From left-wing radicalism to left-wing communism
 Council communism was not born along with councils themselves, although the appearance of the latter did precipitate its formulation. As a political theory it constitutes the culmination of a long tradition of radical opposition within the German social-democratic movement and the unions. The conflict with reformist tendencies is as old as socialist workers' organizations themselves. If we stick to the period following the 'laws on socialists', [38] we can see that a vigorous left-wing opposition began making itself heard within the ranks of the socialist party as early as 1890. Its spokesmen, known as the 'Young People' (Die Junge), protested against the bureaucratic and dictatorial atmosphere almost reigning in the party. The cult of the leader (Führerprinzip), they claimed, enabled an all-powerful leadership, paid by the party, to stifle any sign of revolutionary spirit and to continue to play the parliamentary game for all it was worth. Revolution had now become a slogan regularly repeated inside the Reichstag. But then, this purely parliamentary game was well-suited to the essentially reformist tastes of the leadership. The 'Young People' were excluded from the party at the Erfurt Congress (1891) and went on to found independent socialist groups. Such well-known publicists, anarchist militants and anarcho-syndicalists as Gustav Landauer and Fritz Kater were to emerge from the ranks of these independent socialists. A similar battle was then raging within the trade union organization. An anti-authoritarian and revolutionary fraction had, since the Congress of Halberstadt (1892), been criticizing bitterly the narrow centralism and the purely reformist tactics of the leadership. The leadership's opponents demanded autonomy for local organizations (hence their nickname: 'the localists'), access to strike funds and greater initiative in the launching of industrial action for the rank-and-file sections. In 1897 they managed to set up an independent fraction where, under the influence of French revolutionary syndicalism after 1907, libertarian ideas came to predominate. The other oppositional current began to develop in the early years of this century. Although it was Marxist, its reading of Marx and Engels was far more radical than that of social democratic orthodoxy. Left-Wing radicalism, while violently opposed to anarchism, had a number of points in common with it, notably its mistrust of party apparatus and its faith in the autonomous practices of the masses. Following the elimination of libertarian elements from the socialist and union organizations it was this current which took up the standard, in anticipation of post-war council communism. There were three main currents of thought within the German social democratic party at the turn of the century. The revisionist right, without always acknowledging its debt to Edward Bernstein, called for a policy akin to that of the left-wing bourgeois parties, similar to the French radical party or the English Liberals. Then there was the 'Marxist Centre', in control of the party, and whose authorized theoretician was Karl Kautsky. Under cover of strict doctrinal orthodoxy (contrary to the revisionists, he believed in the inevitability of revolution), Kautsky lent his authority to a markedly prudent tactic that was scarcely any different from the one Bernstein was calling for. A third family of thought emerged during the Russian Revolution of 1905--7. The left-wing radicals (Linksradikalen), as they were called, gathered around Rosa Luxemburg, whose book The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Union first appeared in 1906. [39] Drawing inspiration from her experience of the Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg put forward in this book a number of ideas which had already been in circulation for some years, notably among the Dutch Tribunists. [40] She shows that, in European Russia, revolutionary actions -- strikes, revolts, street demonstrations -- appeared spontaneously, unprovoked by any party. Russian social democracy was insufficiently established among the proletariat, with the result that the workers themselves created the revolutionary organizations the situation demanded: strike committees factory committees, workers' councils. The Radicality of their actions was unfettered by the existence of a heavily structured party or of a powerful, but soporific union. In Germany, the spontaneity of the workers was stifled by bureaucratization of the apparatus, by organization fetishism, the cult of the leader. Hundreds of permanent party and union officials went on applying their own policy, cut off from the rank-and-file, reluctant to undertake any bold initiatives for fear of jeopardizing their magnificent organizational edifice, which no longer served any useful purpose. Preservation of the means (the organization) now came to take priority over the objective (the revolution). [41] In her dispute with Kautsky, Luxemburg held that organization was not a static phenomenon but a process: workers provide themselves with the organizational forms most appropriate to their struggle. The artificial separation of economic and political action is absent from these organizations. The party's parliamentarian policies, and the strictly wage-demand-oriented policies of the unions, are to be submerged beneath the development of spontaneous actions such as mass strikes. Tactically speaking this quarrel took on a more concrete character in the years 1908-10, when the party leadership ruled out a general strike as a means of fighting for the suppression of the plural electoral college in Prussia. But although Rosa Luxemburg developed a theory of mass spontaneity which permitted her to stigmatize the party's immobilism and its congenital reformism, she failed to draw all the organizational and theoretical conclusions which flowed from this theory. To the end of her life she remained a militant profoundly attached to the party of the masses, to the hierarchy, to the congresses and their motions -- in short, to everything which had made up the essence of pre-1914 social-democracy. [42] The Dutch, and Anton Pannekoek in particular, did draw all the conclusions, and notably the organizational ones, from their radical critique of Kautskyite socialism. Their discussion of the general strike took place rather earlier, in 1903, and their attacks on the reformism of the SDAPH (Social Democratic Workers' Party of Holland) led them to break away and found a new party (the SDP, Social Democratic Party) in 1909. This party never attracted more than a few hundred activists and it stayed outside the Second International (which didn't want it anyway), but this break did illustrate the extent of the divergences between Gorter, Pannekoek and Roland-Holst on the one hand, and Troelstra, who was a faithful follower of Kautsky, on the other. [43] The Tribunists' major criticism of Troelstra and his Dutch followers concerned their entirely mechanistic conception of Marxism. While it is true that the proletariat's importance derives from its place and its function in the productive process, said Pannekoek, one should not imagine that the outbreak of revolution is inevitable. Similarly, organization is important for the simple reason that it renders the masses strong, disciplined, fusing the will of each and everyone into a single will. True, parliamentarianism is a powerful means of increasing the cohesion of the working class. And alongside this, syndicalism is necessary in order to arouse workers to fight and induce them to accept class discipline. But, Pannekoek points out, "socialism will not come about merely because all men finally admit its superiority over capitalism and its aberrations". [44] The working class must, in addition, be conscious of the necessity of the struggle and of socialism. Pannekoek thought this subjective factor was extremely important, while Kautsky ignored it. Class consciousness, the former held, is acquired through engagement in mass action, led by the workers themselves. Parliamentarianism on the other hand, which was the leadership's essential activity, is not the class struggle. Certainly in the past it made it possible to unify the proletariat, but it could never lead to socialism. As for the unions, they are an institution by now perfectly integrated into the capitalist system, since their function is to sell the labour force. This critique led Pannekoek to relativize the role of the party and the unions, without, however, going so far as to examine them from the viewpoint of historically situated and dated organizational forms. In his quarrel with Kautsky between 1911 and 1913, on the other hand, he denies the possibility of transforming the existing State into a socialist State by means of an electoral majority, and he declares that the bourgeois State will have to be destroyed utterly (vernichtet), its power annihilated (aufgëlost). [45] But this revolution cannot be accomplished peacefully; it will not be brought about by the present leaders' prudent policies. It will require all the might and the will of the proletariat in action. Parliamentarianism and union demands are no longer enough. New forms of capitalism (monopolies, cartels, the internationalization of production and markets) have given rise to new forms of struggle: mass actions. The passive attitude of the 'marxist centre' stems from its fear that, by 'ill-considered' initiatives, the masses will destroy their patiently constructed organizations. The chiefs, with Kautsky at their head, saw their role as that of brake, a check on 'wildcat' initiatives. For Pannekoek, this was a singularly restricted conception of organization, lingering over its