The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-04-26

subjects f 0 T
numerous continental European
papers. He was also, during this
time. consistent left winger in the
Social Democratic Federation and
British Socialist party, fighting
against Hyndman and other re-
formists here, and in the British
Journalists Union. Since his re-
turn to the Soviet Union he has
been chairman Of the Universities
Reform Commission and for a year,
Soviet minister to Persia.
The first half of the book is the
greater contribution. The other
readable and available work on
British Chartism is very slight.
Chartism is generally known to
those who have heard Of it at all,
as that movement in the 1905 in
England which fought for ballot
reform, and, after some ludicrous
fiascoes in the way of public petit
ton and demonstrations, and after
some reforms had been granted,
faded from sight.
Roth3tein does not deny the fias-
Goes, he explains them as the fatal
results of a mixed theology, a mixed
leadership, of class collaboration Of,
in a word, reformism.
But what Rothstein does do, is to
resurrect from ancient newspaper
files the story of left wing, a very
powerful left wing, in the Chartist
movement, led by such men as
Bronterre O'Brien, Julian Barney,
and to a lesser extent, Feargus
O'Connor. These men, particularly
the first two, tried hard and nearly
succeeded in turning Chartism with
its enormous mass meetings, and
it's beginnings of a workers de-
Tense corps" into a proletarian re-
volutionary movement. Years be-
fore Marx and Engels pointed to
the proletatriat as the class on
which the new social order depend
ed, Harvey said: whatever the
middle classes (capitalists) have
ever taken into hand has turned out
to the peoples cost to be delusive
and fraudulent therefore, as the
producing classes intend to regen-
crate their country, they must rely
on themselves and on themselves
alone" And in practise he showed
he meant by people" and pro
ducing classes" the proletariat and
poor farmers. These left wing
Chartists understood the use and
limitations of the general strike-a
demonstration which could be turned
into an armed revolt, but which IA
lesson the syndicalists have never
learned) is not the revolution itself.
They saw through the maneuvcrs OF
liberal capitalists, who go along
with revolutionary movement
against black reaction until they get
what they want, then unite with the
blacklist tyranny to crush down their
former allies, the workers and
peasants. They saw the capitalist
fraud in the low tariff movement,
in England taking the specific form
of repeal of the corn laws.
fgewinltartwitht,etn
Further anticipations of MarNlst
theory can be seen in O'Brien's
statement in the SOS: "The history
of mankind shows that from the be-
ginning of the world, the rich in
all countries have been in per-
manent state OF conspiracy to keep
down the poor of all countries, and
for this reason-because the poverty
of the poor is essential to the riches
of the rich man"
Rothstein raises the problem OF
the extent to which Marx and En-
els are indebted to the Charitists
for their theory, and leaves it un-
solved. The answer seems to be, very
little. The Marxians had access to
the facts, and they arrived at simil-
ar conclusions, better formulated.
But this does not detract from the
Importance o. the Chartists.
In the days at the end of Chart
ism, these left wingers, those who
had not gone off on tangent to-
wards fake and frivilous utopian
schemes, as did even O'Brien, did
certainly pave the way for the First
International. Pothstein proves
clearly that internationalism was in
the air, and that under the leader
ship especially of Ernest Jones,
younger than the others, several ra-
deal international political move
ments had been founded in London,
and had died out. Immediately be-
fore the First International was
formed: most important of these
was the Fraternal Democrats. Most
of them even sprang into existence
in ways precisely similar to that in
which the First International was
launched.
All in all, an excellent book, a
real searchlight of history into a
dark but promising land in labor
theory and what orators they had
in those days! OBrien, Harvey, and
Jones spoke with tongues of fire,
it should warm the heart of even a
tired radical to read their speeches.
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