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These are pamphlets about class, capitalism, communism etc... They are PDFs and are meant to be printed out and distributed.

THE AMERICAN WORKER

by Paul Romano

"I am not writing in order to gain the approval or sympathy of... intellectuals for the workers' actions. I want instead to illustrate to the workers themselves that sometimes when their conditions seem everlasting and hopeless, they are in actuality revealing by their every-day reactions and expressions that they are the road to a far-reaching change."

"The American Worker" was originally published in 1947 by the Johnson-Forest tendency. It was divided into two parts. The first part "Life in the Factory", was written by Paul Romano, a young worker in one of General Motors' car plants. It describes the everyday lives of the workers, their (often contradictory) attitudes towards the work, the company, unions, politics, and each other. Part 2 "The Reconstruction of Society" was written by Grace Lee Boggs (pen name Ria Stone). It is not included in this pamphlet but is available online at: www.prole.info/texts/americanworker2.html

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[text only version]

WHEN INSURRECTIONS DIE

by Gilles Dauvé

"The question is not: who has the guns? but rather: what do the people with the guns do? 10,000 or 100,000 proletarians armed to the teeth are nothing if they place their trust in anything beside their own power to change the world. Otherwise, the next day, the next month or the next year, the power whose authority they recognize will take away the guns which they failed to use against it."

This is a reconceived version of "Fascism and Anti-Fascism", which Dauvé wrote (under the pen name Jean Barrot) as a preface to a selection of articles on the Spanish Revolution in the French communist journal Bilan (published in 1979). In this text, Dauvé draws on the experiences of the revolutionary movements in Russia, Germany, and Spain to criticize anti-fascism and democracy, and to draw general conclusions for communists today.

[printable pdf]
[text only version]

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