Apparently "the left-communist German Workers Union Unitary-Organisation (AAUD-E)" had (deliberative) delegates at the founding of the IWA in Berlin in 1922.* I know some councillists (specifically Otto Ruhle) advocated revolutionary unions, but didn't know "left-communist unions" had ever actually existed. Anyone know any more?
* V.Damier (2009), Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th century, Black Cat Press, Edmonton; p.82.
Any good sources/books/articles you can recommend?
I don't think there is one decent book on the German revolution and revolutionary movement.It's a while since I read up on this stuff but you really have to look at a number of sources.
The 'fundamental principles of communist production and distribution' has lots of stuff in the appendices but I don't think these have been put online.
The ICC have a book on the Dutch-German communist left that goes into obscure detail (and obviously is biased towards their views).
There's some stuff on here that might help.
I would start looking some more but any texts I find will probably already be copied to libcom, and I dare say others will be posting links here soon...
This article has some information on the AAUD-E:
http://libcom.org/library/preliminaries-councils-and-councilist-organization-rene-riesel
A rejection of this model (in particular, a rejection of the practice of separating the political organization from the revolutionary factory organizations) led in 1920 to the secession of some of the AAUD members, who then formed the AAUD-E (the ‘E’ for Einheitsorganisation — Unified Organization). By the very working of its internal democracy the new unitary organization aimed to accomplish the educative work that had until then devolved on the KAPD, and it simultaneously assigned itself the task of coordinating struggles: the factory organizations that it federated were supposed to transform themselves into councils at the revolutionary moment and take over the management of the society. Here again the modern watchword of workers councils was still mixed with messianic memories of the old revolutionary syndicalism: the factory organizations would magically become councils when all the workers took part in them.
(Just noticed the useful links at the bottom of this thread, too)
Sweet, those ones at the bottom look useful. That 'related posts' module is sweet.
The AAUD and KAUD* specifically are probably a better example of a council or left communist 'union' than the AAUD-E (which was formed to get away from communist influence and become a unitary organization).
Outside of the German left, theres also the example of the various Bordigist and Italian left communist groups and their views on unions (and associated groups- 'communist factory groups', etc).
How did Battaglia change its conception of its "Internationalist Factory Groups"?Now that we have at last determined the "unions' nature and function", we can consider how revolutionaries should develop their organized intervention.
Although the letter to the Mexican and Spanish comrades does not talk about it (why not?), we knew that, for Battaglia, revolutionaries organize their intervention through "factory groups". Let's see then, what is the "nature and function" of these factory groups, and how this notion has evolved in time.
1922: the Partito Comunista d'Italia''s Rome Theses assign to the communist factory groups, made up of party militants, the task of reconquering and taking over the political leadership of the unions, seen as transmission belts from party to class.
1952: the perspective of reconquering the unions being abandoned, the groups are kept alive by giving them "two hats, one of the intermediary between party and class, the other of a political organization". In other words, since the trade's union transmission belt no longer exists, the factory groups themselves are to take their place, replacing, one might say, the class' own unitary organizations. It is no accident that these groups are no longer called communist as in 1922, but union factory groups, coordinated in a Union Fraction on the basis of a specific Trade Union Platform.
1977-80: BC limits its reaction to the discussions on this question during the International Conference of the Communist Left, to changing the name to "Internationalist Factory Groups", without touching anything else.
1982: Battaglia's 2nd Congress throws overboard the whole framework of the Union Fraction, Platform and so on... but continues to ascribe to these groups the role of "sole real transmission belt between party and class"[7].
1986: Battaglia's new pamphlet on the unions declares clearly that, while the factory group retains its role as a party organism, "we ran no longer consider it as an intermediary organ" "situated half-way between party and class". Terms like "intermediary organisms" and "transmission belts" are eliminated, as being "worn-out and out-of-date".
