Rudolf Rocker

Rudolf Rocker
Born	Johann Rudolf Rocker March 25, 1873 Mainz, Hesse, German Empire
Died	September 19, 1958(1958-09-19) (aged 85) Mohegan Colony, New York, United States
Nationality	German
Notable work	Nationalism and Culture Pioneers of American Freedom
Political party	Social Democratic Party (SPD)[a]
Spouse	Milly Witkop
Children	Fermin Rocker
Parent(s)	Georg Philipp Rocker Ann Naumann

Johann Rudolf Rocker (German: [ˈʁɔkɐ]; March 25, 1873 – September 19, 1958) was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to an artisan family.

His father died when he was a child, and his mother when he was in his teens, so he spent some time in an orphanage. As a youth he worked as a cabin boy on river boats and was then apprenticed as a

In October 1884, the Rocker household was joined by his mother's new husband Ludwig Baumgartner. This marriage presented Rudolf with a half brother, Ernest Ludwig Heinrich Baumgartner, with whom Rocker did not maintain close contact. [3] Rocker's mother died in February 1887. After his stepfather remarried soon thereafter, Rocker was put into an orphanage.^[4]

Rudolf Rocker, disgusted by the unconditional obedience demanded by the Catholic orphanage and drawn by the prospect of adventure, ran away from the orphanage twice. The first time he just wandered around in the woods around Mainz with occasional visits to the city to forage for food and was retrieved after three nights. The second time, which was at the age of fourteen and a reaction to the orphanage wanting him to be apprenticed as a tinsmith,^[5] he worked as a cabin-boy for Köln-Düsseldorfer Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft. He enjoyed leaving his hometown and traveling to places like Rotterdam. After he returned, he started an apprenticeship to become a typographer like his uncle Carl.^[6]

Rocker's uncle, Carl Rudolf Naumann, had a substantial library consisting of socialist literature of all colors. Rocker was particularly impressed by the writings of Constantin Frantz, a

In 1890, there was a major debate in the SPD about the tactics it would choose after the lifting of the Anti-Socialist Laws. A radical oppositional wing known as Die Jungen (The Young Ones) developed. While the party leaders viewed the parliament as a means of social change, Die Jungen thought it could at best be used to spread the socialist message. Unwilling to wait for the collapse of capitalist society which Marxism predicted, they wanted to start a revolution as soon as possible. Although this wing was strongest in Berlin, Magdeburg, and Dresden, it also had a few adherents in Mainz, among them Rudolf Rocker.

In May 1890, he started a reading circle, named Freiheit (Freedom), to study theoretical topics more intensively. After Rocker criticized Jöst and refused to retract his statements, he was expelled from the party. Nonetheless, he remained active and even gained influence in the socialist labor movement in Mainz. Although he had already encountered anarchist ideas as a result of his contacts to Die Jungen in Berlin, his conversion to anarchism did not take place until the International Socialist Congress in Brussels in August 1891. He was heavily disappointed by the discussions at the congress, as it, especially the German delegates, refused to explicitly denounce militarism. He was rather impressed by the Dutch socialist and later anarchist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who attacked Liebknecht for his lack of militancy. Rocker got to know Karl Höfer, a German active in smuggling anarchist literature from Belgium to Germany. Höfer gave him Mikhail Bakunin's God and the State and Peter Kropotkin's Anarchist Morality, two of the most influential anarchist works, as well as the newspaper Autonomie.^[10]

Rocker maintained that political rights originated towards the individual, rather than government as the collective that maintained personal freedoms. This view would later influence him into becoming an anarchist. Rudolf wrote on political rights:

Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution.

— Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947^[11]

Rocker became convinced that the source of political institutions is an irrational belief in a higher authority, as Bakunin claimed in God and the State. However, Rocker rejected the Russian's rejection of theoretical propaganda and his claim that only

In October 1891, all Die Jungen were either expelled from the SPD or left voluntarily. They then founded the Union of Independent Socialists (VUS). Rocker became a member and founded a local section in Mainz, mostly active in distributing anarchist literature smuggled in from Belgium or the Netherlands in the city. He was a regular speaker at labor union meetings. On December 18, 1892, he spoke at a meeting of unemployed workers. Impressed by Rocker's speech, the speaker that followed Rocker, who was not from Mainz and therefore did not know at what point the police would intervene, advised the unemployed to take from the rich, rather to starve. The meeting was then dissolved by the police. The speaker was arrested, while Rocker barely escaped. He decided to flee Germany to Paris via Frankfurt. He had, however, already been toying with the idea of leaving the country, in order to learn new languages, get to know anarchist groups abroad, and, above all, to escape conscription.^[13]

In Paris, Rocker first came into contact with

Although it received some funds from Jews in New York, the journal's financial survival was precarious from the start. Many volunteers helped by selling the paper on street corners and in workshops. During this time, Rocker was especially concerned with combating the influence of Marxism and historical materialism in London's Jewish labor movement. In all, the Arbeter Fraint published twenty-five essays by Rocker on the topic, the first ever critical examination of Marxism in Yiddish, according to William J. Fishman. Arbeter Fraint's unsound financial footing also meant Rocker rarely received the small salary promised to him when he took over the journal and he depended financially on Witkop. Despite Rocker's sacrifices, the paper was forced to cease publication due to lack of funds. In November 1899, the prominent American anarchist Emma Goldman visited London and Rocker met her for the first time. After hearing of the Arbeter Fraint's situation she held three lectures to raise funds, but that was not enough.^[17]

Not wanting to be left without any means of propaganda, Rocker founded the

Jewish anarchism's golden years

From 1904, the Jewish labor and anarchist movements in London reached their "golden years", according to William J. Fishman. In 1905, publication of Germinal resumed, it reached a circulation of 2,500 a year later, while Arbeter Fraint reached a demand of 5,000 copies. In 1906, the Arbeter Fraint group finally realized a long-time goal, the establishment of a club for both Jewish and gentile workers. The Workers' Friend Club was founded in a former Methodist church on Jubilee Street. Rocker, by now a very eloquent speaker, became a regular speaker. As a result of the popularity of both the club and Germinal beyond the anarchist scene, Rocker befriended many prominent non-anarchist Jews in London, among them the Zionist philosopher Ber Borochov.^[19]

From June 8, 1906, Rocker was involved in a garment workers' strike. Wages and working conditions in the East End were much lower than in the rest of London and tailoring was the most important industry. Rocker was asked by the union leading the strike to become part of the strike committee along with two other Arbeter Fraint members. He was a regular speaker at the strikers' gatherings. The strike failed, because the strike funds ran out. By July 1, all workers were back in their workshops.^[20]

Rocker represented the federation at the

International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam in 1907. Errico Malatesta, Alexander Schapiro, and he became the secretaries of the new Anarchist International, but it only lasted until 1911. Also in 1907, his son Fermin was born. In 1909, while visiting France, Rocker denounced the execution of the anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer in Barcelona, leading him to be deported back to England.^[21]

In 1912, Rocker was once again an important figure in a strike by London's garment makers. In late April, 1,500 tailors from the West End, who were more highly skilled and better-paid than those in the East End, started striking. By May, the total number was between 7,000 and 8,000. Since much of the West Enders' work was now being performed in the East End, the tailors' union there, under the influence of the Arbeter Fraint group, decided to support the strike. Rudolf Rocker on the one hand saw this as a chance for the East End tailors to attack the sweatshop system, but on the other was afraid of an anti-Semitic backlash, should the Jewish workers remain idle. He called for a general strike. His call was not followed, since over seventy percent of the East End tailors were engaged in the ready-made trade, which was not linked with the West End workers' strike. Nonetheless, 13,000 immigrant garment workers from the East End went on strike following a May 8 assembly at which Rocker spoke. Not one worker voted against a strike. Rocker became a member of the strike committee and chairman of the finance sub-committee. He was responsible for collecting money and other necessities for the striking workers. On the side he published the Arbeter Fraint newspaper on a daily basis to disseminate news about the strike. He spoke at the workers' assemblies and demonstrations. On May 24 a mass meeting was held to discuss the question of whether to settle on a compromise proposed by the employers, which did not entail a closed union shop. A speech by Rocker convinced the workers to continue the strike. By the next morning, all of the workers' demands were met.^[22]

