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intention of working for the reunification of the two opposing KAPDs. But this was to be considered “as soon as there is a resurgence of revolutionary struggles!” 641 The decomposition of the Essen tendency The KAPD split in March 1922 had disastrous effects within the groups that made up the KAI, which either endured, or disappeared as fast as they had been established. In the Bulgarian KAP, numerically the strongest of the KAI, there was a no barred struggle between the Sofia tendency, attached to Essen, and the more workerist Varna tendency, close to Berlin. At first, the Bulgarian KAP had been very reticent about the KAI; in a letter of 25 th January 1922, the Sofia organisation refused to send a delegate to the future KAI congress. 642 Thereafter, it seems that contrary to Berlin’s claims that there were two KAPs, each publishing its own Rabotchnitcheska Iskra the KAP split, not into two parties, but into two groups which coexisted within the same party. 643 Both groups joined the KAI, but a strong minority within the Varna tendency remained in contact with the Berlin KAPD, similarly to Holland (see below). 644 The result was a great confusion in the KAP where the split caused by the formation of the KAI still further encouraged localism and personal antagonisms. Although it emerged intact from the bloody confrontations of September 1923, the KAP seems not to have survived the terrible repression that followed the terrorist action carried out by the Bulgarian CP in April 1925. 645 641 H. Gorter, Die Notwendigkeit der Wiedervereinigung der Kommunistischen Arbeiter Parteien Deutschlands (Berlin- Mariendorf, 1923), p. 20. Gorter signed the content of the pamphlet in a personal capacity, an indication of how isolated he found himself. 642 Canne-Meijer Archives, IISG Amsterdam, map 240. 643 KAZ (Essen tendency), but edited by Emil Sach (KAI Executive) in Berlin, No. 14, August 1922, Aus der Internationale. Other names of KAI, KAPD and AAU “leaders” appear in the Collection Canne-Meijer, between 1921 and 1932: Karl Schröder (KAI Executive), Käthe Friedländer (KAI Executive), Hugo and Leo Fichtmann (KAI, Berlin), Wilhelm Passlack (KAI, Essen), Walter Dolling [1896?- 1965?] (Essen), Otto Gottberg [1884-1960] (KAPD treasurer, Hannover, then Frankfurt/Main and Magdeburg; returned to the Berlin KAPD) [pseudonym: Ackermann?], Christian Rock (Essen), Hugo Oehlschläger (Mühlheim), F. Bergs [1886-?] (Essen), Otto Arendt (KAI Executive), Walter Arendt (1894-1972), Gustav Herrmann (KAI, Berlin), Walter Kalbitzer [1880-?] (Essen), August Schwers (Bremen), Gustav Sabath [1903-?], Ali Baset Salim, Moschev (Sofia), Lydia E. Mattern, Karl Arnold (Berlin), Walter Eckardt; Kurt Kuschewski (Berlin), Schönbeck, Oskar Walz (Berlin-Pankow), for the German ‚Unionist’ movement. In these archives and on the Workers’ Dreadnaught, the names of W.S. Findlay, Nora Smyth, and Sylvia Pankhurst, for the Communist Workers Movement of England; and also: George Garrett, Henry Sara (1886-1953) [one of the future founders of the British trotskyist movement, after 1929], F. Brimley, T. Hodson, Albert Mack, S. P. Viant, Janet Grove. 644 The Varna tendency sent a delegate to the Berlin KAPD. This was the student Krum (Georgi) Jäkov (or Zhekov, in English transliteration), who from 1924 wrote for Proletarier in Berlin. He used the pseudonyms Burg, Charlotte Burg, or Burger [according to Alfred Weiland, an old member of the Berlin KAPD, in: ‘Mitteilung von Alfred Weiland’, no date, two pages, Freie Universität, Library, Weiland Archives, Berlin]. 645 The Bulgarian CP’s putsch of September 1923 left thousands dead. In April 1925, the Bulgarian communist party descended into terrorism. Its military centre blew up the Sveta Nedelya cathedral in Sofia, killing a hundred members of the state apparatus. The repression was terrible: thousands of executions over several months, including an important leader of the BCP, Shablin, many anarchists, very active in Bulgaria, and left communist dissents as Ivan Ganchev. In 1927, the KAI still had contacts with the Bulgarian communist left, or what remained of it [inter alii: Ivan Kolinkoev (leader of the Varna tendency since 1922; teacher in Burgas), and Georgi Christov, from Plovdiv]. (See: map 240, in: Collectie Canne Meijer, IISG) Ivan Kolinkoev (1876-1952), born in Kazanlak, teacher in a Burgas high school, probably in French, was member of the Bulgarian social democracy (BRSDP) since 1900, in charge of the local section in Burgas. He was secretary of the CC of the BRSDP (1906-1914); organisation secretary in Burgas between 1918 and 1920, and editor of the theoretical periodical Novo Vremie [‘New Times’], organ of the BCP published in 1919. In 1920, with Dimitar Nedyalkov et alii, he wrote an open letter to the high bodies of the party, which criticised parliamentary tactics: Pismo kam rabotnitsite pri BKP i obshchiya c. sayuz (Burgas, 1920). He was expelled from the BCP in 1920, as “Iskrist’, and was the dominant figure of the 170
