If KAPD/AAUD-E/German Left Communists Had Survived till the Early 1930s...

[Kiev Communard]

...as a viable political force?

Assuming that German left communists had managed to overcome their fractious struggles in the mid-1920s and avoided the hemorrhaging that was due to the false allure of Soviet-controlled KPD and seeming stability of the "roaring twenties", would they have been able to play a significant political role in Great Depression-years Germany, perhaps, resembling CNT-FAI in their general political part in Spain of that time? I know that this is fairly academic question, but still something tells me that the left communists, had they been major party at that time, would have been much less inclined to sit idly waiting Komintern orders than the KPD leadership when Hitler took power.

In addition, assuming that AAUD-E and/or KAUD had retained a sizable presence among the organized workers in the 1920s (perhaps a minimum base of 30,000 permanent members), what would have their impact been in the situation of the working-class radicalization after 1929? Would they have grown significantly and would they have tried to launch some FAI-style "revolutionary gymnastics" insurgencies? If anything, I believe that their sizable presence in the early 1930s would have been rather beneficial for the increase in workers' militancy that what happened historically due to KPD indecisiveness.

So, what are your thoughts on such a scenario? It is, of course, a purely alternate history, but surely an interesting one to entertain.

[Die Neue Zeit]

30,000 permanent members isn't a good base to work on. In Germany, with its population size, any non-Comintern left political organization would have to have at least 100,000 permanent members (which says a lot about my criticisms of Die Linke today).

[Kiev Communard]

30,000 permanent members isn't a good base to work on. In Germany, with its population size, any non-Comintern left political organization would have to have at least 100,000 permanent members (which says a lot about my criticisms of Die Linke today).

According to the sources I have read, AAUD-E had as much as 80,000-300,000 members at its height in 1921. Their fault was, of course, their millenarian perception of the "coming revolution", as well as the refusal to build permanent workers' committees to conduct radical (i.e. wildcat) economic struggles in the non-revolutionary period. Assuming that they had lacked such faults, AAUD-E (perhaps, united with AAUD in KAUD, as they historically did) could have retained their positions among the working class in the period of stabilization and direct the politicization of the workers after the beginning of the Depression, presumably gaining a new mass following (just as CNT managed to restore its forces after Primo de Rivera's crackdown in the 1920s). If AAUD (the one KAPD led) had decided to form permanent action committees not in 1927, when their organization was reduced to perhaps 500 members, but much earlier, during the early 1920s revolutionary upheaval, who knows what the result might have been?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Perhaps something along the lines of the KKE (and its PAME) in Greece or the RCWP-RPC in Russia? :confused:

[Kiev Communard]

^^^ Perhaps something along the lines of the KKE (and its PAME) in Greece or the RCWP-RPC in Russia? :confused:

Well, certainly not the Stalinist one :D. After all, KAPD never (even in its "Bolshevik" phase) presumed to be the "naturally" controlling agency of the revolutionary union bodies initiated by it.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Am I missing something, or are forgetting the FAUd? They existed in the same period (1919-1933) and at their peak had 150,000 members. What are your opinions on them, why are they being excluded? I figured if you're going to make several mentions to Spain's CNT, it would be odd not to have a similar group based in Germany be discussed.

[Lyev]

I think the social conditions that gave birth to these traditions or organisations had really petered out (or was forcibly snuffed out in a lot of cases) by the early '30s. The significant wave of class struggle that took place during and after the economic disintegration of WWI had seen its end by the late 1920s. Even earlier in Germany, I think, considering the failed German revolution in early 1919.

[Kiev Communard]

Am I missing something, or are forgetting the FAUd? They existed in the same period (1919-1933) and at their peak had 150,000 members. What are your opinions on them, why are they being excluded? I figured if you're going to make several mentions to Spain's CNT, it would be odd not to have a similar group based in Germany be discussed.

No, I did not forget it. FAUD indeed was an important organization, but, unlike CNT or IWW, the principled pacifism of its leadership and its discouragement of direct participation of the workers in armed struggles led to it being effectively sidelined by less numerous but more radical AAUD (whose members were often former FVDG/FAUD adherents). Here is what Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier write about them:


The FAUD was founded at the XIIth Congress of the FVDG in December 1919. This new name reflected the adherence of the various locals of the FAU, born since May, to the FVDG: the FAU of Rhineland-Westphalia, discussed above, was by far the most important. The organization had spread throughout Germany (FAUD, D: Deutschlands) and must have had approximately 200,000 members at the time. The left unionist opposition was weaker at that time and the FAUD returned to classical anarchosyndicalism, under the influence of Kropotkin, filtered through R. Rocker, the ideologist of the movement. It called itself the FAUD(S) to distinguish itself (S: Syndicalist). It broke with all political parties, declared itself against the dictatorship of the proletariat, for not being a dictatorship of “the whole class” “from the bottom up”, and was in favor of non-violence as a matter of principle. Its leadership was to disapprove of many of the revolutionary actions in which its rank and file would participate in 1920-1921.

“Revolutionary syndicalism” (=FAUD(S)) was there to decree the general strike of all workers (proletarians), so it said: this strike would paralyze the economy and the bourgeoisie, and the trade unions would take affairs into their own hands and would organize the society of “the free and equal producers”.

