence I have presented amounts to minor discrepancies which can be satisfactorily accommodated within the assumptions of “rank and filism” or fundamental anomalies which necessitate the abandonment of the paradigm itself.