The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

side, of two KAPDs, with two papers with the same title; and two AAUs, distributing Kampfruf. It introduced
political customs which would later meet with success in the ‘bordigist’ current. 628
From the 2 nd to 6 th April the Essen tendency formed the KAI, at a founding conference. The only ‘foreign’ group
participating was the Dutch KAP. The KAI presented itself as a centralised organisation. Organisationally it
copied the Komintern. Its Executive was composed of a small Bureau, the International Secretariat, responsible
to the international congress, and an enlarged Bureau, composed of the representatives of the national sections,
to be chosen and revoked by the latter. 629 The concern not to place the KAI under the control of the Essen
tendency was concretised through the decision to select the Executive Bureau at each international congress. 630
Aware of the criticisms from Berlin, the Essen tendency decided that the number of mandates held by the
different constituent ‘parties’ of the KAI would be determined by the international Congress. An extraordinary
congress had to be called by a majority of national sections. These arrangements would have been valuable if the
KAI really formed a veritable International with real national parties. This was far from being the case. The KAI
was in fact a provisional Bureau with several national groups. 631
Gorter and the Essen current
Gorter was the KAI’s only real theoretician. Schröder and his friends were far from having Gorter’s stature. 632 It
was Gorter who gave the Essen tendency its programme, in the form of a pamphlet: The Communist Workers’
International. 633 The pamphlet though often confused, brought together the elements of the KAI’s programme.
Although he adopted the theory of the ‘dual revolution’, Gorter took the Russian Revolution as his point of
departure. Contrary to the councilists, he strongly insisted on the role played by the Bolsheviks in 1917, “as the
most determined and most conscious organisation”. Criticism of the Bolsheviks must be from a class, not a
“Menshevik, viewpoint”: “We are the most bitter adversaries – and the KAPs in every country have always been
so – of the Menshevik, kautskyist, independent, pacifist, etc., notion that the Russians should have stopped at the
bourgeois revolution.” 634
However, while he rightly denounced the dictatorship of the bolshevik party, which he incorrectly considered a
party of the bourgeois revolution, Gorter’s evaluation of the Russian Revolution should be treated with caution.
According to Gorter, the Bolsheviks should have prevented the formation of peasant Soviets, refused to
628 According to the Berlin tendency, the Essen KAP used methods unworthy of a revolutionary organisation Essen used
slander, claiming that “Russian roubles were flooding into the Berlin tendency, and that the Berlin district was “a nest of
informers” [KAZ (Berlin), No. 41, 1922]. Essen did not hesitate to seize the organisations equipment, and tried to bribe the
Düsseldorf comrades to turn Klassenkampf against Berlin [KAZ (Berlin), No. 16]. Finally, militants in Essen attacked Berlin
supporters in the town with bludgeons [KAZ (Berlin), No. 41, 1922]. The mania for proclaiming oneself ‘the’ party, with the
same name, after each split, was adopted later by the Italian ‘bordigists’. In Italy today there are at least three ‘international
communist parties’ and one Internationalist Communist Party claiming to represent the Italian communist left.
629 Dethmann had proposed that the KAI’s Executive should be responsible as a whole before the Congress, and that the
latter alone should have the right to revoke its members, “in order that they should not represent the particular conception of
their national party”. This meant that until the next Congress, the Executive could impose a policy that ran contrary to the
organisation’s political orientations, without the rational parties’ being able to revoke and replace their delegates [See the
KAPD pamphlet: Die Kommunistische Arbeiter Intemationale (Berlin-Mariendorf, 1923), pp. 12-13.]
630 Proletarier, April 1922, Berlin, ‚Die Thesen des 1. Kongresses der KAI’. After the split, the Essen tendency kept the
KAPD’s theoretical periodical. From November 1924, the Berlin tendency published its own Proletarier.
631 The British and Bulgarian organisations only joined the KAI officially some time later. In 1922, the KAI was in reality
made up of the KAPN and the Essen tendency alone.
632 After 1922, Karl Schröder wrote very little. He was demoralised, and only took a limited part in militant activity in the
KAI leadership until 1924, when he left it.
633 A French translation – L’Internationale communiste ouvrière – has been published in: Invariance, No. 5, 1974. The page
numbers quoted here are those in Invariance.
634 H. Gorter, L’Internationale communiste ouvrière, p. 34.
168