Council Communism

Council communism was a radical left movement originating in Germany after the First World War. Its primary organisation was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within Marxism and also Libertarian Socialism (Anarchism). The central argument of Council communism is that workers' councils are the natural form of working class organisation and state power, as opposed to the Reformist and Bolshevik stress on parties, parliaments or governments.

The central theoretical argument of Council Communism is that the State and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, composed by delegates elected at workplaces and recallable in any moment. As such, council communists oppose top-down bureaucratic "socialism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party" as council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists believe that the highly desirable workers democracy will be produced by a federation of workers councils.

Council Communists believe that the Bolshevik led revolution in Russia became a "bourgeois revolution" when a party aristocracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Thus Council communists support workers revolutions, but oppose one party dictatorships.

History of Council, or Left-wing, communism

As the Second "Red" International decayed at the beginning of World War I, socialists who opposed nationalism and supported international proletarian revolution regrouped. In Germany two major "Left" communist trends emerged. The Spartacist League emerged through a theoretical challenge led by the SPD radical Rosa Luxemburg. A second trend emerged amongst the German rank-and-file unionists, who opposed their unions and developed increasingly radical strikes towards the end of 1917 and 1918. This second movement created the German Left Communist movement that would become the KAPD during the abortive German revolution of 1918-1919.

As a Communist International formed, inspired by the Bolshevik led revolution in Russia, a Left Communist tendency developed in the Comintern's German, Dutch, Bulgarian and Italian sections. In the United Kingdom Sylvia Pankhurst's theoretically amorphous group, the Communist Party British Section of the Third International, also identified with the Left Communist tendency.

Alongside these formal Left Communist tendencies, the Italian tendency identified with Amadeo Bordiga is often commonly recognised as a Left Communist tendency, although both Bordiga and the Bordigists disputed this and qualified their politics as separate, distinct and more inline with the Third International's positions than Left Communism. Bordiga also advocated abstention from the trade unions, a position seperating him from the more workerist council communists.

These various assorted groups were polemicized against by Lenin in his booklet "Leftwing Communism, An Infantile Disorder".

Despite a common tendential direction, and despite sharing the aprobation of V.I. Lenin there were few politics held in common between these movements. "Left" communism was a label which was applied to radical pro-workers council movements, and also to dictatorial movements for party rule. An example of this divergence is that the Italians supported the Right of Nations to Self Determination while the Dutch and Germans rejected this policy. However, all of the Left Communist tendencies opposed what they called 'Frontism'.

Frontism was a tactic endorsed by Lenin where Communists sought tactical agreements with reformist (parliamentary) parties in pursuit of a definite, usually defensive, goals. The Dutch-German tendency, the Bulgarians and British also opposed standing in elections which they denounced as parliamentarism.

The Left Communists were expelled from the KPD and they formed the Communist Workers Party Syndicalism).

The leading theoreticians of the KAPD had developed a new series of ideas based on their opposition to party organisation and conception of the Bolshevik led revolution in Russia as having been a bourgeois revolution. Their leading figures were Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter, as well as Otto Rühle. Rühle later left the KAPD, and was one of the founders of the AAUD-E. Another leading theoretician of Council Communism was Paul Mattick who emigrated to the USA. A minor figure in the Council Communist movement in the Netherlands was Marinus van der Lubbe whose name is attached to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.

The legacy of the council communist movement was taken up by such groups as Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity (UK) and the Situationist International. Additionally, many Anarchists read and critique the actions of council communism. The Bordigist communist movement also retains some features of Left communism.

See Also

Left communism List of left communist internationals

Bordigism

International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party International Communist Current World Revolution