Left communism

Left communism, or the communist left, describes a range of positions held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices held by Marxist–Leninists, Trotskyists, and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevisation by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress. There have been two primary currents of left communism since World War I, namely the Italian left and the Dutch–German left.

The Italian communist left is primarily made up of the Bordigist current and the Damenite current. These two currents mainly differ on the national question and the role of the communist party during a revolutionary period, with Bordigists considering themselves to be Leninist and Damenites considering themselves to be Luxemburgist. Both currents denounce Marxism–Leninism as a form of bourgeois opportunism materialized in the Soviet Union under Stalin and remained within the Communist International as one fraction until their expulsion. The Italian current of left communism was historically represented by the Italian Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Italy, but today is embodied in the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy, International Communist Party, and the International Communist Current.

The Dutch–German left split from Vladimir Lenin prior to Stalin's rule and supports a firmly council communist viewpoint, as opposed to the Italian left which emphasised the need for an international revolutionary party. The Dutch–German current of left communism was historically represented by the Communist Workers' Party of Germany, General Workers' Union of Germany, and the Communist Workers' International.

Although she was murdered in 1919, before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg has been heavily influential for most left communists, both politically and theoretically.

Proponents of left communism have included Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Karl Korsch, Amadeo Bordiga, Paul Mattick, Onorato Damen, Jacques Camatte, and Sylvia Pankhurst. Later prominent theorists are shared with other tendencies, such as Antonio Negri, a founding theorist of the autonomist tendency.

Early history and overview

Two major traditions can be observed within left communism, namely the Dutch–German current and the Italian current. The political positions those traditions share are opposition to popular fronts, to many kinds of nationalism and national liberation movements and to parliamentarianism.

The historical origins of left communism come from World War I. Most left communists are supportive of the October Revolution in Russia, but retain a critical view of its development. However, some in the Dutch–German current would in later years come to reject the idea that the revolution had a proletarian or socialist nature, arguing that it had simply carried out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution by creating a state capitalist system. The Dutch-German current criticised the Bolsheviks for use of the party form, and emphasised a more autonomous organisation of the working class without political parties. Damenites believe the Bolsheviks substituted the party in place of the class and had an economy of state capitalism. Bordigists begin their critique after the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International and characterize the economy as having developed into "state industrialism".

Left communism first came into focus as a distinct movement around 1918. Its essential features were a stress on the need to build a communist party or workers' council entirely separate from the reformist and centrist elements who "betrayed the proletariat", opposition to all but the most restricted participation in elections and an emphasis on militancy. Apart from this, there was little in common between the two wings. Only the Italians accepted the limited need for electoral work in elections in countries that have not firmly established bourgeois-democratic organs of government, attracting criticism from Vladimir Lenin in "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

The question of parliamentary participation would later contribute to the Internationalist Communist Party split in 1952 with Damenites favoring electoral activity such as with the 1946 Italian general election and 1948 Italian general election, while the Bordigists supported total abstention.

All currents have unique positions regarding trade union work. The Dutch-German current advocates for the immediate construction of revolutionary trade unions and worker organs, while the Damenites support the formation of new mass organizations outside the current trade unions, seeing the trade union form as historically obsolete and impossible to conquer everywhere. Bordigists still see the possibility of reconquering unions, although some currents deem certain unions impossible to agitate within or conquer.

Bordigists are distinct for their insistence on the organizational practice of organic centralism as opposed to democratic centralism, while Damenites adopt the term "dialectical centralism" to describe their practice. The Dutch-German current generally shuns centralism in favor of direct democratic procedures through class conscious workers without political parties.

Russian left communism

Left Bolshevism emerged in 1907 as the Vpered group challenged Vladimir Lenin's perceived authoritarianism and parliamentarianism. The group included Alexander Bogdanov, Maxim Gorky, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Grigory Aleksinsky, Stanislav Volski and Martyn Liadov. The Otzovists, or Recallists, advocated the recall of RSDLP representatives from the Third Duma. Bogdanov and his allies accused Lenin and his partisans of promoting liberal democracy through "parliamentarism at any price".: 8 

The faction largely died out by the end of 1918, as its leaders accepted that much of their program was unrealistic under the circumstances of the Russian Civil War and as the policies of War Communism satisfied their demands for a radical transformation of the economy. The Military Opposition and the Workers' Opposition inherited some characteristics and members of the Left Bolsheviks, as did Gavril Myasnikov's Workers Group of the Russian Communist Party during the debates on the New Economic Policy and the succession to Lenin. Most Left Bolsheviks were affiliated with the Left Opposition in the 1920s, and were expelled from the party in 1927 and later killed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

1952–1968

Examples of left communism ideological currents existed in China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). For example, the Hunan rebel group the Shengwulian argued for "smashing" the existing state apparatus and establishing a "People's Commune of China" based on the democratic ideals of the Paris Commune.

