The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

This tendency was in a large majority in the opposition, and also later in the KAPD, and was not limited to
Berlin. Led by intellectuals from the socialist students’ sphere 461 like Schröder, Schwab and Reichenbach, and
by workers like Emil Sach, Adam Scharrer, and Jan Appel 462 – all excellent organisers – it was rigorously
centralist. It only considered the Unionen as emanations of the party, and so rejected any form of revolutionary
syndicalism, still more so anarchistic federalism. It was influenced theoretically more by Gorter than by
Pannekoek, given the latter’s opposition to Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of decadence.
The new party was made up of three antagonistic tendencies, and the theoretical weight of the Dutch was
decisive in orientating the KAPD’s tactics. This is what Pannekoek did, in a letter addressed to the party on 5 th
July 1920. 463 Pannekoek declared his solidarity with the KAPD, and declared its agitation “correct both in its
principles and formally”; he nonetheless made some explicit reservations. This was not the case with Gorter,
who, in a telegram, uncritically declared the KAPD’s principles to be “magnificent”, and offered his
wholehearted written collaboration. 464 Pannekoek, rightly, was more critical. He rejected the ‘Unionist’
conception which saw the enterprise organisations regrouping a minority of “enlightened workers”, who
recognised the “reactionary role of the unions”, and formed “a little group in the midst of the great masses, still
inactive and hanging on to the old unions”. This double organisation – the Unionen alongside the KAPD – had
no purpose: Unionen and party in reality regrouped the same workers. Pannekoek felt that the Unionen were
permanent “factory groups” of the party, enlarged to include a few worker sympathisers, and not “workers’
groups”, which would organise in struggle to form action committees (Aktionsausschüsse). Much later, and at
the price of its own disintegration the KAPD was forced to recognise this reality, no longer seeing the Unionen
as anything but the pyramidal matrix of action committees. 465
It was important not to confuse the Unionen with the councils, or with the party. The future belonged, not to the
Unionen, but to the soviets, regrouping the vast majority of workers:
In the long run, we will have:
“1) As the foundation of proletarian democracy, the concentration of all the workers of an enterprise who,
through their representatives, the factory councils, will exercise social and political leadership – in Russia, the
soviets (this organisation based on the enterprise, regrouping all the workers, is generally called the factory
organisation).
2) An active, conscious minority which will take into its hands the leadership of the soviets, because of its clear
judgement and revolutionary will: the communists. In my opinion a second minority group, almost exclusively
composed of communists, has no purpose.”
461 See H.H. Müller, Intellektueller Linksradikalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Seine Entstehung, Geschichte und
Literatur – dargestellt am Beispiel der Berliner Gründergruppe der Kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands
(Scriptor Verlag, 1977).
462 After the March 1922 split, when Schröder, Goldstein, Reichenbach and Emil Sach decided to found a KAI the KAPD
leadership was entirely composed of workers. The members of the editorial board of the theoretical periodical Proletarier
were also workers: Adam Scharrer, August Wülfrath, Carl Happ, Pinkowski (a metal worker; pseudonym: Franz Buckow);
Ernst Biedermann (KAP/AAU); Heinz Helm, brother-in-law of Scharrer; Erich Kunze (‘Richard Petersen’). With the
exception of the Bulgarian Krum Zhekov, and the lawyer Ludwig Barbasch (1892-1967) – known under the pseudonym of
Fedor Günther. This last was a militant of first plan. In 1918-1919, during the revolution, he was USPD State minister
without portefeuille in the councils’ government of Mecklenburg. Condemned to death after the defeat of the revolution, he
was amnestied. Member of the KAPD’s leadership from 1924 to 1933. Arrested by the Nazis, isolated in the concentration
camp of Brandenburg from March to September 1933, he could immigrate to Palestine. He came back to Germany after the
war and became a business lawyer in Wiesbaden. [Cf. Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach
1933 (München–London–Paris: Saur KG, 1980).]
463 KAZ (Berlin), No. 112, ‚Brief des Genossen Pannekoeks’.
464 Idem.
465 In 1921 and afterwards, the KAPD advocated the formation of action committees, which would be attached to the
Unionen. The AAU’s separation from the KAPD in 1929 led to the dislocation of the KAPD, which survived as a small
legal group until 1933: in 1931, the AAU merged with the AAU-E to form the KAU, attached to the Dutch GIC.
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