What are the differences between councilism and left communism? I often get the sense that with councilists, they are much more "hands-off" when it comes to participating in strikes, etc. While left communists are more active, or "militant" in that they do participate.
Are there are more demarcations between the two tendencies? Or are they essentially one in the same, and only degrees of one another?
Left Communists include
Left Communists include Daniel Deleon, Slyvia Pankhurst (she goes back and forth), Rosa Luxembourg etc. Basically Left Communists are against Reformism and a Revolutionary Party. They tried to distance themselves from Social Democracy and the degeneration of Russian revolution. They believe in participating in government, but understand the Emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself. Most left communists see Industrial Trade Unions as a tool of Class struggle.
Councilists include Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Paul Mattick, etc. They believe in spontaneity like Left Communists (hence why they are a current of Left Communism), but are against participating in Government and Trade Unions. Most Councilists still believe in a party though.
I've always seen Left Communists as early Councilists, who are unable to let go of old conventions of Class struggle. They are not necessary more Authoritarian or Right Wing, their tactics are just deeply rooted in the countries and times they lived in.
Paulappaul wrote: Left
Paulappaul
*koff*
Paulappaul
against a vanguard party, not against a revolutionary party
Quote: Quote: Paulappaul
Left Communists are against the Idea that the Proletariat has to be lead, that it can't lead itself to victory. So yes Left Communists are against Reformism and a Revolutionary Party. The idea isn't confined to Vanguardism it's against all parties acting for proletariat in the fight against Capitalism and the making of a Socialist society.
Paulappaul wrote: Most left
Paulappaul
I don't think this is at all true.
Paulappaul
Nor this.
Paulappaul
and this certainly isn't. Left Communist believe in a evolutionary vanguard party though perhaps they understand the term 'vangaurd' in a different way to anarchists.
Devrim
A good article is Adam
A good article is Adam Buick's article in the Socialist Standard focussing on Bordiga and Pannekoek
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/jan04/panbordiga.html
Quote: Quote: Paulappaul
To quote Pannekoek's theses on the Fight of the Working Class Aganist Capitalism,
So yes, the Party is for spiritual and educational reasons, not for the actual struggle against Capitalism.
Uh.. Marceau Pivert was a Trade Unionist. Daniel De Leon says that "industrial union is at once the battering ram with which to pound down the fortress of Capitalism" and even Paul Mattick organised for the I.W.W. Left Communists are opposed the bureaucracy and Nature of conventional Trade Unions, but not Industrial Unions, for the reason that they are not so different from Workers' Councils.
So yes, most, not all Left Communists believe that Industrial Unions can be tool for the Proletariat against Capitalism.
Vanguardism presupposes that the Proletariat has to be lead, that the Spontaneous acts of the of the Proletariat are chaotic. Left Communists don't believe in this, and therefor they are against any sort of Vanguard party.
Paulappaul wrote: Vanguardism
Paulappaul
The two main left communist organisations today are the ICC and the ICT. The ICC says in its basic positions:
ICC
The ICT used to be called the 'International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party' until very recently. I think that speaks for itself.
I don't agree with your definition of 'vangaudism' though.
Pivert wasn't a left communist though. Neither was DeLeon as has already been pointed out on this thread. Mattick was, though maybe more of a councilist, and you have a point here. He was an exception.
To go back to today's main left communist organisations:
ICC
ICT
On the point about Panokeok, I think that councilism has changed since that was written.
Devrim
Quote: Its role is neither to
ok, that's why i said it wasn't vanguardist
small typo, that should be ICT
petey wrote: small typo, that
petey
Thank you. I have corrected it.
Devrim
Quote: The two main left
I've never seen the ICC as Left Communist, regardless of what they proclaim themselves to be. I'm sure our definitions of Vanguardism are different though, as they are with everyone. When I talk about Vanguardism I mean the idea that the Working Class is not it's own Vanguard, that is requires someone/something else to be it's Vanguard for the creation of a Socialist society.
So what is Pivert I ask you? Besides being friends with Daniel Guerin, besides being labelled as a Left Communist by the movement, besides being labelled as a Left Communist by Marxists.org and who when expelled from the SFIO he founded the PSOP, which was voice on the independent, anti-authoritarian Marxist left.
Deleon was a Left Communist, he argued that State Ownership is not Socialism. He believed the Emancipation of the working class to be the act of the working class itself. He help found the I.W.W and believed it to be the Socialist society in the making. He understood reformism cannot create a Socialist that only revolution can do this. He wasn't a Leninist, he wasn't a reformist. His view of a Socialist society was libertarian, he was a Left Communist.
Councilism is a current of Left Communism, so I see my comments on Mattick are still truthful.
Automattick referred to Councilists. Not just new Councilists, but old ones as well. Knowing that there are those who are aganist a Party I have said,
I didn't say all Councilists believe in a party, I said most, as early Council Communists were in Parties, if not leading those parties.
Paulappaul wrote: I've never
Paulappaul
We have very different definitions of what left communism is too. So much so that I don't see much point in discussing what left communists think as we are discussing two different set of people.
Devrim
My definition of Left
My definition of Left Communism is the following,
which can be found here,
http://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/index.htm
How would you disagree with this? All Left Communist literature as lead me to believe this to be pretty evident.
Quote: I've never seen the
What are we then?
Oh , my , you really are
Oh , my , you really are setting yoursleves up as a target to lampoon with that question but you did ask it. So here is some answers for you !
But name-calling isn't only reserved for ourselves , of course. The SPGB is described by the ICC as
The Left Communists were
The Left Communists were those Marxists who supported the 1917 Russian Revolution, but differed with Lenin and Trotsky over a number of issues including the formation of the Soviet government in the U.S.S.R., the tactics of the Comintern in Europe and America, the role to be given to autonomous and spontaneous organisations of the working class as opposed to the working class political parties, participation in Parliament, the relationship with the trade unions and the trade union leadership.
yes, so why are we not left communists? This is precisely the tradition we come from. Question is addressed to Paulapaul. Ajj's contribution was not in the least helpful.
What are we then?
What are we then?
Left Communists with little sense of humour :p
Ajj, it's not a question of
Ajj, it's not a question of humour ... I'm genuinely intrigued.
I know that the SPGBers regard us a cult, a sect, and all the rest of it. We can add in idealist from the CWO. A general bunch of bastards from other sundry critics.
Occasionally, these cruel and heartless insults make me cry myself to sleep but I've never heard anyone say we're not left communists!
Alf is at least speaking to
Alf is at least speaking to the actual history.
Communist Left had its origins in the Left-wing of Social Democracy prior to WWI, and overlapped at times with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Rosa Luxemburg, and others. At the end of WWI, after the Russian Revolution, Luxemburg moved towards the center, away from the Communist Left, and towards conciliation with Kautsky's organization, and her surviving followers largely rejoined it or took the side of Lenin and RCP against the Communist Left in Germany.
In the Netherlands and Germany, the Communist Left was made up of a number of groups, including the Bremen Left, the Dutch and German communists around Pannekoek and Gorter and elements around Otto Ruhle, and so on, which cohered into the KAPD in Germany. None of these people referred to themselves as Council Communists until the late 1920's-early 1930's, esp. with the formation of the GIK.
The KAPD still viewed itself as a revolutionary party that would lead, that is, that it would be the coming together of the most class conscious communist workers and intellectuals, but not one that was the product of a handful of intellectuals. They also viewed the KAPD as separate from the councils and viewed the councils as the power. They had openly rejected the Bolshevik distrust of the masses and party-dictatorship, as well as the imposition of strategic and tactical lines derived not from the particular conditions of different countries but wholly fro the Russian experience. The KAPD viewed the unions as counter-revolutionary (a well-deserved accusation as the unions formed the right-wing of every socialist party in Europe and primarily excluded unskilled workers and the unemployed, and often were openly racist, national-chauvinist and sexually exclusive, even more so outside Europe.) they also opposed any kind of participation in Parliament as a kind of recuperation of workers into the state and opposed the policy of the United Front as a policy between leaders against the mass of workers.
In Italy the situation was different with Bordiga and company. While they agreed with the opposition to the United Front and to participation in parliaments, they did not oppose membership in the trade unions and viewed it as necessary. They also put a greater emphasis on political power. it was not enough to take over the means of production and setup councils. The state needed to be smashed and the political power of the proletariat established to directly undermine capitalist social relations.
This was the historical split in the Communist Left, prior to the formation of councilism which broke with the political perspectives of the KAPD and moved towards political organizations as more forms of self-organization for revolutionaries and as propaganda societies.
With the end of WWII and the development of political struggles in the 1960's, councilism gained a new lease on life vis-a-vis its relationship to splinters from Trotskyism (the Johnson-Forrest Tendency, i.e. CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya; Socialisme ou Barbarie, and tendencies which grew out of these tendencies, such as Solidarity UK, ICO), as well as elements which came out of the remaining councilist milieu, such as Root & Branch in the USA, and the Situationist International (itself influenced by contact with Socialism or Barbarism).
Around the same period the Italian communist left also get bolstered by the development of French Bordigists Jacques Camatte and Gilles Dauve and the development of a number of groups today, which have some common roots from this period: ICC, ICT (formerly IBRP), Internationalist Perspective, Mouvement Communiste, Internationalist Communist Group.
There are also a host of groups (some no more than a few people putting out a magazine) that have derived significant parts of their politics from these two historical tendencies and they constitute a large part of what is alive in the communist milieu. The list is long an includes Aufheben, Wildcat (Germany), TPTG (Greece), Theorie communiste, riff raff (I believe still extant, its comrades are still active), Endnotes, Echanges et Movement, and so on.
This is all fairly straightforward and has little to do with DeLeonists, the SPGB, or other elements who pre-existed the historical designations of communist Left (they generally for example do not want to be called communists and are quite allergic to that designation) or council communists.
In any case, you can get into the wide array of differences over who, from within this milieu, considers who a real communist and who is not, just as you can with the Trotskyists or the Maoists, but the historical origins and designation are fairly well documented at this point.
Philippe Bourrinet's books (the ones he revised after his stint in the ICC, which "edited" his texts) are excellent sources.
Cheers,
Chris
redtwister wrote: Philippe
redtwister
Chris, do you know what the main differences are between Bourrinet's revisions and the ICC versions? I know the revised ones exist online, but are far too long to read or print, whereas I have physical copies of the ICC ones, and I wonder if there are particular sections of Bourrinet's versions to read concurrently that might not be unmanagably long...
I would generally say that
I would generally say that the term is intimately connected to the Third (Communist) International, and deals with the politics of groups and currents deemed too far left by the ComIntern leadership before the departure of the Left Opposition around Trotsky and some groups who left Trotskyism and began contacting these others and working with these others. I think the inclusion of people who died before the founding of the congress of the CI (March 1919) means that one is not really talking about the historical communist left (even if all the people mentioned may have some views close to those of some left communists)
Redtwister's history is good but I think a lot could be added to it about the Italian left in exile in (mostly in France and Belgium) and the development of their ideas far beyond anything that Bordiga was criticized for in Lenin's pamphlet ("Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder") on the nature of the state, the new cycle of crises in the epoch of imperialist decay / decadence, Kronstadt, etc.
-soyons tout
soyonstout
soyonstout
Are you referring above mostly to the groups and individuals Redtwister discussed below here?
Also would you and others still consider the groups in the second paragraph above "Ultra Left" or "Left Communist" considering many of these contemporary/neo-communist groupscules also take much from class struggle anarchism, autonomist marxism, and the situationists?
Or is it just a difference between the historical communist left and the contemporary communist left?
laozi wrote: Are you
laozi
No. I'm specifically referring to developments within the Italian Left in exile in France and Belgium (mostly, as well as contact with Paul Kirchoff's Grupo de Trabajadores in Mexico) between the world wars. This would have been the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left which published Prometeo (militant, agitational paper) and Bilan (theoretical journal)* which was later joined by the Belgian Fraction of the Communist Left (made up of many members of Ligue de Communistes Internationalistes and L'Union Communiste, both of which I believe had broken with Trostkyism in the 30s and had contact with the council communists in Germany and Holland). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism#Italian_left_communism_1926.E2.80.931939 for the brief story, the ICC's Italian Communist Left for the long version.
There were also the RKD which again I believe left Trotskyism before the war, had contact with the GIK (council communists) and also the Italian left in France/Belgium.
I don't know. I think they are definitely influenced by left communism but certainly they do borrow from anarchism/autonomism/situationism. I would say they're not 'strictly' left communist. The more eclectic groups like those you mention were in the past (I don't know if anymore) called 'modernist' by the ICC, partly to distinguish them from those that drew primarily on the historical left communist tradition--some would also probably be called 'councilist' (which ICT/ICC tend to use differently than 'council communist') which is a term often applied to groups that are less interventionist in the class struggle and less inclined to things like central organization, drawing up a concrete platform/program of political positions, etc. This doesn't mean that anyone who has learnt and adopted something from situationism or one of those currents is necessarily 'councilst,' but I think a number of them have a very different view of the role that revolutionaries play.
Hope that makes sense.
-soyons tout
laozi wrote: Or is it just a
laozi
This seems to be part of it, but I also think there's also the question of whether groups see themselves in continuity with the left of the CI (3rd International), and again I think part of this continuity is things like organizational models (of course left communists aren't attempt to build a top-down organization like the 'Bolshevized' CI, but the more historical ones tend to be more organizational, I think). Some of this may seem like arbitrary boundaries, but again, that's why there are the different groups and while many consider many of the other to be basically on the same side, there is disagreement as to who's a real left communist and whether certain groups are too one-sidedly left communist (I assume this would be a disagreement between for example the ICT/ICC and say folks like Dauve).
-soyons tout
Quote: This is all fairly
Your history is pretty sound in my opinion right up to this point, where I disagree with you. The first thing I disagree with you is that, Deleonists and the Impossibilists "pre-existed" the historical designations. Wait what Historical Designations? Oh! The ones prior WW1, in the left wing of Social Democracy? We can place this around oh... 1910 - 1914? Daniel De Leon wrote a brilliant piece about Industrial Unionism, ONE YEAR before World War 1, outlining that Goals determine methods, therefore Socialism can only be created by the working class, arguing against "parliamentary idiocy" i.e. Reformism. The Socialist Labour Party was Considered the Left-Wing Socialist Party in America, as it advocated Revolution over Reformism.
Left Communism existed before Leninism, 1917 and the third international.
I've NEVER heard of Marceau
I've NEVER heard of Marceau Pivert being described as a Left Communist before ( let alone De Leon!)
Pivert's PSOP was most similar , if you're looking for British comparisons, to the Independent Labour Party and to the POUM in Spain with which it had fraternal relations. That current is a lot different from what I regard as Left Communism. You seem to have a completely different definition of what Left Communism is from most of us on libcom , Paulappaul
Quote: Left Communism existed
Certainly there was a "left-wing" to Social Democracy, but this included Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks as well as those who later became Left Communists (the Dutch Left around Tribune, the Italian Left around Bordiga).
But the term "left communism" was developed exclusively in the context of Leninism, especially his "Infantile Disorder" pamphlet.
I'm also still bemused by the idea that the ICC isn't left communist, even given your unusual definition...
Quote: I've NEVER heard of
Roll your self over to Wikipedia and Marxists.org. It's not unusual, I've shown how they were Left Communists, using the definition on Marxists.org and redtwister's "origins of Left Communism".
I agree with this. I'm not denying the term came about during Leninism, more however that the theory required you to be in certain historical conditions.
