Swiss Communist Party? (Jakob Herzog)

  1. HEAD ICE
    HEAD ICE
    Anyone know where I can get more information on the early Swiss Communist Party, either in english or another language? This has piqued my interest because their representative in the 3rd International, Jakob Herzog, was an anti-parliamentarian and I think they voted in favor of Bordiga's theses.
  2. Alf
    Alf
    you could try writing to our Swiss comrades
    Postfach 2216, CH-8026 Zürich, Switzerland
  3. Leo
    Leo
    Anyone know where I can get more information on the early Swiss Communist Party, either in english or another language? This has piqued my interest because their representative in the 3rd International, Jakob Herzog, was an anti-parliamentarian and I think they voted in favor of Bordiga's theses.
    This is from Gilles Dauve and Dennis Authier's book:

    Switzerland
    The workers’ low standard of living led to a strike by bank employees in September-October 1918.8 Militants who had previously been involved with the Forderung Group and J. Herzog founded a Communist Party. In November, the labor movement, led by a “committee” set up by Olten and Grimm (centrists), called a general strike merely for the purpose of generating pressure to achieve democratic reforms. The professional employees, who had enjoyed the workers’ help in October, did not take part in the strike. The bourgeoisie, as elsewhere, repressed the strike and granted some concessions. In its Congresses of October 1918 and March 1919, the Communist Party was severely critical of the Socialist Party (Platten). The Communist Party participated in the elections of August 1919. Even so, the “Swiss ultra-leftists” were criticized by the Communist International in September 1919.9 The Swiss Socialist Party, having undergone a split, sought extra-parliamentary means of struggle and provided itself with a flexible organizational structure, the Workers Union. During general strikes in Basel and Zurich, on July 31 and August 5, 1919, five workers were killed. The Socialist Party decided to join the Communist International, only to be expelled later, in December 1920, when confronted with the 21 Conditions. A minority within the party (8,000 militants) would eventually, in March 1921, join the “Old Communists” (Altkommunisten) with Herzog, “who defended left communist positions (rejection of parliamentarism and participation in elections, propaganda for the formation of soviets)”.10
    According to Humbert-Droz, a French-speaking Swiss communist, before the Second World Congress, the German-speaking Swiss Communist Party “adopted, on the issues of the trade unions and parliamentarism, positions which were quite similar to those of the German KAP”.11 Herzog intervened at the Second Congress against parliamentarism. Later, he subscribed to the Theses of this Congress, in its essential points. In January 1921, he conceded great importance to the trade unions, future “directing organs of communist production”.12 He reproached the Russians for remaining “indifferent” in the face of “all the maneuvers of the center”. He accepted revolutionary parliamentarism, with the proviso that he could change his opinion in the event that it should prove to be opposed to revolutionary interests.
    http://libcom.org/library/chapter-17...communist-left

    This quote from the ICC indicates that the class struggle was pretty active there also:

    In Switzerland on the same 13th of November [1918 - L], there was a general strike of 400,000 workers in protest against the use of troops against a demonstration celebrating the 1st anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The workers' newspaper "Volksrecht" proclaimed "Resist until the last. We are strengthened by the revolution in Austria and Germany, the workers' action in France, the movement of the proletariat in Holland and, above all, through the revolution in Russia".
    But here also the "Socialists" and the unions called for an end to the struggle in order "not to place the unarmed masses under the guns of the enemy". It was precisely the disorientation and division that they created in the proletariat, that opened the doors to the terrible repression that defeated the "great strike". The "pacifist" Swiss government militarized the railways, organized counter-revolutionary guards, flattened workers' centers without any scruples. Hundreds of workers were arrested, and the
    death penalty introduced for "Subversives".
    http://en.internationalism.org/node/3623



    Probably some left wing elements within the Communist Party of Switzerland remained more or less true to the same positions, for in the 1947 Internationalist congress in Brussels, a Swiss council communist group called Klassenkampf (Class Struggle) also participated (http://en.internationalism.org/node/2967 http://en.internationalism.org/ir/20...947_conference)
  4. Paulappaul
    Paulappaul
    sought extra-parliamentary means of struggle and provided itself with a flexible organizational structure, the Workers Union. During general strikes in Basel and Zurich, on July 31 and August 5, 1919, five workers were killed. The Socialist Party decided to join the Communist International, only to be expelled later, in December 1920, when confronted with the 21 Conditions. A minority within the party (8,000 militants) would eventually, in March 1921, join the “Old Communists” (Altkommunisten) with Herzog, “who defended left communist positions (rejection of parliamentarism and participation in elections, propaganda for the formation of soviets)
    I wonder if the Workers' Union was similar to the AAUD in Germany. Were the "Old Communists" a party or an extra parliamentary organization?