The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

political activity, to return to the KPD, to act only in the AAU, or, more often, to adhere to the recently formed
rival Union, influenced by Rühle, the AAU-Einheit (unitary), formally split from the AAU after the June 1921
Conference of Berlin. 624
But if the Schröder tendency found itself in the minority, it had the majority in the supreme organ of the KAPD:
the Central Committee (Zentralausschuß), composed of representatives of the different economic districts
(regions) of the party. Through an aberrant clause in the statutes each district, whatever its size, had one
mandate. The numerous small sections were thus over represented in the Central Committee.
Berlin, which comprised nearly half the KAPD membership, thus only had one of the 12 mandates since there
were 12 districts. The central committee plus the GHA (9 members) formed the enlarged central committee,
supreme organ of the KAPD. 625 The Schröder group, which directed the International Bureau at the same time,
was assured of maintaining its majority, relying on the small sections which it was usually able to manipulate.
When the enlarged central committee met on 5 th March, Berlin and the GHA therefore proposed a change in the
mode of representation: one mandate per 100 members of the KAPD, instead of one for each district. This
proposal was rejected by 7 votes to 5. Only the districts voted; the GHA abstained in order not to violate ‘the
principles of proletarian democracy’, by using the same method to vote to change it. 626 The result was to obtain
an artificial majority for the Schröder leadership. The latter could, by a simple majority vote arrange the holding
of a conference in April 1922 for the immediate foundation of the KAI (14 for and 5 against) without first calling
a party congress. Lastly was the extremely serious rejection of wage struggles by the enlarged central committee,
as ‘counter-revolutionary’.
Faced with this situation the Berlin district deposed the Berlin Zentrale and excluded Schröder, Goldstein,
Reichenbach, Emil Sach (pseudonym: Erdmann), Kalbitzer, Gottberg and Dethmann. Karl Schröder and his
partisans immediately constituted a new GHA which was based in Essen, in the Rhineland. 627 The latter decreed
that the Berlin district was “excluded from the party” for “reformism”. A small minority of 450 was allowed to
exclude 2,000 members of the KAPD. The split was complete between the Berlin tendency, which had 2,000
militants in the whole of Germany, and the Essen tendency, very much in the minority, but strong above all in
the Rhineland and central Germany. Of 12,000 AAU members in Berlin, only 600 rallied to the Essen tendency.
The split was catastrophic for the KAPD: its membership had fallen again. Still worse was the existence, side by
624 The AAU-E of Rühle and Pfemfert, rival to the AAU, had absorbed, from October 1921, the majority of the militants
who left the KAPD. The AAU-E had about 60,000 members in 1922, more than the AAU, which had 12,000. But according
to a confidential police report, in July 1922 the KAPD (Berlin tendency) had still 18,400 members, 86 local sections, and
the KAZ a printing of 30,000 copies; the Kampfruf (AAUD), a printing of 64,000 copies really sold. [R134/18, in: Ernst
Ritter, Lageberichte, op. cit.)
625 It was required that a commission should be formed during the sessions of the Central Committee in order to verify the
mandates. This was all the more necessary, given the number of organs taking part. Among those present were: the GHA,
the Bureau of information and organisation of the KAI, the principal enlarged committee (‘Erweiterter Hauptausschuß’), a
sort of political committee not concerned with the management of daily business, the Zentrale of the Berlin KAPD, the KAZ
editors and the press commission, the representatives of the youth (KAJ) of the Reich and of Berlin, the representatives of
the VRUK (commission of support to political prisoners of the KAP/AAU), the representatives of the AAU (Berlin and
Reich), and lastly some members of the Berlin district. The 12 districts (regions) of the KAPD were, of course, also
included. In total 33 persons were present at the time of the session of 5 th and 6 th March. We can see the complexity of the
organisation of a revolutionary party, like the KAPD. Unfortunately we cannot define the organisational competence of the
central organs (GHA, Zentrale of Berlin, Principal Enlarged Committee). It is enough to specify that the following had a
mandate, and thus a right to vote: the 12 districts, the International Bureau, the GHA, the ‘Erweiterter Hauptausschuß’, the
Berlin ‘Zentrale’. This made 20 mandates altogether. Dethmann – the theoretician of ‘the individual worker’ – ‘illegally’
held mandates from 5 districts. With an Erweiterter Hauptschuß, a Zentrale, and 7 districts supporting the Schröder
tendency, it was easy to manipulate the vote and so to ‘swamp’ the real majority of the party.
626 Cf. KAZ (Berlin), Nos. 18 to 21, 1922; KAZ (Essen), No. 1, March 1922.
627 K. Schröder and his friends were able to depose the GHA of Berlin very ‘legally’, since the statutes of the KAPD gave
the Berlin Zentrale the right to revoke the 9 members individually, “under the reserve of approval by the next party
congress”, and replace them by others.
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