Paulappaul- DeLeonism is
Paulappaul- DeLeonism is usually thought of and referred to as being a branch of its own. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLeonism
Key word is branch. Meaning
Key word is branch. Meaning it is subject to a higher category. Search Left Communism on Wikipedia, find "People" and you see Daniel De Leon is third on the list. Scroll down and you see "Related topics" Where you find other branches of Left Communism i.e. Council Communism, Impossiblism (influnced by Deleon), Libertarian Marxism, De Leonism, etc.
They are all considered to have their own theories, but agreeing on very basic things, which draws them together in an overarching current.
Yeah except wikipedia, while
Yeah except wikipedia, while very useful at times, is far from an authority on stuff that isn't well-known like this. (Not to mention DeLeonism isn't even an article in the Left Communist series.) I'd be more inclined to trust the accuracy of actual left communists and modern left communist organizations.
The De Leonists and the SPGB
The De Leonists and the SPGB (another 'Impossibilist' organisation, a term that pre-existed 'Left Communist' by a long way) do not describe themselves as Left Communists. Or even, to my knowledge, Communists. The SPGB certainly call themselves Socialists.
The organisations that do describe themselves as Left Communist (the ICC, the ICT, the Bordigists) are not Impossibilists. These organisations were (or are descended from) the left fractions of the Communist International. This is why they are Left Communists.
The fact that the SPGB (and the De Leonists) and the Communist Left share some elements of anaysis doesn't mean that they're all the same thing. No matter what wikipedia says.
Paullapaul, you still haven't
Paullapaul, you still haven't clarified what you mean when you said this:
I'm not trying to trap you, I'm genuinely interested in why you think this.
Quote: The De Leonists and
Bordiga formed the Communist Party of Italy. Gorter was in the Social Democratic party he helped to form until he was a part of the KAPD, another Communist Party. These people didn't consider themselves "left communists" they considered themselves to be a part of the true Marxist tradition.
Just because it "pre-existed" the term "Left Communism" doesn't mean it wasn't Left Communism. The historical conditions were there. Anarchists leach off of ancient philosophers, who didn't even call themselves Anarchists, let alone know the word.
And I'm not ignoring you. I was hoping you'd see what I posted in 6 and 10, about the ICC and Vanguardism. Maybe I different interpretation of what of things though.
I may be going a little hard on the ICC though looking back. I guess I don't see alot in Common with the older Left Communists and the modern movement.
Paulappaul wrote: ... Bordiga
Paulappaul
Of course. Because Left Communists consider that they are Marxists and the Stalinists, Trotskyists and others have abandonned Marxism. Thus, only Left Communists carry on the Marxist tradition - in this view the SPGB and the De Leonists are fossilised remnants of the pre-1914 Second International - so, not 'Communists' (as in, coming from the Communist International and post-1917) at all, which is why the SPGB calls itself the Socialist Party and not the Communist Party.
The KAPD and the Abstentionist Fraction of the Socialist Party of Italy which became the PCI (and Sylvia Pankhurst's group in Britain and those around Pannekoek in the Netherlands) were criticised by Lenin in 'Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder'. They were then progressively expelled from the Communist International and/or their local Communist parties in the process of 'Bolshevisation'. This is why they are 'Left Communists'. The groups you are talking about are not 'Left Communist' having come out of the Second International not the Third.
Why is it, Paulappaul, that you use words the way you do? The Bolsheviks are socialists because they believe in state power, the Socialist Party is communist because Anarchists leach off ancient philosophers, the Councilists believe in a Vanguard Party because Gorter was in the KAPD, the ICC is not Left Communist because of something about a Vanguard Party... Joey has been taking great pains to unpick your terms on the other thread but I'll tell you straight; I can't keep up. You're like Humpty Dumpty - every time you use a word the rest of us have to check and double check what you mean. We're all speaking the same language, more or less,; but you're using all the same words but with very different meanings. So, why do you think that is?
I'm not sure if this sort of
I'm not sure if this sort of hair-splitting about labels is even worth the time, but...
Paulappaul
Wikipedia is not a very good source for this kind of thing. If you look up the German Marxist Group and its successor journal Gegenstandpunkt, they are also slapped with the label "Left Communism" and "Impossibilism", even though they don't come out of either of those traditions, and in fact are a completely sui generis formation coming out of the student left of the 1960s. They only refer to Marx as a theoretical antecedent, otherwise the only other thinkers they refer to are actual members of their own group.
So Wikipedia plays a little too fast and loose with these terms.
Quote: in this view the SPGB
To quote myself,
Left Communism as an ideology existed before the International. I don't understand why you can't wrap your mind around this one. Daniel De Leon and the Impossiblists and came to same conclusions as other Left Communists.
The AFL, CIO, and other Trade Unions are Reformist. The Socialist Parties have become Reformist. They have lost touch with all Marxism. The Emancipation of the Working Class must be the act of the Working Class itself. State Socialism is bad. These were Deleon's criticisms and they mirrored alot of what Pannekoek, Gorter, Pankhurst and others were saying a couple years later.
And I really am not saying anything out of the ordinary. In fact there are Anarchists (Michael Schmidt and Lucien Van der Walt) who even claim James Connoly, Daniel De Leon and other 20th century Socialists as a part of the broad Anarchist tradition.
Because there are Socialists who strive for Communism, through State Power. I don't understand why this is so bizarre for you.
Never said that. I was illustrating a point that Anarchy as an ideology existed before the enlightenment and the Anarchist movement and yet Anarchists are inspired by their writings.
No I said Councilists believe in a party, have spoken in favour of a party and participated in parties. Not every party is a Vanguard Party, and the Councilists warned against these sort of parties.
Quote: Search Left Communism
I'd recommend actually reading the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism. It nowhere labels De Leon a left communist, and in fact states:
thereby specifically separating out the De Leonist tradition. And the inclusion of De Leon on the "people" list on the same page does not contradict the general attitude of the main article, as Marx and Engels themselves are on the list of "people," and they would certainly not be considered left communists by the standards of the main article (Antonio Negri, for example, is also on this list of people). The implication that the "related topics" list on the page simply lists branches of left communism is again absurd if you bother to read the main article. The first "related topic" listed is "Western Marxism." Go to the "Western Marxism" page and it is clearly stated that
An example of some of their political commitments:
I don't see how anyone could think that these are all somehow "left communists" because they are listed as "Western Marxists," representing a tendency listed as a "related topic" on the "left communism" page! Yes, Wikipedia can be misleading, but it is not that bad.
Continuing off post #36 @
Continuing off post #36 @ Slothjabber.
Guy Aldred, the anarchist, even said once that Deleon is "the leading theorist in the socialist movement in america" and that " his conception of Social revolution .... Is the true and only conception."
You talked a little bit about Infantile disorder, which around the time of it's conception, the Comitern was being by criticised by guess who? The SLP. Who also called the Russian revolution, not a socialist revolution. Something upheld by Communist left. Infantile disorder criticises the Communist left for refusing to work with in the Parliament for the working class, for refusing to work in Trade Unions. Who upheld the exact same idea? Daniel De Leon.
- Daniel De Leon
To which I think particularly in this last line corresponds with one of the Communist lefts' theorisation, Anton Pannekoek was saying in his work "Trade Unionism" published in 1936. Although Pannekoek says that Industrial Unions are not sufficient to unite the working class he comes to very same conclusion that Unionism is centered around exactly what Daniel De Leon says in the First quote. He further concludes that,
Which I think mirrorers exactly what Daniel De Leon was talking about when saying that the working class has to organise Industrially first, but that this struggle against Capitalism in the factories is not enough, that you have to face the State as well, on the Political field.
De Leon on the outside can be seen as the same old Authoritarian Socialist bullshit, but when you start exploring some his writing, you find he's alot like Marx in the sense that he is full of special meanings in word choice, that in conclusion you find him to much more libertarian then expected.
No. You totally mix up
No.
You totally mix up everything into a big soup and pull out the chunks you want in a random order.
De Leon: not a Left Communist. A socialist. Hence, 'Socialist Labour Party'.
The SPGB: not Left Communists (you don't have to believe me, you can ask them). Socialists, hence 'Socialist Party'.
Left Communism does not 'pre-date the (Communist) International'. The Left Communists were the Left fractions of the Communist International. Previously, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Gorter and Bordiga were the left fraction of the Socialist International (and the SPGB and possibly the De Leonists, I don't know, but certainly the SLP in Britain, had already left the II International).
Swans are not sparrows (nor sparrows swans) despite the fact that they both have wings. Of course, as penguins can't fly, they must be fish, right?
Left Communists support the Russian Revolution - Bordiga, Pannekoek before the 1930s, the KAPD, Pankhurst, Gorter, the Russian Left Communists in the 1918-24 period; the ICP, the ICT and the ICC now. All these groups were or descended from groups that were expelled from the Communist International for being 'left-wing communists'. Lenin never criticised De Leon in 'An Infantile Disorder', nor the SPGB.
Those who do not support the Russian Revolution - the SPGB, the De Leonists in your estimatiuon, and the Councilist groups influenced by Ruhle from the 20s onwards (later Pannekoek, Mattick) are not Left Communists. They are an amalgam of 'Anglo-Impossibilists' from the Second International, and Council Communists from the Third. Only Pannekoek figures on both lists. The Left Communists consider that when Pannekoek was pro-Party and pro-Russian Revolution, he was a Left Communist; when he was anti-Party and considered the Russian Revolution bourgeois, he was not a Left Communist.
I don't think anyone is denying that there are similarities between the Impossibilists, Council Communists and Left Communists. The 80% of things they agree on is also the 80% that I agree with - this is the hard core of Marxist internationalism that they have in common. But the 20% of their theories that seperates them from each other is pretty significant. And using historically-derived labels as you wish because of similarities, and then inventing new ones (eg 'the Bolsheviks weren't Communists') because of what you think different groups or individuals believed at different times, is both irresponsible and annoying.
What Guy Aldred has to say about De Leon is supremely irrelevant to this. As is the idea that 'Anarchy predates the Anarchist movement' - it doesn't. You might as well claim that Jesus was a Marxist because he said 'give up all you have and follow me'. Or, maybe, Marx is a Christian, it's difficult to grasp your idea of cause and effect, similarity and significance.
Left Communists: groups that come from the Communist International, and support the Russian Revolution.
Councilists: groups that came out of the Communist International, and consider parties to be bourgeois forms.
SPGB/SLP: "Impossibilist" groups that came out of the Socialist International.
That there is some (a lot actually) of common ground between these organisations does not mean that they're all the same thing.
Quote: Those who do not
To quote Marxists.org
So Councilists are Left Communists. Pannekoek was always a Left Communist. I think this definition of Left Communism tosses out alot of what you've said.
The Next part I'd like to draw your intention too is the Pre-World War one aspect which we've talked about earlier in the thread as a designation for being defined as Left Communist. Daniel De Leon died one year before World War 1 and still wrote in the last year of his life. He rejected compromise with institutions of bourgeois society and the Deleonists after him rejected the class rule of the Russian Revolution.
Yes the Council Communists
Yes the Council Communists came out of Left Communism. If you like, there are two currents of Left Communism, the Council Communists from the Dutch/German Left and the Bordigists from the Italian Left.
The reason the ICC and ICT are not 'Bordigists' is that they both to a greater or lesser extent embody both the traditions of the Italian Left and the Dutch/German Left. But they aren't 'Council Communists' either; the Council Communists developed their positions from pro-Russian Revolution and pro-proletarian party to theorising the opposite. Latterly, Council Communism/Councilism has been anti-Party and believed the Russian Revolution was bourgeois.
So the ICC and ICT are 'synthetic Left Communists' while the International Communist Parties in Italy are 'Bordigist Left Communists' (they do not follow any of the theories of the Dutch/German Left) and the Councilist groups (if any are still in existence) are 'Council-Left Communists'.
So when in these days of shorthand we talk about 'Left Communist groups' we can be referring to groups that are descended (programmatically, if not always organisationally) from groups of the Italian Left, the German/Dutch Left, or both. But not neither.
As 'Bordigism' is a perfectly-well understood term for those groups that only follow the Italian Left, and 'Councilism/Council Communism' is a term for those groups that follow the Dutch/German Left (and there aren't any left in the world anyway), 'Left Communism' is the term most often used for those groups that follow both the Dutch/German, and the Italian, currents of Left Communism.
But as I say it can also be widened those other groups that only follow one strand. One way of using it is to include any group that relies on the heritage of the Italian Left (ICC, ICT, ICP) who believe in proletarian parties, as against the Council Communists, who do not. This isn't wrong, but it's perhaps not immediately explicable what the distinction is.
I'm sorry that you seem to think I know or care what Marxist.org has to say about pre-WWI 'Left Communists'. I don't. I don't even know who or what 'Marxist.org' is; but, honestly, I believe the SPGB when they say that they're not Left Communists, and I believe the ICC when they say they are Left Communists, and I believe both of them when they say that Daniel De Leon wasn't a Left Communist; and I don't believe Marxists.org.
I'll quote again what I said earlier:
slothjabber
The SLP has been mentioned a
The SLP has been mentioned a few times so i thought i cut and paste a contribution from an old Brit SLPer who made this contribution on the SPGB discussion list
I'm not here to defend the SLP view but thought some should hear what they say from the horses mouth so to speak
From the same contributer on
From the same contributer on the SLP attitude to Russia
Quote: I'm sorry that you
Christ get off your high horse please. Don't put yourself above Marxists.org, by acting like you don't have to care about the Largest Internet archive of Marxist literature.
Google search it and stop being a prick.
I'll quote again what I said earlier:
By using your definition of Left Communism, we may as well rule out Rosa Luxemburg as well from ever being aligned with Left Communism, despite being labelled as so.
@ajjohnstone
Thank you for information regarding Workers' Councils and the SLP's industrial union program, I've always been interested in the SLP's position on Workers' Councils but I've never found any information on the SLP's site regarding them.
I'm not saying that Deleon is a Councilist though. More that he is a moderate Left Communist. Councilists, Libertarian Marxists and Ultra Leftists rule out the participation in parliament. Other currents of Left Communism see the parliament as a tool of the Working class, but refuse the structure of Bolshevism and the Reformism of the Social Democracy. They view like, the Councilists that Trade Unions are reformist that they must be superseded by more revolutionary organisations.
OK, Slothjabber should know
OK, Slothjabber should know what marxist.org is. It's a hugely valuable course of basic marxist texts. But Paulapaul, you just don't seem to be engaging with what people are saying here, you keep repeating your own very particular definition, but the one you are hearing from others here is the one you will encounter when you discuss the historical tradition of left communism. You seem to be coming from a kind of Deleonist side river.
I wouldn't consider myself
I wouldn't consider myself Deleonist. I'm inspired by his works and that of another Deleonist William Paul, but in the end, I lean more towards theories of Mattick, Pannekoek and Rocker. I'm defending Deleonism (impossiblism, etc) as a current of Left Communism because I see the similarities in theory and practice. Most of all for that fact that I disagree with kind designations set by Slothjabber and others, which see Left Communism as People, rather then a theory of action.
To put it in nutshell, Sloth and others argue that,
Sloth seems to be confining Left Communism to just the Dutch and German left, as well the Italian Left. To which is wrong. Sylvia Pankhurst is a British Born Suffragette and Left Communist. There are lots of Left Communists not aligned with Council Communism or the Dutch, German and Italian tendency's. Left Communism is like Anarchism. It's a wide ranging collection of theories. Marxists.org, acknowledges this.
