On the Ultra-Left in the Early KPD

Quoted in: Heinrich August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer republic 1918–1924, 2nd ed. (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1985), p. 262.

Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany Under the Weimar Republic (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 35.

See Frédéric Cyr, “Paul Levis Kampf um die KPD,” Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Vol. 9 (2010), No. 1, pp. 115–131. Radek, who opposed the hard stance against the ultra-leftifts, subsequently tried to isolate Levi within the party leadership. See Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 (London, New York and Sydney: Bookmarks, 1997), pp. 203–204; Jean-François Fayet, Karl Radek (1885–1939): Biographie politique (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 329, 364–365, 391 and passim. See especially Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt-Main: E.V.A., 1969), here p. 40. The second volume of Weber’s book includes 400 biographical sketches of KPD functionaries. Weber’s book was attacked in the GDR, but became a standard work in the West. After 1990, historians occasionally questioned his thesis of a more democratic stage of the early KPD under Luxemburg and Levi, yet no one has been able convincingly to refute it to date. The opening of the East German archives more likely confirmed it.

Frédéric Cyr, Paul Levi – rebelled devant les extrêmes: une biographie polituque (Paris: Hermann, and Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013), p. 78.

Mike Jones, “The Decline, Disorientation and Decomposition of a Leadership—The German Communist Party: From Revolutionary Marxism to Centrism,” Revolutionary History, Vol. 2 (1989), No. 3, p. 3.

On the history of the KAPD see Hans Manfred Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918–1923: Zur Geschichte und Soziologie der Freien Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (Syndikalisten), der Allgemeinen Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands und der Kommunistischen Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1969). See also Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier, The Communist Left in Germany 1918–1921: With Texts by: Laufenberg, Wolffheim, Gorter, Roland-Holst and Pfempfert, n.p., 2006, https://​libcom.​org/​files/​Dauve-Authier-Communist%20​left%20​in%20​Germany.​A4.​pdf. This is a translation by M. De Socio of: Denis Authier and Jean Barrot, La Gauche communiste en Allemagne (1918–1921): Avec des textes de Heinrich Laufenberg et al. (Paris: Payot, 1976). Jean Barrot and Gilles Dauvé are names of the same person.

Noske, who more than any other Social Democrat helped right-wing forces to regain power in 1919, was distraught over the breach of confidence. See Harold J. Gordon, Jr., The Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 115. But there had been rumors about a planned putsch since October 1919. See ibid., p. 101.

See on the Kapp Putsch, e.g., Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung, pp. 295–342. East German historians cautiously criticized the political failure of the KPD leadership at the beginning of the putsch. See Erwin Könnemann and Hans-Joachim Krusch, Aktionseinheit contra Kapp-Putsch ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1972).

East German historians overemphasized the role of the KPD among the militias. See e.g., Dieter Dreetz et al., Bewaffnete Kämpfe in Deutschland 1918–1923 ([East] Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR, 1988). According to Angress, the KPD’s militias formed only a relatively “insignificant contingent compared to the anarchosyndicalist rebels, the unaffiliated, or the members of the KAPD, the USPD and even the SPD.” Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–1923 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 46. See also Dauvé and Authier, The Communist Left in Germany, pp. 130–131.

See Heinrich and Elisabeth Hannover, Politische Justiz 1918–1933 (Bornheim-Merten: Lamuv-Verlag, 1987), pp. 93–94.

Fischer, “Autobiographical Notes,” pp. 451–452 (orthography slightly revised). On the Kapp putsch in Leipzig see also the contemporary account by Heinrich Brandler, Die Aktion gegen den Kapp-Putsch in Westsachsen, ed. by the KPD (Spartakusbund) (Berlin: Berliner Buch- und Kunstdruck, 1920).

Ibid., p. 133. See also Klaus Schwabe, “Der Weg der Republik vom Kapp-Putsch 1920 bis zum Scheitern des Kabinetts Müller 1930,” Karl Dietrich Bracher et al. (eds.), Die Weimarer Republik 1981–1933: Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1988), p. 96. On the history of the Ruhr battles see Georg Eliasberg, Der Ruhrkrieg von 1920 (Bad Godesberg: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1974); Erhard Lucas et al., Ruhrkampf 1920 – die vergessene Revolution: Ein politischer Reiseführer (Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 1990).

See John Riddell, “German Workers and the Birth of the United Front,” International Socialist Review, No. 79 (September 2011), https://​isreview.​org/​issue/​79/​german-workers-and-birth-united-front.

Aleksandr Vatlin, “The Testing Ground of World Revolution: Germany in the 1920s,” Timm Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International 1919–43 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 120.

Lea Haro, The Beginning of the End: The Political Theory of the German Communist Party to the Third Period. Ph.D. Thesis (University of Glasgow, 2007), p. 109.

