The Dutch and German Communist Left 1900-1950 [1]

The Dutch and German Communist Left is one of the major components of the revolutionary current which broke away from the degenerating Communist International in the 1920s. Well before Trotsky's Left Opposition, and in a more profound way, the communist left had been able to expose the opportunist dangers which threatened the International and its parties and which eventually led to their demise. In the struggle for the intransigent defence of revolutionary principles, this current, represented in particular by the KAPD in Germany, the KAPN in Holland, and the left of the Communist Party in Italy animated by Bordiga, came out against the International's policies on questions like participation in elections and trade unions, the formation of 'united fronts' with social democracy, and support for national liberation struggles.

It was against the positions of the communist left that Lenin wrote his pamphlet Left Wing Communism, An Infantile disorder; and this text drew a response in Reply to Lenin, written by one of the main figures of the Dutch Left, Herman Gorter. In fact, the Dutch Left, like the Italian Left, had been formed well before the first world war, as part of the same struggle waged by Luxemburg and Lenin against the opportunism and reformism which was gaining hold of the parties of the Second International. It was no accident that Lenin himself, before reverting to centrist positions at the head of the Communist International, had, in his book State and Revolution, leaned heavily on the analyses of Anton Pannekoek, who was the main theoretician of the Dutch Left.

This document is an indispensable compliment to The Italian Communist Left 1926-45, already published by the ICC, for all those who want to know the real history of the communist movement behind all the falsifications which Stalinism and Trotskyism have erected around it.