external forms, its visible structures. And this at a time when the emergence of an economy based on large units had aroused in the proletariat a feeling of common belonging (Zusammengehörigkeit): it is this spiritual factor which leads men to organize, to develop structures. One may throw over external forms, the subjective element is indestructible. [46] On the eve of the war, the Dutch Marxists had thus gone a long way towards an organizational and theoretical break with the Second International. They had demonstrated the limited character of parliamentary struggle (without, however, entirely rejecting it as yet), the capitalist essence of unions (whose usefulness they nevertheless continued to underline), and had made the destruction of political power the number-one task of the revolutionary movement. Finally (together with the Bulgarians and the Russians it is true), they had shown it was possible to break with the social-democratic movement. But above all, they drew lasting lessons as to the relativity of the forms the class struggle was capable of assuming, from the mass movements of recent years (1893, 1903, 1905--7, 1903, 1910). It was quite natural, then, that they should adopt the new organizational structures which were to emerge during and immediately after the First World War. The war precipitated the latent tendencies in left-wing radicalism. What had started out as a simple critique of orthodox socialism was to develop into both a social movement and a revolutionary theory in its own right. Two kinds of factor worked in favour of this. On the one hand, the war had brought to a head German social democracy's desire (but the same phenomenon had occurred at the same moment in the other belligerent countries) for integration into bourgeois society and even (after November 1918) to perpetuate it. This was, in fact, the underlying significance of the 'Sacred Union' (Burgfriede, or 'civil peace') wherein the SPD, by its votes in favour of war credits, its abstention from any meaningful opposition, implicitly approved the German government's war policy. Parallel to this, the unions, by deliberately avoiding involvement in industrial disputes, and by even going so far as to cooperate with the military authorities in preventing or breaking strikes which began to simmer spontaneously in factories throughout the Reich from 1916 on, had set themselves up as enemies of the workers. It very soon became clear that it would only be possible to carry on the struggle in spite of, and against the union leaderships. A whole section of the German proletariat thus fell vulnerable to the ideas of the left opposition. [47] In less than three years, this had been transformed from a handful of intellectuals into an imposing mass movement. By June 1917 the left opposition accounted for more than half the membership of the union organization, and the spring 1917 breakaway showed just how far the party itself had been affected. Theory too leaped forward, emboldened by the example of the Russian Revolution and the appearance of councils inside the Reich itself. The constitution of autonomous bodies, both in the factories and in provinces and towns, was due to the causes mentioned above. The moment the workers' leaders began fulfilling the repressive functions of the employers and the police, each movement, each strike became a revolt. Especially since the slightest action inside a factory almost automatically resulted in the sacking of union officials, cessation of the payment of union dues and the improvisation of temporary structures. Thus, even if to begin with a strike was purely concerned with, say, a wage claim, it nevertheless developed rapidly into an action in which political and economic questions fused to undermine the social status quo. Left-wing radical theory fed voraciously off these examples of mass spontaneity. The organization of councils as the expression of autonomous struggle became the fundamental concept of the new radicality. Right from the beginning of the war, left-wing militants had sought to distinguish themselves from patriotic social democracy. Towards the end of 1914 Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Otto Rühle and Karl Liebknecht established a small oppositional circle, the 'Internazionale' group, later to be known as the 'Spartakus Group'. Liebknecht broke with party discipline in December 1914 by voting against military credits, and he was followed by Rühle in the spring of 1915. Their resolute opposition to the war united all left-wing radicals, with their hatred of all leaderships (Instanzen), parliamentary leaders, paid officials, party propagandists. But divergences soon appeared within the ranks of the extreme left. The origins of this split can be traced back to the preceding period and to the attitude adopted towards social democracy. A right wing, for whom the Spartakist leaders