See Fischer, “Autobiographical Notes,” p. 454.

On the history and especially the dissolution of the USPD see David W. Morgan, The Socialist Left and the German Revolution: A History of the German Independent Social Democratic Party, 1917–1922 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975); Robert F. Wheeler, USPD und Internationale: Sozialistischer Internationalismus in der Zeit der Revolution (Frankfurt-Main: Ullstein, 1975); Hartfrid Krause, USPD: Zur Geschichte der Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Frankfurt-Main: E.V.A., 1975); Dieter Engelmann and Horst Naumann, Zwischen Spaltung und Vereinigung: Die Unabhängige Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands in den Jahren 1917–1922 (Berlin: Edition Neue Wege, 1993); and Dieter Engelmann, “Kommunistische Internationale und Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD),” Theodor Bergmann and Mario Kessler (eds.), Aufstieg und Zerfall der Komintern: Studien zur Geschichte ihrer Transformation (1919–1943) (Mainz: Podium Progressiv, 1992), pp. 23–36.

Fowkes, Communism in Germany, p. 56.

Arthur Rosenberg, A History of the German Republic. Translated by Ian F. D. Morrow and L. Marie Sieveking (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), pp. 4–5. The first German edition came out in 1935 in Carlsbad (Czechoslovakia), the first English edition 1936 in London.

The letter is printed in: RF, January 8, 1921. Reprint in: Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, edited by the Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Vol. 3 ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1966), pp. 610–613.

The Comintern Chair Zinoviev hoped to readmit ultra-leftists who had been dismissed from the KPD under Levi. See Jean-François Fayet, “Paul Levi and the Turning Point of 1921: Bolshevik Emissaries and International Discipline in the Time of Lenin,” Norman LaPorte et al. (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism, and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917–53 (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), pp. 110–111.

Serrati had led the Italian Socialist Party into joining the Comintern, but opposed its centralist principles and remained head of the Socialists after the split in January 1921. The radical wing of the party formed the Italian Communist Party. See Albert S. Lindemann, The ‘Red Years’: European Socialism vs. Bolshevism, 1919–1921 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 275–281.

See RF, April 15, 1921 (evening edition), and the documentation in: Milorad M. Drachkovitch and Branko Lazitch (eds.), The Comintern: Historical Highlights (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 293, 298–299.

Brandler had to flee soon after to Soviet Russia following the March Action, which will be discussed below (until the announcement of an amnesty the following year).

See Richard Lowenthal [Löwenthal], “The Bolshevization of the Spartacus League,” David Footman (ed.), International Communism. St. Anthony’s Papers No. 9 (London [publisher not identified], 1960), pp. 23–71; Gerhard P. Bassler, “The Communist Movement in the German Revolution, 1918–1919: A Problem of Historical Typology?” Central European History, Vol. 6 (1973), No. 3, pp. 233–277.

See Weber, Wandlung and Klaus Kinner, Der deutsche Kommunismus: Selbstverständnis und Realität, Vol. 1: Die Weimarer Zeit (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 1999). For the international level see Pierre Frank, Geschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale. Translated by Rudi Segall, 2 Vols. (Frankfurt-Main: I.S.P., 1981). Frank characterized the period of the first four Comintern congresses as the early democratic phase of the organization before its Stalinist degeneration.

Even historians who had broken with Communism held Rosa Luxemburg in high esteem. Franz Borkenau wrote that Rosa Luxemburg “would have been the one person able to balance and withstand the influence of the Russians. She alone might have had the authority and strength to carry those she had persuaded to co-operate with the Bolsheviks with her when she broke with them. All the others who later took that step were officers without troops.” Franz Borkenau, World Communism: A History of The Communist International (London: Faber & Faber, 1938), new ed., introduced by Raymond Aron (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1962), p. 359. Bertram David Wolfe characterized Luxemburg “a believer in democracy” and an advocate of “unrestricted freedom of press and assembly” (my emphasis). Both quotations are taken from Wolfe’s introduction to: Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 17, 24. The latter quotation is from Luxemburg’s famous pamphlet The Russian Revolution, here p. 71. François Furet likewise praised Luxemburg’s “libertarian genius.” François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century. Translated by Deborah Furet (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 80.

Theodor Bergmann, “Paul Levi: Tragik eines deutschen Revolutionärs zwischen den Parteien,” Utopie kreativ, No. 185 (March 2006), p. 248. English translation by Mike Jones: “The Tragedy of Paul Levi: A Look at the Life and Work of a Noted German Marxist,” New Interventions, Vol. 22 (2011), No. 2, p. 2.

Udo Winkel, “Paul Levi and His Significance for the Communist Movement in Germany.” Translated by Mike Jones, Revolutionary History, Vol. 5 (1994), No. 2, p. 58.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 69.