The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

fraction within the small Proletarian Party of America, the third communist party formed in 1919. The United
Workers’ Party emerged from this ‘party’ at the beginning of the 30s, and published the review Council
Correspondence. Mattick, who was editor of the workers’ paper Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, was very active in
the unemployed movement. The Mattick group was far from rejecting the necessity of a revolutionary party. He
was the only one to insist on unity between the KAPD and the KAU. 731
– In France, the groups Réveil communiste, then Ouvrier communiste, and Spartacus, the first made up of Italian,
the last of German workers (group of A. Heinrich), fell apart at the end of 1931. 732 With them, council
communism was to disappear from France for a long time to come. This highlighted the impossibility of links
between the German-Dutch and the Italian communist lefts. 733
– Outside of these groups, one can hardly speak of a real influence of council communism. The split between the
KAPD and the AAU had led certain national groups to link up with the KAPD alone. Although the KAPD in
Austria 734 had a small group active in Vienna, it was present above all among German-speaking workers in
Czechoslovakia. In the industrial north of Bohemia, a strong opposition developed within the Czech CP. At the
end of 1928 and early in 1929, a group was formed that identified itself with the combat of the KAPD against the
‘Komintern’s opportunism’ since its 3 rd Congress. The Czech KAP Propaganda-Gruppe – led by the Sudeten
journalist Kurt Weisskopf – had a strong presence in the industrial region of Gablonz (Jablonec); it published
Kampfruf, aimed at the Bohemian ‘Unionist’ movement, then its political organ Spartakus from 1929-32. It had
731 P. M., ‘Unsere Auffasung’, in: Rätekorrespondenz, No. 8, 1931, theoretical review of the ‘Unionist’ movement: Chicago:
“The party organises all consistent revolutionaries, even those of bourgeois origin, who join us. It regroups all revolutionary
forces which do not base themselves on the place of work. It is organised by place of habitation; it is more a military than a
propagandist organisation, although the one cannot exclude the other. It declares itself unreservedly for the AAU, that is for
the elimination of the party during the seizure of power by the councils... Until this moment, the party fulfils the function of
shock troops... Without the AAU, the KAP is nothing: without the KAP, the AAU renounces an important aspect of the
class struggle. We can only recommend to the conference [that of December 1931] the renewal of the alliance with the
KAP, just as we urge the KAPD to hasten this alliance. If the KAPD in the factories becomes rooted in the ground of party
dictatorship in opposition to the dictatorship of the councils, we must automatically reject it. Only then would the need for a
new party be on the agenda”. It should be noted that Paul Mattick, in rejecting any factoryist vision and underlining the
necessity for the revolutionary party, was not yet a ‘councilist’. The vision of the party as ‘shock troops’ was that of the
KAPD at the beginning of the 20s; but the assertion that the party must dissolve itself after the taking of power shows a
separation with the KAPD’s position on the function of the party.
732 See: Ph. Bourrinet, The ‘Bordigist’ Current 1919-1999, Italy, France, Belgium, op. cit., Chapter 2.
733 The KAPD remained very suspicious of both Bordiga‘s current and the French Opposition. It had a tendency to identify
them with the Korsch current which it rejected as opportunist. In 1926, the KAPD underlined the indecision of the bordigist
current, while noting that it was outside the official line of the Komintern: “Bordiga was a small exception in Italy; from
time to time he made correct criticisms, without being able to indicate himself the exact revolutionary road” [Zur
Information, No. 5, April 1926). Bordiga’s fraction had begun as a real revolutionary current: “In the soil of the Italian CP,
there began to develop – in a spontaneous form – a real line of the international left. The influence that comrade Bordiga
continued to exercise on this movement prevented the real development of this line, which inevitably sought to return to the
position of the abstentionist anti-parliamentary fraction of 1919, since the latter was a transgression. Bordiga’s activity left
many émigré workers numbed in immobility and absolute indifference; it chained them to the cart of the mechanical party
discipline of the 3 rd International, and consequently to opportunism”. But the bordigist fraction had to be distinguished from
the rest of the French opposition. The latter was more to the right than the Korsch current: “We see clearly that the groups
of the French opposition have taken much the same line as Karl Korsch in Germany, even though we have to say that they
are still further to the right”. Later in the same article, the KAPD waxes ironical about the “graceful” and eclectic side of a
“petty bourgeois Opposition” which “flies from one ideological flower to another”. The KAPD put this down, with some
justice, to a “national narrowness” which “is a bit characteristic of the great theoreticians of the workers’ movement from
Proudhon to Jaurès”, and explains this “ideological lightness” of the French Oppposition [‘Aus der Internationale:
Frankreich’, in: KAZ (Berlin), No. 13, 1929).
734 The Austrian group had existed since 1928: it was formed following the workers’ insurrection in Vienna in 1927. [‚Die
KAP in Österreich’, in: KAZ, No. 43, June 1928.] Kurt Weisskopf, German kapist in Prague, was living in London after
1938 and worked at the Reuters agency, using the wife’s surname – Dowson. He published a book on The Agony of
Czechoslovakia 38/68 (London: Elek Books Ltd., 1968), published in French with another titel: Coups de Prague 1938-
1968 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1968).
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