Rosa Luxemburg a fondé le Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) dans l’hiver 1918-1919. Peu de temps après, elle était assassinée. Elle fut ensuite largement célébrée au sein du parti. Néanmoins, ses idées touchant la praxis politique du KPD ont donné lieu à de vifs débats – en particulier sa conception de la “realpolitik révolutionnaire”. Dès le congrès de foundation du parti, on a assisté à des affrontements sur les questions de la cooperation avec les sociaux-démocrates, de l’engagement dans les syndicats, et (...) de la participation aux élections legislatives – une aile gauche influente rejetant les trois. Ces conflits perdurèrent tout au long de l’année 1919. Le leader du parti, Paul Lévi, se voyait lui-même comme le gardien de l’héritage politique de Rosa Luxemburg, qu’il ne parvint à préserver qu’au prix d’une scission du parti. Cet article suit le développement du KPD dans la première année qui suivit la mort de Luxemburg, et cherche à éclairer le lien entre les différentes positions présentes au sein du parti et la praxis de l’organisation. (shrink)

This is a translation and critical edition of two documents on the Kapp Putsch and the origins of the united-front policy in the German Communist Party. The documents were written by the kpd leader Paul Levi and their titles and dates are, respectively: ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’ and ‘Open Letter of the Zentrale of the United Communist Party of Germany’. They are a documentary appendix to our essay ‘Paul Levi and the Origins of (...) the United-Front Policy in the Communist International’, published in this issue of Historical Materialism. (shrink)

These two key texts of German Communism appear in English for the first time. Paul Levi's Our Path and What Is the Crime? were the response of the KPD leader to the disastrous 'March Action' of 1921. Over two years, Levi had succeeded in building a mass revolutionary party that drew on the traditions of both Luxemburg and Lenin; this was now over-ridden by a stereotyped Bolshevism enforced by the Comintern's emissaries. In the first text, subtitled 'Against Putschism' and written (...) within days of the attempted coup, Levi criticised the attempt to seize power without the majority-backing of the working class, which had decimated the Party's membership. Its publication led to Levi's exclusion from the Party for breach of discipline, even though his critique of the March Action was shared by Lenin. The second text was delivered verbally to the Central Committee, as an unsuccessful appeal against his expulsion, and the transcript gives a unique flavour of the atmosphere in the KPD leadership at this crucial moment. (shrink)

Despite being ‘one of the most notable leaders of the German Communist movement’, Ernst Meyer remains relatively unknown. Prior to the online publication of the author’s PhD dissertation – an extensive 666-page biography of Meyer – there existed beyond two short biographies – an informative political autobiography from Meyer’s wife Rosa Meyer-Leviné and an essay by Hermann Weber published in 1968 – and some recent texts from the author, no other publications dealing closely with his life and work. Of these, (...) only Meyer-Leviné’s biography has been published in English. Meyer played a major role in the left wing of the German labour movement, beginning in 1908 when he joined the German Social-Democratic Party until his death over twenty years later. A friend and collaborator of Rosa Luxemburg, he was also one of the founding and leading members of the International Group and its successor, the Spartacus League, in which the radical, anti-war wing of Social Democracy organised itself after the outbreak of World War i. He represented both of these groups as a delegate to the international conferences of anti-war socialists at Zimmerwald and Kienthal. Elected to the kpd’s Zentrale at the party’s founding conference, Meyer remained a member of the leadership almost continuously in the years to come, occupying various leading positions. He also represented the party at the Second and Fourth World-Congresses of the Communist International. (shrink)

The origins of the Transitional Programme in Trotsky’s writings have been traced in the secondary literature. Much less attention has been paid to the earlier origins of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International between its Third and Fourth Congress, and in particular to the contribution of its largest national section outside Russia, the German Communist Party, which had been the origin of the turn to the united-front tactic in 1921. This article attempts to uncover the roots (...) of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International. This task is important because it shows that the Transitional Programme’s slogans are not sectarian shibboleths, but the result of the collective revolutionary experience of the working class during the period under consideration, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the founding conference of the Fourth International. (shrink)