The FAUD(S) was led by a central committee of old syndicalists, at whose head were R. Rocker and F. Kater, who defended a pacifist and anti-revolutionary syndicalism. They had been the first to proclaim the slogan of a united front, inviting the Spartacists and independent socialists, already in 1918, to join a “social-political” front. They would even continue to follow this policy in 1921, issuing invitations to the USPD as well as to the KPD/VKPD. In parallel with the Levi tendency, the German syndicalists adopted the same “anti-putschist” positions during the course of the March-April 1920, and March 1921 events. Like the Levists, the central committee of the FAUD(S) would characterize the attacks which the left communists (of the KPD and KAPD) carried out against the trains carrying arms to Poland during the summer of 1920 as “romanticism”.[14] As a delegate from the Ruhr declared, requesting that the term “syndicalist” be abandoned: “the syndicalists are not revolutionary enough in the eyes of the Ruhr miners.”

http://libcom.org/library/chapter-9-revolutionary-syndicalism-unionism



Of course, one may say that such a description of FAUD is a result of Dauvé's own ultra-leftism/sectarianism, which is often palpable in his writings, yet I think there is some grain of truth in his description of FAUD as "not radical enough" to become a nucleus of revolutionary workers' organization (which is, of course, related to their pacifistic practices before WWI, as German FVDG, its precursor, lacked the legacy of militant, sometimes armed, struggles against capitalists and their State that FORA/IWW/CNT, etc. were accustomed to).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, certainly not the Stalinist one :D. After all, KAPD never (even in its "Bolshevik" phase) presumed to be the "naturally" controlling agency of the revolutionary union bodies initiated by it.

OK, so maybe I threw in the RCWP-RPC in mistakenly, but the KKE's allegedly "Third Periodist" work should be commendable. It's a shame, though, that they don't require every PAME member to be a KKE member. :(

As for the KAPD, why didn't it ever assume the position of the "naturally" controlling agency of the AAUD?

[Kiev Communard]

OK, so maybe I threw in the RCWP-RPC in mistakenly, but the KKE's allegedly "Third Periodist" work should be commendable. It's a shame, though, that they don't require every PAME member to be a KKE member. :(

My problem with the KKE is, of course, both their vanguardism and the tendency to supplement ostensibly radical rhetorics with utterly reformist praxis. As to the RCWP-RPC, there were indeed some quasi-syndicalist tendencies in this party (including the activists that pioneered a great 1999 strike at Yasnogorsk), and S. Gubanov, the prominent theorist of one their founding organization, the United Workers' Front, has been a major proponent of quasi-Bordigist theory of "corporate capitalism" in the USSR. So, despite their official Stalinism, there is something interesting to them - unlike the KKE's stale orthodoxy.


As for the KAPD, why didn't it ever assume the position of the "naturally" controlling agency of the AAUD?

The reasons for this are outlined in the KAPD 1920 programme:




The idea that in a really proletarian organisation the revolutionary will of the masses is the preponderant factor in the taking of tactical positions is the leitmotif in the organisational construction of our party. To express the autonomy of the members in all circumstances is the basic principle of a proletarian party, which is not a party in the traditional sense...

...The second great aim of the factory organisation is to prepare for the building of communist society. Any worker who declares for the dictatorship of the proletariat can become a member. Moreover it is necessary to resolutely reject the trade unions, and to be resolutely free from their ideological orientation. This last condition will be the cornerstone for being admitted into the factory organisation. It is through this that one shows one's adhesion to the proletarian class struggle and to its own methods; we do not demand adhesion to a more precise party programme. Through its nature and its inherent tendencies the factory organisation serves communism and leads to the communist society. Its kernel will always be expressly communist, its struggle pushes everyone in the same direction. On the other hand, the programme of the party has to deal with social reality in its widest sense; and the most serious intellectual qualities are demanded from party members. A political party like the KAPD, which goes forward and rapidly modifies itself in liaison with the world revolutionary process, can never have a great quantitative importance (if it is not to regress and become corrupt). But the revolutionary masses are, on the contrary, united in the factory organisations through their class solidarity, through the consciousness of belonging to the proletariat. It is this which organically prepares the unity of the proletariat; whereas on the basis of a party programme alone this unity is never possible. The factory organisation is the beginning of the communist form and becomes the foundation of the communist society to come.

The factory organisation carries out its tasks in close union with the KAPD.

The political organisation has the task of bringing together the most advanced elements of the working class on the basis of the party programme.

The relationship of the party to the factory organisation comes from the nature of the factory organisation. The work of the KAPD inside these organisations will be that of an unflagging propaganda, as well as putting forward the slogans of the struggle. The revolutionary cadres in the factory become the mobile arm of the party. Further, it is naturally necessary that the party always takes on for itself a more proletarian character, that it complies with the dictatorship from below. Through this the circle of its tasks grows wider, but at the same time it acquires the most powerful support. What has to be achieved is that the victory (the taking of power by the proletariat) ends up in the dictatorship of the class and not the dictatorship of a few party leaders and their clique. The factory organisation is the guarantee of this.

http://libcom.org/library/programme-communist-workers-party-germany-kapd-1920



Basically their idea of the relationship between the class and the party was closer to that of later Platformist anarchists (i.e. "the specific political organization of the militants" expounding its ideas through participation in social movements, but not dominating them) than the traditional social-democratic (namely, Kautskyan) notions of the leading role of the political party.