The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Chapter 5 GORTER, THE KAPD AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE COMMUNIST
WORKERS’ INTERNATIONAL (1921-1927)
In January 1921, the recognition of the KAPD as a ‘sympathising party’ of the 3 rd International with ‘permanent
representative on the Executive’ 521 , seemed to be a victory for the policy of opposition carried out by Gorter and
Pannekoek. It was beginning to be possible for the Komintern and left communism to work in common. At least
that is how it seemed reading Zinoviev, writing in the name of the Executive Committee: “The core of the
KAPD contains some really revolutionary workers. This party has taken a great step towards communism
recently by excluding Laufenberg, Wolffheim and Otto Rühle from its ranks. The KAPD criticises our German
comrades. This is no misfortune. The KPD is not in any case immune from errors: we only need to remember its
attitude during the Kapp putsch and during the last insurrection of the Berlin electricians ...” 522
The joint work between the left communists and the Komintern was of short duration. It did not survive the
March 1921 action in central Germany. The international environment was becoming more and more
unfavourable, not only with the very clear retreat of the world revolution, but above all in relation to the politics
of the Russian state. The foreign policy of this state, the events at Kronstadt and finally the politics of the
Komintern in Germany were to be signposts towards the final break which happened at the 3 rd Congress of the
Komintern. Preceded by the expulsion of the minority from the CPH, even before the 3 rd Congress, that of the
KAPD in September 1921 sounded the death knell of an international opposition in the Komintern. However, it
was the Dutch Communist Left which took the lead of the international opposition even outside the
International. Under the guidance of Gorter, but not of Pannekoek, a Communist Workers’ International (KAI)
was formed which finally became an adventure without any future. It could only precipitate the decline in the
current of the Communist Left in Holland, as in Germany, before the rise at the end of the 1920s of the Group of
Communist Internationalists (GIC).
As the centre of gravity of the Dutch current moved to Germany, and even Britain and Bulgaria, Holland became
the theoretical and political centre of the international left communist movement.
The retreat of the world revolution. – The 1921 ‘Kronstadt tragedy’ and March Action
521 The representative of the KAPD was Arthur Goldstein (pseudonym: Stahl). Born in 1887, he was a journalist. Member of
the SPD in 1914, he joined the USPD in 1917. In opposition in the KPD in 1919 he was a founder member of the KAPD.
Within the latter he lead a stubborn battle against National Bolshevism, by writing a pamphlet against it: Nation und
Internationale. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Hamburger Kommunismus (Berlin: KAPD Verlag, 1920). A
delegate on the Komintern’s Executive from November 1920 to the end of March 1921, he returned to Germany to edit the
KAP organ in the Ruhr: Klassenkampf. He was part of the Schröder clan, and through this was a member of the KAI Bureau
of Information, before the split of March 1922. After this he rapidly became a collaborator of Paul Levi and of the
periodical Unser Weg. Levi made him enter the SPD ‘to form an opposition’. At the end of the 20s, he formed the
clandestine ‘Rote Kämpfer’ group with Schröder, Reichenbach, and Schwab, who left the KAPD claiming to take up its
original positions. He was exiled to France after 1933, where he tried to form an organisation of the R.K. He may have been
the author, using the pseudonym of A. Lehmann, of the article ‘The Communist Workers’ Groups’, and of ‘The economic,
social and political causes of fascism’ (Masses, No. 11, Paris, Nov. 1933). He was captured by the Gestapo in 1941 and
assassinated.
522 Letter from the Executive Committee on 15 January 1921: published in: Die Aktion, No. 13-14, Berlin, April 1921.
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