The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

After World War II council communism survived at the international level only through personalities like Karl
Korsch and Paul Mattick in the USA, 1267 Willy Huhn and Alfred Weiland 1268 in Germany, who have remained
loyal to their revolutionary orientations. But on the whole their work remained purely individual, which led them
to collaborate with groups whose orientations, far from being council communist, were close to anti-bolshevik
‘left wing socialism’ or revolutionary syndicalism. Hence the whole political ambiguity of ‘councilist’ elements
outside The Netherlands with regard to such groups.
From the aftermath of the war until the period of the 1960s, the existence of a veritable international council
communist movement is difficult to perceive. In the USA Paul Mattick proved incapable of reconstituting a
political group and of publishing a periodical specific to the ‘councilist’ movement. He preferred to write for
marxological and even left-wing socialist periodicals. But the conditions for a reception of the council
communist have changed in the 40s and 50s, and Mattick sufferd also of political isolation. Whenever a certain
interest in the ‘council movement’ develops on the American continent, as in South America, this always
crystallizes around individuals, as in Chile around the mining engineer and anarchist Laín Diez, who published
in Santiago a Spanish translation of Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher. Throughout the world, the ties between
councilists’ are purely individual, maintained by means of correspondence, and easily broken in the absence of
an organisation. 1269
More realistic was the appearance, in 1944 in Australia, of a periodical laying claim to council communism from
1944 on: the Southern Advocate for Workers’ Councils (An International Digest) of Melbourne. This monthly
periodical that survived until 1949 published Lenin as Philosopher and The Workers’ Councils in 1948, in cooperation
with Pannekoek, and so made known the work of the Dutch theoretician. The group was animated by
James Arthur Dawson (1889-1958), and backed up by the anarchist intellectual Kenneth Joseph Kenafick (1904-
1982). Dawson born in Melbourne was the son of a Methodist pastor, notably influenced a milieu of German
immigrants. But politically the group was an eclectic mixture of revolutionary syndicalism (through its close ties
1267 For Paul Mattick’s (1904-1981) biography, and a bibliography of his political writing until his death, see the work of
Frank Dingel in: IWK, No. 3, Sept. 1986, pp. 190-224.
1268 Alfred Weiland (1906-1978) was the son of a Spartakist. In 1920, he joined the Freie Sozialistische Jugend, the KPD‘s
youth organisation: the latter became the ‘Communist Workers’ Youth’ (KAJ) when it split from the KPD (Oct. 1920), with
around 4,000 young workers. Influenced by Rühle’s pedagogical theories. From August to December 1925, he took a
member card to the nazi party in Berlin, and did not give in the 60s some clear explanations about this mysterious episode
of his live. From 1926 he held positions in the Berlin AAU and in the KAPD (in charge of international contacts; secretary
of organisation in Berlin from 1929 to 1931; member of the KAPD GHA), then in the KAU. Working in Berlin, in a
telegraph lines building bureau, he was a militant in the unemployed movement, and then held by the Gestapo from 1933 to
1935. He managed to take part in the council communist conference in Copenhagen in 1935, and wrote its final resolutions.
Despite remaining under police surveillance until 1938, he succeeded in maintaining an activity with communist workers’
groups. After May 1945, he published the KAU bulletin Zur Information, then the review Neues Beginnen together with
some ex-militants from the Unionen (Fritz Parlow, Willy Raukitis, Ernst Pönisch, Otto Reimers, etc.), and left socialists, in
West Berlin. Here he was ‘kidnapped’ by the Russian political police the 11 th November 1950, and condemned as a
‘counter-revolutionary’ by an East Berlin court. Thanks to a ‘campaign’, led by Margarete Buber-Neumann, he was released
in Nov. 1958. Hostile to the Brandt’s political openness to East, he funded in 1971 a ‘Democratic Centre’ in West Berlin.
He sold his important library to the Free University of Berlin. [See pamphlet: Ein Leben für die Freiheit. Der Menschenraub
an Alfred Weiland, Die Sonde, No. 1, (West) Berlin, 1950; and Sylvia Kubina, Die Bibliothek des Berliner Räte-
Kommunisten Alfred Weiland 1906-1978 (Universitätsbibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin, 1995.]
1269 In periodicals, such as The Western Socialist, Politics, Left, Partisan Review, etc., Mattick contributed frequently to
anarchist, socialist (World Socialist Party, USA) and councilist periodicals in the USA, Britain, France, Scandinavia,
Germany, Italy, Australia, and Chile.
The Chilian Laín Diez (?-1975?), who was in the 40s in Santiago the chief of the mines’ state department, was an
anarchosyndicalist, who wrote about the “exemple and lessons” of Pierre Monatte [See: Laín Diez, Pedro Monatte, ejemplo
y enseñanzas sindicalistas (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1951).] He was also one of the animators of the
famous literary and leftist monthly periodical Babel (1921-51, Buenos Aires, then Santiago), which published some texts of
Paul Mattick. This periodical was led by Samuel Glusberg, known as Enrique Espinoza (1898-1987), born in Kishinev,
Russia, settled in Argentina in 1905, who lived in Chile, visited Trotsky in exile, and was a contributor of the Mexican
trotskyist periodical Clave.
316