The most incredible thing today is that the comrades of Battaglia seem to be unaware how important these last changes are.
http://en.internationalism.org/node/2999
"International debate
Bourgeois trade unions, Working class organizations and the intervention of revolutionaries (Reply to "Battaglia Comunista") "
EDIT: * I wrote 'KAPD' instead of 'KAUD' in the post above as an example of a 'left communist union'. The KAPD being the Communist Workers Party of Germany, and the KAUD being the Communist Workers Union of Germany.
Here's a short piece published by the KAUD in their press in 1932:
I've come across bordiga's 'factory cells' before, but they were seen as a way to extend strictly hierarchical party influence into the workplace. What's interesting in Ruhle is the parallels with forms of syndicalism, rejecting party organisation in favour of workplace-based revolutionary unions etc. There also appear to be some important differences (eg Ruhle says the separation of political and economic organisation is necessary outside a 'revolutionary period'), but I want to read a bit more before coming to any firm conclusions.
Cheers everyone, I'll get these printed off and added to my reading list. Not an area I really know much about (there's nothing like it in the councillist stuff I've read - Pannekoek, Luxemburg - nor in contemporary left communism).
Obviously I'm going to read up on this myself, but does anyone know if these ideas/organisational forms were influenced by e.g. French revolutionary syndicalism or British syndicalism like The Syndicalist, or were they developed independently out of the critique of political parties/trade unions?
Apparently "the left-communist German Workers Union Unitary-Organisation (AAUD-E)" had (deliberative) delegates at the founding of the IWA in Berlin in 1922.* I know some councillists (specifically Otto Ruhle) advocated revolutionary unions, but didn't know "left-communist unions" had ever actually existed. Anyone know any more?
Well, the AAUD and the AAUD-E were not really "left communist unions", if by "unions" you mean either trade unions or syndicalist type unions. They were really national federations of "factory organisations" (in German: "Betriebsorganisationen"). They were militantly opposed to the trade unions (see below). Their relation/attitude to the anarcho-syndicalist FAUD is less clear. Actually, for the AAUD, being pro-KAPD, they were likely not very sympathetic with the FAUD. However, for the AAUD-E, since they were not pro-KAPD, and opposed all political parties and the separation of the 'political' and the 'economic' in a way not dissimilar from that of anarcho-syndicalism, it shouldn't be too surprising that in 1922, when the overall proletarian movement was declining, that the AAUD-E would be interested in and want to have a presence at the founding of the IWA.
From the first link provided by prec@ariat:
The Workers 'Union'The most significant feature of this renewed industrial activity,
expressing lessons drawn from the pre war and early war time industrial
struggles, was its outright rejection of the role of the trade unions in
mediating and policing the struggle between the working class and capital on the shop floor. The slogan 'Get out of the Unions' was first heard in the middle of the war and was then taken up as a central part of the platform of the Left Communist current.After the war, in the period of the Councils, when demobilisation took
place and unemployment soared, the popularity of this slogan spread and in the main industrial centres hundreds of thousands of workers left the
unions. Often they dissolved their local branches, seized branch funds and redistributed them as unemployment relief. Many of these workers, skilled and unskilled alike, regrouped themselves during the course of 1919 into single factory organisations within their own plant, often as a result of the strikes of the time. These factory organisations were to be the basic organs of the Worker Unions into which they were grouped at regional and national level.[In this context the German word 'Union' has nothing whatsoever to do with trade union which is called 'Gewerkschaft' in German. The 'Union' therefore fought the trade unions. - Publishers Note]
At first many of these workers joined the recently formed Anarcho-Syndicalist FAUD, following the first period of the Councils and the downturn of the German Revolution in May 1919. The FAUD, whose forerunner the FVDG had wielded considerable influence in the pre war
industrial struggles, had been banned for the duration of the war. It
proved however not to have gone beyond a militant anti-political democratic syndicalism of the pre war period. This was not enough for a generation that had just gone through the political experience of the war, and the small Marxist opposition within the FAUD soon left along with many others and helped to found the General Workers Union of Germany, the AAUD at the start of the following year. The formation of the AAUD from factory organisations [Betriebsorganisationen] and workers unions organised at plant and regional level was parallelled by the 'democratic' expulsion of the Left Communist tendency from the KPD in December 1919.
one current of the AAUE joined the FAUD in around 1923
Any good sources/books/articles you can recommend?
