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29-474: (Redirected from Workers Weekly ) Workers' Weekly may refer to: Workers' Weekly (UK) , newspaper by the Communist Party of Great Britain 1923–1927 Workers' Weekly (Australia) , newspaper by the Communist Party of Australia 1923–1939 Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

58-466: A press run of 19,000 and sold out within 24 hours of publication. By the end of March, the press run had increased considerably, to over 50,000 copies. Circulation peaked at 80,000 copies in August 1926, in the aftermath of the 1926 General Strike . Trouble lay ahead, however, as at the end of January 1927 a successful legal action for libel forced the publication into bankruptcy . A new party paper

87-557: A review of Capital , Marx's life work, which Engels wrote for the Rheinische Zeitung , he emphasised its importance for the German Social-Democrats, describing "the present book as their theoretical bible , as the armoury from which they will take their most telling arguments." In other reviews and correspondence Marx and Engels emphasise over and over the importance of this theoretical work for arming

116-640: A similar vein: "we have ... quite given up all traffic with the people who want to smuggle this nonsense and these arselickers into the Party ... It will soon be time to come out against the philanthropic upper and lower middle class types, students and professors, who are penetrating the German Party and want to dilute the proletariat's class struggle against its oppressors into a universal human brotherhood organisation" (Engels to Becker, September 8, 1879 ) Less pithily Marx and Engels explained their position to

145-403: Is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece". Once they grasp that poverty is not simply poverty but that it has "a revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society", science - Communist thinking, to the extent that it incorporates this subversive side - "has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary." Marx contrasted this scientific, partisan role of

174-608: The Morning Post and the British Empire Union , we in the party know to our cost, and do not conceal it...that our party numbers only some thousands of members, of whom perhaps half are "active," i.e., propagandists, agitators, organizers, literature-sellers, writers, etc. The party has not a great many more members than those organisations which were represented at the first and second unity congresses in August 1920 and January 1921.... We have some members active in

203-477: The Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class." When capitalism was relatively immature and the struggle of the working class undeveloped, their thinking took utopian forms and they would "improvise systems and go in search of regenerative forms". However, as capitalism matured and the independent class struggle of the proletariat developed, "they have only to take note of what

232-576: The Workers' Weekly. The first issue of the new paper was dated 10 February 1923. The change of name was to reflect a parallel change in the publication's approach, emphasizing the daily life and shop concerns of the working class as well as noteworthy events in the Labour Movement . In his article in the monthly theoretical magazine of the CPGB announcing the switch, Andrew Rothstein declared that

261-491: The grassroots in its first year. On 17 February 1923 the paper explicitly stated the change in direction: "We want a paper made by the workers for the workers. Our news is working class news supplied by the workers on the spot. It may not be very wonderful news yet, but you can improve that for us by seeing that we get the news that you won't get in other papers. It is the news of the workers." Circulation once again began to rise. The first issue of The Workers' Weekly had

290-545: The 60,000 mark at the time of the raid on party offices in May 1921. Towards the end of April 1921, Member of Parliament J. H. Thomas successfully sued The Communist for libel , naming its editors, printer, and publisher in the action. The pressure of this legal action and subsequent raid of party offices by the police had the effect of making production of the paper extraordinarily difficult. The Independent Labour Party's printing house abruptly stopped production of an issue of

319-449: The BSP's weekly, assisted by Raymond Postgate . The paper maintained a circulation of between 8,000 and 9,000 during 1920, after which time the circulation began to rise rapidly due to improvements in the publication's design. Francis Meynell took over as editor around the first of 1921 and by 5 February 1921, circulation stood at 25,000. Sales continued to rise throughout the year, touching

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348-474: The Communists simply as theoreticians, but emphasise that this one facet of their activity: "The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding

377-487: The completion of the conference (the Congress of London) which founded the CPGB. The publication continued without interruption until its 131st issue, dated 3 February 1923. The paper was in many ways a direct continuation of The Call , retaining the same look and style, the same editor, and even continuing the serialization of articles begun in the earlier publication. The first editor was Fred Willis , former editor of

406-407: The daily life of the workshops; by building it up, in short, around letters from the workships, because the constitute the first link in the chain, the first like that we must take hold of and hold on to with all our might, knowing that only in that way we shall arrive at what we desire." The governing Executive Committee of the CPGB had decided to replace The Communist with a new publication called

435-612: The earlier press of the British revolutionary socialist movement. With the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in August 1920, the constituent parties such as the British Socialist Party (BSP) and the Workers' Socialist Federation (WSF) ceased to exist as did the BSP's paper weekly newspaper, The Call . A new publication was established for the new political party called The Communist . The Communist began on 5 August 1920, just four days after