Which I disagree. The theories of Left Communism were coming in before the 3rd International. I wasn't alive during the Communist International, does that mean I am not a left communist?
Rosa Luxemburg, was not alive during the Communist International. Is she not a Left Communist as well?
To be Left Communist doesn't mean you have to have Lenin right next to saying your an Infantile Leftist. Even the phrase 'Left Communist' was being uttered before Lenin wrote Infantile disorder.
To be Left Communist means to agree with it's set of ideas, it's programs, etc. It isn't geographically or historically oriented just to those in the 1920's Germany, Italy and Holland.
No doubt the biggest strides of information and theories began here. But the theories of Spontaneity, Anti-Reformism and Anti-Trade Unions were developing in Marxism before 1919 and the International.
Paulappaul, your method here
Paulappaul, your method here is baffling. It is not so much that you have a very idiosyncratic way of classifying people as left communists, but that you keep appealing to sources that do not support your claims. You appealed to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism) to support your claim that Daniel De Leon is a left communist. I showed how sloppy that was. You then appeal to Marxists.org (http://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/index.htm) to support your claim that Rosa Luxemburg is a left communist. That web page lists a number of left communist thinkers whose writings are available at the Marxists.org website. Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most famous Marxists ever, whose writings are most definitely archived at Marxists.org, is not listed.
It is simply bizarre that on post #12 you quote the Marxists.org page saying "The Left Communists were those Marxists who supported the 1917 Russian Revolution . . .", say that this is your definition, and then go on to name Daniel De Leon (who died in 1914!) as a left communist.
I am not so much criticizing your insistence on certain classifications. But you need to be consistent. For example, if you want to define left communism as entailing a rejection of vanguard parties, because you want to upset the ICC, that is all well and good, but you then can't say that Amadeo Bordiga, for example, was ever a left communist.
There are of course reasons why what scholarship exists on "left communism" counts Rosa Luxemburg as an important influence on left communism but not an actual "left communist." At the time of the founding of the German Communist Party, for example, Luxemburg did not share the views of the left wing majority on communist participation in parliament and trade unions. Still, you can attach little significance to this if you like.
The websites are not all that authoritative, although the Wikipedia article is not a bad place to start. But if you are sympathetic to the ideas of the Dutch-German left, I would recommend the following works (none of which support your classifications) for understanding some of the historical context on which useful classifications are constructed:
Bricianer, Serge, Pannekoek and the Workers’ Councils. Telos Press, St. Louis: 1978.
Gerber, John, Anton Pannekoek and the Socialism of Workers’ Self-Emancipation, 1873-1960. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA: 1989.
Gombin, Richard, The Radical Tradition: A Study in Modern Revolutionary Thought. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1979.
Philippe Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left. Porcupine Press, London: 2001.
Shipway, Mark, “Council Communism,” in Maximilien Rubel and John Crump, eds. Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1987.
Smart, D.A., ed. Pannekoek and Gorter’s Marxism. Pluto Press, London: 1978.
Paulappaul said Quote: "I
Paulappaul said
Not sure if you have read it but there is a contemporary review of Paul's work The State: Its Origin and Function
by the SPGB
It can be read here
With the SLP and the SPGB having their roots in the SDF, its not surprising that there was an overlap of ideas. We share the same analysis that raises the importance of political action in addition to industrial action to achieve our socialist objective - one of the defining factors that separates us from the anarchists and syndicalists and which led to the SLP leaving the IWW .
Although we may have reservations on the actual economic organisation ie industrial unions , William Paul was much in accord with the SPGB views.
Chapter 4 from the pamphlet Scientific Socialism. Its Revolutionary Aims and Methods by Paul shows the similarity of his views and the SPGB position is available here to read.
It is regrettable that Paul went down the road of Bolshevism when the CP was formed.
I have heard some SPGBers call themselves communists , not very many and not very often and usually echoing Paul Mattick's book by describing themselves "Anti-Bolshevik Communists", but never ever Left Communists. Nor Ultra-Left nor Far Left. One suggestion at the founding conference of the SPGB for the party's name was Social Democratic Party ( and an amendment to add "of Great Britain"- so it could have been the SDPGB for those also following the acronym thread ) , a hint that they saw themselves as a British version , or perhaps an aspiration to become the German-type mass party.
Paulappaul wrote: ... Christ
Paulappaul
Never heard of it. I used to use the John Gray website for my internet based Marxist (and other) textual needs.
Right, on to the point.
No, the fact that you were born after the CI doesn't mean you can't be a Left Communist. It does however mean that the CI wasn't, and never could have been, Paulappaulists, no matter how much you try to claim that people who were dead before currents were formed were members of them.
Rosa Luxemburg was not a Left Communist. She inspired Left Communists. I don'y know who 'labelled' her a Left Communist, but, as a Luxemburgist myself, and not a Left Communist (though, quite obviously I have a lot of sympathy with them), I can categorically state that I do not consider Rosa to have been a Left Communist because Left Communism as a series of historically-defined currents didn't emerge until after Rosa's death. Whether she would have evolved her positions to be a Left Communist had she lived is unknown; but she could not belong to a current that didn't form until after she was dead.
Same goes for Daniel De Leon. 'Left Socialist' if you like, though it's not a term that has any historical currency I don't think, but many of the people that you identify as 'Left Communism' were rather on the left wing of Social Democracy - as of course were Lenin and Trotsky. Why aren't they 'Left Communists' in your definition?
As a set of ideas, it seems to me what you're actually talking about is not 'Left Communism' ( a name given to a historically constituted group of tendencies in the Third International) but Marxism. This is why you can on the one hand have Pannnekoek in both phases (pro-Revolution, pro-Party; and 'anti-Bolshevik'), thoe Councillists, De Leon, Luxemburg, Bordiga and the SPGB. But, strangely, not the ICC, the largest Left Communist organisation in the world.
I think it bizarre that you claim my definition of Left Communism is about 'people' and yours is about 'ideas'. You're the one that is claiming that semi-random figures in the early 20th century workers' movement were all Left Communists. Of course, on one level, Left Communism must be about people, and ideas, in that people hold ideas; but my 'history of left communism' is about groups and tendencies. Sylvia Pankhurst was close to the Dutch/German Left, and also worked with Bordiga; but she left no organisation - there is no continuing 'British Communist Left'. Nor is there a continuing Russian Communist Left, or in any significant way a Greek or Spanish Communist Left. Just the Dutch/German and the Italian Communist Lefts.
These are the only Left Communist currents to have continuity to the present, in the form of the ICC, ICT and various ICPs. The 'pure' Dutch/German Left - Council Communism - is organisationally dead, following the demise of Daad en Gedacht in the 1990s. But both the ICC and CWO (British section of the ICT) were formed in a large part from Council Communist groups so there is some continuity.
Paulappaul wrote: ... I'm
Paulappaul
But you don't, you see it as 'people' - Luxemburg, De Leon - while I see it as historically constituted organisations.
I agree with you that there are similarities between the SLP, the SPGB, and the Left Communists. But that doesn't mean that it's applicable to call the SPGB or the De Leonists Left Communists.
Paulappaul
Actually, she was a Suffragette, then a Left Communist. She wasn't both at the same time. But she was closely aligned with the Dutch/German Left. However, as my definition relies on groups not individuals, Sylvia Pankhurst can be included with the Dutch/German current, and anyway, my point was that only the Dutch/German Left and the Italian Left have bequeathed organisations down to the present; Pankhurst's group did not create a lasting Left Communist organisation in Britain. The important verb in what I said is "are". Not "were". There "were" British, Russian, Greek, French, Belgian and Spanish Communist Lefts, and possibly others too. But now there are only two currents; the Italian and the Dutch/German.
Paulappaul
It is a wide-ranging collection of theories; for instance it goes from Ruhle's anti-Partyism, to the Bordigists' pro-Partyism; but this merely emphasises the historical nature of what Left Communism is. It is the developing theory of the groups (or their political descendents) that came out of (or were expelled from) the Third International. Those groups have never had a single coherent set of positions. Until the 1930s, the Italian Left described the government of the Soviet Union as 'centrist'. Many in the Dutch/German Left were already declaring that all parties were bourgeois. But it's a mistake to think that because there are different Left Communist positions, that all different positions can be included in Left Communism. Again; historically-determined set of currents, the defining feature of which was that they were the left wing of the III International.
Paulappaul
Yes the theories that became the positions of Left Communist groups (some of them at least) pre-date the III Int. You are after the III Int. That's an important point I think. You didn't die a hundred years ago. That makes a big difference. When discussing history, it's best to make sure you know the difference between 'before' and 'after'.
For the same reason, Marx was not a Left Communist, Jesus was not a Christian, Lao Tzu was not an anarchist, and you won't be a 9th Internationalist, because the 9th International won't be formed until after you're dead.
Paulappaul
No, she wasn't.
Paulappaul
But to be a Left Communist means precisely orientating yourself to one of the historically-determined Left Communist currents. I agree that some of the ideas that became 'Left Communism' pre-existed the CI. But that's not 'Left Communism'. That's the pieces from which 'Left Communism' came together.
Wilhelm Liebknecht said 'there is no state socilaism, only state capitalism'. Does this mean he was a member of the SPGB, who critiqued the Fabians for being state capitalists? No, it doesn't; it means that different people can use the same ideas without being the same thing.
If you're suggesting that I think only German, Dutch or Italian people can be Left Communists, then, I'm afraid you haven't really understood anything either I or anyone else on this thread has been saying. It's got nothing particular tyo do with location, it's got to do with history. Historically, it is the Dutch/German and Italian Lefts that had political continuity down to the present.
Left Communism is a heterogenous current derived from specific historical roots. Those roots include both the left of social democracy and the left of the Communist International. Crucially Left Communism has both of these. Luxemburg, De Leon and the SPGB do not. They only have the first of them. They are not Left Communist, no matter how much they have in common (a lot, I'd say).
Quote: You appealed to
Being that it's the left Communist page, I generally have a feeling a left communist made it, which means, there are more left communists out there regarding Deleon.
Rightly so, If you look at alot of authors you'll find they are in places they don't really belong. Mostly because of geological or historical background. Take James Connolly, he is classified as an American Socialist on the site. That isn't really an idelogy and Connolly fought and died in Ireland. But they put him there because his theories developed alot in America and he did alot for the IWW. I appealed Marxists.org for my definition, and defend my definition of Deleon as a left communist. I don't deny that I may be odds with people on this one, but that's why I'm arguing it.
If you continue the quote goes onto to include pre-WW1 left communists.
I went back on my ICC comment later.
I would recommend my website, but I haven't got it set up yet. Although I do print some Anarchist stuff, I am mostly a left communist printer
@ Slothjabber
I will get back to your stuff later, I need to get to work.
Paulappaul
Paulappaul
So you you think this source is contradictory, yet you keep appealing to it! You believe in using definitions that are internally contradictory!? I have a more reasonable explanation: Andy Blunden (whose name is on the bottom of the page) or whoever wrote that stuff wrote "Left Communist" and "Left Communism" (with capital letters) over 10 times on that page to designate this current. The one time that "left communists" is written without capital letters is not meant to designate this current as such (and hence is not capitalized), but rather is a very misleading label for tendencies that influenced the development of Left Communism (this also explains why Luxemburg, for example, is not listed below). I think this is clear from the context. A better label would have been "left socialist" in order to avoid confusion and be more historically accurate in tying these tendencies to the Second International. But I think the meaning is clear from the context, and the fact that you ignore this context shows how you are cherry-picking bits of information with little rigor.
Once again, it is bizarre that you keep appealing to sources that do not support your classifications. I recommended books I have read that deal with this topic to varying degrees and all place "left communism" in its post-Bolshevik Revolution context. You appeal to websites that don't even support what you are saying, and then recommend a website of yours that is not up. Why?
From the SLP newspaper, The
From the SLP newspaper, The People, from the early 1990's (I don't have the exact date to hand):
industrial unionism or workers' councils?
QUESTION PERIOD
What is the difference between the socialist industrial unions
advocated by the SLP, and the soviets, or workers' councils, that
arose in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917? Since the soviets were the
spontaneous product of workers' uprisings, and socialist industrial
unions are just an abstract concept, shouldn't soviets be the
preferred form for a workers' government?
Socialist industrial unions are unions that embody the true
mission of unionism organizing and uniting the entire working class
for the express purpose of taking, holding and operating the
industries, putting an end to capitalist-class rule in its entirety.
They are central to the establishment of a genuine socialist society;
they would at once provide the organized economic might needed to
ensure the defeat of the capitalist system and provide the basic
organizational structure of the socialist industrial government.
Through the socialist industrial unions, every worker in a socialist
society would have a voice and a vote in the running of their own
workplace, their particular industry and the economy as a whole.
Meeting where they work, the workers would elect, and recall as
necessary, their own managers, their own representatives to local,
regional and national councils charged with administering their
industry, and their own representatives to an all-industry congress
charged with administering the economy as a whole.
Soviets, on the other hand, were essentially political, or
parliamentary, bodies elected by factory workers, and subsequently by
soldiers, sailors and peasants as well. They were first formed by
representatives of strike committees in 1905, and to a limited extent
tried to function as an alternative, workers' government in some
cities before that rebellion was crushed.
They re-emerged in 1917 and became the central organs of the new
Russian state following the October Revolution, but were soon
subordinated to the party-dominated Supreme Economic Council, the
Council of People's Commissars and other party-run administrative
bodies in the emerging hierarchy. In time, they became purely formal,
rubber-stamp legislative councils, thoroughly controlled by the party
bureaucracy.
Geographic vs. Industrial Organs
The key word here is that the soviets were state bodies organs of
continued class rule, standing over society as a whole, not of
workers' self-government. They were never intended to be used to
administer the means of production and distribution: They were
geographically based, not industrially based bodies, organized by city
or village, district, county, or region, with an All-Russian Congress
of Soviets ostensibly representing the nation as a whole. Accordingly,
they were not, and are not, an appropriate model for the classless
society of socialism, in which the workers themselves, collectively
and democratically, are to administer the forces of production and
distribution.
(It should be noted that the soviets are sometimes confused with the
factory committees that the Russian workers formed in 1917 which were
industrially based organizations aiming to establish democratic
workers' control over the forces of production. However, those bodies,
too, were subordinated to the party-state machinery in short order,
before they could form their own central authority for administering
the economy as a whole.)
As to the second question, while it is true that the soviets were
created by workers during a revolutionary period, that does not confer
superior status on them. Neither does the fact that they were more
"spontaneous" in their origin. Actually, there is no such thing as a
"spontaneous" organization; no organization can be formed without some
degree of forethought.
'Spontaneity' Is No Virtue
Nonetheless, some "revolutionary" theorists make a fetish of
"spontaneity," contending, in effect, that only organizations built in
the heat of crisis, with little forethought, are truly
"revolutionary," and that there is no point to trying to build
revolutionary organizations with greater forethought and deliberateness.
That notion is refuted by common sense and historical experience. The
Paris Commune, the factory committees and similar bodies of workers'
power formed in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1918, Spain in the 1930's,
Portugal in 1974, etc. however inspiring and instructive their history
may be all suffered from the lack of a coherent and unifying program
for administering the economy going into the revolutionary period, and
all were defeated, in part, because of it.
Moreover, the soviets were the product of a workers' uprising in an
underdeveloped country that was far from being ripe for socialism;
their inadequacies reflect those circumstances. And the final fate of
the Russian soviets and the "Soviet" government hardly recommends them
as a model organization for Socialists to advocate today.
