Part of the Politics series on Left Communism

Basic concepts Internationalism Class Consciousness Class Struggle Mass Strike Workers Council World Revolution Communism Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. ... Left Communism is a term describing a whole range of communist viewpoints which oppose the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position which is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views held by the Communist International after its first two Congresses. ... Image File history File links Sickle. ... International Socialism redirects here. ... Class consciousness is a category of Marxist theory, referring to the self-awareness of a social class, its capacity to act in its own rational interests, or measuring the extent to which an individual is conscious of the historical tasks their class (or class allegiance) sets for them. ... Class struggle is class conflict looked at from a Marxist, libertarian socialist, or anarchist perspective. ... A general strike is a strike action by an entire labour force in a city, region or country. ... A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ... World revolution is a Marxist concept of a violent overthrow of capitalism that would take place in all countries, although not necessarily simultaneously. ... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ... Influential Figures Marx · Engels Luxemburg · Rühle Bordiga · Damen Gorter . Pannekoek Myasnikov · Korsch Pankhurst · Rubel Appel · Chirik Mattick · Munis Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883, London) was a German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Friedrich Engels (November 28, 1820, Wuppertal – August 5, 1895, London), a 19th-century German political philosopher, developed communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx, co-authoring The Communist Manifesto (1848). ... Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1870 or 1871 – January 15, 1919, in Polish Róża Luksemburg) was a Jewish Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. ... Otto Rühle (1874 - 1943) was a German Left Communist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder with along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of... Amadeo Bordiga. ... Onorato Damen (4 December 1893 - 14 October 1979), was an Italian left communist revolutionary who was first active in the Communist Party of Italy. ... Herman Gorter (born Wormerveer, Netherlands, 1864) was a late 19th century and early 20th century Dutch poet and Socialist. ... Anton Pannekoek Antonie (Anton) Pannekoek (January 2, 1873, Vaassen – April 28, 1960, Wageningen) was a Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist. ... Gavril Ilyich Myasnikov (1889-1945), also transliterated as Gavriil Ilich Miasnikov, was a Russian metalworker from the Urals, who participated in the Revolution of 1905 and became a Bolshevik underground activist in 1906. ... Karl Korsch (August 15, 1886 - October 21, 1961) was a German Marxist theorist. ... Sylvia Pankhurst Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (May 5, 1882 - September 27, 1960) was a campaigner in the suffragette movement in the United Kingdom, and a prominent left communist. ... Maximilien Rubel (1905 in Chernivtsi - 1996 in Paris) was famous Marxist historian. ... We dont have an article called Jan Appel Start this article Search for Jan Appel in. ... Mark Chirik (1907-1990) born in Russia. ... Paul Mattick (1904-1981): Born in Pomerania in 1904 and raised in Berlin by class conscious parents, Mattick was already at the age of 14 a member of the Spartacists Freie Sozialistische Jugend. ... Grandizo Munis (1912-1989) was a Spanish politician. ... Prominent Organizations Communist Workers International International Communist Party International Communist Current International Bureau The Communist Workers International (German: Kommunistische Arbeiter-Internationale, KAI) or Fourth Categories: ... The Socialist Equality Party is the name of several branches of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the largest being in the United States. ... The International Communist Current is a centralised international left communist organisation with sections throughout the world. ... The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party is an international tendency whose member organisations identify with the Italian left communist tradition. ... Related Subjects Luxemburgism Council communism Ultra leftism Libertarian Marxism Anarchist communism Autonomism Situationist International Luxemburgism (also written Luxembourgism) is a specific revolutionary theory within communism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. ... Ultra-leftism is a term used initially to the Ultra Left current of Marxist communism closely related to council communism and left communism and, later, to identify and criticise positions, especially by those within the mainstream historical Marxist parties, to describe a position which is adopted without taking notice of... Libertarian Marxism is a school of Marxism that takes a less authoritarian view of Marxist theory than conventional currents such as Stalinism, Trotskyism, and other forms of Marxism-Leninism, as well as a generally less reformist view than do Social Democrats. ... Anarchist communism is a form of anarchism that advocates the abolition of the State and capitalism in favor of a horizontal network of voluntary associations through which everyone will be free to satisfy his or her needs. ... For other meanings of autonomism, see autonomism (disambiguation) page Raised fist, stenciled protest symbol of Autonome at the Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus in Vienna, Austria Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ...

