The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The criticisms put forward by Geyer and Rosenberg connect up with those of Lenin who talked about left
communism as an ‘infantile disorder’. For Curt Geyer (1891-1967), a former member of the USPD who then
went into the KPD, left communism was a kind of ‘prophetism’. He took up the same arguments as those of
Kautsky against Rosa Luxemburg, asserting that this was a “teleological conception of the role of the masses in
history”, based on a “mystical” vision of class-consciousness and a “catastrophist” theory of history. These were
“the typical tactics of a sect”, where “slogans have become political concepts”. (Geyer, op cit.) A. Rosenberg
made the same analysis, with a bit more sympathy, but also assimilating left communism with bolshevism:
“...utopian extremism is a purely emotional movement and is incapable of elaborating any kind of doctrine or
order. The utopian extremist workers also adhered in droves to bolshevik ideas” (op. cit.)
Such assertions seem to be based on a moralising critique. ‘Utopian extremism’ appeared as an a posteriori
explanation during the decline of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. For the Komintern, at the beginning, as for its
left currents, the international proletarian revolution did not seem to be a form of ‘utopian extremism’; its
generalisation to Central Europe in 1919 was not a long term, but an immediate task. For the first time in the
history of humanity, the accomplishment of the world revolution, involving the action of masses of workers, no
longer appeared to derive from a ‘teleological’ vision of history, a new kind of ‘prophetic mysticism’, but as a
reality. The ‘catastrophist’ theory of a definitive collapse of capitalism was shared throughout the communist
movement: its contours could be seen in the destruction of the war, the outbreak of the economic crisis and of
mass unemployment. Again, in retrospect, we can say that the communist movement of the day underestimated
the strength of capitalism, both at the economic and the political level. But as in the classics of Marxism, the
emphasis was always on the factor of class-consciousness, which was in the final analysis the decisive
revolutionary factor.
To say that ‘extremist’ communism was a purely ‘emotional’ movement, incapable of a coherent theoretical
vision, is hardly convincing. Passion there certainly was but it was a widely shared revolutionary passion, before
the scepticism of defeat smothered it. This passion was nourished by a coherent theoretical vision, that of the
‘decadence of capitalism’, which had opened up a period of world wars and revolutionary convulsions. On the
theoretical basis of the decadence of a now obsolete system, left communism edified its strategy, rejecting the
old parliamentary and trade union tactics. This theory of ‘decadence’ was, furthermore, the very basis for the
foundation of the Komintern in 1919. Certainly, left communism seemed to nurture a fatalistic view of the
revolution, via its theory of the ‘death crisis’ or ‘final crisis’ of capitalism. But these exaggerations were more
typical of the Essen current than of the Berlin current. Theoreticians like Pannekoek always had a strong distrust
of this theory of the death crisis, insisting that the factor of the crisis was only operational if it was accompanied
by the subjective factor of class-consciousness. But these divergences were not limited to this current: they also
appeared within the International as a whole, as could be seen from the debates at the 3 rd and 4 th congresses of
the Komintern.
As for the ‘sectarian’ vision of left communism, it is enough to show that its anti-parliamentary and anti-trade
union positions were shared by hundreds of thousands of workers in Europe in 1919-1920. It was a mass social
phenomenon and not the product of small isolated groups.
Certainly, the decomposition of left communism, but also of the entire communist movement after 1924-27, into
a number of small oppositional groupings, was a real phenomenon. It expressed a historic course of counterrevolution
following the liquidation of the Russian and world revolution. In order not to betray their principles,
these small groups made the painful choice of isolation, of which they never made a virtue. These groups always
attempted to intervene in the class struggle, particularly in the milieu of the unemployed. Like the bolsheviks, the
spartakists and the tribunists at the beginning of the first world war, it was a question of going against the tide,
with the long term aim of reconstituting a revolutionary workers’ movement. This passage from a mass
movement to a nebulous state of multiple groups did however give rise to new forms of ‘sectarianism’. These
groups were often closed in on themselves and isolated within their national areas. Contacts between them
dropped oft, and their very existence became problematical. Council communism was an expression of this turn
of events.
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