World War I

Rocker opposed both sides in

Allies, and Rocker in Arbeter Fraint in October and November. He called the war "the contradiction of everything we had fought for".^[23]

Shortly after the publication of this statement, on December 2, Rocker was arrested and interned as an enemy alien. This was also the result of the anti-German sentiment in the country.^[24] Arbeiter Fraynd was suppressed in 1915. The Jewish anarchist movement in Britain never fully recovered from these blows.^[25]

Return to Germany

FVdG

In March 1918, Rocker was taken to the

Red Cross. He stayed at the house of the socialist leader Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and he recovered from the health problems from which he suffered as a result of his internment in the UK and met up with his wife Milly Witkop and his son Fermin. He returned to Germany in November 1918 upon an invitation from Fritz Kater to join him in Berlin to re-build the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG). The FVdG was a radical labor federation that quit the SPD in 1908 and became increasingly syndicalist and anarchist. During World War I, it had been unable to continue its activities for fear of government repression, but remained in existence as an underground organization.^[26]

Rocker was opposed to the FVdG's alliance with the communists during and immediately after the

November Revolution, as he rejected Marxism, especially the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Soon after arriving in Germany, however, he once again became seriously ill. He started giving public speeches in March 1919, including one at a congress of munitions workers in Erfurt, where he urged them to stop producing war material. During this period the FVdG grew rapidly and the coalition with the communists soon began to crumble. Eventually all syndicalist members of the Communist Party

were expelled. From December 27 to December 30, 1919, the twelfth national congress of the FVdG was held in Berlin.

The organization decided to become the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD) under a new platform, which had been written by Rocker: the Prinzipienerklärung des Syndikalismus (Declaration of Syndicalist Principles). It rejected political parties and the dictatorship of the proletariat as bourgeois concepts. The program recognized only decentralized, purely economic, organizations. Although public ownership of land, means of production, and raw materials was advocated, nationalization and the idea of a communist state were rejected. Rocker decried nationalism as the religion of the modern state and opposed violence, championing instead direct action and the education of the workers.^[27]

Heyday of syndicalism

On

Munich Soviet Republic uprising, Rocker took over the work of editing the German publications of Kropotkin's writings. In 1920, the social democratic Defense Minister Gustav Noske started the suppression of the revolutionary left, which led to the imprisonment of Rocker and Fritz Kater. During their mutual detainment, Rocker convinced Kater, who had still held some social democratic ideals, completely of anarchism.^[28]

In the following years, Rocker became one of the most regular writers in the FAUD organ

Kronstadt uprising and the peasant movement led by the anarchist Nestor Makhno, whom he would meet in Berlin in 1923. In 1924, Rocker published a biography of Johann Most called Das Leben eines Rebellen (The Life of a Rebel). There are great similarities between the men's vitas. It was Rocker who convinced the anarchist historian Max Nettlau to start publication of his anthology Geschichte der Anarchie (History of Anarchy) in 1925.^[29]

Decline of syndicalism

During the mid-1920s, the decline of Germany's syndicalist movement started. The FAUD had reached its peak of around 150,000 members in 1921, but then started losing members to both the Communist and the Social Democratic Party. Rocker attributed this loss of membership to the mentality of German workers accustomed to military discipline, accusing the communists of using similar tactics to the Nazis and thus attracting such workers. At first only planning a short book on nationalism, he started work on Nationalism and Culture, which would be published in 1937 and become one of Rocker's best-known works, around 1925. 1925 also saw Rocker visit North America on a lecture tour with a total of 162 appearances. He was encouraged by the anarcho-syndicalist movement he found in the US and Canada.^[30]

Returning to Germany in May 1926, he became increasingly worried about the rise of nationalism and fascism. He wrote to Nettlau in 1927: "Every nationalism begins with a

Mazzini, but in its shadow there lurks a Mussolini". In 1929, Rocker was a co-founder of the Gilde freiheitlicher Bücherfreunde (Guild of Libertarian Bibliophiles), a publishing house which would release works by Alexander Berkman, William Godwin, Erich Mühsam, and John Henry Mackay. In the same year he went on a lecture tour in Scandinavia and was impressed by the anarcho-syndicalists there. Upon return, he wondered whether Germans were even capable of anarchist thought. In the 1930 elections, the Nazi Party received 18.3% of all votes, a total of 6 million. Rocker was worried: "Once the Nazis get to power, we'll all go the way of Landauer and Eisner" (who had been killed by reactionaries in the course of the Munich Soviet Republic uprising).^[31]

