Shop stewards, or other forms of workshop representation, are a common feature of British industry. It is not known for certain how many such shop floor representatives are active; estimates vary between 90,000 and 200.000, “the truth is probably somewhere between these two figures”. What is certain, however, is that the great majority of industrial workers, particularly in large-scale industry, have recourse to lay trade union representation for the settlement of shop floor grievances. Often such representatives are “the union” for the ordinary workman who does not come into contact with full-time union officers. “For the great majority of British trade unionists the workplace representative is their only direct personal link with their union.” He also provides a front-line defence against the arbitrary use of authority by management. If no shop steward existed, managerial authority, unchecked by the countervailing power of shop floor representatives, would be open to abuse. If such managerial authority was also supported by a system of legal powers which further strengthened its position, it would make possible “the use of penal sanctions to compel acceptance of working conditions which free agents would not endure”. Such was the case in the British Merchant Navy until less than five years ago.

Der erste Organisator grossen Stils in der sich neu konstituierenden deutschen Arbeiterbewegung der Jahre 1862–63 war ein aus Mecklen-burg-Strelitz stammender Lackierer Casimir Eichler, der seit einigen Jahren in Berlin wohnte und bei der v. Unruhschen Fabrik zur Herstellung von Eisenbahnwagen angestellt war. Dieser Eichler stand schon im Herbst 1862 in stetiger Verbindung mit Regierungsstellen und empfing noch vor Weihnachten desselben Jahres geldliche Unterstiitzung von Bismarck, wie sich aus dem Nachlass Zitelmann nach-weisen lässt. Man darf ihn daher als “Agent Bismarcks in der Arbeiterbewegung” bezeichnen, wie es im Personenverzeichnis der von Koch, Schleifstein und Höhle besorgten Neuausgabe von Mehrings Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie heisst. Im Index der vom Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus herausgegebenen Minutes der Londoner Kon-ferenz der “Internationale” heisst es, Eichler habe als “agent-provo-cateur” in der Arbeiterbewegung gewirkt und sei als solcher später “entlarvt” worden. Beide Angaben harmonisieren, wenn wir an-nehmen, dass die Charakterisierung Eichlers als “Agent” sich auf den Beleg des Zitelmann-Nachlasses stützt, während die der Minutes auf Bismarcks Geständnis im Reichstag zurückgeht, Eichler habe allerdings längere Zeit der Polizei Informationen gehefert, wenn auch nicht über die Arbeiterbewegung, so jedenfalls über den Nationalverein. Bismarck ist zu seinem Geständnis durch Aussagen Bebels iiber die Beziehungen Bismarcks zu Lassalle gezwungen worden, uber die ihm die Grafin Hatzfeldt Einzelheiten mitgeteilt hatte.

Hitlers Ernennung zum deutschen Reichskanzler am 30. Januar 1933; der Brand des Reichstages in Berlin am 27. Februar und die einen Tag später erlassene „Notverordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat”; der erste Boykott jüdischer Geschäfte am 1. April; die Auflösung der Gewerkschaften am 2. Mai und die Bücherverbrennung vom 10. Mai, mit der ein Grossteil der literarischen und wissenschaftlichen Produktion der Weimarer Periode als „geistiger Unflat” und „jüdische Entartung” verdammt wurde; schliesslich das Verbot der SPD am 22. Juni und das „Gesetz gegen die Neubildung von Parteien” vom 14. Juli 1933 – diese und eine Reihe anderer Ereignisse führten dazu, dass schlagartig Tausende Deutsch-land verliessen: führende politische Persönlichkeiten der Weimarer Republik, Wissenschaftler, Künstler, Schriftsteller, Journalisten und viele Angehörige des jüdischen Bürgertums.

Since the 1930's the French Communist party has faithfully endorsed the policy decisions of the Soviet Union, oftentimes despite disagreement with major Soviet pronouncements. In the 1920's, however, the French Communist leadership was divided over the appropriateness of Soviet instructions on matters that appeared to many French Communists clearly within the exclusive domain of the French party. The intrusion of the Comintern, the Soviet-dominated international Communist organization, into the pre-campaign discussion of the tactics for the 1928 elections to the French national assembly forced French Communists to re-examine their goals, their position in French politics, and their relationship with the Soviet Union. The decisions of the French party leaders, made amid what was perhaps the last animated and freewheeling public party debate, determined the party's relationship with the USSR for a full forty years.

The first World War was an important period in the history of the British trade union and labour movement. It is well known that at a national level the leaders of the trade unions were consulted by the government to a greater extent than ever before, and that the signing of the Treasury Agreements represented a recognition of their importance, and made them partners in the prosecution of the war. Labour Party leaders also became members of the administration, thus confirming once and for all that they were “fit to govern”. These were significant developments for the working class movement, but they did not take place without sharpened disagreements within the movement and the growth of increasingly radical political and social attitudes. The purpose of this article is to show that at a local level there were almost precisely parallel developments for the working class movement during the war years. There was a similar accession to power, if more limited, and to prestige in the local community, if often more grudgingly conceded. At the same time there was a growth of general disillusionment with the work which was undertaken, and by the end of the war, an increasingly militant attitude on trade union and general political questions.

In his famous study of attitudes to the state in nineteenth-century England, Dicey described the period 1825–70 as “the period of Benthamism or Individualism”. Evangelicalism and Benthamism, he argued later, “represented the development in widely different spheres of the same fundamental principle, namely, the principle of individualism”. Only later did laissez faire fall into eclipse: “somewhere between 1868 and 1900 … changes took place which brought into prominence the authoritative side of Benthamite liberalism.” Dicey's interpretation has come under sustained attack during the last twenty years, and historians now pay more attention to the continuing momentum of state intervention from the 1830s, and to the collectivist aspect of Bentham's teaching. Yet Dicey's critics have ignored a movement which in some ways lends more support to their case than any other mid-Victorian development, and which draws attention to hitherto unappreciated virtues and defects of Dicey's account.