Sylvia Pankhurst’s Communist Workers’ Party (CWP), formed from sections expelled from the British CP and attached to the KAI, tried to imitate the KAPD by artificially forming ‘All Workers Unions’. The CWP seems to have had contacts in India and South Africa. At least, this was what the KAI claimed in Berlin. But the organisation’s theoretical weakness and localism tinted with anarchism got the better of it in 1924. All that remained was the Glasgow group ‘The Commune’, led by Guy Aldred, and situated somewhere between Bakunin and ‘council communism’ (see Chapter 6). The existence of a Russian KAP, much trumpeted by the Essen tendency, appears to have been a bluff. In fact it consisted of two Russians, who lived in Berlin and translated documents for the KAI. 646 The Berlin KAPD noted ironically that the KAI had a strong tendency to building Potemkin villages. 647 Miasnikov’s Workers’ Group was more real. Strictly clandestine, it nonetheless considered itself as an external fraction of the bolshevik party, “in order to exercise decisive pressure on the ruling group of the party itself”. 648 It was attached to the KAI, but did not long survive the attentions of the Cheka. In Austria, the proclamation of a KAP in 1924 was another ‘Potemkin village’. The militants of this ‘party’, whose press was printed in Berlin, could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and it soon disappeared. 649 In Germany itself, the Essen tendency was affected with the splitting virus. Its main theoretical figures left: Goldstein in 1922, then Schröder in 1924 left to join the SPD, where they formed an opposition group with their Varna tendency. After 1927, he contributed to the foundation of the BRP (Balgarska Rabotnitcheska Partiya, or ‘Bulgarian Workers’ party’; legal cover of the CP, after 1927) in Burgas. He was interned in a lager (Khristo Pole) in 1941-42. He died in September 1952 in Svishchov. [See: Entsiklopediya Balgariya, 4 Vols., Sofia, 1978-88.] 646 See: Die Kommunistische Arbeiter Internationale, Räte Internationale oder Führer Internationale?, p. 17-19; pamphlet of the Berlin KAPD (1923). The two Russians in question were perhaps Kropf and Basil Ivanovich Ruminov. The former is cited in a German police report [Lageberichte, R.K. 57 In., 11 October 1921] as being a member of the KAI’s information bureau at the end of 1921. The second may have been the husband of Käthe Friedländer, who played a leading role in the KAI’s international work. His name also appears spelt ‘Ramanov’ in letters in the Canne-Meijer archives, whence the name Rumanova, which in the correspondence seems to refer to Käthe Friedländer. She (Katja in Russian) and ‘Raminov’ (in fact her husband Vassili Ruminov [1894-?]) were excluded from the international work in January 1925, and then from the KAI in autumn 1925, as attested by a circular of 4 th March 1926 (map 241/1, Canne-Meijer archives) entitled “warrant for arrest”. Both were excluded “for their reformist attitude, links with groups of the Third International, and betrayal of the organisation”. She and her husband were friends of the Franz and Cläre Jung couple, and joined probably the Rote Kämpfer group at the beginnings of the 30s. They emigrated to New York, where they were living in 1971 [See: ‘Cläre Jung/Katja und Wassili Ruminoff. Rote Kämpfer, Ein Briefwechsel’, in: Sklaven, Berlin, No. 49, Sept.-Oct. 1998.] From 1922, Käthe Friedländer had represented the Communist Workers’ Party of Russia on the inner Executive of the KAI. She was not formally a member of the Essen KAPD, doubtless because she worked at the Russian Trade Mission in Berlin (map 38a/61). She worked with two other members of the inner Executive, Walter Dolling and Karl Schröder, who were expelled in Mai 1924 [Rundschreiben, No. 3, Sept. 1924, map 238a/60]. It is difficult to determine whether the reason was her support for the theories of Rosa Luxemburg against Pannekoek (idem), or her not very clear ties to the Russian government, through her job with an institution of the Russian state. 647 Potemkin, the minister and lover of Catherine II, who during the empress’s tours of the country would build brand new villages in order to hide from her the wretched reality of the Russian peasant’s existence. The KAPN claimed there existed a section of the KAI in Africa, in fact a contact in Johannesburg [De Communistische Arbeider, No. 4, Jan. 1922]. 648 ‘Manifesto of the Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)’, 1923, published by the Essen KAPD, reproduced in: G. Hillmann, Selbstkritik des Kommunismus (Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag, 1967), translated into French in: Invariance, No. 6, 1975. For the history of the Russian communist left, see: R.V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969). 649 The Vienna KAZ was printed in Mülheim (in the Ruhr) by Hugo Oelschläger. According to the Austrian police reports, the KAP had some 20 members in 1922, much less in 1924. The editor of the Vienna KAZ in 1924 was Stanislaus Geiger [2436 BKA für Inneres, 15/3, 1922-25, Polizei-Direktion in Wien, 11 th March 1924], an office worker and member of the KPÖ in 1919. In 1927, he was a delegate to the first conference of the KPÖ opposition led by Josef Frey (1882-1957), former president of the Vienna Council of Soldiers in the 1918 revolution, expelled from the ‘Party’ in 1927 as a trotskyist. In 1928, Geiger was a member of the Kurt Landau group, though still keeping in contact with the Essen KAPD [Josef Frey Archiv, Vienna, map 12]. (Documents kindly transmitted to me by the Austrian historian Hans Schafranek.) 171
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PHILIPPE BOURRINET The Dutch and Ge
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The Dutch and German Communist Left
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General studies ...................
