council communism

Theses on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution (KAPD, 1921)

The KAPD’s Theses on the Party were written in July 1921 to be discussed not only in the party but within the Communist International.

1. It is the historical task of the proletarian revolution to bring the disposal of the wealth of the earth into the hands of the working masses, to put an end to the private ownership of the means of production, thus rendering impossible the existence of a separate, exploiting, ruling class.

Schwab, Alexander aka Sachs, 1887 -1943

A short biography of council communist and organiser of underground networks, Alexander Schwab, who died in a Nazi concentration camp.

Born on the 5th July 1887, at Stuttgart, Alexander Schwab was the son of a choir master. He studied at the Universities of Rostock, Jena, Heidelberg and Freiburg in philosophy, ancient languages, political economy and sociology. He was a member of the Free Students movement.

Weiland, Alfred, 1906-1978

Alfred Weiland

A short biography of council communist, organiser of underground network, Alfred Weiland, kidnapped by the East German state in the post war period

Alfred Weiland was born on 7th August 1906 in the Moabit district of Berlin. He apprenticed as a fitter. He later worked as a telegraph worker.

In 1925 he was for a short time a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) which in Berlin had a more “left” outlook than elsewhere. Soon after he joined the communist KAPD and AAU.

Communism - Story of the Communist Party - Guy A. Aldred

Guy A. Aldred

Aldred's summary of the development of the official communist movement and of its external radical communist critics contains a wealth of detail.

[b]Published during World War II, it illustrates how Russian political intervention in China and Europe served Russian foreign policy interests and so worked against the possibilities of proletarian revolution.

Lenin’s Infantile Disorder. . .and the Third International

Franz Pfempfert comments on Lenin's infamous pamphlet, Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

I

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution - Otto Ruhle

Workers from the FAUD

Written in 1924, this pamphlet charts the development of the Russian and German revolutions, and attempts to point forward from the failure of these two major events, analysing the role of the parties and the trade unions in their respective failures.

This online version taken from http://www.marxists.org

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution

1 The Bourgeois Revolutions

Programme of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), 1920

Plakat der KPD zur Reichstagswahl vom 6. Juni 1920.

May 1920 programme of the party, with appended background and information notes

Preface

Council Communism & The Critique of Bolshevism

Cajo Brendel

Cajo Brendel on council communism and Bolshevism.

Council Communism & The Critique of Bolshevism

Preliminaries on councils and councilist organization - René Riesel

A look at workers' councils and the historical contexts in which they were created. A useful analysis - which challenges some aspects of the standard anarchist analysis of the events in Spain during the 1936 Revolution.

Bernard Reichenbach:The KAPD in retrospect - An interview with a member of the Communist Workers Party of Germany

A former member of the anti-parliamentary, councilist KAPD describes his experiences of the German Revolution, his time spent in Moscow amongst the Bolsheviks and the difficulties faced in a revolutionary situation.

Published in Revolutionary History, Vol. 5, No. 2 Spring 1994.

We have omitted the footnotes from this text as they are mainly short biographies of people in the text. This interview first appeared in Solidarity Vol. 6 no.2 when Reichanbach was a militant in the anti-parliamentary Left in Germany. He was interviewed by Rudi Dutschke (RH)

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