council communism

1. It is the historical task of the proletarian revolution to bring the disposal of the wealth of the earth into the hands of the working masses, to put an end to the private ownership of the means of production, thus rendering impossible the existence of a separate, exploiting, ruling class.

Born on the 5th July 1887, at Stuttgart, Alexander Schwab was the son of a choir master. He studied at the Universities of Rostock, Jena, Heidelberg and Freiburg in philosophy, ancient languages, political economy and sociology. He was a member of the Free Students movement.

Alfred Weiland was born on 7th August 1906 in the Moabit district of Berlin. He apprenticed as a fitter. He later worked as a telegraph worker.

In 1925 he was for a short time a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) which in Berlin had a more “left” outlook than elsewhere. Soon after he joined the communist KAPD and AAU.

[b]Published during World War II, it illustrates how Russian political intervention in China and Europe served Russian foreign policy interests and so worked against the possibilities of proletarian revolution.

I

This online version taken from http://www.marxists.org

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution

1 The Bourgeois Revolutions

Preface

Council Communism & The Critique of Bolshevism

Published in Revolutionary History, Vol. 5, No. 2 Spring 1994.

We have omitted the footnotes from this text as they are mainly short biographies of people in the text. This interview first appeared in Solidarity Vol. 6 no.2 when Reichanbach was a militant in the anti-parliamentary Left in Germany. He was interviewed by Rudi Dutschke (RH)

Article source: The Council Communist Archive - www.kurasje.org

The largest collection of Mattick's work is at the Paul Mattick homepage - http://www.home.no/mattick/

'Bolshevism and Stalinism' was originally published in Politics Vol. 4 - no. 2 - Mar/Apr 1947.

He describes the conflicts and tensions between the various political factions; between communist revolutionaries and social democracy, between German revolutionaries and Russian Bolshevism. He discusses reasons for the failure of the revolution in the context of the wider international situation and the development trends of capitalism.

Council communism was a radical left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Today it continues as an important theoretical current within libertarian communism.

There are so many ideological views conflicting about Russia 1917-1985 that revolutionaries should almost be able to see the nature of modern ideology and non-dialectical critique without even considering what actually happened.

Reprinted by Unpopular Books, London, March 1989.

We may add here after all the conservatism of the working class today, only reflects the still massive strength of capitalism, and that this material power cannot be cast out of existence by propaganda but by a material power greater than that of capital."

From International Council Correspondence.

Maximilien Rubel
Born 1905 - Chernivtsi, Ukraine, died February 1996 - Paris, France

The Hunt for Red October - Ten Days That Didn't Overthrow Capitalism
By Wildcat (UK)

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 Sozialistiche Jugend. In 1918, he started to train as a toolmaker at Siemens, where he was also elected as the apprentices’ delegate on the workers’ council of the company during the German revolution.

--from the AK Press edition