Finally, while it it true that there are no socialist industrial
unions in existence today, the SIU concept is not a mere abstraction.
It is itself a product of the class struggle in the United States, the
most developed capitalist nation in the world, a nation that is ripe
for socialism, at least in terms of having the necessary material
foundation. The SIU program was formulated and first articulated by
Daniel De Leon, but he didn't just dream it up: It evolved as a
consequence of the lessons learned by the SLP in the course of its
involvement in the class struggle and its efforts to build socialism
under U.S. conditions.
More specifically, it evolved as De Leon and the SLP identified the
pitfalls of the "purely political" or reformist "socialism" of the
Socialist Party, on the one hand, and the pitfalls of "pure and
simple," or pro-capitalist, trade unionism on the other. From these
experiences, De Leon and the SLP drew the logical conclusion that a
classconscious economic organization of labor must play an essential,
leading role in the establishment of socialism, with the party playing
an equally essential, but supporting and transitory role. The SIU
concept took concrete form with the organization of the original
Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, though that effort came to
naught when anarchist forces disrupted and split the organization in 1908.
But that initial disaster does not disprove the correctness of the
concept. On the contrary, historical experience since then including
the fate of the Bolshevik Revolution and other attempts to reconstruct
society under the political rule of a party has only further affirmed
that the socialist industrial union program is the real pathway to
genuine socialism.
Quote: but many of the people
Where as Left Communists were calling for Spontaneity and against State Socialism, Lenin and Trotsky were not. Which goes back to the whole theory of things. I classify the Communist left as a collection of theories which resists the State as a means of building Socialism, resists Trade Unions and Reformism.
Left Communists believe themselves to be true tradition of Marxism, If I generally regard the too as the same, it is because I am a Left Communist. I have talked about how the ICC is Left Communist, to quote
Pannekoek was always pro-party, just anti-parliament and anti-Vanguard.
Because she is generally regarded as one.
Now you're putting words in my mouth, to quote
So no.
So she is not a left communist in your definition?
I said it to ensure her British tradition.
By being in a completely different country, doing completely different things, coming to different conclusions? By closely aligned do you mean she inspiring the Dutch/German Left Communist tradition
Much like how the Communist left is an extension of the same criticisms of left communists in the Second International. It's descendants which were really only about a year or two apart.
I've already said, It doesn't bother that me other Left Communists or sites don't agree with. Hence why I am arguing it. I posted my site, to show I'm not a I'm not a socialist, anarchist, syndicalist, etc. but a Left Communist. I didn't do it to back up my point, more to show you that I'm not someone who is
more of someone who acknowledges his allegiance to such ideas. Guess I didn't make it clear enough, though.
Paulappaul
Paulappaul
Not 'generally' by Left Communists (eg the ICC). Not by Luxemburgists (eg me). Not by non-Left Communists that you think are Left Communists even though they don't (eg the SPGB). So, who, except you, are these 'generally' people who regard Luxemburg as a Left Communist?
Paulappaul
Reading that again, it says exactly what I thought it said, and you claim it doesn't. Odd.
Paulappaul
I am at a total loss to understand why you should think that. The rest of what I said was that there were Left Communists and Left Communist groups in Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, Russia, and Greece, and maybe other countries too. But only the Dutch/German and Italian Lefts had organisations that continued until the present. The fact that there isn't a British Communist Left now doesn't mean that Sylvia Pankhurst wasn't one then. Again, you have a very strange idea of cause and effect in history.
Paulappaul
By working closely with the Dutch/German Left, and maybe less closely with the Italian Left, publishing their works, supporting them in the work of the Amsterdam Bureau, etc.
Paulappaul
Yes, very much (except they were 'left socialists' in the Second International).
The Left Wing of Social Democracy (Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Pannekoek, Gorter, Bordiga and their organisations) was the foundation of the CI. Some of them (Pannekoek, Gorter, Bordiga) became the Left of the Communist International too. Others did not; Luxemburg because she was dead; Lenin and Trotsky because they were 'state socialists' apparently. Other prominent Left Communists did not have any significant role in the Left of Social Democracy. Mattick for instance; Munis; Ruhle; Pankhurst; Miasnikov.
Others, that you claim were Left Communist, had no connection even with the end of the Second International. I don't know when De Leon set up the SLP, but the British SLP came out of the BSP and the IInd Int in 1903, I believe, shortly before the SPGB did the same. They weren't even in the IInd Int by 1914 when you claim that in 'only year or two' the CI would be spawning its own left wing.
So your argument that the left wing of the Socialist International = the left wing of the Communist International rests on Pannekoek, Gorter and Bordiga - in other words, the Dutch/German, and the Italian, Lefts, which is what I've been arguing all along; and everyone else (De Leon, left the Socialist International about 1900? then died before WWI; the SPGB, left the Socialist International 1904; Lenin and Trotsky, became 'state socialists'; Luxemburg, dead before the constitution of a Communist Left) has no direct organisational connection with the foundation of Left Communist currents, though their theories may have had an influence. Of all of them, Luxemburg is probably the closest to being the 'founder' of a Left Communist group, in that the KAPD was the majority of the KPD that Luxemburg founded. But she was still dead before the KAPD formed.
This part of your post is very significant:
"I classify the Communist left as a collection of theories which resists the State as a means of building Socialism, resists Trade Unions and Reformism."
What you have to realise is that no-one else does. Whatever our backgrounds, whether Left Communist, Marxian Socialist or Luxemburgist, we all seem to be agreed that 'Left Communism' is the historically-defined group of theories of particular organisations, specifically, those derived from the work of the Dutch/German and Italian lefts that were expelled from the Communist International between 1920-30. It is a particular specific thing, not a synonym for 'anti-statist communism' or 'left anti-unionism' or anything else.
Other currents may have similar ideas. That doesn't give you the power to take the name of a thing and apply it to another thing that may or may not be closely related to it.
Quote: Other prominent Left
I think you are wrong on Rühle here. He was a member of the SPD, and along with Liebknecht, one of the first Reichstag members to vote against war credits in 1915:
Mattick
Devrim
Thanks for the information
Thanks for the information Devrim.
I meant that those I listed didn't have an international reputation in the Second International before WWI, unlike Luxemburg, Lenin, Pannekoek etc. I realise it might be a slightly ambiguous usage saying that they didn't have significant roles in the left of social democracy when in theory the Communists were still in the Second International until the founding of the Third; but for all practical purposes I think, the Second International ceased to exist during the war.
It may be that I've underestimated the international importance of some of the people listed. On the other hand, being 'nationally important' such as Ruhle's opposition to the war, doesn't counteract the general thrust of the argument, that many future Left Communists did not have significant roles or profiles in the left of the Second International as a whole, though they may have done at a national level.
Quote: I don't know when De
the US SLP was founded in 1876 and deleon joined in 1890, so both well before there could be left communists.
I don't agree Sloth, but if I
I don't agree Sloth, but if I responded it would draw us into another circle which I don't want to do, and I have a feeling your getting tired of this too. Regardless you and Dave C have taught me alot and have made me reconsider alot of Left Communist history ;)
I was looking at something
I was looking at something else and this topic appeared in the side bar. So I started to browse it.
Anyway, is this really true about Luxemborg?:
Quote: Anyway, is this really
Not really. I think this whole quote is misleading. First, Luxemburg was never a Left Communist - simply because the term itself invented after her death. But even when she was alive, future LCs like Pannekoek were already anti-parliamentarian and in opposition to her - just as the slight majority of the German CP-Spartakist. Moreover, neither Luxemburg nor LCs were against a Revolutionary Party. They just have different conceptions of it. Needless to say LCs and Luxemburg did not advocated participation in government but the soviet power. The union question is more complex but LCs also rejected unions tactically.
Along with Luxemburg, De Leon
Along with Luxemburg, De Leon wasn't a Left Comm either. Both of them died before Left Communism emerged from the 3rd Int.
That whole conception it seems to me comes from wikipedia not the real history of the emergence of the Dutch/German Left currents. There's a tendency I think to conflate the left of the 2nd Int (even though I don't think De Leon and the the SLP were even in the 2nd Int) with the left of the 3rd Int (because for example Pannekoek was part of both) and call anyone on the left of the 2nd Int a 'Left Communist'.
the SLP was present at least
the SLP was present at least up to the 1907 congress of the International in Stuttgart - http://archive.org/details/reporttosocialis00socirich - where they defended (together with a majority of continental delegates) an internationalist position on immigration against especially other American and Australian delegates who were demanding a "colour bar" ... the 2nd was in a way a broad church e.g. with the Armenian Dashnaks, Fabians, LibLabs, Russian SRs, etc. participating ... Luxemburg belonged at the founding conference of the KPD together with Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi and Carl Minster (a strange guy, despite this and advocating together with Jogiches and Hirsch to stay in the USPD, he went over to the KAPD in 1920, then to the USPD, 1931 to SAPD and was supporting French-backed separatists in Western Germany) to the minority which was in favour of electoral participation ... there was a strong tendency towards Luxemburgism (defense of international party democracy and of the autonomy of unions and other proletarian orgs, appreciation of proletarian spontaneity) among those, who were expelled as "Right-wingers" from the KPD 1921 (Levi, Däumig and the KAG) and 1928 (Brandler, Thalheimer, Frölich (he and his partner Rosi Wolfstein (who was the legal "owner" of Luxemburg's "Nachlass") edited the first edition of writings of Luxemburg during the 1920ies) and the KPO)
redtwister wrote: In the
redtwister
both prominent and rank & file members of the Bremen Left/IKD ended up in quite different camps after 1919, many did not end up in the KAPD, but on different wings in and around the KPD e.g. Radek, Frölich, Becker, Deisen, Lindau (helped Heinrich Laufenberg to write his History of the Workers Movement in Hamburg in 1911, later KPD polititian and maverick historian in East Germany), Eildermann (later a leading ideologist of the SED), Borchardt or even in the SPD (Henke) or in the FAUD (Hermann Böse), some historians say, that the Bremen Left/IKD was in fact the "more Leninist" than the Spartacus League during the KPD's founding process
p.s.: in my opinion, it is not really possible to create non-contradictory "lines of (apostolic) succession" and "calendars of saints" for whatever revolutionary current because the concrete history is to contradictory and to complicated
Rosa supported a party
Rosa supported a party gaining state power, nationalizing the economy, but then giving that nationalized economy into workers' self-maganement, insted of the state/party appointing managers.
I'm pretty sure that De Leonism is for a party fighting in the elections, but that is less important then syndicalist struggle.
And coucil communists think party should only do propaganda, no participation in election, no council communist unions.
I am correct here?
Green: Quote: Rosa supported
Green:
For my own info, where did she write this or lay it out?
Ent:
No doubt. But I am very conflicted about placing Lux. in the libertarian camp. She always read and seemed like a partyist. That the foci was the party. That mass strikes were aimed at and in support of the revolutionary party. I can be wrong and am willing to engage and learn, but this is my impression.
Quote: For my own info, where
Essay is called "The socialization of society", also her "What does the Spartacus League want?".
greenjuice wrote: Quote: For
greenjuice
Got it: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/20.htm
Off to work. Read it later.
Thanks for the mention.
syndicalist wrote: No doubt.
syndicalist
see also http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm
and occasionally e.g. in dealing with a minority inside the SDKPiL in 1911 (the Warsaw Committee) and in a conflict around 1912 with Radek, she and Jogiches also used dirty tricks and slander (which was at this point vehemently criticised by Lenin) ... but probably more libertarian than the "most beloved comrade" Garcia Oliver
Ent: Quote: but probably more
Ent:
What does this have to do with anything? She's a marxist (I'm not) and he's an anarchist?
I'd prefer to try and gain an understanding of Lux.and why she seems to be liked in some libertarian circles.
On political-state power...
On political-state power... there seems to be little difference between the state socialist perspective of others who see the party-formation as the dominant vehicle .....
BUT.....
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm
Not in the least. She did
Not in the least. She did write against the Party-centric then developing Leninism, but was an active factor in the founding of the KPD. The bit about left communists being for industrial unions is also false. So is the bit about 'participating in government'. So, overall, no.
Entdinglichung wrote: both
Entdinglichung
Interesting post and I think your comment is right. Apparently what held these people -radicals- together in between 1905 to 1918ish has gradually dissolved after 1919...
Endinglichung;
Can I ask you which historians you are referring especially about IKD?
syndicalist wrote: No doubt.
syndicalist
Wait. What? The original quote you posted re Luxemburg talked about Left Communists? There's nothing remotely libertarian about most Left Coms - Bordiga made Stalin look like a liberal, for e.g.
ocelot wrote: syndicalist
ocelot
Sorry, I crossed the two, my bad..there are some libertarians who think she is.. while were at it.. thanks for confirming that left communism is not libertarian. :groucho:
For the umpteenth time,
For the umpteenth time, council communism was also part of the "communist left", "left communism", "ultra-left", "infantile disorder".
And, of course, it depends
And, of course, it depends what you mean by 'libertarian'.
If the defining question is 'do you believe that the organisation of revolutionaries should call itself a party?' then Left Comms are 'partyists', or even 'vanguardists'.
If the defining question (as many people on this site seem to think) is 'do you believe 'the party' should take power?' then the answer is no, Left Comms don't and are therefore 'libertarian' (except Bordigists do, but there are very few Bordigists in the world at large).
If the question is 'do you advocate a post-revolutionary state?' then the answer is complicated, because we don't 'advocate' one, we think it's unavoidable in the short term, but there are all sorts of qualifications about what 'state' actually means in this case, and anarchists and Marxists tend to have different definitions of a 'state' anyway. I'm quite happy with Rocker on this point - 'Everything for the Councils! Nothing above them!'
The notion of putting Luxemburg and the then the Council Communists into some sort of 'Libertarian Marxism' category I think stems from Guerin who (if I'm remembering correctly) comes up with a list of Marxists who can be used to criticise the Bolsheviks. It's not something that Luxemburg would have recognised, I dont think, and it's not a distinction most Left Comms would recognise either, though Council Communists might.
mikail firtinaci
mikail firtinaci
especially Ossip K. Flechtheim in his study on the Weimar KPD (also available in French) which was originally published in 1948, Hermann Weber, probably the leading expert on the KPD at least partly agrees with it, a few historians in Eastern Germany around 1960 like Karl Drechsler also put forward the argument that the IKD was closer to Lenin than the Spartakusbund, which was however not the official party line of the SED whose leader Ulbricht (joined the KPD only in 1920, was before in the USPD) said, that the Spartakusbund was always closer to Lenin ... bearing in mind the history of differences between Luxemburg/Jogiches and Lenin and Radek's privileged relationship with Bremen and also the different positions on the "centrist" USPD, Flechtheim's argument makes sense
Entdinglichung wrote: p.s.:
Entdinglichung
/thread
slothjabber wrote: If the
slothjabber
imo the opposite is the case. There are not many people "in the world at large" who identify as left communists, full stop. Of those that do identify first and foremost as left communists (or "in the tradition of the communist left") rather than council communist, the majority, at least in my experience, are bordigists (in the sense of referencing Bordiga's version of 'party and class', rather than Pannekoek's, the "Rome Theses" etc).
edit: not to mention that gateway theorists important in the transition from paleo- to neo-ultraleftism, like Cammatte and Dauvé, are ex-bordigists, so when "communization" folks look back to the traditions of "the communist left" it's more often Bordiga than Pannekoek they're looking to
I think historically the
I think historically the Bordigist ICP was bigger than Battaglia, or the Bilan group and its offspring - so people like Camatte came out of Bordigism, in a similar way perhaps to the Trotskyist groups who broke towards the 'ultra-left' around the time of WWII - 'meso-ultra-left' I think?
