The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

history of the Dutch communist current is not a ‘dead history’, despite its weaknesses, because of its theoretical
and political contributions – above all in the 1920s – and that this current is the bearer of pertinent analysis
which should not be neglected.
We take care, in our text, to distinguish the terms left communism and council communism. German and Dutch
Communist Left communism in the 1920s situated itself on the terrain of the Russian revolution, within the
Communist International, and recognised the necessity of a revolutionary party. The term council communism,
then of “councilism”, can only really be used to define the current of Rühle and the GIC, which rejected the
Russian revolution as “bourgeois” and refused the existence of any militant revolutionary party in the proletariat.
From this point of view, while left communism belongs to Marxism, “councilism” discarded it to return to the
anarchist conception.
We consider that the definition of the Dutch Communist Left as “leftist” or “ultra-left” contains a confusion and
often shows an ill-will inherited from a period where it was characterised as “infantile”. The term “leftism”
historically has defined the trotskyist and maoist organisations which were born and developed in the period of
May 1968, and revealed themselves as opposition currents to or within the left parties. By their antiparliamentarian
and anti-union positions, and their denunciation of state capitalism in Russia, neither left
communism nor council communism were ever in “critical” opposition with official leftism (social democracy
and stalinism): they were in open war.
As for the term “ultra-left”, which is often equated with “sectarianism”, it can only define those currents which
historically split from the KPD between 1925 and 1927. Left communism never appeared as a pure will to be “as
left as possible”. It was the revolutionary events of the period 1917-1921 which gave birth to it. In the final event
it is the evaluation of the praxis of the revolutionary proletariat which determined its positions and its political
action.
The collapse of the stalinist regimes in 1989-1991 allowed to consult the secret archives of the Komintern and of
its parties, giving also more detail on the real weight of the “leftist” tendencies in the beginning of the 20s.
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