In 1931, Rocker attended the IWA congress in Madrid and then the unveiling of the Nieuwenhuis memorial in Amsterdam. In 1933, the Nazis came to power. After the

St. Tropez, France. There he wrote Der Weg ins Dritte Reich (The Path to the Third Reich) about the events in Germany, but it would only be published in Spanish.^[32]

In May, Rocker and Witkop moved back to London. Rocker was welcomed there by many of the Jewish anarchists he had lived and fought alongside for many years. He held lectures all over the city. In July, he attended an extraordinary IWA meeting in Paris, which decided to smuggle its organ Die Internationale into Nazi Germany.^[33]

United States

First years

On August 26, 1933, Rocker with his wife emigrated to New York. There they were reunited with Fermin who had stayed there after accompanying his father on his 1929 lecture tour in the US. The Rocker family moved to live with a sister of Witkop's in

Mohegan Colony about 50 miles (80 km) from New York City.^[34]

Nationalism and Culture and Anarcho-Syndicalism

Main article: Nationalism and Culture

In 1937, Nationalism and Culture, which he had started work on around 1925, was finally published with the help of anarchists from Chicago Rocker had met in 1933. A Spanish edition was released in three volumes in Barcelona, the stronghold of the Spanish anarchists. It would be his best-known work.^[35] In the book, Rocker traces the origins of the state back to religion claiming "that all politics is in the last instance religion": both enslave their very creator, man; both claim to be the source of cultural progress. He aims to prove the claim that culture and power are essentially antagonistic concepts. He applies this model to human history, analyzing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and modern capitalist society, and to the history of the socialist movement. He concludes by advocating a "new humanitarian socialism".

In 1938, Rocker published a history of anarchist thought, which he traced all the way back to ancient times, under the name Anarcho-Syndicalism. A modified version of the essay would be published in the Philosophical Library series European Ideologies under the name Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in 1949.^[36]

World War II, and publication of Pioneers of American Freedom

Main article: Pioneers of American Freedom

In 1939, Rocker had to undergo a serious operation and was forced to give up lecture tours. However, in the same year, the Rocker Publications Committee was formed by anarchists in Los Angeles to translate and publish Rocker's writings. Many of his friends died around this time: Alexander Berkman in 1936, Emma Goldman in 1940, Max Nettlau in 1944; many more were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

Allied effort in World War II was just, as it would ultimately lead to preservation of libertarian values. Although he viewed every state as a coercive apparatus designed to secure the economic exploitation of the masses, he defended democratic freedoms, which he considered a result of a desire for freedom of the enlightened public. This position was criticized by many American anarchists, who did not support any war.^[38]

After World War II, an appeal in the

Freie Arbeiter Stimme detailing the plight of German anarchists called for Americans to support them. By February 1946, the sending of aid parcels to anarchists in Germany was a large-scale operation. In 1947, Rocker published Zur Betrachtung der Lage in Deutschland (Regarding the Portrayal of the Situation in Germany) about the impossibility of another anarchist movement in Germany. It became the first post-World War II anarchist writing to be distributed in Germany. Rocker thought young Germans were all either totally cynical or inclined to fascism and awaited a new generation to grow up before anarchism could bloom once again in the country. Nevertheless, the Federation of Libertarian Socialists (FFS) was founded in 1947 by former FAUD members. Rocker wrote for its organ, Die Freie Gesellschaft, which survived until 1953.^[39] In 1949, Rocker published another well-known work. In Pioneers of American Freedom, a series of essays, he details the history of liberal and anarchist thought in the United States, seeking to debunk the idea that radical thought was foreign to American history and culture and had merely been imported by immigrants.^[1]

Final years and death

On his eightieth birthday in 1953, a dinner was held in London to honor Rocker. Words of tribute were read by the likes of Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Herbert Read, and Bertrand Russell.^[40]

Political position

Rocker is often described as an

personal and social freedom of men".^[41]

