Thomas Bell, born on this day in 1882, was a Scottish socialist politician, trade unionist, and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He said: "The Communist Party is nothing if it is not a party of realism".

Bell also worked as an editor for the Communist Party's magazine "Communist Review" and co-founded the Socialist Labour Party.

Thomas Bell was born in Parkhead, Glasgow to an irregularly employed stonemason and a mother who worked at home spinning cotton and silk. While working at a bottling shop, Bell became interested in atheism and labor politics, reading rationalist works by Ernst Haeckel and Thomas Huxley, as well as texts on evolution by Charles Darwin.

Bell joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1900, but would participate in more radical parties as his politics matured, including the Marxist Social Democratic Party and, later, the Socialist Labour Party.

In 1919, Bell was elected President of the Associated Ironmoulders, Secretary of the SLP and editor of its newspaper, "The Socialist". He sat on a unity committee, intending to negotiate for a single communist party with leaders of the British Socialist Party, Workers Socialist Federation and other socialist groups, but their proposals were repudiated by the SLP.

Resigning as Secretary, Bell helped found the Communist Unity Group, which became an original constituent of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

"The theory of getting a Labour government in order to get communism is as stilted as the Kautskyan idea that Russia should go through period of capitalist development under the democratic bourgeois institutions in preference to the Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' dictatorship."

  • Thomas Bell

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  • Sen_Jen [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Its insane to me that in 2020 there were massive protests against the police all across the US for a full summer, and then in 2022 Roe v Wade got overturned and absolutely nothing at all happened. People stopped talking about it within weeks.

    This is what happens when the main political opposition is the democrat party rather than angry working class people who burn down precincts

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's extremely disheartening. I expected something. All the justices were doxxed but only one guy took a shot at them and he didn't even take a shot, he just kind of called the police and said "I want to shoot a SCOTUS judge". There was some marching and yelling at Fascists houses, but none of them burned down. Just what the entire fuck?