I don't think there is one decent book on the German revolution and revolutionary movement.
Most accounts I've come across are fairly mainstream, but here are some book suggestions:
Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918/19 by Sebastian Haffner (1969). A 200-page book that's highly readable and a quick read. It's a sympathetic account. I'd recommend this one.
The German Revolution 1918-1919 by Ralph Haswell Lutz (1922). A first-hand account by an America academic. Lots of excellent details, but rather dry and dispassionate.
German Social Democracy 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism by Carl E. Schorske (1955). An interesting historical survey.
The German Revolution of 1918: A Study of German Socialism in War and Revolt by A. J. Ryder (1967). This is a very thorough account.
for those who can read German, I would recommend Hans Manfred Bock' books Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918-1923 (large pdf, 24.5 mb) and Geschichte des „linken Radikalismus“ in Deutschland. Ein Versuch where one chapter deals with the KAPD and its offshoots and Olaf Ihlau's Die Roten Kämpfer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik und im „Dritten Reich“
JK - F and T recommend the ICC one on the Dutch/German left, especially for the bibliography. Also apparently the PDF version the author did is better than the ICC published one, altho only slightly.
I have heard a few people on here say this, and I don't quite understand why. I asked about the Italian book, which people had said the same thing about, and somebody said there were two different sentences, which were 'less partyist' in the whole book. Looking at them though it appeared to me that the authors version was a rough translation, which hadn't been proofread. Given that the ICC's prose can, at times, be unintelligible in itself, I'd find it hard to imagine how an unproofread version could be better.
Devrim
wrote:
JK - F and T recommend the ICC one on the Dutch/German left, especially for the bibliography. Also apparently the PDF version the author did is better than the ICC published one, altho only slightly.I have heard a few people on here say this, and I don't quite understand why. I asked about the Italian book, which people had said the same thing about, and somebody said there were two different sentences, which were 'less partyist' in the whole book. Looking at them though it appeared to me that the authors version was a rough translation, which hadn't been proofread. Given that the ICC's prose can, at times, be unintelligible in itself, I'd find it hard to imagine how an unproofread version could be better.
Devrim
Yeah there was a discussion on this a while back and Devrim is right, it seemed to be two sentences cahnged in the introduction.
Anyway on topic. There's an essay by Bock, the author of Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus mentioned above, in Thorpe and Van der Linden's book 'Revolutionary Syndicalism' which touches on the realtionship between the FAUD and the AAUDs.
The bordigists have unions I believe. I've been told some bordigist union merged with the CGT in Spain. In some ways the french cnt is a left communist union.
yeah i'd recommend the PDF book , just cause it is easier than buying the book and up to date
Left communist unions is gettting to be a bit of an "urban myth". The CWO was founded beleiving that the KAPD was the bees knees politically in 1975. We wrote a text on the German Revolution in Revolutionary Perspectives 7 (first series) based very much on two sources (Reichenbach's History of the KAPD and Manfred Bock's "Linkskommunismus" - wisely recommended by Entdinglichung above) which our most energetic comrade at the time had translated into English (the same comrade who translated Ruhle's "From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution" (published by Socialist Reproductions and Revolutionary Perspectives in 1972-3) but we never published the Bock transaltion (it was type written manuscript). It may be lost. Bock points out the distinction betwen "unionen" and "BO"s (betriebsorganisation) to indicate that the KAPD intended to found something more like struggle organisations than unions but gradually the the KAPD split over this and other issues and in the end there were several factions but the Ruhle faction being mainly anti-party put their hopes in the AAUD which was no different in our view at the time than anarcho-syndicalist. I am doing all this from memory and am not versed in German so if I have got any of that wrong fire away.
