Ultra-leftism
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In Marxism, ultra-leftism encompasses a broad spectrum of revolutionary communist currents that are generally
Historical usage
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Left communism |
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The term ultra-left is rarely used in English. Instead, people tend to speak broadly of left communism as a variant of traditional Marxism. The French equivalent, ultra-gauche , has a stronger meaning in that language and is used to define a movement that still exists today: a branch of left communism developed by theorists such as Amadeo Bordiga, Otto Rühle, Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, and Paul Mattick, and continuing with more recent writers, such as Jacques Camatte and Gilles Dauvé. This standpoint includes two main traditions, a Dutch-German tradition including Rühle, Pannekoek, Gorter, and Mattick, and an Italian tradition following Bordiga. These traditions came together in the 1960s French ultra-gauche.[2] The political theorist Nicholas Thoburn refers to these traditions as the "actuality of ... the historical ultra-left".[3]
The term originated in the 1920s in the German and Dutch workers movements, originally referring to a Marxist group opposed to both
The ultra-left is defined particularly by its breed of anti-authoritarian Marxism, which generally involves an opposition to the
The ultra-left was born and grew in opposition to Social Democracy and Leninism—which had become Stalinism. Against them, it affirmed the revolutionary spontaneity of the proletariat. The German communist left (in fact German-Dutch), and its derivatives, maintained that the only human solution lay in proletarians' own activity, without it being necessary to educate or to organize them ... Inheriting the mantle of the ultra-left after the war, the magazine Socialisme ou Barbarie appeared in France between 1949 and 1965.[6]
One variant of ultra-leftist ideas was widely revived in the
Pejorative usage
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Used pejoratively, ultra-left is used to label positions that are adopted without taking notice of the current situation or of the consequences which would result from following a proposed course. The term is used to criticize leftist positions that, for example, are seen as overstating the tempo of events, propose initiatives that overestimate the current level of
The mainstream Marxist critique of such a position began with
See also
- Anti-Stalinist left
- Centrist Marxism
- Libertarian Marxism
- Left communism in China
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-885662-7.
- ^ "Bring Out Your Dead". Endnotes. Vol. 1. 2008. Archived from the original on 8 June 2017.
- ^ Thoburn, Nicholas (Spring 2013). "Do not be afraid, join us, come back? On the "idea of communism" in our time". Cultural Critique (84): 1–34.
- CiteSeerX 10.1.1.454.6346.
As for the term 'ultra-left', which is often equated with 'sectarianism', it can only define those currents which historically split from the KPD between 1925 and 1927. Left communism never appeared as a pure will to be 'as left as possible'.
- ISBN 1-931859-32-9.
- ^ Dauvé, Gilles (1983). "The Story of Our Origins" (PDF). La Banquise. No. 2.
- ISBN 978-3-319-62632-1.
- ISBN 978-0-520-02652-0.
- ^ Birchall, Ian (May 1988). "The Left and May 68". Socialist Worker Review. No. 109.
- ^ "Danger of Ultra-Leftism". Socialist Alternative. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
- ISBN 9781844674596.
- ^ Nicholas Thoburn "Do not be afraid, join us, come back? On the "idea of communism" in our time" Cultural Critique Number 84, Spring 2013, pp. 1-34
- ^ "Introduction" in Smith Evan, Worley Matthew Against the grain: The British far left from 1956, Oxford University Press, 1 December 2014
- ^ e.g. John Molyneux "What do we mean by ultra-leftism?" (October 1985) in Socialist Worker Review 80, October 1985, pp. 24–25.
- ISBN 0873486897. Archived from the originalon 20 November 2008. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- ^ "A Critique of Ultra-Leftism, Dogmatism and Sectarianism, Introduction". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
Further reading
- Bahne, Siegfried, 'Zwischen' Luxemburgismus' und 'Stalinismus', die ultralinke Opposition in der KPD, in Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 4/1961, pp. 359–383.
- Cunningham, John (29 September 2009). "Invisible Politics - An Introduction to Contemporary Communisation". Meta Mute. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
- Hoffrogge, Ralf. "Marcel Bois, Kommunisten gegen Hitler und Stalin--Die Linke Opposition der KPD in der Weimarer Republik. Eine Gesamtdarstellung" Twentieth Century Communism, no. 10, 2016, p. 139+. Academic OneFile, Accessed 7 September 2017.
- O. Langels Die Ultralinke Opposition der KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1984)
External links
- Libertarian Communist Library – an archive of libertarian, left and ultra-left communist texts
- Gilles Dauvé (1969) "Leninism and the Ultra-Left" in Gilles Dauvé and François Martin, The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement, 63–75. Rev. ed. London: Antagonism Press.
- Peter Camejo, Liberalism, Ultra-Leftism or mass action
- Abbie Bakan, Ultraleftism: left words, sectarian practice
- International Luxemburgist Network (Anti-Leninist)