L'Institut international d'histoire sociale d'Amsterdam conserve dans le fonds Kautsky soixante-douze lettres d'Otto Bauer. Malheu-reusement les rponses de Karl Kautsky n'ont pas t retrouves et sont considres comme perdues. Aprs l'chec de l'insurrection ou-vrire du 12 fVrier 1934, en Autriche, Otto Bauer dut se rfugier Brno, en Tchcoslovaquie; la police de Dollfuss fouilla son apparte-ment et emporta tous les papiers. Plus tard, en 1938, quand Otto Bauer eut migre Paris, les bureaux de Brno furent ferms et on brǔla encore des documents parmi lesquels des lettres dont on assure qu'elles taient sans importance. Toujours est-il que les lettres de Bauer Kautsky constituent l'essentiel de ce qui a t sauv de sa correspondance.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the two major socialist parties in Russia, the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, had taken shape. But these two parties did not win the adherence of all of Russia's revolutionary activists. There existed in addition a series of small extremist groups that formed what might be called the “militant fringe” of the revolutionary movement. These groups differed among themselves on programs, methods and ultimate objectives, but they all rejected the leading parties as insufficiently committed to revolution or too slow-moving in their tactics to achieve it. Although they never attained the numerical or organizational strength of the SD's and SR's, they remained a significant element in the revolutionary movement and left their mark on Russia's political life. The three main components of the militant fringe were the anarchists, the SR Maximalists, and the Makhaevists. Of these the Makhaevists are almost unknown today, although they formed organizations in several cities and rivalled the Maximalists and anarchists for the allegiance of the revolutionary extremists. An account of their program and activities will help to shed light on a segment of the Russian political spectrum whose insight into Russia's social and political condition has been underestimated, and on the revolutionary role of its smallest but in many ways most original element.

Of the numerous front organizations spawned by the Communist International, none became more widely known or more active than International Red Aid (IRA). Created in 1922, IRA served the Comintern for over twenty years until it was dissolved with its parent in 1943. At its peak (1932–1933) this front attained a membership of over fourteen million, scattered over seventy-three national sections. It claimed to have provided relief and aid for thousands of Communist and non-partisan revolutionaries who were subjected to the persecutions of “bourgeois class justice” and “white terror”. From its presses poured a steady stream of propaganda in a dozen languages – handbills, leaflets, pamphlets, books, and periodicals. The Red Aid leadership initiated and conducted protest demonstrations and campaigns on behalf of the most celebrated causes of the 1920's and 1930's: Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, Tom Mooney, the Reichstag Fire Trial, Ernst Thälmann, Antonio Gramsci, and the Spanish Civil War.

The need to study the historical roots of the household is gradually becoming accepted, although as yet methods of approach are still being developed and debated. For the student of the mid-nineteenth century, the census enumerators' books provide basic data for such an enquiry. They give the occupation, marital status, age and birth place for every member of each household in all registration districts throughout the country. In order to exploit this information effectively, a sophisticated methodology is required. One has been suggested by Dr W. A. Armstrong. It involves selecting a sample of households from a district, and translating the information thus gained into numerical form, which can then be placed onto punched cards. By sorting them mechanically it becomes possible to make a whole series of quantitative statements about the households, such as their mean sizes, the numbers headed by widows, etc. This method has attracted some support, but it has not been without its critics. Some have voiced general scepticism about “quantitative” history; others have questioned specific points. In rejoinders Armstrong has backed up his arguments with illustrations from his researches into York as well as with some of my own Nottinghamshire results. However, these discussions have been conducted in something of a vacuum. This is an indication that there is now room

The last three decades of the nineteenth century were marked in British social history by a vigorous and far-reaching debate about the causes and incidence of poverty amongst the elderly. By the early 1890s this controversy had produced a sharp cleavage of opinion between those commentators who held that old-age pauperism was largely a product of character defects and those who attributed it to certain social and economic ills which the individual, acting alone, could never hope to remedy. Social thinkers who subscribed to this latter view – the loosely labelled collectivist school of thought – were not content, however, merely with the work of analysis; they were equally anxious to find a panacea for one of the main social problems of the day. In the end the solution they most widely canvassed was the introduction of an old age pensions scheme in which the state would have a vital rle to play. But perhaps of more significance for the development of social services in Great Britain, three of the leading advocates of state intervention endeavoured, in their own distinctive styles, to translate this general declaration of intent into detailed programmes of action.

Das Thema “Schulbildung und Industrialisierung” gehört nicht zum klassischen Kanon der von den Historikern der Industrialisierung untersuchten Aspekte. Demgegenüber haben die empirischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, im Zusammenhang mit der Faktor-analyse des wirtschaftlichen Wachstums und mit Blickrichtung auf die Zukunft entwickelter und unterentwickelter Volkswirtschaften, das Thema von verschiedenen Seiten in Angriff genommen. So spricht die Nationalökonomie vom “human factor” oder Dritten Faktor neben Arbeit und Kapital und meint damit “die natürlichen Fähigkeiten der Menschen eines Landes und die Erfolge und Anstrengungen der Bil-dungspolitik und den Ausbau der Forschung in vorausgegangenen De-zennien oder gar Jahrhunderten”. Die neue Disziplin der Bildungs-ökonomie versucht u.a. Vorausschätzungen der Größe und Struktur des Bedarfs an qualifizierten Fachkräften und entwickelt “Strategies of Human Resource Development”.