acted as spokesmen, [48] had no wish to break with the party, fearing that by so doing they would 'cut themselves off from the masses'. Underlying this argument was their reluctance to break with the old organizational forms and with the old Second International habits, object of so much obloquy in the past. This wing linked up with the centrist fraction of the party, the 'Sozialdemokratische Arbeitsgemeinschaft', in April 1917 in order to found the independent social-democratic party (USPD), which took a very moderate line, and whose organization scarcely differed from that of the SPD. The other wing was more extremist, and followed their ideological premises right through to their conclusion. The extreme left-wing radicals were made up of local groups, independent of each other, although some of them had already been bastions of the opposition before the outbreak of war. This was the case, for example, of the Berlin group, gathered around the review Lichtstrahlen (edited by Julian Borchardt); the Bremen group, around the Bremer-Burger-Zeitung and, subsequently, the Arbeiterpolitik (with Karl Radek, Paul Fröhlich, Johann Knief), which was heavily influenced by Pannekoek's thinking; the Hamburg group, which edited Kampf, under the direction of Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolfheim. Other extreme left-wing groups were active in Dresden, Frankfurt and Brunswick. Unlike the Spartakists, who had not entirely broken with social democracy, the extremists were hoping to individualize themselves, organizationally speaking. In their view, the task of the future for the proletariat was to construct its own organization and conduct its own policy. [49] Although they managed to cut all their bridges (and especially the financial ones) with the party, the extremists only came together in a distinct structure in l920. But as early as autumn 1915 they had labelled themselves 'Internationals', after the Bremen and Hamburg delegates had approved Lenin's proposal to construct the Third Intemational at the Zimmerwald Conference (September 1915), while the Spartakists had preferred to maintain their links with the Second Intemational. Thus, on the eve of the Russian Revolution, the Internationals [50] were very clearly moving away from the Spartakists on two points. For one thing they were demanding an organization built along different lines from the old forms found in their entirety in the USPD. They wanted an organization arising out of the struggle itself and action-orientated (Aktionsfähig). [51] Secondly, in order to mark their complete estrangement from pre-war organized socialism, they planned to construct a new International. It was these ideas that Pannekoek advocated in the organ of the Zimmerwald Left, which he edited with his compatriot, Henrietta Roland-Holst. [52] With the October Revolution in Russia, the November 1918 revolution in Germany and the growth of factory committees and workers' councils, the Internationals had at last found a concrete form for the organization of their struggle. Soviet Russia illustrated their own notion of dictatorship of the proletariat, with power emanating from the base and rising towards the town and rural councils. [53] As a result of their enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution they altered their label, and in November the ISD (International Socialists of Germany) became the IKD (International Communists of Germany), publishing a paper called Der Kommunist, propagating the slogan: 'All power to the soviets'. Paradoxically, the Russian Revolution brought the Internationals and the Spartakists together again; in view of the extent of revolutionary turbulence they decided to merge and found the German Communist Party (KPD). [54] The constitutive congress took place in Berlin, 30--31 December 1918, in the midst of great exaltation. But this was not enough to wipe out divergences, and the antagonistic currents were to crystallize around three questions. What form of organization should dominate in the new party (centralization, or decentralization with autonomy for the local sections)? Should the new party vote for the Constituent Assembly (and thus participate in the parliamentary institutions)? Finally, what should be the party's attitude towards the unions (entry into the existing unions in order to stimulate opposition from within, or construction of new, even original organizations?). The delegates divided into two blocs more or less along the lines separating the left and right wings of the old left-wing radicals. A right-wing minority (Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Karl Radek, Paul Levi) favoured electoral participation, entry into the existing unions and a centralized, hierarchized organization. Although (through the intermediary of Radek) this group had the blessing of the Bolsheviks, it was nevertheless very attached