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Council communism is a Radical Left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and Libertarian Socialism. Radical Left can refer to: 18th century Radicalism was a separate ideology, which was absorbed into liberalism and socialism. ... The 1920s is a decade sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... Communist Workers Party of Germany is the English name of the Kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands and is more generally known by its initials KAPD. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands or KPD. Originally the party remained a sympathising member of... Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ... Libertarian socialism includes a group of political philosophies that aims to create a society without political, economic or social hierarchies - a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. ...

The central argument of Council Communism, in contrast to those of Social democracy and Leninist communism, is that workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the Reformist and the Bolshevik stress on vanguard parties, parliaments or bureaucratic states. Social democracy is a political ideology emerging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from supporters of Marxism who believed that the transition to a socialist society could be achieved through democratic evolutionary rather than revolutionary means. ... Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism refers to various related political and economic theories elaborated by Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, and by other theorists who claim to be carrying on Lenins work. ... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ... A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ... Reformism (also called revisionism or revisionist theory) is the belief that gradual changes in a society can ultimately change its fundamental structures. ... Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... A vanguard party is a political party or grassroot organization at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. ... A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modelled after that of the United Kingdom. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science referring to the way that the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules are socially organized. ... A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern the people in one or more societies, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory. ...

The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic collectivism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils. A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ... The term recall has a number of meanings: Product recall A recall election Recall to employment after a layoff Recall from memory. ... Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. ...

Council Communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships. This has much in common with libertarian communism and most strains of anarchism, although the latter usually upholds individual liberty and autonomy as paramount over all else, which Council Communism does not. States in which a single party is constitutionally linked to power are coloured in brown. ... Anarcho-Communism, or Libertarian Communism, is a political ideology related to Libertarian socialism. ... Anarchism is a political philosophy or group of doctrines and attitudes centered on rejection of any form of compulsory government (cf. ... Look up autonomy, autonomous in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Council Communists also believe in diminishing the role of the party to one purely of agitation and propaganda; they reject all participation in elections or parliamentary procedures; and they argue that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union. It is still actively debated whether the Industrial Workers of the World is a fulfillment of council communist wishes. Agitation may have the following special meanings Agitation, an emotional state Agitation, putting into motion (by shaking or stirring) Agitation, a term from the lexicon of Communists: political activities aimed at urging people to do something This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that... An Australian anti-conscription propaganda poster from World War One U.S. propaganda poster, which warns against civilians sharing information on troop movements (National Archives) The much-imitated 1914 Lord Kitchener Wants You! poster Swedish Anti-Euro propaganda for the referendum of 2003. ... The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. ...

The legacy of the council communist movement was taken up by such groups as Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity (UK) and the Situationist International. Most Libertarian socialists agree with some of the ideas of council communism. Sometimes Bordigist theory is held to retain some features of council communism- it would be more accurate to say that the Italian Communist Left respected councils as necessary organs of class struggle (a standard Leninist position) but saw the Communist Party as the ultimate wielder of the proletarian dictatorship. Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism) was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period. ... Solidarity was a small libertarian socialist organisation and magazine of the same name in the United Kingdom. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Libertarian socialism is a political philosophy dedicated to opposing coercive forms of authority and social hierarchy, in particular the institutions of capitalism and the state. ... Amadeo Bordiga (June 13, 1889 - July 23, 1970) was a prominent Italian Marxist and a key contributor to Left Communist theory (see also Council Communism). ...

