By Paul Mattick
In this collection of essays written over the last thirty five years, Paul Mattick discusses a wide range of problems that have beset the Labour movement with the freshness and insight that have been characteristic of his better known writings on marxist economics. In particular he analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary movement in Europe in the twenties, assessing the contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch, and the Cou Communists in Holland and Germany. Many of the problems that faced the Labour movement then, Mattick argues, are still unresolved: the relationship of party and class, the nature of political organisation and the position of Trade Unions in capitalist society.
Paul Mattick was an early contemporary critic of the authoritarian direction taken by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and by the failed revolution in Germany. Both revolutions swept aside the 'Council Communists and it is the debate between these two tendencies which these essays revive.
Paul Mattick was born in 1904, and in 1918 joined the youth section of the German Spartacist League. He now lives in the USA where he has edited the journals Living Marxism and New Essays. He is the author of Marx and Keynes and Critique of Marcuse: one dimensional man in class Society.