to the spirit of social democracy, which it intended to perpetuate in the new party. The majority, on the other hand, emerged as the heirs to the boldest themes of left-wing radicalism. It contained most of the extremist groups (the Bremen, Hamburg, Dresden, etc., Internationals) and the left wing of the Spartakists which, for the first time, came out into the open to express its disagreement with the respected leaders. [55] The confusion between Spartakists (starting with its leaders) and the revolutionary wing of the left-wing radicals was deliberately encouraged by communist historiography in subsequent years. In reality, however, the Spartakists were always rather more cautious than the Internationals, especially where tactics were concerned. It was clear right from the inaugural congress that the former intended to construct a mass party capable of playing a role in the institutional political life of the future Weimar Republic, while the latter, the Internationals, were more interested in crystallizing their thirst for revolutionary action in some completely new form of organization. This unhappy menage à deux was to last until the expulsion of the group (the majority group at that!) coming to be known as the left-wing communists (Linkskommunisten) at the Heidelberg Congress (October 1919). In April 1920 the expelled group founded the KAPD (German Workers' Communist Party). Right from the start this new formation boasted 38,000 members, or rather more than half the KPD, which was left drained of life until its merger with the majority of the USPD (in December 1920), the latter bringing with it a dowry of some 300,000 militants. The party within which the left-wing communists now found themselves was supposed to incarnate the principles conceived and propagated since 1915. Its programme (inspired by Pannekoek) utterly rejected parliamentarianism and the unions. It sought to remain a party of confirmed communists working to develop the revolutionary consciousness of the masses and the struggle on the shop floor through organizations within the enterprise (Betriebsorganisationen). The new party was not organized along federal lines, as some might have hoped, but along the lines of 'proletarian centralism', the decisions of the highest bodies being binding. [56] Its refusal to work with the reformist unions led the KAPD to assume the programmatic leadership and long-term direction of the new factory organizations as well. These organizations emerged during the war and their numbers increased rapidly after November 1918. They began to unite in the summer of 1919, notably in the mines and in the metalworking industries. But it was in February 1920 (before the creation of the KAPD) that factory committees (Betriebsorganisationen) came together to form the General Workers' Union of Germany (AAUD). This organization was articulated around the enterprise, the basic cell being formed by the factory or workshop; these were then organized at local, provincial (Wirtschaftsbezirk) and Reich levels. Its aim was to generate revolutionary agitation within the factories with a view to the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of a council republic. In 1920 the AAUD had about 100,000 members, but the following year membership declined irremediably. The decline of council organizations (principally the AAUD, but also the anarcho-syndicalist union, the FAU) flowed from the centrifugal tendencies, apparent right from their birth, as well as from the political and social situation in the country. Factory organizations mushroomed during 1919, to the detriment of the unions, which fell back considerably, especially in the heavy industries of the Ruhr and central Germany. At first factory committees were formed spontaneously, without any precise ideological attachments. It was only towards the end of 1919 that ideological divergencies began to surface. Firstly because the communist party, under Paul Levi's leadership, was warning its militants of the dangers of 'anarchist' tendencies, inviting them to vote for the legal factory councils and not to take part in extra-union organizations. Secondly because, from December 1919 onwards, the anarcho-syndicalists, who had until then shared the views of the left-wing communists, now adopted Rudolf Rocker's anarchist- inspired programme, denying the necessity of a dictatorship of the proletariat and of the use of violence. The new programme returned to the traditional (revolutionary) syndicalist view, namely that the trade union, the instrument of economic struggle, was destined to become the fundamental organizational unit in the society of the future. As opposed to the leaders of the KPD and the FAUD (German Free Workers' Union), the council theoreticians were thinking in terms of structures suited to both political and economic struggle, constituted at the place of work and not at