History of Council Communism

As the Second International decayed at the beginning of World War I, socialists who opposed nationalism and supported proletarian internationalism regrouped. In Germany, two major communist trends emerged. First, the Spartacist League was created by the radical socialist Rosa Luxemburg. The second trend emerged amongst the German rank-and-file unionists who opposed their unions and organized increasingly radical strikes towards the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918. This second trend created the German Left Communist movement that would become the KAPD after the abortive German revolution of 1918-1919. The phrase Second International has two meanings: For the international association of socialist parties of the late 19th century, see Second International (politics) and a successor organization, the Socialist International For one of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries of American English, see Websters New International Dictionary, Second Edition This is... This article is becoming very long. ... Socialism is any economic system in which the means of production are owned and controlled collectively or a political philosophy advocating such a system. ... Eugène Delacroixs Liberty Leading the People, symbolising French nationalism during the July Revolution. ... International Socialism redirects here. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... The Spartacist League (Spartakusbund in German) was a left-wing Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during and just after the politically volatile years of World War I. It was founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (nicknamed Red Rosa) along with others such as Clara Zetkin. ... Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1870 or 1871 – January 15, 1919, in Polish Róża Luksemburg) was a Jewish Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. ... Left Communism is a term describing a whole range of communist viewpoints which oppose the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position which is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views held by the Communist International after its first two Congresses. ... Communist Workers Party of Germany is the English name of the Kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands and is more generally known by its initials KAPD. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands or KPD. Originally the party remained a sympathising member of...

As the Communist International inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia formed, 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. The first edition of Communist International, journal of the Comintern published in Moscow and Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. ... The October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was the second phase of the Russian Revolution, the first having been instigated by the events around the February Revolution. ... Sylvia Pankhurst Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (May 5, 1882 - September 27, 1960) was a campaigner in the suffragette movement in the United Kingdom, and a prominent left communist. ... An amorphous solid is a solid in which there is no long-range order of the positions of the atoms. ...

Alongside these formal Left Communist tendencies, the Italian group led by Amadeo Bordiga is often commonly recognised as a Left Communist party, although both Bordiga and the Italian Communist Left disputed this and qualified their politics as separate, distinct and more in line with the Third International's positions than the politics of Left Communism. Bordiga himself did not advocate abstention from the unions, although later Italian Left currents developed a critique of the "regime unions", positing that most or all unions had become tools of capitalism by submitting themselves to bourgeois interests and were no longer viable as organs of class struggle. Nevertheless, those "Bordigists" who put forward this critique still held out the necessity of "red unions" or "class unions" re-emerging, outside and against the regime unions, which would openly advocate class struggle and allow the participation of communist militants. Amadeo Bordiga. ...

These various assorted groups were all criticized by Lenin in his booklet "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.[1] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a...

Despite a common general direction, and despite sharing the criticism of Lenin, there were few politics held in common between these movements. 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 (seeing it as a form of bourgeois nationalism). 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 (social democratic) parties in pursuit of a definite, usually defensive, goal. In addition to opposing "Frontism", the Dutch-German tendency, the Bulgarians and British also refused to participate in bourgeois elections, which they denounced as parliamentarism. Bourgeois nationalism is a term from Marxist phraseology. ... The practice of Frontism is that of uniting with anyone one can against a common enemy. ... Social democracy is a political ideology emerging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from supporters of Marxism who believed that the transition to a socialist society could be achieved through democratic evolutionary rather than revolutionary means. ...

In Germany, the Left Communists were expelled from the Communist Party of Germany, and they formed the Communist Workers Party (KAPD). Similar parties were formed in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Britain. The KAPD rapidly lost most of its members and it eventually dissolved. However, some of its militants had been instrumental in organising factory-based unions like the AAUD and AAUD-E, the latter being opposed to separate party organisation (see: Syndicalism). 1932 KPD poster, End This System The Communist Party of Germany (German Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period. ... Communist Workers Party of Germany is the English name of the Kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands and is more generally known by its initials KAPD. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands or KPD. Originally the party remained a sympathising member of... Syndicalism refers to a set of ideas, movements, and tendencies which share the avowed aim of transforming capitalist society through action by the working class on the industrial front. ...

