German Revolution 1918

A 1971 essay on the KAPD, its positive features (its break with the ideology and practice of social democracy) and its shortcomings (“ideology of the producers”), with discussions of, among other things: Lenin’s Infantile Disorder; the KAPD’s relations with the Third International; National Bolshevism; the AAU and AAUE; the KAPD as vanguard party; the counterrevolution, Stalinism and fascism; the crucial importance of Germany for the proletarian revolution; the KAPD’s influence on the communist currents of the 1960s; and the next, “human revolution” entailing the “abolition of the proletariat” (communism: “the mode of production in which the goal of production is man himself”).

From the Workshop of the Revolution (pp. 158, Berlin, 1919). A person of world-historical importance, Emil Barth (1879–1941) was the leader of the revolutionary shop stewards (revolutionäre Obleute) and the Council of the People's Deputies' most radical member. Barth recounts his bitter experience, providing an unflattering picture of the German Revolution's (mis)leadership.

“Manifest Proletkunst” (Manifesto of Proletarian Art), a text written by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg, published in Kurt Schwitters' periodical Merz #2 in April 1923 (Hannover, p.24-25), with signatures by leading artists of the international avant-garde (Schwitters, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and Christof Spengemann).

Retells the history of the radical left during the twentieth century through the words and deeds of Paul Mattick.