464-462: The great majority of the German bourgeois converts that is not the case. ... there are about as many points of view among these gentry as there are heads; instead of producing clarity in a single case they have only produced desperate confusion – fortunately almost exclusively among themselves. Cultural elements whose first principle is to teach what they have not learnt can be very well dispensed with by

493-456: The line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." To the extent that they are theoreticians, they are 'practical theoreticians', not abstractly analysing society in general or some facet of it, but devoted to understanding and clarifying "the line of march" of the proletarian movement. Henceforth, this was the task which Marx and Engels, the pre-eminent Marxist theoreticians, set themselves. Thus, in

522-412: The main principles of Marxian socialism in the analysis. In The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marx equated Socialists and Communists as "theoreticians" of the proletarian class, analogous to the "economists", "scientific representatives" of the bourgeois class: "Just as the economists " - referring to the classical Political Economists - "are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so

551-480: The paper in midstream after coming to an agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions not to produce any more Communist material. In July 1921, Postgate took over for Meynell as editor of The Communist . He continued in that role until giving way in favor of T.A."Tommy" Jackson in May 1922. By the autumn of 1922, the print run of The Communist had declined to around the 20,000 mark, with actual sales in

580-608: The paper was a 26-year-old named William Rust , whose editorial experience had included a brief stint at the helm of the paper of the Young Communist League . With the appearance of the Daily Worker, its less frequent forerunner, The Workers' Weekly, ceased publication. Theoretician (Marxism) In Marxism , a theoretician is an individual who observes and writes about the condition or dynamics of society , history , or economics , making use of

609-455: The party leaders: "It is an inevitable phenomenon, rooted in the course of development, that people from what have hitherto been the ruling classes should also join the militant proletariat and contribute cultural elements to it. We clearly stated this in the [Communist] Manifesto. But here there are two points to be noted: First, in order to be of use to the proletarian movement these people must also bring real cultural elements to it. But with

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638-492: The proletarian theoreticians, with the superficial neutrality of Proudhon, who attempted to rise above both Political Economy and Communism: "He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism." In the Communist Manifesto , Marx and Engels no longer talk of

667-548: The reintroduction of utopian socialism into the movement ("which for tens of years we have been clearing out of the German workers’ heads with so much toil and labour") by "a whole gang of half-mature students and super-wise doctors who want to give socialism a “higher ideal” orientation, that is to say, to replace its materialistic basis (which demands serious objective study from anyone who tries to use it) by modern mythology with its goddesses of Justice, Freedom, Equality and Fraternity." As their influence persisted, Engels remarked in

696-520: The revamped publication was to mark a move away from being "a weekly journal for the orthodox Communist household" and towards becoming "a live reporter and interpreter of the working class life and struggle." R. Palme Dutt was editor of the revamped publication. Following the Comintern's emphasis of the day, the new paper attached particular importance to letters from worker-correspondents , publishing over 2,500 letters and reports submitted from

725-514: The title Workers' Weekly . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Workers%27_Weekly&oldid=1252112198 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Workers%27 Weekly (UK) Workers' Weekly had its origins in

754-419: The trade unions, less in the trades councils, and very few in the workshops.... The masses do not attend branch meetings. We shall find them where they are to be found daily — at the 'point of production': the workshop, pit, depot, stores, or office.... "How can we extend our influence in the workshops? By means of the Workers' Weekly: by making it interesting to those in the workshops; by reflecting in it

783-412: The vicinity of just 8,000. It was clear to Communist Party leaders that a drastic makeover for the publication was due. In the spring of 1923, the Communist Party of Great Britain felt itself at low ebb. Leading theoretician Andrew Rothstein minced no words in an article in the party's monthly theoretical magazine: "What is the position of our party today? Despite the terrifying pictures drawn by

812-594: The working class. By contrast Marx and Engels were extremely wary of the role of what may be described as 'professional theoreticians', however learned, who were only tenuously familiar with their theory and not tied to the struggles of the working class. Thus we find Marx writing to Sorge in October 1877, following the fusion of the German Social Democrats with the Lassalleans, complaining about

841-541: Was established at that time called Workers' Life, a publication which attained a circulation of 60,000 copies a week by that summer. In London on 1 January 1930, under a banner headline reading "Workers of the World, Unite," a new daily newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain called The Daily Worker was born. It took the same name as the American Communist daily established in 1923. The editor of

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