The leading theoreticians of the KAPD had developed a new series of ideas based on their opposition to party organisation, and their conception of the Bolshevik 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 later 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. Anton Pannekoek Anton Pannekoek (January 2, 1873 – April 28, 1960) was a Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist. ... Herman Gorter (born Wormerveer, Netherlands, 1864) was a late 19th century and early 20th century Dutch poet and Socialist. ... Otto Rühle (1874 - 1943) was a German Left Communist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder with along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of... Paul Mattick (1904-1981): Born in Pomerania in 1904 and raised in Berlin by class conscious parents, Mattick was already at the age of 14 a member of the Spartacists Freie Sozialistische Jugend. ... Mugshot of van der Lubbe Marinus van der Lubbe (January 13, 1909 – January 10, 1934) was a Dutch council communist accused of and executed for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on February 27, 1933, an event known as the Reichstag fire. ...

Council Communism within the Soviet Union

The Russian word for council is "soviet," and during the early years of Bolshevist Russia workers' councils were politically significant. Indeed, the name "Supreme Soviet," by which the national parliament of the Soviet Union was later called, as well as the name of the Soviet Union itself, imply that the country was meant to be ruled by workers' councils. This was largely the case in the beginning, but the workers' councils soon lost their power and significance because Lenin had always envisioned the Communist Party, not the soviets, as truly entitled to run the State. After the forced dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, of which Lenin had been the head, after the October Revolution, the Supreme Soviet was relegated to the role of a rubber-stamp parliament, and real power was concentrated in the hands of the Communist Party. Bolshevist Russia is a common term that refers to the Red side in the Russian government between the Bolsheviks October Revolution (November 7, 1917) and the constitution of the Soviet Union (December 30, 1922). ... The Supreme Soviet (Russian: , Verhovniy Sovet, literally the Supreme Council) comprised the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union in the interim of the sessions of the Congress of Soviets, and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments. ... Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a... The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за = КПСС) was the name used by the successors of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from 1952 to 1991, but the wording Communist Party was present in the partys name since 1918 when the Bolsheviks became the Russian... A constituent assembly is a body elected with the purpose of drafting, and in some cases, adopting a constitution. ... Red October redirects here. ... A toy rubber stamp featuring a pterosaur. ... The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за = КПСС) was the name used by the successors of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from 1952 to 1991, but the wording Communist Party was present in the partys name since 1918 when the Bolsheviks became the Russian...

For these reasons, Council Communists described the Soviet Union as a capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a "bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Although most Council Communists felt the Russian Revolution was working class in character, they believed that since capitalist relations still existed (for example, the New Economic Policy), the Soviet Union ended up as a state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ... Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... Bourgeois at the end of the thirteenth century. ... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... Silver Ruble 1924 Gold Chervonetz (1979) The New Economic Policy (NEP) (Russian: Новая экономическая политика - Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika or НЭП) was officially decided in the course of the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party. ... There are multiple definitions of the term state capitalism. ...

Literature

• Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils, AK Press, 2003
• Anton Pannekoek, Anton Pannekoek Archive
• Collective Action Notes A collection of Council Communist and other anti-authoritarian marxist literature
• Communism or Reforms two articles by Sylvia Pankhurst and Anton Pannekoek, first published in the Workers Dreadnought in 1922. First published as a pamphlet in 1974 by Workers Voice, a Communist group based in Liverpool.
• Kurasje ”The Council Communist Archive”
• The communist tendency in history
• Libertarian Communist Library Largest online archive of Council Communist texts.
• Paul Mattick, Paul Mattick Archive

Anton Pannekoek Anton Pannekoek (January 2, 1873 – April 28, 1960) was a Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist. ... Anton Pannekoek Anton Pannekoek (January 2, 1873 – April 28, 1960) was a Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist. ... Paul Mattick (1904-1981): Born in Pomerania in 1904 and raised in Berlin by class conscious parents, Mattick was already at the age of 14 a member of the Spartacists Freie Sozialistische Jugend. ...

See also

• Left communism
• Luxemburgism
• List of left communist internationals
• DeLeonism