Left communism
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Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the
There have been two primary currents of left communism since
Left communism differs from most other forms of Marxism in believing that communists should not participate in democratic elections, and some argue against participating in trade unions. However, many left communists split over their criticism of the Bolsheviks. Council communists criticised the Bolsheviks for elitist party functions and emphasised a more autonomous organisation of the working class, without political parties.
Although she was murdered in 1919 before left communism became a distinct tendency,
Early history and overview
Two major traditions can be observed within left communism, namely the
The historical origins of left communism come from World War I.[8] Most left communists are supportive of the October Revolution in Russia, but retain a critical view of its development. However, some in the Dutch–German current would in later years come to reject the idea that the revolution had a proletarian or socialist nature, arguing that it had simply carried out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution by creating a state capitalist system.[9]
Left communism first came into focus as a distinct movement around 1918. Its essential features were a stress on the need to build a
Russian left communism
Left Bolshevism emerged in 1907 as the
The faction largely died out by the end of 1918, as its leaders accepted that much of their program was unrealistic under the circumstances of the Russian Civil War and as the policies of War Communism satisfied their demands for a radical transformation of the economy. The Military Opposition and the Workers' Opposition inherited some characteristics and members of the Left Bolsheviks, as did Gavril Myasnikov's Workers Group of the Russian Communist Party during the debates on the New Economic Policy and the succession to Lenin. Most Left Bolsheviks were affiliated with the Left Opposition in the 1920s, and were expelled from the party in 1927 and later killed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.[12]
Dutch–German left communism until 1933
Left communism emerged in both countries together and was always very closely connected. Among the leading theoreticians of the more powerful German movement were
When it was founded, the KAPD included some tens of thousands of revolutionaries. However, it had broken up and practically dissolved within a few years. This was because it was founded on the basis of revolutionary optimism and a purism that rejected what became known as frontism.
The KAPD was unable to reach even its founding congress prior to suffering its first split when the so-called National Bolshevik tendency around
Left communism and the Communist International
Left communists generally supported the Bolshevik
Left communists supported the
To a considerable degree, Lenin's well known
As the Kronstadt rebellion occurred at a time when the debate on tactics was still raging within the Comintern, it has been wrongly seen as being left communist by some commentators. In fact, the left communist currents had no connection with the rebellion, although they did rally to its support when they learned of it. In later years, the German–Dutch tradition in particular would come to see the suppression of the revolt as the historic turning point in the evolution of the Russian state after October 1917.
1939–1945
Many small currents to the left of the mass communist parties collapsed at the beginning of
Meanwhile, the final
In 1941, the Italian fraction was reorganised in France and along with the new French Nucleus of the Communist Left came into conflict with the ideas which the fraction had propagated from 1936, namely of the social disappearance of the
The strike at FIAT in October 1942 had a huge impact on the Italian fraction, which was deepened by the fall of Mussolini's regime in July 1943. The Italian fraction now saw a pre-revolutionary situation opening in Italy and prepared to participate in the coming revolution. In 1943 the Internationalist Communist Party was founded by Onorato Damen and Luciano Stefanini, amongst others. By 1945 the party had 5,000 members all over Italy with some supporters in France, Belgium and the US.[14] It published a Manifesto of the Communist Left to the European Proletariat, which called upon workers to put class war before national war.[15]
In France, revived by Marco in Marseilles, the Italian fraction now worked closely with the new French fraction, which was formally founded in Paris in December 1944. However, in May 1945 the Italian fraction, many of whose members had already returned to Italy, voted to dissolve itself so that its militants could integrate themselves as individuals into the Internationalist Communist Party. The conference at which this decision was made also refused to recognise the French fraction and expelled Marco from their group.
This led to a split in the French fraction and the formation of the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) by the French fraction led by Marco. The history of the GCF belongs to the post-war period. Meanwhile, the former members of the French fraction who sympathised with Vercesi and the Internationalist Communist Party formed a new French fraction which published the journal L'Etincelle and was joined at the end of 1945 by the old minority of the fraction who had joined L'Union Communiste in the 1930s.
One other development during the war years merits mention at this point. A small grouping of German and Austrian militants came close to left communist positions in these years. Best known as the Revolutionary Communist Organisation, these young militants were exiles from Nazism living in France at the start of World War II and were members of the Trotskyist movement but they had opposed the formation of the Fourth International in 1938 on the grounds that it was premature. They were refused full delegates' credentials and only admitted to the founding conference of the Youth International on the following day. They then joined Hugo Oehler's International Contact Commission for the Fourth (Communist) International and in 1939 were publishing Der Marxist in Antwerp.
