The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

the other side of the coin of the parliamentary politics of Levi and the Komintern: “The two methods do not
contradict each other; they grow inevitably on the soil of opportunism”. 555
The pamphlet by Gorter and the KAPD suffered from a certain number of weaknesses. It greatly overestimated
the significance of the March Action and the historic course. In a contradictory way it proclaimed on the one
hand that the March Action was defensive, on the other that it was the “first attack by conscious revolutionary
proletarians of Germany against the bourgeois state”. 556 While Rühle lucidly emphasised that “the revolution in
Germany has been lost for a long time” 557 , Gorter and the KAPD saw the workers on a revolutionary course:
“For the German workers the spell of passivity which for so long bewitched the German revolution is at last
broken”. 558 A naive incantation, when in the same pamphlet it is stated bitterly that “even the great masses of
Central Germany remained neutral if not hostile, towards the vanguard’s struggle”. 559 Finally the March Action
could only have an ‘educational’ effect on the workers’ consciousness: “The open struggle against the bourgeois
capitalist state unmasked for all the true face of democracy”. 560 But since January 1919, had the German
proletariat really waited until March 1921 to discover the ‘true face of democracy’? To this question no answer
was given.
Gorter and the KAPD did not see that the revolutionary course in Germany and the world was in the process of
being reversed. They realised it too late in 1923. 561 In 1921 they counted on the world economic crisis, when
capitalism until 1928 started to stabilise under the effects of the reconstruction, though it is true that Germany
only felt them from 1924 to 1928. The world crisis would almost automatically be transformed into
revolutionary victory: “The world crisis [Gorter’s emphasis] contained for two years after the liquidation of the
war must commence: it will be terrible and can give us and will give us our victory”. 562 This confusion between
the ‘historic crisis of capitalism (decadence)’ unfolding over a whole period and the ‘open crisis’ explains the
adventure that finally caused the constitution of a KAI, as a means to force the real course of history.
555 Idem, p. 11.
The putschism urged by the Komintern was directly in line with its degeneration: the Bulgarian Communist Party launched
itself into an insurrection, without preparation, in September 1923. In October 1923 the little Estonian Communist Party
attempted to take power in Reval, without any support from the workers. Lastly, in November 1927 the Chinese CP, at the
instigation of the Komintern, attempted to take power in Canton.
556 Idem, p. 21.
557 Die Aktion, idem. But Rühle was an individualist; instead of pursuing militant activity he devoted himself more and more
to pedagogic projects. After 1924, he broke with the ‘Unionist’ movement (AAU-E) and published with his wife Alice
Rühle-Gerstel (1894-1943), both influenced by the thought of the psycho-analyst Alfred Adler, the Marxist-Adlerian
periodical: Am anderen Ufer. Blätter für sozialistische Erziehung; 1.1924 – 2.1925, Nos. 1-5. In 1925 he formed (in
Dresden) the „Marxistisch individual-psychologischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft“ (‚Work group of Marxist individualist
pychology’), with his wife, psycho-analyst. He edited with Alice Gerstel the periodical Das proletarische Kind.
Monatsblätter für proletarische Erziehung. (Dresden [Buchholz-Friedewald]; 1.1925 – 12.2.1926; Nos. 1-6.) After a
biografical book on Marx and three books on the 1848 Revolution in Europa, published in 1927, Rühle wrote an impressive
cultural history of the German proletariat (1930): Illustrierte Kultur-und Sittengeschichte des Proletariats, amazingly
published by Willy Münzenberg (1887-1940) – a leader of the KPD – in his own publishing house, Neuer Deutscher Verlag.
After 1931, Rühle was involved more and more in a political and theoretical activity under the pseudonyms of Carl
Steuermann in Germany and Carlos Timoneros in Mexico. He took part in the Dewey Commission, which was an ‘impartial
body’ initiated in March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leo Trotsky, after the Moscow trials.
558 Idem, p. 22.
559 Idem, p. 24.
560 Idem, p. 25.
561 The press and leaflets of the KAPD, in 1923, were constantly pointing out the passivity of the German proletariat and
insisted on the fact that it was only “five minutes” from defeat.
562 Idem, p. 19.
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