The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900-68): 'Neither Lenin Nor Trotsky Nor Stalin!' - 'All Workers Must Think for Themselves!'

By Philippe Bourrinet

Book Overview

The Dutch-German Communist Left, represented by the German KAPD-AAUD, the Dutch KAPN and the Bulgarian Communist Workers Party, separated from the Comintern (1921) on questions like electoralism, trade-unionism, united fronts, the one-party state and anti-proletarian violence. It attracted the ire of Lenin, who wrote his Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder against the Linkskommunismus, while Herman Gorter wrote a famous response in his pamphlet Reply to Lenin. The present volume provides the most substantial history to date of this tendency in the twentieth-century Communist movement. It covers how the Communist left, with the KAPD-AAU, denounced 'party communism' and 'state capitalism' in Russia; how the German left survived after 1933 in the shape of the Dutch GIK and Paul Mattick's councils movement in the USA; and also how the Dutch Communistenbond Spartacus continued to fight after 1942 for the world power of the workers councils, as theorised by Pannekoek in his book Workers' Councils (1946).

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004269770
• ISBN13: 9789004269774
• Release Date: December 2016
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 642 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.3" x 9.4"