Storia e Politica (Aug 2022)
Il Consiliarismo britannico 1918-1921
Abstract
This work, which starts from some unpublished documents in the British Library in London – Pankhurst Archive, analyzes the birth and development of the British consiliarist movement immediately after the October Revolution. Two main groups of consiliarist orientation emerge within the Communist Party of Great Britain: the Worker Suffrage Federation (WSF) and the British Socialist Party (BSP). Among the British consiliarists we remember mainly for the BSP George Peet, Albert Samuel Inkpin and Joseph King, while for the WSF we have Sylvia Pankhurst and Leonard Augustine Motler; the latter will also influence the Chinese consiliarism and, last but not least, C. Hagberg Wright. Both of the above sections initiated the Council or Left Communism movement, as an alternative to the political reality offered by post- revolutionary communism, to support an “international socialism” and direct democracy through the establishment of factory councils. As evidence of how the British consiliarist movement was relevant, Lenin wrote, in June 1920, Left Communism: as disorder infantil precisely to discredit the British consiliarist policy in front of international public opinion. Despite the “attention” of the Russian leader to the British comrades and the relevant relationships established with the rest of the European consiliarists, Left Communism remains a field of investigation still little investigated.