But surely since the 1980s the Bordigists proper have been pretty much confined to Italy, haven't they? Sure, people can read Bordiga, but does that really make them 'Bordigist'? The biggest organisations of the Communist Left are the ICC and the ICT, aren't they? Neither of these organisations is 'Bordigist'.
slothjabber wrote: I think
slothjabber
slothjabber, as far as I can tell ocelot is using "Bordigist" in the broad sense of all the groups that originate and stay within the Italian communist left. Not the more narrow sense of Bordigism as it emerged and took shape in post-WW2 context of the split in PCInt. I don't think the broad sense of the term is very useful in describing much, apart from saying all these groups and individuals come from or are influenced by the Italian left.
And I think Bordigists do and have existed outside Italy (France, Germany, UK, Lebanon, and possibly other places) mainly as isolated individuals, collection of individuals and small/tiny groups. Although it is mainly an Italy-centered thing, alright.
slothjabber wrote: And, of
slothjabber
Cutting my teeth on the heels of the peak of the "new left", I can recall going back to my early years and onwards, various folks within the movement promoting Luxemborg or having her poster on their walls or exhorting the reading of the "Mass Strike" .... I guess some saw her as a revolutionary woman, who challenged some forms of "lenninism". Maybe you're right to pin some of this on Gurein, I kinda get a sense that the Situationists had a bunch to do with this as well. Well, perhaps those f a certain age and generation.
Angelus Novus
Angelus Novus
;-)
Quote: And, of course, it
I'd say that the broad movement of "socialism" can be divided in two camps- libertarian socialists and state capitalists, the difference being that the first ones are for a non-hierarchical economy (worker self-management) and the second ones are for technocracy- a class of "experts" ruling over the workers. With that in mind, I would clasify as "left communism" all marxists who are for a libertarian socialist economy.
Android wrote: And I think
Android
in Germany Bordigism was, especially compared with Council Communism, Situationism or Korschism, always a negligible force, despite some academic/political research by the late Christian Riechers (who met Bordiga in 69 while doing research on Gramsci) during the 1970ies, some of his essays have been republished a few years ago, Riechers deeply admired Bordiga's intransigeance but was as far as I know never part of any PCInt & Co., furthermore, a few tiny circles, some very bad translations, some web pages existed for the last 40-45 years ... and occasionally Bordiga's Auschwitz-text popping up, sometimes not published by Bordigists ... and unlike the KAPD tradition, Pannekoek, Situationism, Korsch, etc., Bordiga and also other Italian Left (ICC and since around 2004 the ICT have a presence in Germany) stuff never played a substantial role in discussions of the SDS during the 60ies or for the Operaist scene or in other parts of the "left left"
greenjuice
greenjuice
from above or from below?!
Can be both, Rosa was for
Can be both, Rosa was for "from above", although she, along iwith Esers, was the only revolutionary LibSoc that was that, but there were also reformists who wanted a LibSoc economy like Ricardian socialists, Guild socialists, Mill, and being reformists, they naturally wanted it established from above.
Entdinglichung, I agree with
Entdinglichung, I agree with your point about it being completely marginal in Germany and many other places too for that matter. I was not trying to make an assertion in the opposite direction.
I was responding to slothjabber.
I have never met German Bordigists but people have told me they exist. Not in the form of a formal group, but an informal network of people, in Hanover for instance.
Entdinglichung thanks for
Entdinglichung
thanks for the very interesting info. I am actually working on the early comintern/pre-war 2. International left history. And I am pretty convinced that Bremen Left/IKD is actually the closest ally of the Bolsheviks after 1914. Perhaps there is more to that; Bremen/Dutch left and Bolsheviks have more theoretical connections than it is conventionally assumed because obvious reasons; cold war, councilist-liberal-stalinist re-writing of history etc.
For a very interesting
For a very interesting discussion on Pannekoek's influence on "Leninism" or Bolsheviks:
"Anton Pannekoek and the Origins of Leninism" H. Schurer
"Anton Pannekoek and the
"Anton Pannekoek and the Origins of Leninism" H. Schurer
is there a free-be of this in english? Only found Jstor and in non-english langs.
I have the article in
I have the article in English. I can send it to you if you like. Would you pm me you e-mail address?
Android
Android
Christian Riechers was based in Hannover where he lead a research project at university from 1973 up to his too early death in 1993 on the workers movement in Hannover ... there were a few people in Berlin around 1975 who produced the journal "Faden der Zeit" (Sul filo del tempo) ... don't know if the webpage http://www.alter-maulwurf.de/ is run by more than two people ... was (is?) "Communisme ou Civilisation" "Bordigist"?, they produced with a few more groups an irregular journal in the early 1990ies in German
mikail firtinaci
mikail firtinaci
the Gruppe Internationale/Spartakusbund was pretty much shaped by the circle around Rosa Luxemburg in the SPD/SDKPiL which had its own theoretical and programmatical framework long before 1914 (among its core "members" were in 1914 Leo Jogiches, Julian Marchlewski, Clara Zetkin, Paul Levi, Franz Mehring, Hermann Duncker, Hugo Eberlein, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pieck (1949-60 president of Eastern Germany), Martha Arendsee, Fritz Ausländer, Heinrich Brandler, Käte Duncker, Otto Gabel, Otto Geithner, August Thalheimer, Bertha Thalheimer, Johannes R. Becher, Edwin Hoernle, Paul Lange, Jacob Walcher, Friedrich Westmeyer and a few more), Liebknecht (who was more a kind of idealistic maverick leftist in the SPD) only joined these circles in Autumn 1914, none of people mentioned above joined the KAPD, most of them who were still alive in the 1920ies ended either on the "right" or the conciliator wing of the KPD or as part of the mainstream of the party, only Geithner joined the left oppositionist Korsch group during the 1920ies, many of those who formed ultra-left opposition groups in the KPD 1924/25 (Schwarz, Katz, Korsch, Schlagewerth, etc.) came only 1920 with the USPD-Left to the KPD and are a "product" of the radicalisation of the USPD after 1918, ... well-known KAPD members like Karl Schröder, August Merges, Arthur Goldstein or Adam Scharrer who came from the Spartakusbund did not play a prominent role in it ... another important impact in the KAPD/AAUE/etc. came in my opinion from radicalized people from the cultural opposition of the pre-1914 period and weren't part of the workers movement: e.g. Reichenbach (he was never in the KPD and came like James Broh directly from the USPD)) and Schwab (and also Korsch and Benjamin) from the Free Students and the German youth movement, others like Pfemfert, Jung, Kanehl and Vogeler and some fellow travelling writers like Hermann-Neisse and Sternheim from the expressionist scene
p.s. Hermann Weber btw. makes as far as I can remember in his study about the stalinization/bolshevization of the KPD 1923-29 (Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik) the remark, that the Liebknecht and those which he calls "utopian" and "syndicalist" in the original KPD/S had much in common, he btw. blames the Stalinization of the KPD mainly on the newly radicalized/politicized USPD members who merged with the KPD in 1920 and where in his opinion less rooted in a tradition of internal democracy and open debate (partly untrue in my opinion, many new ultra-leftists who raised these questions came also from the USPD)
mikail firtinaci
mikail firtinaci
p.p.s.: another interesting question would be to what extent former KAPD members rejoined the KPD, especially during their pseudo-leftist turns 1924/25 and 1928-33, probably attracted by features in the KPD's official line like "red unions", denunciation of social democrats as "social fascists", rejection of united front politics, campaigns against "Luxemburgism" or the KPD's revolutionist phraseology in general, there were at least a number of more prominent KAPD members who joined/rejoined the KPD: James Broh (1930), Max Hoelz (~ 1927), Karl Jahnke (1921/1930), Karl Plättner (1928), the artist Heinrich Vogeler (1925, died 1942 in Kazachstan, relatively likely that he starved to death) and probably Adam Scharrer (emigrated to the Soviet Union around 1934)
p.p.p.s.: stamps commemorating former KAPD members
soyonstout wrote: No. I'm
soyonstout
Paul Kirchhof, outside the communist left far better known as the anthropologist who created the concept of the cultural area of Mesoamerica
great comments
great comments Entdinglichung! those hints are really appreciated.
btw., among academic
btw., among academic historians, it is mainly Hans Manfred Bock but also Olaf Ihlau who stress the continuity between Bremer Linke and KAPD focussing much on the influence of Pannekoek ... Bock draws in his Geschichte des „linken Radikalismus“ in Deutschland. Ein Versuch a line of continuity from the Bewegung der Jungen over the KAPD to the anti-authoritarians of the SDS
p.s.: there is a new
p.s.: there is a new biographical study by an East German historian available about Johann Knief (1880-1919) who was probably the most central figure of the Left in Bremen, haven't read it but seems to be a useful book also pointing on the unique situation in Bremen with a large influence of radicalized school teachers in the local SPD (in the rest of Germany, they were banned from joining) and their approach on the party's educational work
a review in the Brandlerite "Arbeiterpolitik" here: http://www.arbeiterpolitik.de/Zeitungen/PDF/2011/arpo-4-2011.pdf (p. 22-24)
Gerhard Engel: Johann Knief – ein unvollendetes Leben,
Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2011, 457 S.
Geschichte des Kommunismus und Linkssozialismus
Band XV, ISBN 978-3-320-02249-5, EUR 29.80
slothjabber wrote: (even
slothjabber
the SLP still was a member in 1914 and intended to attend the planned congress in Vienna which never took place: http://library.fes.de/zweiint/w59b.pdf
My understanding was they had
My understanding was they had observer status but not full membership. Seems I was mistaken about that - thanks for putting me straight.
Checking up, it seems that the SLP decided to withdraw from the 2nd Int in 1919 preparatory to joining the 3rd Int.
slothjabber wrote: My
slothjabber
The SLP and the 3rd International see: "The SLP & the USSR" http://slp.org/pdf/others/slp_ussr.pdf
SLP NatSec Arnold Peterson to Lenin:
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/slp/1921/0115-petersen-tolenin.pdf
slothjabber wrote: I think
slothjabber
I don't know about this. 1. Some of the groups in italy are actually huge. 2. I don't think membership is the correct way of measuring this. So I think the ICC has almost no influence outside its members. (Most people think they are crazy.) However, if we count a group like Wildcat in the communist left, I think the circulation of their magazine is way higher than anything by the ICC or ICT.
georgestapleton
georgestapleton
you mean Wildcat (Germany) ... definitely, their magazine is available in most left-wing bookshops and relatively widely read among the Autonomen, in the anarchist scene, among the more radical layers of the trade union left, among left socialist and trotskyist people, etc. ... but their background is far more in the operaist current ... don't know about the German ICT's (GIS) exact influence but some of their texts are e.g. replicated on popular webpages like Syndikalismus or trend and they do as far as I know have the reputation to be nice people while the IKS/ICC is relatively unknown, many of the people who read their paper do also read Spartakist, Bahamas, Rote Fahne, Watchtower, etc.
Entdinglichung wrote: [...],
Entdinglichung
Didn't know the Jehovas' Witnesses were so big on the German left :eek:
some read their stuff as
some read their stuff as entertainment which you can get at tube station, markets, etc. for free ... a different story is however that many on the left in Germany and Austria have a lot of respect for Jehovahs' Witnesses due to the persecution they suffered 1933-45 and the solidarity many Witnesses showed in the Concentration Camps towards fellow prisoners
Entdinglichung wrote: some
Entdinglichung
Interesting factoid.
From "The Socialist Labor
From "The Socialist Labor Party and the Internationals"
" "The Russian Situation"
Nowhere is the Socialist Labor Party's prescience
more conclusively demonstrated than in the accompanying
article on "The Russian Situation," by Arnold
Petersen, the Party's National Secretary since I9I4.
The article was written a few weeks after the
October Revolution and was published in the WEEKLY
PEOPLE, Nov. 24, I917. As the author later explained
(WEEKLY PEOPI.E, Jan. I9, I924), it was intended
only as "a brief and sketchy outline of the Russian Bolshevik
Revolution." But its immediate effect was to
produce widespread discussion. Well-grounded Marxists,
conceding the facts, agreed that the reasoning and
conclusions were sound. They welcomed the article 'as
a timely and scientific appraisal of a great historic
event.'
Sentimentalists, however, who were carried away
by the flood of emotionalism proceeding from Russia,
and the former SP-ites and ex-Wobblies who were to
become America's burlesque bolsheviki, assailed the
National Secretary and falsely accused him of "condemning"
the Russian Revolution and the Russian revolutionists.
But time and events have given ample vindication.
"Brief and sketchy" though the article is, it applies the
basic touchstones and reaches fundamental conclusions
that are unassailable.
-Eric Hass
Editor, WEEKLY PEOPLE
*
(WEEKLY PEOPLE, November 24, 1917)
Events in Russia furnish one of the most profound
lessons in Socialist teaching and tactics. Up-to-date Socialism
declares:
I. Socialism is not possible until-
(a) Capitalism has developed to a point where all
the essential forces of production have been developed,
centralized and coordinated, and--
(b) The exploited proletariat has divested itself
of the notion that the interests of the two main classes
in society are identical, and that this system of production
is God-ordained and the only possible one.
2. Socialism is not possible, even in a highly developed
capitalist country, until the working class organizes
as a class into industrial unions (in contradistinction
to the existing craft unions), for the express
purpose of overthrowing the existing order, supplanting
the political State by the industrial representative councils
of the workers. ("The government of persons is
replaced by the administration of things .."-Engels.)
Political organization of the workers is indispensable
in this process.
RUSSIA IN 1917
Applying this test to Russia, several facts leap into
prominence. In the first place, Russia as a whole is
woefully behind in capitalist development. By far the
majority of the population is composed of peasants, a
large number of whom are illiterate, -and wholly ignorant
as regards the object of the labor movement
and the nature of the social revolution. Consequently,
not only is the material groundwork for Socialism
lacking, but the human element-a class-conscious proletariat-
is largely absent.
Last, but not least, the industrial proletariat is not
-so far as we are able to learn-organized in industrial
unions, the condition sine qua non of the Socialist
Republic.
THE BOLSHEVIK PARADOX
The revolutionary element now in control in Russia
(the Bolsheviki) - though a comparatively small
minority - is aggressive and up to a certain point
clear, i.e., so far as the relation between the capitalist
class and the proletariat is concerned. But the very
clearness of their vision is under the circumstances the
very cause of their weakness. This sounds paradoxical,
but bearing in mind the condition outlined in the foregoing,
it must be clear that at the present time their
social program has not a ghost of a chance of success.
Yet, they cannot honestly subscribe to the program of
the Kerensky element - seeing that this element, whatever
its protestations, and possibly good intentions -
is bent on a war "to the finish," at the same time allying
itself with the interests of the bourgeoisie. So long as
the Bolshevik [element] was in oppositon it was doing
excellent agitational work. Now that it is in power it
faces failure. The day of its victory was the day of its
defeat.
Russia presents one of the saddest spectacles in
human history. Here is a high-spirited, noble race
caught betwixt a stunted growth at home and an overdeveloped
capitalism abroad. If it continues fighting,
the young democracy may be strangled, as war and
democracy in the present circumstances are incompatible.
If it ceases fighting against Germany, the Allies
may turn against it, thus compelling it to fight for and
together with the detestable German autocracy; that is,
going from bad to worse.
The hope of Russia lies in an early general peace.