The Weimar-Republic, and the modernist architecture and planning that was born there, is still a contested place, from whence liberals, reactionaries and Marxists can all trace their lineage. Sabine Hake’s Topographies of Class attempts to clarify this contestation, through an interdisciplinary study of the modernist geography of the interwar-capital, Berlin. The book offers many new insights into the Weimar-era city, countering a tendency on the Left to reject the twentieth-century city in favour of the romanticised ‘capitals of the nineteenth century’, (...) with their insurgent proletariat and their lushly ornamented boulevards. Topographies of Class is a reminder that, irrespective of the era’s rejection of ornament and romanticism, it was a site of class-struggle as intense as that of the Paris of the 1870s. However, Hake’s study is dominated by a conception of class as an ‘identity’, akin to the identity-politics of race or gender, leading to an argument centred on the suppression or expression of ‘class-difference’ rather than class-struggle. In the process, her reading of the city’s modernism becomes overly one-sided, as a period of tension between labour and capital is read, under the influence of Manfredo Tafuri and Italian post-Marxist architectural theory, as being governed almost solely by the logic of Fordist capital. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar RepublicBen LiebermanThere are few, if any, ideological terms in the extensive historiography of the Weimar Republic so omnipresent and yet at the same time so obscure as the word “system.” Historical accounts of the Weimar Republic are strewn with references to the “system.” In recent works on the Weimar Republic Hagen Schulze points to the opposition of bourgeois (bürgerliche) (...) parties to the “Weimar ‘system,’ “ Detlev Peukert notes “hatred of ‘the system,’ the political and social order of the Republic”; Knut Borchardt observes the loss of faith in the capacity of “the system” to satisfy expectations; and Hans Mommsen refers to the “political system,” the “party system” and the “parliamentary system.” 1Historians, whatever their other differences, agree that mounting opposition to the System weakened the Weimar Republic, but the usefulness of this observation requires analysis of the meaning or meanings of the System. What, then, was the Weimar System? Surprisingly, many accounts of the Weimar Republic do not even attempt to provide a definition of the System, and the term receives only cursory treatment in several specialized works on ideology of the Weimar era. 2 Anti-System politics does receive attention, but Thomas [End Page 355] Childers’s insightful and pioneering essay on “anti-system politics” concentrates on mobilization against the System rather than on the problem of defining it. 3The best existing analysis of the System in Kurt Sontheimer’s valuable study of anti-democratic thought in the Weimar Republic suggests that historians cannot take the meaning of the term as a given. Sontheimer establishes that the System formed part of the array of anti-democratic thought of the Weimar Republic, but he also notes that the term’s meaning cannot easily be pinned down. The System conveyed a variety of political and economic meanings and ultimately formed a “nationalist counter myth.” 4During the Weimar Republic, attacks against the System emanated from a wide range of sources, most notably from a variety of nationalists as well as from Communists. Nationalists of many leanings detested the System. The DNVP (German National People’s Party), the largest political party of the right for most of the Weimar Republic, hated the System. So, too, did conservative revolutionaries and völkisch (ethnic or racist nationalist) groups including nationalist associations and the National Socialists. At the other end of the political spectrum, attacks against the System also surfaced in the pronouncements of the KPD (German Communist Party). 5No single ideological line of attack doomed the Weimar Republic, but use by an extraordinarily broad range of political groups lent tremendous force to anti-System discourse. Adopted by foes who sometimes agreed on little else, the System was the targets of repeated attacks spread across the German political spectrum and called into question Weimar legitimacy. Analyzing this broad pattern of use raises several tasks. As a prelude to investigating anti-System terminology, it is necessary to map out the patterns of use of the System during the Weimar Republic. The very ability of rival groups to adopt anti-System suggests that the System incorporated varied meanings.Beyond investigating the meaning or meanings of the System, an analysis of anti-System terminology should also explore the appeal and influence of anti-System terminology. Why did such a broad range of groups adopt anti-System discourse, and how did acceptance of anti-System terminology help to discredit the Weimar Republic and designate alternatives for Germany’s future? [End Page 356]Describing Weimar’s perceived failings, anti-System terminology simultaneously provided a partial guide to a presumably-better Germany without the System. The System came to envelop many institutions of German public life, but attention should also be paid to spaces left unoccupied by the System. What, if any, institutions or structures of public life were left untainted by the broad wave of attacks against the System? If the hated System could be swept away, what would be left in its place? It is noteworthy that the many enemies of the System generally desired a strong state.Exploring the effects of broad attacks against the System, analysis of the System should also... (shrink)

The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) first coined the united-front policy in 1921, representing a promising effort to bolster Communist influence in the workers’ movement of that country. As the first part of the article shows, the KPD recruited large numbers of new members and significantly improved its electoral returns as a result. Despite this success, however, the party only pursued the united-front policy in two phases (1921–3 and 1926). As illustrated in the second part of the article, the KPD (...) bid farewell to the united front as ‘Stalinisation’ began to set in during the Weimar Republic’s final years – with lethal consequences, as its abandonment decisively abetted the victory of German fascism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 14-37.