Since the 1960s, many radicals have had their eyes opened by the writing of Maurice Brinton. The most prolific writer of the British Solidarity group, which existed from 1961 to 1992, his work toppled countless dusty towers of standard leftist thinking. For Brinton, “actually existing socialism” did not, in fact, exist. It had to be created.

Brinton wrote with passion, clarity, and consistency on behalf of worker self-activity and self-management, and he decried those who reinforced passivity, apathy, cynicism, pecking orders, and alienation among workers. To him, this oppressive behavior was as prevalent among state socialists and communist parties as it was among capitalists, because it enabled rulers and would-be rulers of every political stripe to deceive and manipulate those in whose name they claimed to act. Today, when a new crop of so-called democratic socialists are seeking state power, allegedly on behalf of working people, Brinton’s work is as relevant as ever.

Maurice Brinton (1923–2005) lived most of his life in London. He was a founding member of the Solidarity group and wrote some of the twentieth century’s most important critiques of authoritarian socialism.