The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

orientation was in fact not internationalist (“Neither East nor West”), but pro-western. Ultimately, they were
regroupments of opponents inside western social democracy, whose ideological cover was anti-authoritarian and
‘anti-bureaucratic councilism’.
In the 50s, particularly after the kidnapping of Weiland in West Berlin (on 11 th November 1950) by the Russian
secret police (NKVD), the influence of the former council communism decreased.
In fact, it was outside Germany that the ‘councilist’ movement was to develop internationally. This development
was less in continuity with the council communism of the 1920s and 1930s, than it was under influence of the
group Socialisme ou Barbarie of Castoriadis (alias Chaulieu, alias Cardan, alias Coudray). 1277 This group
originated in trotskyism which it had broken with in 1949, and was characterised by its definition of the USSR as
a ‘bureaucratic capitalism’ that had engendered a ‘new class’: the bureaucracy. According to this view a ‘modern
capitalism’ was developing, whose internal contradiction was no longer the class struggle, but the opposition
between ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’. From this point of departure, ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’ claimed that it was ‘going
beyond Marxism’, and that the proletariat had been ‘integrated into consumer society’. The revolutionary
movement ceased to be political and had to be a ‘total movement’, inserting itself into everyday life. This vision,
which one can describe as a ‘modernist’ theory – i.e. a theory of ‘modern capitalism’ – shared with classical
‘councilism’ a rejection of the political and trades union ‘apparatuses’ of the ‘old workers’ movement’ and the
rejection of the Russian revolution and bolshevism as ‘bourgeois’.
While ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’ disappeared in 1967, having proclaimed that the revolution was ‘impossible’ in
the Marxist sense – unless in the form of ‘revolts of the people’ at the level of everyday life – it has had a
striking influence outside France. The British group Solidarity, which published a periodical of the same name
from 1961 on, was formed on the basis of the theories of Castoriadis (new pseudonyms: Cardan or Coudray). 1278
1935. From 1950-52, he was one editor of the periodical Pro und contra. He was a member of the SPD, and taught at the
August Bebel Institute in West Berlin, but was excluded in 1953 for his articles revealing the SPD’s true history. From then
on, he worked with Funken, Von unten auf, etc. [See: the Huhn’s biography by Christian Riecherts in: W. Huhn, Trotsky, le
Staline manqué (Paris: Cahiers Spartacus, 1981), pp. 115-118.] From a ‘councilist’ point of view he criticised the German
Social Democracy from Lassalle to Kautsky [cf. Willy Huhn, Der Staatssozialismus der deutschen Sozialdemokratie
(Freiburg: Çà ira Verlag, 2001).]
Henry Jacoby (1905-1986), anarchist-pacifist, came into contact during the mid-1920s with Otto Rühle, whose friend he
became. In 1933, he was a member of the group ‘Funken’ (the Spark), founded by Kurt Landau, and was imprisoned from
1934-36. In exile in Prague, then Paris, while remaining a member of the Funken’ group, which adhered to the left socialist
‘London Bureau’. In 1941 he sought refuge in the USA, and worked for Marcuse’s Institute for Social Research, which in
1943 was working for the Allies. After the war, he worked for the UN and became Director of the FAO’s General Section in
Geneva. Like Willy Huhn, he contributed to the Berlin ‘Funken’ circle. Under the pseudonym of Sebastian Franck, he
published works and studies by Rühle, as well as his memoirs and a study on ‘The Bureaucratisation of the World’ [see:
IWK No. 3. September 1986: biography and bibliography of Jacoby’s works by I. Herbst and B. Klemm, p. 388-395.]
1277 Claude Lefort (“Montal”) and Cornelius Castoriadis came from the trotskyist movement (Parti communiste
internationaliste). During the mid-1960s, they abandoned Marxism to become well-known “political thinkers” and
‘philosophers’. Castoriadis (pseudonyms: Chaulieu; Cardan; Coudray) ended his political evolution as a defender of
‘Western democracy’ against the “stratocratic peril’ incorporated by the ‘Russian totalitarianism’, in his book Devant la
guerre (Paris: Fayard, 1981). His articles in Socialisme ou Barbarie have been reprinted in the ‘10/18’ series, Paris, UGE,
from 1973-79. Before his recent death (Dec. 1997), he was philosopher of the ‘autonomy thought’ and psycho-analyst. See:
Philippe Gottraux, Socialisme or Barbarie. A political and intellectual engagement in France of the post-war period,
(Lausanne: Éditions Payot, 1997). Readers will find in this book useful elements on the influence of the Council
Communism within the Castoriadis group, in the Fifties and Sixties. See also: M. van der Linden, ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie:
A French Revolutionary Group (1949-65). In memory of Cornelius Castoriadis, 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997’, in:
Left History 5.1 (Toronto, 1997).
1278 The London ‘Solidarity’ group (with which several ‘autonomous’ groups later amalgamated) came from the ‘Socialism
Reaffirmed’ group, formed in 1960. From 1961, it was well-known for its participation to the ‘Committee of 100’ against
nuclear weapons [see: Autogestion et socialisme, No. 24-25. Sept.-Dec. 1973, ‘The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control 1917-
21’ , by Maurice Brinton, with a forward on Solidarity). Maurice Brinton (1923-2005), leading figure of the Solidarity
group, was the pen name of the British neurologist Chris Pallis. He translated from French much material by Castoriadis and
wrote vivid first-hand accounts of mass struggles such as May 68 in France.
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