But even then the fruits of the Russian Revolution can
only be gathered if social revolution takes place in the
leading capitalist countries of the world, ending this
miserable system of production, and establishing the
Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth. For, while it is
true that Russia cannot take the lead in social revolution
and establish Socialism as an example for the world
to follow, it can and will follow suit when social revolution
has succeeded in the leading capitalist countries ..
WISHFUL REASONING
There are those who believe that Socialism can be
established in Russia now, despite its backward economic
development, and the argument advanced is that
every country need not necessarily go through all the
phases of capitalist development. A parallel is sought
in biology by the exponents of this idea. They say that
it is no more necessary for a country to go through this
development than it is for a child to pass through all
the stages of the development of the human race.
It is extremely dangerous to reason by analogy,
especially when analogies are sought between the biological
and the social struggles. Those anti-Socialists
who attempted to justify the jungle conditions of society
by the "survival of the fittest" struggle in nature
came seriously to grief ..
Though it is true that not every country need necessarily
go through all the phases of capitalist development;
that admission does not mean that Russia can
independently leap the chasm of its present mixture of
primitive communism and retarded industrialism into
the Socialist Republic. But with the rest of the world
organized into industrial commonwealths, commonwealths
where the ownership of the means of production,
etc., is actually vested in the producers, it is altogether
reasonable to suppose that countries such as
Russia may finish their economic development under a
general world regime of Socialism, and with the aid
of the workers in the various countries. To suppose
that Russia can independently and separately lead the
world in Socialism is to suppose that the tail can wag
the dog.
SOCIALISM Is HOPE OF HUMANITY
Pathetic as is the spectacle of Russia at present,
and hopeless as the cause of the Bolsheviki may be at
present, there is no cause for despair either over Russia
or over Socialism. Socialism must be, will be the next
step in social organization, unless the world is to recede
into barbarism and absolute despotism. And thinking
people refuse to believe that possible.
Capitalism holds nothing in store for the masses
except renewed and intensified misery and exploitation,
and a recurrence of the awful worldwide slaughter.
The civilized mind recoils at this ghastly spectacle.
Unless the past is a monstrous joke, the race will
set about to build that new society, which the soul of
Russia is so passionately yearning for. And upon the
working class devolves the tremendous task. Industrial
organization of the working class is the absolutely in-
dispensable groundwork for this society. The Socialist
Labor Party points the way.
The dawn of tomorrow, red with the blood spilt
in this war, to use an expression of Brandes', will bring
the fulfillment of the dream of New Russia. Let us
meanwhile labor hard and wait. "
I tried "quoting"
I tried "quoting" Syndicalist's post # 104 above, but for some reason it (obviously) didn't take. Apologies.
the Weekly People article
the Weekly People article from shows some similarities to stageist concepts of Kautsky, the Mensheviks, etc. ... first capitalism has to be fully developed, only than socialism is possible (in the DeLeonite case of cause with out the class-collaborationist tendency) ... I prefer those approaches which do not stick to this mechanistic viewpoint about modes of productions
another article in German
another article in German about the relationship between Luxemburg and the Bremen left from the "Brandlerite" journal "Arbeiterstimme": http://www.arbeiterstimme.org/arsti_177.pdf (pp 19-29), pointing out that their opinions on inner-party and council democracy where pretty similar albeit the closer relations of the later with Radek, Bucharin and also Lenin. The article says, that Luxemburg critizised the soft spot the daily of the SPD in Bremen had for syndicalist and temporarily broke with them in 1912 because of their defense of Radek (whom Luxemburg despised both politically but especially personally), the article also says that after the disintegration of the Bremen left into different orgs after 1919, all of its successors still held Luxemburg in high regard
Entdinglichung wrote: mikail
Entdinglichung
reading Stefan Heinz's interesting study about the Einheitsverband der Metallarbeiter Berlins (EVMB) at the moment, the EVMB was one of the red unions of the KPD which emerged 1930 (and became independent in 1933 before being finally smashed by the Nazis in 1935), according to Heinz, around 10% of the inner core of the EVMB were people who only left the KAPD or the AAUD at that time (= people who stayed in these orgs after they imploded after 1921 from mass organizations into small and marginal groups) which in a way confirms further that the highly stalinized KPD and its fronts were attractive to some genuine ultra-leftists after the KPD adopted an ultra-revolutionist phraseology
just to add that the
just to add that the "ultra-left turn" of the KPD attracted also some anarchists like Herbert Wehner (who became a leading SPD politician after 1945) or Paul Albrecht (whose methods of carrying out the agrarian reform in his area in East Germany where considered too radical)
James Broh's defection from
James Broh's defection from the AAUE to the KPD in 1930 had most likely professional reasons, he worked as a defense lawyer for the KPD's Red Aid and couldn't afford to loose this part of his income when the Red Aid became tighter controlled by the KPD
Paulappaul wrote: Anarchists
Paulappaul
What nonsense is this? Who are these "ancient philosophers" anarchist "leach off" who did not call themselves anarchists? If anarchist do quote dead people, they usually go for Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Malatesta, etc. who all certainly knew what anarchism was -- and the word.
What is the difference between "left-communism" and council communism?
Well, "left-communists" generally seem fine with party dictatorship -- Bordiga springs to mind, but the left-communists of the Bolshevik Party certainly did so as did the so-called "Workers Opposition":
Were any of the Bolshevik oppositions a real alternative?
They also seem to fetishise centralisation to an even more silly degree than your usual Leninist.
Council Communists are much better and saw through the Leninist illusions the "left-communists" subscribe to very early -- even came to question the party.
As some one mentioned above, this is a good summary: More Lenin or less Lenin?
Which raises an interesting question -- why the hell are "left-communists" here on a libertarian site? They are definitely not libertarian. I can see why council communists and other marxists should be welcome, I fail to see much benefit of the authoritarian -- and frankly space-cadet -- politics being aired here by "left-communists".
Anarcho wrote: ... What is
Anarcho
Except the majority of Left Communists now do not see the role of the organisation of revolutionaries as being to take power.
...and "left communism" is a
...and "left communism" is a historical term which at the time included "council communists".
Anarcho arrives to dispute a
Anarcho arrives to dispute a couple of points from earlier on this thread 6+ years later!!
Most left communists don't
Most left communists don't consider themselves Bordigists either.
the paper of the Bremen Left:
the paper of the Bremen Left: Arbeiterpolitik, 1916-19, in one clunky 800mb file: http://aaap.be/Pages/Arbeiterpolitik-Bremen-1916-1919.html
also recently read the
also recently read the autobiography of Paul Frölich Im radikalen Lager. Politische Autobiographie 1890–1921 which he wrote during his exile period in the 1930ies (manuscript only rediscovered in 2007 and published four years ago), according to him, the main Russian influence on the Bremen Left was Radek, Lenin and his writing were generally unknown before the war in Germany (his name was known to some only through the polemics by Luxemburg/Jogiches against "What is to be done"), Trotsky was known through his writings about the 1905 and the role he played back then. Generally, among the Russian Social Democrats in German exile, the relations were according to Frölich quite easy-going between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks ... also loads of other intetesting stuff in Frölich's book about the left in Germany
De Leon and Sylvia were
De Leon and Sylvia were marxist council communists tho
De Leon was most of his political career and Sylvia was later on in her life.
Not DeLeon of the SLP - a
Not DeLeon of the SLP - a socialist industrial unionist rather.
... and to come in a year
... and to come in a year after the last comment, not Sylvia Pankhurst either.. She was close to the Dutch/German Left when it was still pro-party, pro-October (ie when it was still part of what would be regarded as 'Left' Communist, not 'Council' Communist) but 'later in life' she became a supporter of Haile Selassie.
This is the first time I've
This is the first time I've seen someone reject Council Communism as being part of the Left Communist umbrella. I mean Lenin's Left Wing Communism an Infantile disorder refers to Pannekoek and Dutch and German Council Communists as being victims of "the childishness of Leftism".
Well, I'm not sure anyone
Well, I'm not sure anyone did. But the situation is complicated by the German Left of 1920 (pro-party, pro-October) calling itself variously 'Linkskommunismus' and 'Ratenkommunismus'. What is Left Communism in 2018 is not exactly the same as everyone's political trajectory from 1918-1968.
The Communist Left now is generally understood - by those that claim to be it, and by related currents such as the Council Communists - to be those organisations that defend 'pro-party, pro-October' lines, as opposed to the Council Communists, who defend the positions that the German/Dutch Left developed in the 1920s-30s, that parties were bourgeois and October was a dual or even straight out bourgeois revolution.
The fact is that the Council Communists developed a theory that was very different to that of the KAPD. They started as 'Left Communists' but ended as something else - which today we know as 'Council Communists'.
slothjabber wrote: Well, I'm
slothjabber
I don't think that's very accurate at all, a lot of the Council Communists from what you call the "pro-party, pro october" phase weren't. Otto Ruhle to pick probably the most well known KAPD member was already advocating his ideas by 1920 if not earlier. The KPD under Radek was pro Bolshevik and pro party, and also pro participation in parliament as was supported by the Third International at the time, so would that not also mean the KPD qualified for Left Communist status?
I also don't recognise your views on contemporary Left Communism, its not been my experience at all of those who use the term. I've seen plenty of supporters and groups active over the years whose archives are full of the older texts including Mattick and Pannekoek's anti Bolshevik and party scepticism. I've even seen a few cite material put out by syndicalist and Anarchosyndicalist groups like KRAS.
I'm familiar with groups like the ICC using extremely narrow definitions of the term Left Com, but these groups don't really have a codified criteria from what I've seen.
I think it was 1920 when
I think it was 1920 when Ruhle started saying that the revolution had been betrayed. He was the first from the SPD-KPD-KAPD that I'm aware of. How is that incompatible with me saying that the German and Dutch Lefts came to those views in the 1920s and 30s? Over that time more people from the German/Dutch Left came to agree with Ruhle, but not all in 1920 by any means.
The KPD weren't expelled from the ComIntern. Not Left Communists (of either Italian or German/Dutch flavour).
Who in your experience is 'Left Communist' (apart from the Hekmatists, that is)?
slothjabber wrote: I think it
slothjabber
But calling people 'pro-October, pro-party' based on an external view of the Russian Revolution in 1918-1919 is a bit ahistorical, it's like projecting those positions back into the past. Emma Goldman in 1919:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/ch01.htm
So is Emma Goldman also 'pro party, pro October' (or just pro October?), or did she have a skewed view of events filtered through distance until confronted with reality within a day or so of landing in Russia?
There is some truth to someone like Gorter not making a complete break with Lenin when they broke with the Comintern - i.e. the Open Letter to Comrade Lenin is much more about Lenin imposing tactics developed in Russia on communist parties in Western Europe, it does not really question those tactics being applied to Russia itself or that they might be correct in 'different historical circumstances' or similar.
slothjabber wrote: I think it
slothjabber
Well from what I read you're implying it was some sort of radical break in 1920. That's not really the impression I get from that. I mean they had already walked out on the KPD which was the official Comintern affiliate. In Left Wing Disorder Lenin its stated that the KAPD was only allowed to join the Comintern as a sympathiser on condition that it go back into the KPD, that this was a condition and that they didn't comply suggests there was already a growing divergence.
I remember Jan Appel stating that the KAPD had already put its focus into the AAUD as early as its founding 1919.
Huh? So now its expulsion that's the key determining factor? So being pro party pro Bolshevik isn't that important I guess. Also Radek the former leader of the KPD at this time was expelled from the Comintern and then executed so I guess he still counts, then.
Off the top my head Kurasje, Mark Shipway, Mattick Snr and Jnr, the Operaismoists, Karl Korsch, etc. According to the Left Communism tag on this site, we have other groups including Communizers. I've also encountered Left Communist groups and factions that have popped up within the IWW.
Other authors note continuity with Socialism ou Barbarie and the German Left, like in La Banquise.
It doesn't seem like you're very familiar with Left Communism at all.
Reddebrek wrote: slothjabber
Reddebrek
Italian workerism has very little to do with the left communist tradition, and little to do with the Italian communist left specifically. On a very superficial level, they share some positions (e.g. both were critical of unions or of Gramsci), but their historical lineages are independent. Apart from some "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" stuff like the fact that Bordiga was one of the founders of the party of which Mario Tronti was also a member of (a completely different party in terms of substance by then!), there is no real relation between them.
Also, the Middle Eastern "workerist" parties, as much as I like them (more than I like most Trots), have nothing to do with either Italian workerism (or "autonomism" more generally) or with left communism. Again, there are some superficial similarities, but nothing substantial – don't let the label fool you.
Left communism or the communist left was a phenomenon related to the debates and conflicts around the IIIrd International. It included both the German-Dutch and the Italian variety, along with similar tendencies in other countries (e.g., Russia, Bulgaria). They were defined, chiefly, by their opposition to working in unions and parliaments, and their opposition to "compromises" in general. Yes, in terms of other positions, the views of all of those who were included were not compatible. That is also why their attempts to cooperate and forge a united opposition ultimately failed.
Does operaismo really count
Does operaismo really count as "left-communism"? It did not come from the Italian left-communist parties or circles, it came from the stalinist Italian Communist Party and most operaismo groups still had ties to the Italian Communist Party in someway(even if their members were purged as time went on). At the time of the operaismo movement the left-communist parties were very critical of the operaismo groupings(often in a chauvinist manner, ex 1, ex 2), just as much as the operaismo groupings were critical of the "bordigists" for being the result of the labor movement in retreat, i.e intellectuals retreating to defend the "invariance" of marxism and the party's "nucleus".
Reddebrek wrote: Well from
Reddebrek
Well, moving from a position that the October revolution was a proletarian revolution and that the Bolsheviks were an expression of the international working class, to a position that the October revolution was bourgeois and so were all parties, seems like a pretty radical break to me. In 1920, other Left/Council Communists didn't share Ruhle's views; by 1940, many did, especially in the Dutch/German Left, and from then on, they've generally been known as 'Council Communists'; and the groups that didn't change their view as 'Left Communists' - today, that's generally how the terms are used.
Reddebrek
The KAPD was founded in 1920, so it can't have been focusing on the AAUD in 1919. They were expelled from the KPD, rather than walking. The expulsion is important.
Reddebrek
Comparing the Left Communists with the Council Communists, the points of difference are pro/anti-party, pro/anti-October.
Comparing the Left and Council Communists with the ComIntern, the points of difference were affiliation to the Soc-Dem parties and contesting elections.
'Left-Wing Communism: an infantile disorder' is extremely relevant here. The Left Communists (all of them, including the Council Communists, including both the Dutch/German and Italian Lefts) were against participation in elections and affiliation to the Soc-Dem parties. That's pretty much the point Lenin is making. They were expelled from their national parties and/or the international. In Germany the majority was expelled and formed the KAPD; in Italy the leadership was manoeuvred out of its positions by Gramsci's faction backed by (and backing) Moscow.
So yes, taking 'Left Communists' in opposition to 'the Moscow line' then expulsion from the Comintern (or parties affiliated to) is what is important. Taking 'Left Communists' in distinction to 'Council Communists' the important question is the nature of the October revolution.
Reddebrek
If you like. Maybe I'm not, I've only been talking to them for 20 years. I don't know Kurasje or La Banquise.
Some of those you mention were connected with the German Left over the course of its development into modern Council Communism (Korsch, Mattick, Mark Shipway). So, yes, part of the Communist Left in its widest sense.
