1920s
Extracts from the Leading Principles of the KAI
Extracts from the 1922 'Leading Principles' of the Communist Workers' International.
Introduction
When Rühle envisaged a Fourth International in Moscow and Us (September 1920), the political current of “council communism” had several hundred thousand adherents in Germany, a figure which would decline to 20,000 in 1923, and then would be reduced to a few hundred when Hitler took power.
Karl Korsch: a Marxist friend of anarchism - A.R. Giles-Peters
A look at the life of Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch, and the relevance of his theoretical work to anarchism.
The pursuit of revolutionary struggle by what Marxism and Philosophy called an "ideological dictatorship" is in three ways different from the system of intellectual oppression established in Russia today in the name of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." First of all, it is a dictatorship of the proletariat and not over the proletariat.
Guidelines of the AAU-E
Guidelines of the General Workers' Union Unitary Organisation, as presented at the Fourth Conference of the General Workers' Union of Germany in June 1920
Introduction1
- 1. These theses comprised one of two projects proposed by the opposition within the AAUD. They were presented by the East Saxony and Hamburg districts at the Fourth Conference of the AAUD (June 1920), were adopted as definitive “guidelines” by the first autonomous conference of the opposition in October, and were published in Die Aktion No. 41/21, 1921.
Extracts from the guidelines of the AAUD
Extracts from the December 1920 Guidelines of the General Workers' Union of Germany
What Is Organization?
To organize means to arrange and give form to something. Parties, trade unions, the army, the Church, the State and the League of Nations are organizations.
The KAPD’s report on the third congress of the Communist International
Report presented at the meeting of the KAPD Central Committee on July 31, 1921, by a KAPD delegate to the Third Congress of the Third International.
Comrades!
Program of the AAUD
Program of the General Workers' Union of Germany, adopted at their third national conference in Leipzig, December 12-14, 1920.
Introduction
The Communist Left and the resolutions of the second congress of the Communist International - Henriette Roland-Holst
Dutch communist Roland-Holst argues against using the objective and subjective conditions of the Russian Revolution as a model for revolution in the Western countries.
The consequences of the decisions reached in Moscow are more complicated for the left communist groups.
Resolution of the conference of the Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party
1920 text showing how the left wing of the Italian Socialist Party initially held anti-parliamentarist positions, prior to the Second Congress of the Communist International.
The National Conference of the abstentionist communist fraction of the Socialist Party of Italy was held in Florence on May 8 and 9, 1920.1
- 1. We include this short text of the Italian Left (extracted from Il Soviet and published by Kommunismus) in this collection because it shows, in opposition to the legend maintained by Bordiga and the Bordigists, that the entire Italian Left was actually more
The Kronstadt commune 1921 - The Red Menace
The Red Menace's analysis of the Kronstadt rebellion.
‘The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government has decreed that Kronstadt and the rebelling ships must immediately submit to the authority of the Soviet Republic. I therefore order all who have raised their hands against the socialist fatherland to lay down their arms at once. Recalcitrants are to be disarmed and turned over to the Soviet authorities.
Franz Kafka and libertarian socialism
Michael Löwy explores the links between the seminal writer and the anarchist/libertarian socialist movement.
Clearly, the work of Franz Kafka cannot be reduced to a political doctrine of any kind. Kafka did not give speeches but fashioned individuals and situations. In his work, he expressed a Stimmung or sense of feelings and attitudes. The symbolic world of literature cannot be reduced to the discursive world of ideologies.