With the beginning of the war, they took the name Revolutionary Communists of Germany (RKD) and came to define Russia as state capitalist in agreement with Ante Ciliga's book The Russian Enigma. At this point, they adopted a revolutionary defeatist position on the war and condemned Trotskyism for its critical defence of Russia (which was seen by Trotskyists as a degenerated workers' state). After the fall of France, they renewed contact with militants in the Trotskyist milieu in Southern France and recruited some of them into the Communistes Revolutionnaires (CR) in 1942. This group became known as Fraternisation Proletarienne in 1943 and then L'Organisation Communiste Revolutionnaire in 1944. The CR and RKD were autonomous and clandestine, but worked closely together with shared politics. As the war ran its course, they evolved in a councilist direction while also identifying more and more with Luxemburg's work. They also worked with the French Fraction of the Communist Left and seem to have disintegrated at the end of the war. This disintegration was sped no doubt by the capture of leading militant Karl Fischer, who was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was to participate in writing the Declaration of the Internationalist Communists of Buchenwald when the camp was liberated.
1952–1968
The year 1952 signalled the end of mass influence on the part of Italian left communism as its sole remaining representative, the Internationalist Communist Party, split in two sections: the group led by Bordiga took the name
Examples of left communism ideological currents existed in China during the
Since 1968
The uprisings of May 1968 led to a large resurgence of interest in left communist ideas in France where various groups were formed and published journals regularly until the late 1980s when the interest started to fade.
Prominent post-1968 proponents of left communism have included
See also
References
- ^ Bordiga, Amadeo (1926). The Communist Left in the Third International. Retrieved 23 September 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8.
- ^ Bordiga, Amadeo. Dialogue with Stalin. Retrieved 15 May 2019 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ISBN 978-1-349-10369-0.
- ^ Bourrinet, Philippe. "The Bordigist Current (1919-1999)". Archived from the original on 20 January 2022.
- ^ Negri, Antonio (1991). Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. Translated by Ryan, Michael. New York: Autonomedia.
- ^ Smeaton, A. (1 August 2003). "Background on the Italian Communist Left, Bordiga and Bordigism". Internationalist Communist. No. 22. Retrieved 17 October 2013 – via Leftcom.
- ^ Luxemburg, Rosa (1915). The Junius Pamphlet. Retrieved 23 September 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- S2CID 155654843. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via GeoCities.)
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link - ^ a b Lenin, V.I. Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Retrieved 17 October 2013 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ISBN 9780801420887.
- ISBN 978-1-4422-5280-6.
- Walter de Gruyter. p. 220.
- ^ "The Italian Communist Left - A Brief Internationalist History". Revolutionary Perspectives. Communist Workers' Organisation. 2009.
- ^ "The 1944 Manifesto of the Internationalist Communist Left". Revolutionary Perspectives. Communist Workers' Organisation. 2016.
- )
- ^ "Archive of French left communist journals after 1952". Archives Autonomies. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
- ^ "On Communisation and Its Theorists". Endnotes. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
- ^ "May 68: the student movement in France and the world". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
- ^ Lassou (May 2012). "Contribution to a history of the workers' movement in Africa (v): May 1968 in Senegal". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
- ^ Ken (23 March 2008). "1968 in Japan: the student movement and workers' struggles". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
- ^ "1968 in Germany (Part 1): Behind the protest movement – the search for a new society". Internationalism. 26 May 2008. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
- ^ Bourrinet, Philippe (2000). The "Bordigist" Current (1912-1952). pp. 332–333.
- ^ "Internationalist Communist Tendency". January 2000.
- ISBN 2207251632.
- ^ "Wildcat". Wildcat-www.de. 21 September 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
- ^ "Ta paidiá tis galarías" Τα παιδιά της γαλαρίας [The children of the gallery] (in Greek). Tapaidiatisgalarias.org. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
- ^ "Blaumachen – journal". Blaumachen.gr. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
Further reading
- Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils (2007) (includes texts by ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8.
- Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Writing. Allison & Busby, 1984.
- Pannekoek, Anton. Workers Councils. AK Press, 2003. Introduction by Noam Chomsky
- The International Communist Current, itself a left communist grouping, has produced a series of studies of what it views as its own antecedents. In particular, the book on the Dutch–German current, which is by Philippe Bourrinet (who later left the ICC), contains an exhaustive bibliography.
- The Italian Communist Left 1926–1945 (ISBN 1897980132).
- The Dutch-German Communist Left (ISBN 1899438378).
- The Russian Communist Left, 1918–1930 (ISBN 1897980108).
- The British Communist Left, 1914–1945 (ISBN 1897980116).
- The Italian Communist Left 1926–1945 (
- Also of interest is volume 5 number 4 of Spring 1995 of the journal Revolutionary History. "Through Fascism, War and Revolution: Trotskyism and Left Communism in Italy".
- In addition, there is a good deal of material published on the Internet in various languages. A useful starting point is the Left Communism collection published on the Marxists Internet Archive.