Socialisme ou Barbarie came out of Trotskyism, under the influence of Bordigism. It moved towards Left Comm positions. Other groups such as Munis's group in Spain and Stinas's group in Greece had somewhat similar evolutions. These groups did move towards the Communist Left for sure.
Communisation isn't Left Communism.
In agreement with Jura, Operaismo isn't Left Communism either.
There are definitely Marxists in the IWW, some of whom are Left Comms, and Mattick was for a while a member. I've never heard of any Left Comm groups coming out of the IWW - though if they did it would surely be on the basis of approach to the positions of either the Italian or the German/Dutch Left, these being the only Left Comm groups to have left lasting organisations.
But I don't really see the point you're trying to make here. You're just mixing up a lot of different things and claiming that they're all Left Communism. I don't accept that as a method. I think political labels have meanings; Left Comm means something specific, and a bunch of the groups you name don't have the characteristics of Left Comm groups. You didn't answer when I asked if you think Anarcho-capitalists are Anarchists. I don't think they are, because I think 'Anarchist' has a meaning which excludes An-Caps from being Anarchists. I think Left Comm means something too, and at its widest it means 1-the groups mentioned by Lenin in Left Wing Communism; 2-the groups organisationally descended from those groups; 3-groups which approach the political positions of 1 and 2.
...Moreover, operaismo was
...Moreover, operaismo was also critical of the other part of the communist left, i.e. the (perceived) council communist views on "self-management". Operaists (Sergio Bologna, notably) argued that they were but the expression of a technical composition based on highly skilled, artisan-like workers (German metalworkers being the archetype).
I really wouldn't trust WIkipedia on obscure marxist history.
slothjabber wrote: Socialisme
slothjabber
There was also Dunayevska's correspondence with Pannekoek in the late '40s or early '50s (i.e. after the Forest-Johnson tendency had split with Trotskyism, but before the late '50s early '60s splits in that tendency between Correspondence/Facing Reality/Marxist Humanism).
With that tendency you have:
- Pro-Lenin, but anti-Leninism/Trotskyism
- extremely critical of the unions.
- ambivalent on the party form
- pro workers councils
Neither the CWO nor the ICC have more than a sentence each to say about CLR James though, let alone Glaberman - this despite Glaberman having some of the very clearest writings on trade unions.
Are they classical left communists? No. Did they come to very similar positions to left/council communism? (both independently and as a result of contacts with earlier generations during that process), definitely they did.
Mike Harman wrote: Are they
Mike Harman
But this very much depends on the range of positions you choose. If you focus on the union question, the analogy works. Less so with the party (at least with respect to the Dutch-German variety of left communism), as you noted. Conversely, the Italian left was very critical of the councils and of self-management – a major point of contention with Gramsci, in fact, and an important difference with respect to, e.g. Socialisme ou Barbarie and their splits. And surely you don't think that CLR James' views on the Third World and anti-imperialist struggles were close to those of the Italian Communist left. (One of James' students was Kwame Nkrumah.)
To Jura and LeninistGirl
To Jura and LeninistGirl that's true but I didn't mention Bordiga. My reading of Autonomism and Workerism was that it came out of the Italian left in Opposition to the PCI and embrace a more rank and file approach to build a movement that went beyond the ownership of factories and aimed at abolishing among other things wage labour.
slothjabber
Sure but the issue here is timing, I don't think that's usually how ideas develop, again Jan Appel stated that he and his comrades had put their faith in the AAUD at its founding in 1919.
Sorry but you're the first person I've seen to use the term in that way. I've seen people distinguish between what they call Councilism and Council Communism before but never as a divergence between Left Communism and Council Communism. I've seen plenty of debate about Russian, British, Italian, and Dutch and German Left Communists before too.
The AAUD was founded in 1919 with the involvement of many KPD members who went on to be the KAPD. I agree the expulsion is important, but for different reasons. They were expelled because they opposed the KPD leadership that at the time was very close to the ComIntern. Opposing the Comintern line doesn't strike me as "Pro Bolshevik," it seems to suggest that they were already well on the way to critical opposition.
Ok so you are using Left Communism to exclude the Council Communist, but on your second point the PCI contested elections before the split and since Lenin called the Council Communists
Sure but that also applies to others including Pankhurst who you've discounted. If that's your criteria then the definition of Left Communism would be much broader. But you keep insisting that isn't the case.
Well I've been talking to many over the years too and you're just as dismissive of my experiences, so. Both La Banquise and Kurasje are on this site.
Personally I'd agree but I've seen more than a few Left Coms that overlap it a lot with what their doing.
Sorry if your not familiar with them than what's the point of you speculating about them?
That's true but your qualifiers in this thread aren't very clear at all. From what you've told me Trotskyists would easily qualify as Left Communists, they're pro party, pro Bolshevik, were expelled from the ComIntern, and a number are hostile to participating in elections and social democratic policies.
I don't think your usage of the term is very useful at all. You keep having to add layers of distinction which often add more ambiguity.
If you want to use the term Left Communism to refer exclusively to groups that are as close as possible to the ones singled out in Lenin's book then that's fine, I don't think its particularly useful since most (all?) of the people covered by it are now dead.
But in terms of Left Communism in ideas and positions that's just useless, unless you're arguing that the few groups you do consider Left Communist haven't changed or developed at all over the years, how on earth are you making the judgement? The criteria you've shown me seems both highly reductive and yet somehow loose enough to include plenty of people and groups I'm sure you wouldn't accept.
Reddebrek wrote: To Jura and
Reddebrek
In this sense any opposition "from the left" against the Stalinist parties could count as "left communism". According to this logic, certain Yugoslav humanist philosophers of the 1960s, Jacek Kuron in Poland, some of the Hungarian militants fighting on the barricades of 1956 and many others would all be "left communists". Feel free to define your terms however you want but surely this isn't standard usage.
I think all of the criteria necessary to determine what left communism was are contained in Lenin's brochure. It clearly states that both the Dutch-German and the Italian currents belong there. It's what started the term. End of story. We can perhaps extrapolate to latter-day followers of the original left communists' ideas (who explicitly identify as such), but I don't see the point in stretching the term to include someone like Raniero Panzieri (who at one time was on the central committee of the PSI) or Mario Tronti, who even returned to the PCI after a few years (but still remains somewhat true to operaist discourse to this day).
jura wrote: But this very
jura
James was very critical of Kwame Nkrumah in 1962, in his book Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, where he quotes Lenin at length in order to critique Nkrumah. He was also connected to Jomo Kenyatta in the 1930s, but had an extremely low opinion of Kenyatta (although only wrote about him a couple of times, basically calls him an idiot when he does). A lot of James' inconsistency on this is due to him not breaking fully with Lenin IMO (or his personal ties with people he met and organised with in the 1930s UK when he was still a Trotskyist and very recently ex Caribbean nationalist) - but that lack of Lenin break does not distinguish him from some Left Communists.
Even though I think the criticism of Nkrumah is tame (in the same way Lenin's criticism of the USSR, which James marshals against Nkrumah, is tame), it's useful to read, in that he's at least (although by his own admission belatedly) giving an account of events. But James on Nyerere reads very uncritical indeed, and that's even later.
On the other hand a 'left communist' evaluation of anti-colonial and similar movements often equates to sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'la la la' very loudly. See the really sloppy discussion of Syria and South Africa here for example: https://libcom.org/blog/trotskyism-war-syria-01092018 where actual class struggle just gets ignored in favour of talking about how Mandela actually wasn't that great, and a survey of Trotskyist positions on Syria from everywhere except the middle east. Or the ICC's promotion of campists/conspiracy theorists Robert Fisk and Piers Robinson documented here: https://libcom.org/forums/news/syria-campism-conspiracy-theory-26062018. Not really anything substantial in these to compare to other tendencies unfortunately, one or two ICC articles have been better (I think there was one on Senegal), but haven't seen anything substantial from the CWO.
Matthew Quest is excellent on CLR James' residual Leninism fwiw: https://libcom.org/library/silences-suppression-workers-self-emancipation-historical-problems-clr-jamess-interpreta . Would also recommend Quest's resurrection of Eusi Kwayana's The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics on proto-workers councils in 1970s Guyana.
Also 'unreconstructed Johnsonite' Glaberman wrote more on the unions than James, and didn't really write much about national liberation that I know of.
Mike, that was very
Mike, that was very interesting, but my point was that while the standard left communist position on anti-imperialism is pretty unambiguous – petty bourgeois nationalist movements inimical to the working class and designed to prop up domestic capitalist development – the views of CLR James, or even Glaberman (with respect to the LRBW and their Maoism or whatever it was), were much more accommodating. I'm not picking a position here, just stating the difference. You were implying that on some positions, the JFT and their splits were close to left communism. I'm saying it only works with a pretty narrow range of positions (on a rigorous view, unions and perhaps working class self-activity, but that's a very broad theme).
Reddebrek wrote: ... My
Reddebrek
Operaismo came out Stalinism. Nothing to do with Left Communism or even Trotskyism.
Reddebrek
I think probably you have seen other people use the term that way, but not realised. I really don't think that how I use the terms Left Communism and Council Communism is all that idiosyncratic. I don't refer to 'Councilism' because my understanding is that it's basically a pejorative from the French that the ICC popularised. A bit like how Stalinists refer to Trotskyists as Troskyites. I consider people who identify with Council Communism as comrades. I'm not out to insult them.
Reddebrek
How have I discounted Pankhurst? Literally don't know what you're referring to here. She was a Left Communist: she was anti-parliamentarian, expelled from the CPGB, was close to the KAPD, was part of the Fourth International, published pieces by Bordiga, and was criticised in Left Wing Communism. How could she not be a Left Communist? She's pretty much the poster-child of Left Communism.
The point is about legacy if you like. There were loads of Left Communists in 1919. Only the German/Dutch Left, and the Italian Left, had continuing legacies in terms of organisations that survived. The British Left didn't, the Bulgarian Left didn't, the Russian Left didn't.
Reddebrek
OK, I'll check them out but if they're Hekmatist, Communisers or Autonomists I reserve the right not to be impressed.
Reddebrek
Did Lenin refer to Trotsky in Left Wing Communism: an infantile disorder?
The Trotskyists were not Left Communists. There were Left Communists in Russia - Ossinsky, Bukharin in 1918 (he changed positions, but Left Communism didn't go with him) and others.
When the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists called themselves 'Left Communists', Trotsky complained because he knew 'Left Communist' was a term with a meaning and it didn't apply to his supporters in Spain.
Reddebrek
Yes they're all dead, how could they not be?
But that's pretty much the origin of the term - Lenin was criticising various groups in Europe who refused to participate in elections. Gorter, Pannekoek, Bordiga's group in the Italian party, Pankhurst - they were the 'Left (Wing) Communists'. That's what 'Left Communist' means as much as anything does.
Reddebrek
If they're anti-parliamentary, refuse to back fractions of capital in imperialist wars, and are in favour of workers' self-organisation, that's a really good start as far as I'm concerned. I disagree with the Council Communists about the nature of parties, but they're still part of the broader Communist Left.
But the point is, Left Communism (broadly so including the Council Communists) is the political positions of the groups that were expelled in the '20s for anti-parliamentarism (so, not the Trotskyists). If new groups move towards those positions then yes they are Left Communists. If they don't then they're not. I don't know why you think that's a useless definition.
jura wrote: Mike, that was
jura
In theory yes. In practice any investigation of independent working class organisation is absent when there's also an 'anti-imperialist' movement happening at the same time.
I'm sure if a group showed up in South Africa, Kenya or Tanzania that claimed to be in the direct intellectual lineage of the Italian fraction of the communist left they'd be into it, but general strikes organised by mass meetings of thousands in post-war Kenya, or Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa today, it's just silence or conflation. Are mass strikes 'petit bourgeois'? Maybe if you're Lenin in 1919..
slothjabber wrote: I don't
slothjabber
hmm I know 'councilist' is a perjorative but for some reason I also thought Henri Simon identified with it? Might be wrong on that though. Have also seen it used as a catch-all for SouB, Solidarity et al, sort of 'post war council communism'.
slothjabber
I don't think you have, but Dyjbas/the ICT/CWO have with there 'left communism first arrived in the UK in the 1970s' claim which they really don't like me bringing up.
slothjabber wrote: Operaismo
slothjabber
OK, I guess at this point the debate has already lost any pretence at historical accuracy and everybody's just redefining terms as they go (how this is possible on a site with perhaps the best available literature on all of this, I don't know), but I want to add that the organizational origins of "operaismo" were much broader than just the PCI. As mentioned in this or other thread, one of the founders, or perhaps the founder, came out of the PSI and was influenced by (and corresponded with) S. ou B. Montaldi had a brief stint in the PCI but his father was an anarchist. Still others had no formal party background or were politicized in Christian Socialist circles. Anyway, operaismo as a current signified a radical break with the Gramscian-Togliattian postwar PCI, so saying "it came out of Stalinism" and pretending like it's some sort of political analysis from which one can draw conclusions is like saying Pannekoek came out of the IInd International and doing the same.
Mike Harman wrote: In theory
Mike Harman
Seriously, what are you on about? We're not debating the details or merits of that position. We're debating your dysfunctional analogies.
jura wrote: Mike Harman
jura
Pannekoek in 1947:
Pannekoek
Seems to be advocating for political independence for the colonies with full political social rights and liberties as a step towards an international communist revolution to me - i.e. that it would not be possible for the working class in colonised countries to attain a communist consciousness without that step first. Of course this isn't quite the same as support for 'national liberation movements' in the usual Trot/Leninist sense but it doesn't seem so very far removed from CLR James' combination of council communism in Western Europe and support for nationalist movements in the periphery.
In both cases for me it's because they didn't fully drop 'historical materialism' (in the bad, 'Marksist' sense).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1947/workers-councils.htm#h31
jura wrote: And surely you
jura
Mike Harman
jura
jura wrote: jura wrote: And
jura
Why stick to James vs. the Italian communist left when thread is 'council communism vs. left communism' - if you think they've got some continuity with council communism but not italian left communism that's fair enough and I agree.
Obviously there are
Obviously there are similiarities (the union question) that I've mentioned myself, but not on the question of nationalism/anti-imperialism. What Pannekoek is saying in that quote is that if capitalism develops in the colonies, the working class will also develop that could be an ally to the working class in the West (or North). I guess any marxist would agree with that. It's rather trivial, and quite different from rooting for Fidel Castro, as James did. For what it's worth, Pannekoek opposed nationalism since before WW1, favoring personal autonomy over territorial autonomy. Even in Workers' Councils, he calls nationalism "the essential creed of the bourgeoisie". Gorter rejected national self-determination in 1914 and later viewed Lenin's national liberation doctrine as "bourgeois-capitalist".
Here's Bordiga in
Here's Bordiga in 1951:
Bordiga
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/charthes.htm
Or Programma Communista in 1958:
Programma Communista
http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/REPORTS/57ColQue.htm
Do you really think this is
Do you really think this is the same as pan-Africanism or support for Castro?
jura wrote: Obviously there
jura
This is an issue though - whether the plantation system in the US South, and to some extent in African, Caribbean, and South American colonies, was capitalist. What they really mean isn't capitalism, but industrialisation. And possibly a shift from forced labour to wage labour - although capitalism was only able to develop in the colonies via forced labour and land expropriation, enforced by capitalist states, in the first place. Covered some of these issues a bit here: https://libcom.org/blog/dauve-versus-marx-31072018
jura
They're quite clearly rooting for the national bourgeois to develop (industrial) capitalism against imperialist underdevelopment, because it would lead to the development of a local working class, if not for specific national ruling classes.