the level of the locality (as in the case of the unions) or the old trade unions (the organizational base of the FAUD). The emergence of a theory of councils coincides with that of factory organizations, though it is impossible to say which came first. At most we may presume that the example of the IWW (the American revolutionary organization based on industrial unions) was not without influence on the thinking of the Hamburg propagandists. [57] In other words, when the AAUD was formed, only some of the factory committees actually joined it; on top of that, two tendencies began pulling the organization in opposing directions right from the first months of its existence. The Brunswick tendency, close to the left wing of the USPD, followed the IWW example, advocating the industry-wide union as the basic form of organization. It left the AAUD shortly afterwards and slid into obscurity. The other tendency, left-wing, was more deeply prejudicial to the cohesion of the Union. This was the so-called 'unitanst' (Einheitsorganisationstendenz) tendency which rejected the KAPD's control over the Union and demanded instead a unitary organization that would be both politically and economically oriented, bypassing political parties. This tendency was especially strong in Dresden, the fief of its chief theoretician and spokesman, Otto Rühle, who very early (in December 1920) made his section independent of the KAPD. In October 1921 his organization, the East Saxony section, led a number of other local groups out of the KAPD and founded the AAUD-E (German General Workers' League Unitary Organization). Aside from these centrifugal tendencies, the mass council organizations, the Leagues, were further handicapped by the overall situation in the country: inflation, growing unemployment, fiercer repression, especially since the failure of the March 1921 'action' in the course of which an embryonic insurrection was harshly stamped out by the army and the police. After 1921 the AAUD began to lose its mass character, evolving into a marginal group. It shifted away from the KAPD in 1927 and in 1931, it formed the KAU (Communist Workers' Union) together with the remnants of the AAUD-E. As its name suggests, the KAU had no pretentions to being a mass workers' movement but consisted of a group of propagandists fighting "to make the councils the instrument of class will". [58] The KAPD suffered a similarly rapid decline after 1921, torn by personal and ideological quarrels. The principal disagreements concerned the binding nature of the decisions of the highest bodies, relations with the AAUD and the question of membership of the Third International. Local groups were becoming less and less autonomous, while centralism was gradually gaining the upper hand over federalist principles, and the AAUD rapidly became a union appendix to a party congratulating itself on having brought together the 'avant-garde elements'. One final question of practical importance exacerbated the party's already considerable difficulties: should militants take part in purely economic struggles (Lohnkampf)? The Berlin leadership, dominated by Karl Schröder (backed up on doctrinal terrain by the Dutchman Herman Gorter), was exhibiting some singularly dictatorial and dogmatic tendencies. In March 1922 Schröder was outvoted and expelled from the party. So he formed his own 'Essen Tendency' (Essener Richtung), with its own paper, its own congress and its 'own' AAUD. Consequently from 1922 onwards two KAPDs coexisted alongside each other, but their numbers were derisory, with 12,000 militants in the Berlin tendency at the end of 1922, and only 600 in the Essen wing. [59] To begin with, most of the Essen tendency's activities were taken up with the establishment of a Fourth International. This attempt in itself would only be of passing interest had it not followed immediately upon the heels of the KAPD's imbroglio with the Third International, which had caused something of a stir within the International and which marked the emergence of a communist theory of councils as opposed to the Comintern's party communism. Footnotes [38] Sozialistengesetze (1878-90), which outlawed socialist organizations during this period. On the development of German social democracy see C. E. Schorske's classic work, German Social Democracy (1905-1917) (Cambridge, Mass 1955). [39] R. Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Union (Detroit, n. d. [1919]). [johngray note : Online at the www.marxists.org site] [40] From the name of the journal opposing the leadership of the Dutch party, published from 1907 onwards: Die Tribune. [41] At the time she wrote, the problem of bureaucratization was being discussed widely. lt was in 1906 (while still a member of the SPD) that Robert Michels drew attention to this phenomenon, before devoting a more detailed sociological study to it in 1911. [johngray note : English translation as Robert Michels Political Parties (London, 1962)] [42] J. P. Nettl's book bears abundant witness to this: Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1966). [43] H. M. Bock, 'Zur Geschichte und Theorie der holländischen marxistischen Schule', in A. Pannekoek and H. Gorter, Organisation und Taktik der proletarischen Revolution (Frankfurt, 1969), p. 12, speaks of 500 members; F. Kool (ed.), in his introduction to Die Linke gegen die Parteiherrschaft (Olten, 1970), p. 89, puts the figure at 700. [44] A. Pannekoek, Die taktischen Differenzen in der Arbeiterbewegung (Hamburg, 1909). [johngray note : English translation of excerpts in Serge Bricianer Pannekoek and the Workers Councils (St Louis, 1978), ch. 2] [45] A. Pannekoek, 'Massenaktion und Revolution', Die Neue Zeit, vol. 1 (1912), p. 543, and 'Die Eroberung der Herrschaft', Leipziger Volkszeitung, no. 210 (1912). [johngray note : English translation of excerpts in Serge Bricianer Pannekoek and the Workers Councils (St Louis, 1978) ch. 3] [46] A. Pannekoek, 'Marxistische Theorie und revolutionäre Taktik', Die Neue Zeit, vol. 1 (1912), pp. 272-81, 365-73. [johngray note : English translation in D.A.Smart (ed.) Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism (London, 1978)] On the history of 'left-wing radicalism', cf. H. M. Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918-1923 (Meisenheim am Glan, 1969). [47] The more so in that extreme-left journals circulated with amazing ease, even at the front. Cf. J. Miller, 'Zur Geschichte der linken Sozial-demokraten in Bremen (1906-1918)', in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (Sonderheft, 1958), pp. 202-17. [48] In reality, a good many Spartakists did not share the views of their leaders but, in the circumstances, only the latter managed to make their views heard. Liebknecht's views, moreover, were more innovative than those of Luxemburg, as is shown by his prison writings in the years 1917-18: Karl Liebknecht, Politische Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Nachlass (Berlin, 1921). See also Bock, op. cit., pp. 65, 66. [49]Arbeiterpolitik (Bremen), no. 1 (24 January 1916), and no. 7 (17 February 1917), see the editorials. [50] To begin with, the ISD label, strictly speaking, referred only to the Hamburg and Bremen groups. But within a short space of time all the extremist groups came to be known by this name. [51] Arbeiterpolitik (Bremen), no. 15 (14 April 1917), and no. 10 (26 August 1916). [52] 'Zur Einführung', Vorbote (1 January 1916), unsigned. [53] A.Pannekoek,'Bolschewismus und Demokratie', Arbeiterpolitik (Bremen), no. 5 (14 December 1918). [johngray note : English translation of excerpts in Serge Bricianer Pannekoek and the Workers Councils (St Louis, 1978), pp. 150-152] [54] Radek played a vital role in this unexpected rapprochement. Having been active in the Hamburg organization, he joined Lenin in 1917 and argued in favour of reunification. It should be added that the Bolshevik leaders were highly popular among the Internationals, the latter reprinting articles by Lenin, Zinoviev and, of course, Radek in their press, even though the latter had not exactly left fond memories behind him among his former comrades in either the German or Polish parties. [55] More exactly, the divergencies were masked by a facade of ideological unity. Thus, even at the constitutive conference of the USPD (in April 1917), the Spartakist representative Fritz Ruck, had expressed views very close to those of the Internationals. H. M. Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus, op. cit., p. 62. [56] Programm der kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands, place of publication not indicated, undated [1920]. [johngray note : online link] [57] It was the left-wing communists of Hamburg and Bremen who drew up the statutes of the AAUD in August 1919. Cf. Bock, op. cit., pp. 130 2. See also F. Wolffheim Betriebsorganisationen oder Gewerkschaften (Hamburg, 1919; the text dates from August). [johngray note: English translation of AAUD statutes published in Workers Dreadnought November 1921] [58] Massenaktion, pamphlet put out by the KAU (Berlin, 1933). For a long time already, the AAUD-E had been torn between those wanting to maintain a solid organization, with decisions taken at the top and binding on the rank-and-file (the Rätekommunisten), and those calling for the abolition of all constricting organizational structures. As for propaganda, chiefly directed against the political parties, it called for the extension of the councils' watchword. Cf. Die Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union (Einheitsorganisation). Was sie ist und was sie will ! (Frankfurt am Main, 1927). [59] H. M. Bock, op. cit., p. 209. In 1923, council communist groups and sects as a whole numbered fewer than 20,000 persons (F. Kool, op. cit., p. 145). |