The Skeleton: A Cautionary Tale

It had all been a mistake she knew that now. It seemed so obvious back then. It was her first wart that had made up her mind. She had known it was coming; she could feel it emerge, but it wasn’t until a devil pointed it out that she realised that this was just the first of many. That slowly more and more warts would appear, her chin would start to jut and her nose start to hook.

She had just worked magic with the devil. They lay exhausted from the effort, united in the afterglow of shared secrets, as he ran his hand over her body, across her breasts and down her arm, until he stopped at the small bump in her hand. “A wart!”, he proclaimed. “Your first, no doubt. There will be many more, my little witch. They come thick and fast after the first.” She looked at her hand, where the lump was starting to break the skin and knew that he was right.

When Marx met Bakunin

Most Marxists and Anarchists are aware of the historical tensions which led to the collapse of the First International at the Hague Congress in 1872, there is however a very interesting story behind the schism.

In August 1872, Marx was aware of the tensions that were emerging between groupings in the First International and of the contributions that he had made to the schism. Fearing that fictitious splits may become a real one, he sent a telegram to Bakunin