Since 1968

The uprisings of May 1968 led to a large resurgence of interest in left communist ideas in France where various groups were formed and published journals regularly until the late 1980s when the interest started to fade. A tendency called communization was invented in the early 1970s by French left communists, synthesizing different currents of left communism. It remains influential in libertarian marxist and left communist circles today. Outside of France, various small left communist groups emerged, predominantly in the leading capitalist countries. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Internationalist Communist Party initiated a series of conferences of the communist left to engage those new elements, also attended by the International Communist Current. As a result of these, in 1983 the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (later renamed as the Internationalist Communist Tendency) was established by the Internationalist Communist Party and the British Communist Workers' Organisation.

Prominent post-1968 proponents of left communism have included Paul Mattick and Maximilien Rubel. Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Party, the International Communist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency. In addition to the left communist groups in the direct lineage of the Italian and Dutch traditions, a number of groups with similar positions have flourished since 1968, such as the workerist and autonomist movements in Italy; Kolinko, Kurasje, Wildcat; Subversion and Aufheben in England; Théorie Communiste, Echanges et Mouvements and Démocratie Communiste in France; TPTG and Blaumachen in Greece; Kamunist Kranti in India; and Collective Action Notes and Loren Goldner in the United States.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bordiga, Amadeo (1926). The Communist Left in the Third International. Retrieved 23 September 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  2. 1 2 Gorter, Hermann; Pannekoek, Antonie; Pankhurst, Sylvia; Rühle, Otto (2007). Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils. St. Petersburg, Florida: Red and Black Publishers. ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8.
  3. ↑ Bordiga, Amadeo. Dialogue with Stalin. Retrieved 15 May 2019 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  4. ↑ Kowalski, Ronald I. (1991). The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave MacMillan. p. 2. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-10367-6. ISBN 978-1-349-10369-0.
  5. ↑ "The Italian Communist Left - A Brief Internationalist History". Leftcom. 1 July 2009. Retrieved 30 July 2026.
  6. ↑ Bourrinet, Philippe. "The Bordigist Current (1919-1999)". Archived from the original on 20 January 2022.
  7. ↑ Bourrinet, Philippe (1 January 2017). The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68). BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-32593-7.
  8. ↑ Negri, Antonio (1991). Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. Translated by Ryan, Michael. New York: Autonomedia.
  9. ↑ Smeaton, A. (1 August 2003). "Background on the Italian Communist Left, Bordiga and Bordigism". Internationalist Communist. No. 22. Retrieved 17 October 2013 – via Leftcom.
  10. ↑ "Rühle: Revolution Not A Party Affair". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
  11. ↑ Luxemburg, Rosa (1915). The Junius Pamphlet. Retrieved 23 September 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  12. ↑ Fox, Michael S. (Spring 1991). "Ante Ciliga, Trotskii, and State Capitalism: Theory, Tactics, and Reevaluation during the Purge Era, 1935–1939" (PDF). Slavic Review. 50 (1). Cambridge University Press: 127–143. doi:10.2307/2500604. JSTOR 2500604. S2CID 155654843. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2020 – via GeoCities.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. ↑ "Dialogue with Stalin". 1952. Not only are we not in the phase of early socialism, but neither are we in complete State capitalism, that is, an economy in which, although all products are commodities and circulate for money, every product is at the disposal of the State, to the point that from the center the State can fix all equivalence relations, including that of labor power. Even such a State is not economically and politically controllable and conquerable by the working class and functions in the service of Capital rendered anonymous and underground. In any case, Russia is far from such a system, and there we have only a State Industrialism.
  14. ↑ Lenin, V.I. Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Retrieved 17 October 2013 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  15. ↑ "THESES ON PARLIAMENTARISM PRESENTED BY THE COMMUNIST ABSTENTIONIST FRACTION OF THE ITALIAN SOCIALIST PARTY". 6. Possibilities of propaganda, agitation and criticism could be offered by participation in elections and in parliamentary activity during that period when, in the international proletarian movement, the conquest of power did not seem to be a possibility in the very near future, and when it was not yet a question of direct preparation for the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the other hand in a country where the bourgeois revolution is in course of progress and is creating new institutions, Communist intervention in the representative organs can offer the possibility of wielding an influence on the development of events in order to make the revolution end in victory for the proletariat.

