What form of communism was adopted by the SI?

[Theta Sigma]

This has probably been asked before - was it council communism, as Wikipedia supposes? Perhaps left communism? Some form of anarcho-communism?

[RedWorker]

Second International?

[Blake's Baby]

Situationist International.

In answer to the original question - I don't know.

[Red Economist]

Situationist International: Autonomism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism

Second International: Orthodox Marxism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Marxism

They would have referred to themselves as 'social democracy' but the word has lost it's revolutionary meaning in the course of the twentieth century.

Personally I would have thought council communism would have counted as a form of 'left communism' in so far as advocacy of rule by soviets/councils as opposed to rule by Bolsheviks/vanguard party is 'left of Lenin'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism

(wikipedia says left communists can identify as anarcho-communists).

[Blake's Baby]

wikipedia doesn't know what it's talking about.

Left Communism is a specific tendency that came out of the Third International. All Left Communists are Marxists.

Council Communism was what the German Left Communists tended to call themselves. During the 30s Council Communism became more anti-party and anti-October. Themain Left Communist currents are not. The terms 'Council Communism' or sometimes 'councilism' is used to refer to currents after the 1930s that reject the party and reject the experiences of the October revolution (or have a 'dual revolution' theory).

[Brutus]

wikipedia doesn't know what it's talking about.

Left Communism is a specific tendency that came out of the Third International. All Left Communists are Marxists.

Council Communism was what the German Left Communists tended to call themselves. During the 30s Council Communism became more anti-party and anti-October. Themain Left Communist currents are not. The terms 'Council Communism' or sometimes 'councilism' is used to refer to currents after the 1930s that reject the party and reject the experiences of the October revolution (or have a 'dual revolution' theory).

It's worth adding that the KAPD (the German Left Communists in the revolutionary wave) expelled Ruhle and the councilists for rejecting the party.

[Blake's Baby]

Certainly. The current around Otto Ruhle (who theorised as early as 1920 that the party-form was only suitable to the epoch of bourgeois revolutions) started as a fringe opinion in the KAPD, became a tendency, and eventually (in the 1930s) came to be orthodoxy among the Dutch/German Left.

The same people may have called themselves 'Left or Council Communists' continually from 1918-1938, but that doesn't mean that their positions were the same in that period. Nor does it mean that now, 'Left or Council Communists' is a thing, or that we recognise the description of them as such as being accurate or useful.

Generally and I'm sure someone will disagree, 'Left Communist' refers now to those who are pro-party and uphold that the October revolution was proletarian; 'Council Communist' refers to the belief that parties are bourgeois and the October revolution was a 'dual revolution - bourgeois from above, proletarian from below'. Which is not the position the 'Left or Council Communists' had before about 1930.

[Zoroaster]

Certainly. The current around Otto Ruhle (who theorised as early as 1920 that the party-form was only suitable to the epoch of bourgeois revolutions) started as a fringe opinion in the KAPD, became a tendency, and eventually (in the 1930s) came to be orthodoxy among the Dutch/German Left.

The same people may have called themselves 'Left or Council Communists' continually from 1918-1938, but that doesn't mean that their positions were the same in that period. Nor does it mean that now, 'Left or Council Communists' is a thing, or that we recognise the description of them as such as being accurate or useful.

Generally and I'm sure someone will disagree, 'Left Communist' refers now to those who are pro-party and uphold that the October revolution was proletarian; 'Council Communist' refers to the belief that parties are bourgeois and the October revolution was a 'dual revolution - bourgeois from above, proletarian from below'. Which is not the position the 'Left or Council Communists' had before about 1930.

What do Ultra-Leftists like Dauvé think of the October Revolution? Is it the same as the Council Communists?

[Devrim]

This has probably been asked before - was it council communism, as Wikipedia supposes? Perhaps left communism? Some form of anarcho-communism?

Debord's actual politics came mostly from the French group S ou B, of which he was a member for a time.

Devrim