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INTRODUCTION Despite the theoretica
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In fact, it was not the GIC, but th
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history of the Dutch communist curr
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Chapter 1: Origins and Formation of
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1862-1866, 1871-1872); these conser
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Dutch and German workers’ movemen
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However, this ‘radicalism’ of D
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emained an internationalist. It is
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a formidable weapon against the lef
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form the Tribunist movement: Mendel
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of the organisation. 31 He only dev
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The support given to the various re
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Using the pretext of the struggle a
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the end of 1903. 57 By contrast, a
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Bolsheviks had deputies in the Duma
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imposed to form an organised fracti
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was obliged to include in the pream
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‘right’ 100 - which was based i
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This was the beginning of an increa
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carried out by the SDP - in the for
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The growth of Dutch imperialism cou
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Wijnkoop’s suggestion, the SDP’
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evolution. 125 Right up until the w
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helped to write the pamphlet addres
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section, supported a counter-resolu
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Chapter 2 Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’
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The philosophical bases of radical
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Wrongly presented by its opponents
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is most necessary. Only knowledge g
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ended in defeat - but whatever help
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The Dutch Left never considered the
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ourgeois revolutions, thinks of not
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eligious faith in the success of th
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organisations they had so patiently
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forces... The most backward country
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mass strikes; the proletariat’s s
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‘Great Night’: “[passive radi
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economic, and whose political domin
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letter to Paul Lafargue (20 th June
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Luxemburg in urging a clear rejecti
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explicit criticism of their leaders
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As in most of the belligerent count
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the main goal was the return to pea
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Gorter’s analyses were remarkable
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political factors which led to this
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During 1915, opposition to the war
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inform its readers about the Confer
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It is noteworthy that Roland Holst
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powerful opposition to this policy
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The workers’ reaction was immedia
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concealed the Wijnkoop leadership
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Lenin was quite right to emphasise
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“Don’t you feel, little by litt
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dissolved itself. There only remain
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Chapter 4 THE DUTCH LEFT IN THE KOM
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Spartakusbund not rejected particip
Page 120 and 121: However, the circular of the Komint
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Page 126 and 127: The resolution adopted by the confe
Page 128 and 129: Led by Wolffheim and Laufenberg, th
Page 130 and 131: Pannekoek’s great clear-sightedne
Page 132 and 133: Rühle’s anti-party current. But
Page 134 and 135: All these accusations fail to stand
Page 136 and 137: not that of a general staff, in whi
Page 138 and 139: democrats and bourgeois in the war
Page 140 and 141: The unions also resemble the state
Page 142 and 143: eal decision-making centre. In this
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Page 146 and 147: The NEP (New Economic Policy) in th
Page 148 and 149: and the workers, who had all been a
Page 150 and 151: However, all the left communists, G
Page 152 and 153: was more disastrous for the VKPD th
Page 154 and 155: At its 3 rd Congress, the Komintern
Page 156 and 157: when he was in fact in Spain at the
Page 158 and 159: workers, and that every three month
Page 160 and 161: committee is also of the opinion th
Page 162 and 163: large towns passed from capitalism
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Page 166 and 167: private property”. They constitut
Page 168 and 169: side, of two KAPDs, with two papers
Page 172 and 173: ‘old enemy’ Paul Levi. 650 Deth
Page 174 and 175: district in Amsterdam, condemning a
Page 176 and 177: THE GROUP OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIS
Page 178 and 179: the Dutch theoretical review Radenc
Page 180 and 181: the CPO decided to dissolve in orde
Page 182 and 183: political sleep by the crisis of th
Page 184 and 185: economic, rather than the political
Page 186 and 187: the nationalist, even anti-Semitic
Page 188 and 189: parliamentary stipend financed the
Page 190 and 191: shreds”. 706 But significantly, t
Page 192 and 193: KAPD. The GIC, followed by Pannekoe
Page 194 and 195: It was a party which dared not spea
Page 196 and 197: a big impact in the unemployed move
Page 198 and 199: anarchist group like the BAS was ch
Page 200 and 201: The other factor in the defeat of t
Page 202 and 203: would ‘awaken’ the German prole
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Page 206 and 207: Chapter 7 TOWARDS A NEW WORKERS’
Page 208 and 209: The evolution of the Dutch GIC towa
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Page 212 and 213: Secondly, by trying at all costs to
Page 214 and 215: In a contradictory way, the GIC rep
Page 216 and 217: The ‘new workers’ movement’ a
Page 218 and 219: The function and functioning of the
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een eclipsed and replaced by a “d
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and developed since the birth of th
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GIC recognised the fundamental role
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This view has a certain resemblance