    7. The present historical period was opened by the end of the World War with its consequences for the social bourgeois organization, by the Russian Revolution which was the first realization of the conquest of power by the proletariat, and by the constitution of a new International in opposition to the socialdemocracy of the traitors. In this historical period, and in those countries where the democratic regime achieved its formation a long time ago, there is no possibility of using the parliamentary tribune for the communist revolutionary work, and the clarity of propaganda, no less than the efficiency of the preparation for the final struggle for the dictatorship, demand that Communists conduct an agitation for an election boycott by the workers.
  16. ↑ Onorato Damen (1972). "You Can't Build the Party Playing with Paradoxes". The party's participation in the election campaign of 1948 has to be seen and understood in that context: it was not for electoral gains or even slavish application of the theses on revolutionary parliamentarism of the Second Congress of the International. There was only one goal at the bottom of the decision to be "participationists": inserting the party in the electoral mechanism was to enable the organisation to conduct a major battle of political clarification; not to ask for votes but to have the opportunity to show the working masses, in the broadest possible way, the true face of the revolutionary party which the press and propaganda of Togliatti's party sought to defile with accusations and insinuations that it always failed to prove. The occasion was more conducive than ever to face the beast in its very lair[08]. In reality, the party has never been offered, neither before or after, the possibility to frontally and openly attack the Stalinist vulture in the factories, in the biggest industrial complexes, and on the streets, with the consequence of seeing the Stalinist front break every time and the alignment of the most politicised elements, and those most inclined to critical independence, with the internationalists.
  17. ↑ "Characteristic Theses of the Party". 1951. The capitalist State taking on a constantly more evident form of class dictatorship which Marxism has denounced since the beginning, parliamentarism loses necessarily all importance. The elected organs and the parliament of the old bourgeois tradition are no more than survivals. They have no content any longer, only the democratic phraseology subsists and this cannot hide the fact that at the moment of social crises, the State dictatorship is the ultimate resource or capitalism, and that the proletarian revolutionary violence must be directed against this State. In these conditions the Party discards all interest in elections of all kinds and develops no activity in this direction.
  18. ↑ Onorato Damen (1952). "Bordiga: Beyond the Myth". I think that the current corporate union (who cares if fascist, communist or social democratic), due to its essential role in the revival of the capitalist system, is destined to continue until the end of the economic, social and political hardships of a dying capitalism, and will only be defeated when the assault of the revolutionary proletariat brings down the imperialist state. In such a period of advance and struggle for power, grouping of the proletarian forces will not wait for a repeat of the traditional practice of the union, but will face up to the particular problems of power in new mass organisation with a more suitable structure than that of the union (factory councils, or soviets or others, such as occurred in Russia and Germany) and under the direction of the revolutionary party,
  19. ↑ "Outside and Against the Existing Trade Unions". 1979.
  20. ↑ Onorato Damen (1970). "Amadeo Bordiga – Beyond the Myth and the Rhetoric". Organic centralism? Democratic centralism? We would call it dialectical centralism, in greater coherence with the Bordiga of then, who is for us not the best Bordiga but the consistent Bordiga. Dialectical centralism because it starts with pressure from below, even if it is irrational, received and rationalised by the leadership, it returns to the rank and file to be translated into action in a concrete political way.
  21. ↑ Sochor, Z. A. (28 March 1988). Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Cornell University Press. pp. 4–8. ISBN 9780801420887.
  22. ↑ Smele, Jonathan D. (2015). Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 667–668. ISBN 978-1-4422-5280-6.
  23. ↑ Meisner, Maurice J. (1986). Mao's China and after: a history of the People's Republic (A revised and expanded edition of Mao's China ed.). New York. pp. 343–344. ISBN 0-02-920870-X. OCLC 13270932.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  24. ↑ "Archive of French left communist journals after 1952". Archives Autonomies. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
  25. ↑ "On Communisation and Its Theorists". Endnotes. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
  26. ↑ "May 68: the student movement in France and the world". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  27. ↑ Lassou (May 2012). "Contribution to a history of the workers' movement in Africa (v): May 1968 in Senegal". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  28. ↑ Ken (23 March 2008). "1968 in Japan: the student movement and workers' struggles". Internationalism. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  29. ↑ "1968 in Germany (Part 1): Behind the protest movement – the search for a new society". Internationalism. 26 May 2008. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  30. ↑ Bourrinet, Philippe (2000). The "Bordigist" Current (1912-1952). pp. 332–333.
  31. ↑ "Internationalist Communist Tendency". January 2000.
  32. ↑ Bourseiller, Christophe (2003). Histoire générale de l'Ultra-Gauche [General history of the Ultra-Left] (in French). Paris: Editions Denoël. ISBN 2207251632.
  33. ↑ "Wildcat". Wildcat-www.de. 21 September 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
  34. ↑ "Ta paidiá tis galarías" Τα παιδιά της γαλαρίας [The children of the gallery] (in Greek). Tapaidiatisgalarias.org. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
  35. ↑ "Blaumachen – journal". Blaumachen.gr. Retrieved 17 October 2013.

Further reading