The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

– the Ruth Fischer–Arkadij Maslow group which comprised 6,000 militants;
– the Hugo Urbahns (1890-1947) group, which regrouped 5,000, the future Leninbund 693 ;
– the Wedding opposition, excluded in 1927-28, along with a part of the Leninbund created by Urbahns,
was later to form the German trotskyist opposition.
Common work between the Entschiedene Linke and the KAPD only developed with the Schwarz group
(Schwarz was still a Member of Parliament) once the latter had split with Korsch (who went on to publish
Kommunistische Politik).
For the latter there was no question of working with Korsch, who defended syndicalist and parliamentary
politics. For the KAPD, the slogan of a ‘new Zimmerwald’ launched by Korsch was only a “phrase without
content”. 694 Moreover, since Kommunistische Politik approved the Komintern’s policy from 1921 to 1925, it
could hardly subject it to rigorous criticism:
“Those who consider the tactic of the 3 rd International correct from 1921 to 1925 cannot consider that of 1926 as
false because the tactic of the 3 rd International in 1926 is only the logical continuation of its [political] line [...]
The 3 rd International is built on a marshy terrain, that of reformism, in an epoch when capitalism goes from
catastrophe to catastrophe and when the revolution is on the agenda; it has built its house on sand.” 695
The problem was different with Ivan Katz’s group, which had regrouped with the AAU-E and a small
independent trade union in a heterogeneous cartel. 696 The principal question was the acceptance of a centralised
revolutionary organisation. Considering that the Katz group was a “peculiar kind of anarchism”, the KAPD
refused any common work, insofar as the question of the party had not been resolved:
“The struggle for revolutionary tactics is not a struggle against the revolutionary party but on the contrary a
struggle for the revolutionary party, as leader of the class [...] For you the question is: for or against the
KAPD.” 697
In the end, only Schwartz’s Entschiedene Linke replied, but with hesitations on the KAPD. An intense campaign
was undertaken of joint denunciation of the ‘scandal of the grenades’ delivered by the Russian government to the
Reichswehr; the KAPD used Schwarz’s speeches in Parliament to denounce both the friendship treaty between
Germany and USSR, and Russian imperialism. 698
From October to November 1926, a tighter collaboration began between the two organisations. The organ of the
Schwarz group, Entschiedene Linke (EL), was even printed in the KAPD printshop. On all major questions
(trade unionism, parliamentarism, state capitalism in Russia, recognition of the necessity of a party) EL
recognised in December 1926 that it was on the same terrain as the KAPD. Finally, at a session of EL’s central
committee – from 4 th -6 th June 1927 – it was unanimously decided to merge with the KAPD, before the autumn.
Simultaneously the militants of the EL had to leave any kind of union and join the AAU. But the bacillus of
‘anti-parliamentary parliamentarism’ was still present within the EL; a substantial exception was made to the
abandoning of its remaining parliamentary mandates: Schwarz retained his seat in the Reichstag. Officially his
693 See the well-documented study on the left in the KPD by O. Langels: Die Ultralinke Opposition der KPD in der
Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1984).
694 KAZ, No. 77, 1926, ‚Zimmerwald: eine Phrase ohne Inhalt’.
695 KAZ, No. 77, 1926, op. cit.
696 In June 1926, the „Spartakusbund Linkskommunistischer Organisationen“ was formed. Pfemfert was its mentor. It was
joined by an independent transport union (Industrie-Verband für das Verkehrsgewerbe).
697 KAZ, No. 69, August 1926, ‚Der Weg der KPD-Opposition’.
698 See the KAPD pamphlet Von der Revolution zur Konter-Revolution: Russland bewaffnet die Reichswehr (Berlin: KAP
Verlag, 1927). In 1923, at the same time as the Russian state proclaimed its solidarity with the insurgent workers of
Hamburg, Russian boats brought shells, grenade-launchers and machine-guns which went to the Reichswehr to crush the
insurrection [see: Les relations germano-soviétiques de 1933 à 1939 (Armand Colin, Paris, 1954); article by G. Castellan,
‘Reichswehr et Armée rouge, 1920-1939’, pp. 137-260].
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