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“At the beginning of the period o
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Bogdanov, the social process was re
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to construct a coherent and ordered
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“As soon as the proletarian class
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the danger of state capitalism. The
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inseparable from the anti-organisat
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growing uncertainty of existence is
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indivisible unity operating like th
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“freedoms” and the introduction
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Steuermann 972 , Rühle showed that
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Russian capitalism. It was only con
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The unemployed workers of Amsterdam
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Unlike the Paul Mattick group in th
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The contribution by this group, whi
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Chapter 9 THE DUTCH INTERNATIONALIS
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workers’ councils”, the KAPN’
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impoverished peasants and, on the o
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The first ‘minority’ was formed
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iting, since the Dutch RSAP and the
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seems to have come from an ex-membe
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esult which appeared positive to th
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Chapter 10 FROM THE “MARX - LENIN
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to the previous history of Germany
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posterity a political, as much as a
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Council communist theory had a revo
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organisations together, including t
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This ‘broad’ policy towards oth
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The MLL Front played a considerable
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workers had been liquidated. A tota
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Chapter 11 The Communistenbond Spar
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political past, marked less by synd
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process, and “the [capitalist] sy
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organisation, once theoretical and
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organisation: “The Bond is a temp
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The implicit rejection of the Russi
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the ‘right’ to speak in the Ber
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slavenmaatschappij tot arbeidersmac
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In 1945-46, the Bond examined sever
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Luxemburg’s conception, it was fo
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draws in ever greater masses. [...]
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The onset of the Cold War left the
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- General rejection of all groups t
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disappeared in 1948. Canne-Meijer w
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Bond arrived at the idea that the R
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After World War II council communis
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joined the left wing of the SPD or
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Like SB, it paraded a strong anti-b
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If ‘councilism’ as an organised
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The history of the Dutch and German
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organisational discipline, both exp
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looked to changes in the sociologic
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The criticisms put forward by Geyer
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BIBLIOGRAPHY A bibliography on the
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Stan POPPE (1899-1991) archives: mi
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Rote Armee (constituted in April 19
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Korrespondenz-Blatt der KAPD, ‚an
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‘Monatsblätter aus der Jugendbew
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Nasha Duma, Sofia, Oct. - Dec. 1919
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THE NETHERLANDS The Dutch communist
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Uit eigen kring; intern orgaan (the
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(These latter two texts have been t
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There is a good choice of texts, tr
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Zur Psychologie des proletarisches
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Marxism: last refuge of the bourgeo
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(These texts are in Authier-Barrot,
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Der Kampf um die Macht in der Gegen
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Pamphlets by the Bulgarian left com
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REICHENBACH (Bernard), ‘Moscow 19
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‚Über Karl Korsch’, in Jahrbuc
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ROEGHOLT (Richter), Ben Sijes. Een
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JANEV (Nikola), Balgarskata komunis
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The ‘intellectual current’: lit
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MALANDRINO (Corrado), ‘Anton Pann
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BERENDSEN (Hans), & WEEDA (Rik), Ui
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HARMSEN (Ger), Historisch overzicht
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NGO VAN, Vietnam 1920-1945, révolu
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WINCKLER (Heinrich August), Arbeite
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Protokolle der Vereinigungs-Konfere
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Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli,
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CWI: Communist Workers’ Internati
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NSV: Nederlandsch Syndikalistisch V
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VOC: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compa
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Blackwell (Russell) [alias: Negrete
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Fischer (Ruth) [Eisler (Elfriede),
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KAPN, 17, 138, 172, 187, 199, 204-2
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Most (Johann), 29 Mühsam (Erich),
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Rühle (Otto), 13, 17, 21, 62, 120,
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Vonk (group De), 324, 329, 337, 351
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