Syndicalism And The Co-Operative Commonwealth (How We Shall Bring About The Revolution) by Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget. New International Publishing Company: Oxford. 1913. First English Edition.
8vo, 240pp, title stamped orange cloth boards. Front board soiled at top fore corner, corners and board edges bumped, spine bruised. Gutter split between frontispiece and forward, pg (v]. Pen contemporary ownership signature with later presentation inscription on front free endpaper. Pencil notation in post-novel notes section, pg.238. Good condition.
The scarce first English edition of the Utopian novel and collaboration written by French radicals Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget, representing the vision of the early anarcho-syndicalist movement in France, outlining a successful worker’s revolution where “public opinion would insist upon the suppression of the standing armies.” Pataud, an electrician by trade, earned notoriety and the nickname “The Prince of Darkness” for coordinating blackouts across turn of the century Paris in protest of labor conditions.
Although called “King Pataud” by some for his status among Belle Epoque activists he was banished into obscurity and mockery the same year this translated edition was published for his association with anti-Semitic groups. Pouget, the anarcho-communist publisher of Pere Peinard and vice-secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail, was more representative of the philosophical changes of the period, shifting his sympathies toward more syndicalist style of organized collaboration that transcended traditional borders like nations. Perhaps best known as one of the original signers of the 1906 Charte d’Amiens, Pouget and his co-signers established the a syndicalist inspired model for French unionism, declaring the independence of labor (and the CGT) from outside government and business authority.
Pouget’s work as an organizer inspired others internationally, including the labor organizer Tom Mann, who provides this volumes introduction, and brought him sufficient acclaim to merit a preface by Russian revolutionary philosopher Pyotr Kropotkin and illustrated plates by Australian political cartoonist Will Dyson.