On the Italian Left communist side the PCInt was founded (in hiding in 193 , fornally in 1945) on the basis that unions were now integrated into capitalism (Luciano Stefanini insisted on this point at the 1945 Congress) but that posed a question as to how to relate to the daily struggle of the class. This was nothing to do with the factory cells idea from the days of working in secret under fascism in the 1920s (as devoration1 thinks). The idea of factory groups to keep workers who had struggled in contact with political activity was tehn neww tactic. There is no big mystery to it. When a strike finishes most workers forget it but others remain "antagonistic" without at the same time willing to commit to a lifetime's struggle against the system. The job of the factory group (made of of members and non-members) is to try to carry forward the same attittude (consciousness if you want to be precise) from one struggle to the next and to demonstrate in practice that the rev org is always with the struggle.
Bordiga was very ambigouous on this as on so many other things and there was some talk amongst the Bordigists during the split of 1951-2 of forming new unions, "red trade unions", but the mainstream of Bordigism did not accept this. They contented themselves with working inside the existing unions but not (as far as I have so far worked out) following the Trot line of giving them new leadership. I think the line can best be summed up that the workers were there so we work there. The one exception was the Party of Firenze (Florence). This was a split (I think in 1972) from the International Communist Party which naturally in late Bordigist fashion also took the name "International Communist Party" but the title of their paper is "Il Partito" so in Italian they are known as "Il Partito di Firenze". Their distinquishing feature is the belief that we can, under current capitalist conditions, create "red trades unions" (their writings are accessible in English via Communist Left which is published in Liverpool by an ex-comrade of the CWO).
So we have libertarian communist splitters who vere to syndicalism in the German Left and late Bordigist spliters who rediscover "red trades unions" but the real heritage of the communist left is to try to transcend the problem that the integration of unions into the capitalist state has created.
So we have libertarian communist splitters who vere to syndicalism in the German Left and late Bordigist spliters who rediscover "red trades unions" but the real heritage of the communist left is to try to transcend the problem that the integration of unions into the capitalist state has created.
this is what i'm trying to get my head round. it looks like Ruhle (and Pannekoek) were somewhat influenced (at a distance) by the US IWW - Pannekoek makes a partial exception for it after his critique of trade unionism for example. coupled with Ruhle's rejection of the party, i can see why Bordiga et al saw it as a break from Marxism in the direction of syndicalism/anarcho-syndicalism.
on the other hand, there appear to have been a nuber of differences. while there was cross-membership between council communists and the FAUD, they did leave to set up their own unions (not gewerkschaft), consisting of federations of factory organisations (though some later rejoined the FAUD). the AAUD-E at least also seems to have rejected partial struggles in facvour of only revolutionary ones (of course at the time revolution seemed very much on the cards), whereas the FAUD had always seen such struggles as preparatory for revolutionary ones. Related to this, Ruhle qualified his advocacy of 'unitary' political-economic organisation as appropriate only during a revolutionary period... i don't know if he was viewing revolution as inevitable (with Russia, factory councils in Germany, Italy and do on...), or if were he to be around today he'd be reverting to separate economic-based unions and a political party. if so, that would be another significant difference.
i very much get the impression contemporary left-communists regard this as a 'retreat' from Marxism, and i'm not sure that there's any contemporary organised council communists advocating anythng like it, but correct me if i'm wrong.
There is a small union in Spain coming from Solidaridad Obrera called "Solidaridad y Unidad de los Trabajadores" that seems to be based in Bordigism. http://www.nodo50.org/sindicatosut/index.php. They describe themselves as a classist union that does not accept subventions from the state or employers.
This was nothing to do with the factory cells idea from the days of working in secret under fascism in the 1920s (as devoration1 thinks).
No- the idea of a network of communists during the underground work under the Fascist regime is entirely different from the 'Internationalist Factory Groups' of PCint around the time of the International Conferences of the Communist Left in the 1970's. This is alluded to in the old ICC text reproduced above that makes a very clear distinction in the timeline between the 1922 (under Fascism) communist factory groups (networks of communist militants working in existing legal labor unions) and the 1950's-1970's conceptions of Battaglia Comunista/PCInt as the 'Union Fraction' and the 'Internationalist Factory Groups'.
i very much get the impression contemporary left-communists regard this as a 'retreat' from Marxism, and i'm not sure that there's any contemporary organised council communists advocating anythng like it, but correct me if i'm wrong.