I haven't read James on Castro, but there's a summary here for anyone following along, and I'll maybe try to read it tomorrow: http://insurgentnotes.com/2016/04/c-l-r-jamess-critical-support-of-fidel-castros-cuba/
jura wrote: Do you really
jura
No. I do think there are some similar theoretical routes though, which go back to Lenin and a stagist conception of the transition to communism - which again the Matthew Quest essay gets into.
edit: I'll try to put it more clearly.
CLR James, implicitly - because he tends to write about concrete events and extrapolate, but often one thing at a time, so you have to figure out the contradiction yourself:
In Western Europe and Eastern Europe, workers autonomy is everything, the party has no role except to produce a workers paper and some theory. Rejection of the unions and parliamentarianism.
In the Caribbean and Africa - 'critical support' for left nationalist movements. Sometimes more support, sometimes more critical. If he said why he would advocate two different strategies in the different areas I haven't seen it, but I would assume a reference to Lenin and 'historical conditions' to justify that stance.
With Bordiga and Programma Communista passages explicitly, because concrete events are largely ignored, focusing on general trends:
the third world can only produce bourgeois revolutions because of its stage of development, but that these bourgeois revolutions will accelerate local capitalist development and hence the creation of a local working class, which can then fight capital on the same terms as the western working class.
With Pannekoek, we have more of a 'political' take on anti-colonialism where he thinks that not only economic development but liberal democracy is necessary to give the working class freedom to organise etc.
Are they the same positions? No they're not. Are they compatible positions with some similar theoretical routes - yes I think they are, or at least there's a venn diagram with some overlap.
What none of the three are arguing for is that a communist revolution would be possible in the Third World - at least not unless it first happened in Western Europe then was somehow exported. There are significant moments of class struggle which none of the three ever addressed at the time (probably because news of them never even made it out of the colonies where they occurred) which is a shame. I think James' own work on Haiti partially attacks the position as well, but not completely because he was such a massive Trotskyist when he wrote it, but the information is in there if not quite the realisation.
Tthe problem you allude to
Tthe problem you allude to stretches back to Marx, who had his own stagism to overcome, very late in his life. I agree that both the JFT and the left communists were marxists, and Lenin certainly was an important point of reference (though a negative one, in the case of the Duch-German left). But I see no point in calling the JFT left communists or council communists. They came from different historical traditions (the branching occurs around 1914-1918) and held different positions on a variety of things. They had certain key things in common which I guess is why they're featured in the libcom library (and not just "for reference")... as are many other currents.
jura wrote: They had certain
jura
They're one of my favourite groups of people to read - i.e. when I read stuff by James or Glaberman and disagree with it, I still learn something and enjoy it, whereas I often read stuff by people I supposedly 'agree' with and just get completely annoyed and demoralised. For example when Glaberman talks about unions, he manages to avoid the conspiracist 'tool of the capitalist state' framing that a lot of groups fall into, but still manages to completely explain what their role is.
PS. edited the post just above yours to expand a bit, but apparently not quick enough.
Yep, I like them too, and
Yep, I like them too, and especially Glaberman.
Reddebrek wrote: slothjabber
Reddebrek
Why don't you see communisation as left communist? Obviously both terms are pretty slippery, but I think it's fair to say that Dauve, Troploin are pretty openly influenced by/have actually republished Bordgia, Bilan and so on.
But Dauve/Troploin have an
But Dauve/Troploin have an extensive critique of Lenin, Trotskyism & Bolshevism quite opposite to left communism positions today. They also have more theoretical sympathy with anarchism & with the situationists than left communists. They also share no theoretical conception of the essential existence of an organisational Party form with left comms.
Among other things, Left
Among other things, Left Communism accepts the need for the Party and that October 1917 was a genuine proletarian revolution.
Both council communism and communisation (depending on the theorists) reject these, so are not left communism.
Craftwork wrote: Among other
Craftwork
Only according to your idiosyncretic definition of "left communism". According to standard usage, the Dutch-German left is part of "left communism"/"the communist left".
Left Communism includes
Left Communism includes Council Communism but Council Communism doesn't include Left Communism. No-one would call the Bordigists 'Council Communists'.
However, Council Communism's positions morphed away from the positions of 'The Communist Left' in 1920 (Bordiga's didn't change much, what with invariance and all. Joke, I know that's not really what invariance is).
As what is now known as 'Council Communism' is both a subset of a wider (historical) category of Left Communism, and significantly different from other subsets of Left Communism (differentiated on the questions of the party and the nature of the October revolution) which otherwise, between themselves are relatively coherent, I think it makes sense to see 'Council Communism' as a split from 'Left Communism'. Maybe up until 1940 Left Communism meant the Italian and German Lefts. I'd think that post-WWII, it makes sense to regard Council Communism as a separate but related thing to Left Communism (the Left Communism that continued to hold pretty much the 1920 positions).
So I'm going to say that I don't see Craftwork's use as being idiosyncratic, because it's pretty much how I see it and generally use the terms too.
Of course, that might just mean that we use the terms the way the ICC does (for example) not the way everyone else does. But I don't really think there's any argument against the idea that Council Communism represents a break with the positions of 1920 (in Italy and Germany in particular) but the groups of the Communist Left today represent a large element of continuity with the positions of 1920.
I wouldn't say that Council Communism was not part of the Communist Left, in a historical sense, but 'Council Communists' now are not 'Left Communists' now.
jura wrote: Craftwork
jura
Err.. Council communism is not synonymous with Dutch-German Left.
Philippe Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68)
Philippe Bourrinet, The Dutch
Philippe Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68)
[/quote]
Why would you think this supports your case? He even uses the expression "German and Dutch left-communism". He then goes on to say that another term, "councilism" can be used to denote a smaller circle of people who (later) went on to oppose the party-form as such. But "councilism" is not the same as "German and Dutch left-communism". It's a subset (in terms of the people involved) and a later development.
jura wrote: Why would you
jura
Edited my previous comment for clarity. Council communism =/= Left Communism.
Zinoviev at the 2nd
Zinoviev at the 2nd Congress:
Zinoviev
Why are you quoting zinoviev
Why are you quoting zinoviev of all people? He puts the left in quotation marks.
LeninistGirl wrote: Why are
LeninistGirl
Because the term basically originated as a slur by the likes of Zinoviev.
Edited for clarity: What I'm saying is that the "the communist left"or "left communism" is something that originated in the debates around the founding of the IIIrd International. There were some precursors, of course: the Russian "left communist" faction of 1918, the earlier views of the Tribunists that later translated into some of the council communist positions, etc. But the meaning of the term became established in those debates and in Lenin's brochure, which was a part of those debates (it was written in April 1920; the 2nd Congress took place during the summer of that year).
The participants in those discussions had certain criteria according to which classify communists as "left communists". Whatever those criteria were, the German-Dutch lefts were to be included as "left communists" based on them, as shown in the Zinoviev quote. Of course there were differences between the Italians and the Dutch-Germans (and even within each of the camps), but in the context of those debates, they were treated simply as "left communists". The bit from Zinoviev also makes it clear that some of the later positions of "council communism" were already present at that time (i.e. not a party in the "traditional sense", and evidently not in the Bolshevik sense either; soviets or councils as the focus; the working class organized primarily in the councils, not in a party etc.).
Yeah if I had the energy I'd
Yeah if I had the energy I'd draw a venn diagram, but something like this:
Left communism - all the groups/people in 1920 referred to as 'left communist' as a slur by Zinoviev/Lenin.
Council communism - a tendency within 'left communism/the communist left'.
Pro-party left communism - mainly in Italy around Bordiga, sometimes referred to as Bordigism or 'the Italian fraction of the communist left'. Bilan and Camatte too.
Then there are some groups heavily influenced by council communism - the Solidarity/Socialism ou Barbarie/Correspondence/Facing Reality milieu - who equally came out of a break with Trotskyism during WWII, but both ended up making links with older council communists and coming to similar conclusions independently.
The situs which partly came out of a split in SouB.
Then groups influenced by Bordiga - Dauve and the communisation tendency, but who are also influenced by council communist groups too.
And Operaismo which was influenced by the post-war-post-trots (especially things like workers inquiry) as well as having other theoretical/organisational routes.
No-one's linked to https://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map yet.
For the tendencies that emerged post-war, they obviously did not emerge strictly from either council communism or Bordigism - but equally there's a lot of influence and some historical continuity.
The big issue here is that there can be multiple historical routes to very similar political positions, as well as similar historical routes to different political positions. I think talking about the historical development of ideology is really interesting, but this exclusivism around labels is... not interesting.
Yeah I can get behind that .
Yeah I can get behind that :).
But why call it "libertarian"
But why call it "libertarian" Marxism like that map does? It is also missing Kautsky since neither Lenin nor Luxemburg came from Marx and Engels directly without being influenced by the Second International and it's head therotican.
Also, does anyone know
Also, does anyone know anything about this?
"After 1925, sections of the Council Communist movement worked together with the anarchists in ‘anti-authoritarian blocs’." (From In the Tradition: https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2017/11/14/in-the-tradition-where-our-politics-comes-from/ )
Any idea what they did, if there's anything written about them, etc?
I guess what they mean is the
I guess what they mean is the General Worker's Union of Germany (AAU), an organization affiliated to the KAPD. It was somewhat similar to the IWW. In 1921, it was divided into two tendencies, the Essen one (around Ruhle, AAUD-E or AAUE) and the Berlin one (if I remember correctly). The former advocated a "unitary" approach to organizing (a union involved in political and economic struggle). It cooperated somewhat with the FAUD (the anarcho-syndicalists). The AAUE was present at the IWMA/IWA congress of 1923 (as a guest). Many members of the AAUE later joined the FAUD (or vice-versa).
The two tendencies merged again in 1931 into the KAUD (Communist Workers Union of Germany). It disappeared with the Nazi takeover.
You can read about their history here: https://libcom.org/history/councilist-movement-germany-1914-1935-history-aaud-e-tendency-grupo-de-comunistas-de-con
I think Entdinglichung would be able to tell you much more about this.
Edit: Apparently the "Essen" and "Berlin" tendencies relate to a split of the KAPD, not the AAUD. The AAUE was, however, based around a tendency in Essen around Ruhle.
Ah OK - was wondering if
Ah OK - was wondering if "anti-authoritarian blocs" was a term used at the time or a later framing, but sounds like the latter in that case.
It appears the expression
It appears the expression ("Antiautoritärer Block") was in fact used at the time. I've never come across this before. Apparently in some places in Weimar Germany, the FAUD, AAUE, the FKAD (anarcho-communists), entered into closer cooperation in the framework of "blocs". The only sources I could find are in German, though:
https://anarchistischebibliothek.org/library/ulrich-linse-die-transformation-der-gesellschaft-durch-die-anarchistische-weltanschauung.a4.pdf
https://muckracker.wordpress.com/geschichte/nordwest-faud-nordwest-und-der-block-antiautoritarer-revolutionare-1924/
The most important splits:
The most important splits: The AAUE around Ruehle, Pfemfert, Kanehl and Broh split from KAPD and AAUE in late 1921 due to their rejection of the party-form and their criticism of the March action which they considered “Putschism”; the KAPD split around 1922 between the Berlin wing and the Essen wing on the question about daily labour struggles, the Essen wing around Schwab, Goldstein, Reichenbach, Schroeder, Sach and Utzelmann rejected the participation in non-revolutionary struggles (most of their leading figures with the exception of Sach joined the SPD in the following years and created an entryist current in it which became in 1931 the “Rote Kaempfer”). The AAUE which had its stronghold in Saxony (don’t think that they were particularly strong in Essen) split several times, some currents moving towards anarchism like the Heidenau current (becoming extremely individualistic and rejecting every form of organization) and the two Zwickau currents (the first joining the FAUD and the second publishing up to 1933 the weekly “Proletarischer Zeitgeist”), in 1925, the council communist core of the AAUE split on the question of Adlerian psychology between the minority who supported Ruehle and his Adlerian ideas with centres in Breslau and Frankfurt, these people merged in 1931 with the remains of the AAUD (Berlin current) into the KAUD; the majority around Pfemfert and Kanehl undertook an unsuccessful merger (called Spartakusbund Nr. 2) with a leftwing KPD breakaway group centered in Hannover around the MP Iwan Katz and the local councillor Karwahne (who soon dropped out and later became a Nazi MP) and a small leftwing transport workers union, it disappeared around 1932. Meanwhile, the KAPD (Berlin) suffered another split when they teamed up with another leftwing breakaway group from the KPD around the MP Ernst Schwarz about the question if Schwarz should leave the parliament or not.
There were several attempts in the mid-1920ies to form a block of anti-authoritarian revolutionaries involving FAUD, AAUE, AAUD, FKAD, etc. but in some cases even the reminders of the USPD around Theodor Liebknecht, the “Spartakusbund Nr. 2” was one result of these talks, another initiative which also never materialised of this period was brought forward by the FKAD who wanted to launch a multi-tendency antiauthoritarian daily paper
jura wrote: Do you really
jura
Just to come back on this, Goldner on Bordiga:
https://libcom.org/library/communism-is-the-material-human-community-amadeo-bordiga-today
Goldner
I don't really see how it could be more compatible with those positions (although I don't think pan-Africanism is a single ideology by any means) to be honest. What do you think?
Mike Harman wrote: I don't
Mike Harman
I guess you're right with Bordiga. In this respect, he was not entirely representative of the Italian left, though. Onorato Damen opposed national liberation everywhere AFAIK, and I think contemporary left communists such as ICC or IBRP/ICT take more after him (at least in this respect) than Bordiga. I think this was actually one of the reasons for the split in the 50s.
Mike Harman wrote: Just to
Mike Harman
If you are interested in Bordiga's positions, it is probably advisable to stick to the texts by the man himself, or to the party literature prior to 1970. The more I read Bordiga, the more I dislike Goldner's article. I wasn't able to locate the quote about "great romantic revolutionaries", and Avanti, Barbari! is not about Stalinism at all, as anyone can see for themselves thanks to the tireless efforts of Libri Incogniti, who earlier this year translated the text into English for the first time. Although the title of the article does make it seem as if Bordiga was taking a jab at Socialisme ou Barbarie, something he was certainly wont to do, that's not the case: Bordiga only makes two mentions of "Chaulieu" (Castoriadis' nom de plume back when he was writing for the journal) in it, one of which is to ridicule him for believing that bureaucracy is a historical novelty unattested in earlier stages of capitalism – not for misunderstanding the "bourgeois revolutionary side" of Stalinism. Similarly, the eponymous "barbarians" are not the Stalinists, as Goldner seems to be implying, but the communists, who strive for a new barbarism that will destroy the capitalist civilization without replacing it with a new one (since Bordiga defined civilization as a class society). On second thought, it's not that surprising that Goldner completely misinterpreted the article, as he probably didn't even read it; he cites a secondary source for the paragraph in question instead of the article itself.
Bordiga was no pan-Africanist or Castro supporter, and the term "left communism" should not be used as an ahistorical catch-all that lumps the 1950s PCInt with the likes of CLR James.
AnythingForProximity
AnythingForProximity
You obviously didn't read it, there are long sections explicitly about Stalinism:
Bordiga
And it's clear that ICP supported national liberation movements in Africa and Asia as bourgeois revolutions because they would develop industrial capitalism (although Africa mostly did not take this national bonapartist development line and instead ended up with neo-colonial regimes that maintained a more or less plantation economy).
ICP