Works

Books

• Nationalism and Culture
• Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice
• Pioneers of American Freedom
• The Tragedy of Spain
• Anarchism & Anarcho-Syndicalism

Articles

• Anarchism and Sovietism
• Federalism
• Marx and Anarchism

Memoirs

Rocker wrote three volumes of memoirs, which have been published in Spanish and Yiddish translations from a German typescript:

• La juventud de un rebelde (Spanish, 1947); Di yugnṭ fun a rebel (Yiddish, 1965)
• En la borrasca: Años de destierro (Spanish, 1949); In shṭurem: Goleś-yorn (Yiddish, 1952)
• Revolución y Regresión (Spanish, 1952); Reṿolutsye un regresye (Yiddish, 1963)

The second volume is the only part of the memoirs to have appeared in English, in 1956 and re-edited in 2005, with the title of The London Years, though this is an abridgement of the second volume.

See also

• Anarchism in Germany

References

Notes

1. ^ It is unknown when he joined and when he left.

Citations

1. ^ ^{a b} Dorfman 1950, p. 363.
2. ^ Krämer 2002, pp. 315–316; Wienand 1981, p. 17; Graur 1997, pp. 16, 22.
3. ^ Graur 1997, p. 17.
4. ^ Wienand 1981, pp. 20, 28; Graur 1997, p. 17.
5. ^ Graur 1997, pp. 17–18.
6. ^ Krämer 2002, p. 316; Wienand 1981, p. 30; Graur 1997, p. 18.
7. ^ Krämer 2002, pp. 316–317; Wienand 1981, pp. 34–38; Graur 1997, pp. 20–21.
8. ^ Graur 1997, p. 21.
9. ^ Krämer 2002, p. 318; Graur 1997, p. 22.
10. ^ Krämer 2002, pp. 318–321; Graur 1997, pp. 22–34.
11. ^ Rocker 1947, p. 130.
12. ^ Graur 1997, pp. 34–36; Wienand 1981, pp. 77–80, 95–96.
13. ^ Krämer 2002, pp. 321–323; Graur 1997, pp. 39–41; Wienand 1981, pp. 110–112.
14. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 231–234 and Rübner 2007.
15. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 235–238.
16. ^ Fishman 1974, p. 239.
17. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 239–242.
18. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 243, 247–248, 251–252.
19. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 257, 261–262, 265, 286.
20. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 280–284.
21. ^ Rübner 2007.
22. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 295–299 and Fishman 1966, pp. 48–49.
23. ^ Fishman 1974, pp. 306–307.
24. ^ Fishman 1974, p. 307.
25. ^ Fishman 2004.
26. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 77–78.
27. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 80–81.
28. ^ Vallance 1973, p. 80.
29. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 81–85 and Rübner 2007.
30. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 86–88.
31. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 82–83, 88–89.
32. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 90–91.
33. ^ Vallance 1973, p. 91.
34. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 91–93 and Reichert 1976, pp. 476, 483.
35. ^ Rothfels & Rocker 1951, p. 839.
36. ^ Vallance 1973, p. 93.
37. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 93–94.
38. ^ Rübner 2007 and Reichert 1976, pp. 483–484.
39. ^ Vallance 1973, pp. 94–95.
40. ^ Reichert (1976), p. 484.
41. ^ Avrich 2006, p. 7.