.
Your impressions seem accurate going by the public press of the existing left communist groups. Though I think a clearer distinction can be made concerning the 'councilism' of the AAUD-E and anarcho-syndicalism of FAUD than can the Unionen, factory committee's, etc and the KAUD.
So we have libertarian communist splitters who vere to syndicalism in the German Left and late Bordigist spliters who rediscover "red trades unions" but the real heritage of the communist left is to try to transcend the problem that the integration of unions into the capitalist state has created.
I think the problem of 'red labor unions' and traditional labor unions has been 'solved'. Most class struggle or internationalist anarchist/libertarian communist/etc groups and tendencies as well as contemporary left communists have nearly identical theories concerning unionism.
The historical problems of the German left (specifically in the forms of the AAUD, AAUD-E, KAUD and FAUD) and the KAPD regarding forms of organization like factory committee's, economic networks of militants, economic networks of revolutionaries, etc and their relation to political or political-economic groups is simply being repeated in the present by the current day 'working class camp/milieu'. The language and heritage of anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary syndicalism, council communism, councilism, etc is often used to try and get to the 'meat' of these questions, but as we've seen with the oft repeated semantic arguments around the Brighton SolFed document on this topic, when it comes to this topic of organization and their relationship to other organizations and events, historical baggage (heritage, language, big time names of theorists, etc) does more to confuse than enlighten unintentionally. I think the argument of 'dialectical spontanaism' of Councilism (but borrowed by left communism and Luxemburgism to different extents) is taken down a peg by the reality of events in Germany during the 1918-1923 period when this question was attempted to be resolved in the heat of [pre] revolutionary events.
Left communist unions is gettting to be a bit of an "urban myth". The CWO was founded beleiving that the KAPD was the bees knees politically in 1975. We wrote a text on the German Revolution in Revolutionary Perspectives 7 (first series) based very much on two sources (Reichenbach's History of the KAPD and Manfred Bock's "Linkskommunismus" - wisely recommended by Entdinglichung above) which our most energetic comrade at the time had translated into English (the same comrade who translated Ruhle's "From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution" (published by Socialist Reproductions and Revolutionary Perspectives in 1972-3) but we never published the Bock transaltion (it was type written manuscript). It may be lost.
What, what, what?
Is there anyway of finding out if this is lost? Is the translator still around? I'd be really, really interested in reading this.
Hello there.
I scanned the Bock book. It's interesting that there's an english translation.
Dauve's book on the Communist Left (available on Libcom) is in my opinion the best critical analysis of the Unionen from a communist perspective. I'd check the relevant chapters.
The Unionen were neither trade unions nor industrial unions. Although there are clear influences from the IWW (and direct contacts with its german-speaking members), in the german context these influences transformed into a different form, mostly due to the altogether different situation. As Mattick says in a text comparing IWW and the Unionen movement, IWW was a-political, while AAUD was anti-political.
Beyond the semantics, some characteristics that point that there's a break with the trade/industrial union form are the following:
* they weren't (contrary to the trade unions and Betriebsraete of the time), and didn't want to acquire, some sort of legal entity.
* against any negotiation whatsoever with employers or the state. Against collective bargaining.
* against syndicalism.
This is obscured in the english translation of the AAUD program:
"7. The AAUD is opposed to trade unionism because the latter is opposed to the council idea."
The german text reads: "7. Die AAU wendet sich gegen den Syndikalismus, soweit er dem Rätegedanken ablehnend gegenübersteht." ie "7. The AAUD is opposed to syndicalism, insofar the latter is opposed to the council idea." For some brief period (early 1919 I think) FAUD supported the council system and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
* did not endorse 'partial/day-to-day struggles'.
* They were in close connection with the armed-struggle arm of KAPD.
* endorsed direct action, sabotage etc.
