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George Woodcock (1912-1995) was a historian, political biographer, essayist, poet, and anarchist. He wrote biographies of such anarchist thinkers as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, and Peter Kropotkin. Throughout his life, Woodcock was given numerous awards for his work, but he refused several awards from the government of Canada on the grounds that he only accepted awards granted by his peers.

Chapter 1 of "Socialism from Below" is Woodcock's evaluation of the Second World War (which went on for more than a year after the publication of the book) and an overview of the political culture of the pre-war era. Woodcock argues that the two opposing sides--the Axis and the Allies--represented two competing forms of totalitarianism: fascism on the one side, and the dictatorship of capital on the other.