Sources

• Avrich, Paul (2006).
  ISBN 978-1-904859-27-7
  .
• Barsky, Robert F. (1998). "Bakhtin as anarchist? Language, law, and creative impulses in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Rudolf Rocker". The South Atlantic Quarterly. 97 (3/4): 623–642.
  S2CID 147080092
  .
• Bock, Hans-Manfred (1969). Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918 bis 1923: Ein Beitrag zur Sozial- und Ideengeschichte der frühen Weimarer Republik. Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain.
• Buhle, Paul (1992). "Rocker, Paul". In Buhle, Mari Jo; Buhle, Paul; Georgakas, Dan (eds.). Encyclopedia of the American Left. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. pp. XXX.
• Carlson, Andrew R. (1972). Anarchism in Germany: Vol. I: The Early Movement. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
• Dorfman, Joseph (August 1950). "Review: Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America by Rudolf Rocker". The Journal of Political Economy. 58 (4). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 362–363.
  OCLC 1754747
  .
• Ferguson, Kathy E.(2023). Letterpress Revolution: the Politics of Anarchist Print Culture. 1st ed. Durham: Duke University.
• OCLC 1644842
  .
• Fishman, William J. (1974). Jewish Radicals: From Czarist Stetl to London Ghetto. New York: Pantheon Books.
  ISBN 978-0-394-49764-8
  .
• Fishman, William J. (2004). "Rocker, Rudolf (1873–1958)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58606. Retrieved September 9, 2007. (Subscription or UK public library membership
  required.)
• Graur, Mina (1994). "Anarcho-Nationalism: Anarchist Attitudes towards Jewish Nationalism and Zionism". Modern Judaism. 14 (1): 1–19.
  doi:10.1093/mj/14.1.1
  .
• Graur, Mina (1997). An Anarchist Rabbi: The Life and Teachings of Rudolf Rocker. New York: St. Martin's Press.
  ISBN 978-0-312-17273-2. Thesis version
• Krämer, Reinhard (2002). "Die Mainzer Jahre des Anarchisten Rudolf Rocker".
  OCLC 1413993
  .
• Leftwich, Joseph (1987). "Rudolf Rocker: Mentor of the Jewish Anarchists". Jewish Quarterly. 34 (2): 30–33.
• Levy, Carl (2018). "Anarchism and Cosmopolitanism". The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 125–148.
• Linse, Ulrich (1969). Organisierter Anarchismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
• Morris, Brian (2012). "Rudolf Rocker 1873–1958: A Tribute". Anarchist Studies. 20 (2): 11–21.
• Reichert, William O. (1976).
  ISBN 978-0-87972-118-3
  .
• Rocker, Rudolf (1947). Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice: An Introduction to a Subject which the Spanish War has Brought into Prominence. Modern Publishers.
• OCLC 1830326
  .
• Rübner, Hartmut (1998). "'Eine unvollkommene Demokratie ist besser als eine vollkommene Despotie': Rudolf Rockers Wandlung vom kommunistischen Anarchisten zum libertären Revisionisten". Archiv für die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit. 15: 205–226.
• Rübner, Hartmut (1994). Freiheit und Brot: Die Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (FAUD): Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Anarchosyndikalismus. Berlin: Libertad Verlag.
• Rübner, Hartmut (2007). "Rocker, Rudolf". Datenbank des deutschsprachigen Anarchismus (in German). Retrieved November 23, 2007.
• Vallance, Margaret (July 1973). "Rudolf Rocker – a biographical sketch". Journal of Contemporary History. 8 (3). London/Beverly Hills: Sage Publications: 75–95.
  S2CID 159569041
  .
• Vogel, Angela (1977). Der deutsche Anarcho-Syndikalismus: Genese und Theorie einer vergessenen Bewegung. Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag.
• Wienand, Peter (1981). Der "geborene" Rebell: Rudolf Rocker – Leben und Werk (in German). Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag.
  ISBN 978-3-87956-106-3
  .
• The Anarchist Rabbi (2014), BFI, dir., Adam Kossoff, a film about Rudolf Rocker's time in London

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Rudolf Rocker.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rudolf Rocker.

• Rudolf Rocker Papers at the International Institute of Social History
• Profile at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Center Winnipeg Manitoba
• Rudolf Rocker Page at the Anarchist Encyclopedia
• Rudolf Rocker Archive at the Kate Sharpley Library
• Rudolf Rocker Archive at libcom.org Archived 2006-01-17 at the Wayback Machine
• Rudolf Rocker page at Anarcho-Syndicalism 101
• Rudolf Rocker Texts at Anarchy is Order
• Riggenbach, Jeff (October 1, 2010). "A Tribute to Rudolf Rocker". Mises Daily.
  Ludwig von Mises Institute
  .
• The Radical Pamphlets Collection at the Library of Congress contains materials written by Rudolf Rocker.
• Rudolf Rocker's son, Fermin, reminiscing about his father and growing up in London
• Interviews with Nellie Dick recalling her activism as one of Rocker's followers in London before the First World War