* one of the critiria for joining AAUD was being for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
All in all, there were organisations for revolutionary struggle, ie a different form altogether. It wasn't an accident that after the revolutionary fervor the Unionen broke apart.
Parts of AAUD-E wanted to participate in day-to-day struggles and keep relations with the syndicalists (there was, naturally, a break within the AAUD-E).
According to Bock and Dauve, the FAUD of the time, atleast the leadership, was quite pacifist. Ofcourse many FAUD members participated in the revolutionary struggles, along with Unionists and KAPists. A number of FAUD locals left it during 1919-1921 to join AAUD on the basis of FAUD not being revolutionary enough.
According to Bock and Dauve, the FAUD of the time, atleast the leadership, was quite pacifist. Ofcourse many FAUD members participated in the revolutionary struggles, along with Unionists and KAPists. A number of FAUD locals left it during 1919-1921 to join AAUD on the basis of FAUD not being revolutionary enough.
acoording to the study of Klan/Nelles about the FAUD in the Rhein/-Ruhr-area, Gandhi was relatively popular among the anarcho-syndicalist youth ... this changed, when starting with 1929/30, the SA became a threat
cheers, really helpful stuff...
For some brief period (early 1919 I think) FAUD supported the council system and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
when the IWA was founded in Berlin in 1922, it committed itself to "a system of free councils without subordination to any authority or political party, bar none." However in the 30s, some (e.g. Besnard) concluded the problem with soviets was that they were not exclusively workers bodies and allowed delegates from political parties (i need to check this for 1917, was certainly true of 1905), and so the CNT maintained something like Emile Pouget's model, where in the revolution the unon throws itself open, transforming itself from an organ of struggle to an organ of administration based on assemblies in the factories and fields (this wouldn't totally get rid of poltical party influence, but they'd need to be workers, and function as mandated delegates if elected to councils). This was subject to heated debate in the IWA, and also arguably created problems in the Spanish revolution since even in their Catalonian heartland the CNT didn't come close to getting all workers to join - and subsequently saw the only options as 'CNT dictatorship' or anti-fascist collaboration.
JK
I was not referring to your serious question at the beginning of this thread but to the passsing bits of guesswork that some subsequent commentators added. One of them was devoration1 I think. And by the way Devoration1 I would not trust one iota of what the ICC writes on the issue since from their birth they were out to discredit any tradition that might stand in their way on the road to world domination of the communist left.
More seriously JK I think you are right that in the 1920s the Communist lefts (in Germnay and Italy) regarded the issue of how to relate to the trades unions as "tactical" (also parliament) and they certainly did not regard the issue as we now do today. They were beginning to see the role of the unions and the state and their increasing confluence of interests but it took at least another 20 years before this became a part of the basic positions (or strategic vision if you prefer) of all CL groups today.
GS
I am certain that we used to possess the only copy (and now I have to retreat a bit as I am not sure that it was not just a summary - it was a long time ago) and we may still have it (since I have to confess not to looking in the German Left folder much these days). The translator (DGP) abandoned revolutionary politics in 1991 for fame and fortune elsewhere. I will get back to you on that. Sorry not to be of more help but if I dig anything up I'll certainly let you have it.
I am certain that we used to possess the only copy (and now I have to retreat a bit as I am not sure that it was not just a summary - it was a long time ago) and we may still have it (since I have to confess not to looking in the German Left folder much these days). The translator (DGP) abandoned revolutionary politics in 1991 for fame and fortune elsewhere. I will get back to you on that. Sorry not to be of more help but if I dig anything up I'll certainly let you have it.
Deadly thanks.
long live revulation
Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918/19 by Sebastian Haffner (1969). A 200-page book that's highly readable and a quick read. It's a sympathetic account. I'd recommend this one.
Good call. The best popular introduction. It's a real shame that the English translation is out of print. Some enterprising lefty publisher should do a reprint (or somebody should scan it for the Libcom archives).
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I think the AAUD had over 100,000 members at one point. It was linked to the KAPD.
The AAUD-E, of which Otto Rühle was the leading light, were probably better described as council communists as they had broken with the idea that a communist party was needed.