The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

private property”. They constituted a sort of “class for capital’ 620 , if they lowered themselves to struggles for
pay, which were defined as ‘opportunist’ and ‘reformist’.
According to the opponents of the Schröder–Dethmann–Goldstein tendency, the rejection of economic struggles
and the theory of the ‘individual worker’ by the fraction of the KAPD, which in effect controlled the leadership,
had damaging and even destructive consequences for the life of the party and the revolution:
– The separation between the economic and revolutionary struggles condemned the KAPD to exist
as a party only in periods of open revolutionary struggle. In a period of retreat it had no more than a
propaganda function and was transformed into a mere circle, not intervening in the class struggle as an
organisation, trying to give a direction to this struggle. The AAU, similarly, had no more function than
propaganda for the revolution, since according to the conception of the future Essen tendency the
‘Unionists’ could only intervene individually in the economic struggles. The result was that the AAU
was nothing more than a second party, and as such, useless. This was the whole ambiguity of the
existence of Unionen which were political organisations and organisations of economic struggle at the
same time. 621
– If the KAPD and AAU followed a policy of ‘neutrality’ towards economic struggles they risked
objectively playing the role of strike-breakers. ‘Neutrality’ faced with the outbreak of economic strikes
became a ‘neutrality’ in the face of the class enemy. 622 Lastly, if the workers were to heed the advice of
the Schröder tendency and abandon economic struggles, that would be a definite blow in the more
certain defeat of the working class and the triumph of the counterrevolution. The principle committee of
administration (Geschäftsführender Hauptausschuß, or GHA) led by the Berlin Opposition, underlined
this energetically: “Workers who are incapable of leading such struggles and in conflict with capital are
giving in to cowardice and are not capable of conducting the struggle for power”. 623
– Lastly, in an indirect way, the Schröder tendency adopted an ambiguous attitude on the nature of
the trade unions, denounced as counter-revolutionary by the communist left. If the unions were capable
of “representing the interests of the particular worker”, they retained a proletarian nature. This was in
contradiction with the theory of the KAPD and the Dutch who had justified the struggle against the
unions by the fact that in the epoch of the decline of capitalism, since 1914, the trade union form could
no longer defend the elementary economic interests of the workers. The disquiet in the GHA and the
Berlin district, which saw Social Democratic conceptions coming back in through the window after
being chased out of the door, was not without foundation. Some leaders of the future Essen tendency
were not long in rejoining the SPD or the KPD (see below).
The split in the KAPD and its international consequences
a) The March 1922 split
In a few months the Berlin district and the GHA had succeeded in winning the majority of the party. The
militants were more aware of the disturbing consequences of the theory of the ‘individual worker’ than of the
proposal to form the KAI. The politics of the Schröder group had been disastrous for the KAPD. In only a few
months its membership had fallen from 40,000 to less than 5,000. Many workers had left the party, to retire from
620 This theory of a ‘class for capital’ was developed, or rather taken up again, in the 70s by some intellectuals, from an
‘ultra-left’ milieu close to the periodical Invariance in France. These last proclaimed the abandonment of all economic
struggle, which could only be a ‘struggle for capital’ by a ‘class for capital’. The proletariat, according to them, must
‘negate itself’ as a wage-earning class. These individualities or groups rapidly disappeared at the end of the ‘70s.
621 The Essen tendency, which published a KAZ and proclaimed itself the KAPD, was logical with itself: at the end of the
20s, it announced the dissolution of its own ‘Union’.
622 Der Kampfruf, No. 21, Feb. 1922, ‚Zur Reichskonferenz der Allgemeinen Arbeiter Union’.
623 KAZ (Berlin), No. 21, Feb. 1922, ‚Leitsätze zur Taktik der KAPD und AAU’.
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