The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Uit eigen kring; intern orgaan (then Bulletin) van de Communistenbond Spartacus, 1945-76.
(The influence of council communism, after 1937 in particular, was deep in the Flemish region of Belgium. Its
occasional mouthpiece was the Internationalist Communist League, which published a bilingual Bulletin and
distributed the Dutch ‘councilist’ press. The influence was even bigger after the war. But the Belgian councils’
movement does not seem to have had any press. We should also mention the cultural weekly review De Vlam
(The Flame), 1946-52, with which Frits Kief, Wijnand Romijn, Sam de Wolf and Henriëtte Roland Holst
collaborated, and which published councilist articles. However, its contents and its orientation were foreign to
the council communist movement, being closer to left socialism and pacisfism.)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Council communism appeared late in this country, mainly in German Bohemia and in Prague. A group from the
Czech CP in 1929 made contact with the KAPD and published Spartacus, Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou), 1929-
32.
The group, essentially composed of German-speaking workers, seems to have evolved towards the tendency of
the Berlin ‘Rote Kämpfer’.
TEXTS
Rosa Luxemburg
The German-Dutch left was justified in claiming a descent from Luxemburg, whose theses on the decline of
capitalism, the impossibility and the rejection of national liberation struggles, the spontaneity of the masses, etc,
influenced the KAPD theoreticians.
The majority of the Rosa Luxemburgs works are easily available in English, French. Note also the so-called
complete works in German, published by the former GDR, which are in reality quite incomplete:
Gesammelte Werke, (Ost) Berlin, 5 Vols. (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972-90).
Politische Schriften, 3 Vols. (Frankfurt, 1966-67). Ossip K. Flechtheim ed.
In English
Selected Political Writings (New York: Grove Press, 1974).
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970).
The national question [selected writings; translated from the Polish and the German; edited with an introduction
by Horace B. Davis] (New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
The Accumulation of capital (translated by Agnes Schwarzschild; with a new introduction by Tadeusz Kowalik),
(New York: Routledge, 2003).
The crisis in the German social-democracie (New York: H. Fertig, 1969).
Theory and practice (translated by David Wolff) (Detroit: News and Letters Committees, 1980).
The National Question (selected writings on the national question) (London/New York: Monthly Review Press
1976).
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