Communist Workers' Party of Germany Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (KAPD) | |
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| Founded | April 1920 (1920-04) |
| Dissolved | March 1933 (1933-03) |
| Split from | Communist Party of Germany |
| Merged into | Communist Workers Union of Germany |
| Newspaper | Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung |
| Membership(1921) | 43,000 |
| Ideology | Left communism Revolutionary socialism Council communism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | Communist Workers' International |
| Colours | Red |
| Party flag | |
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TheCommunist Workers' Party of Germany (German:Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands,KAPD) was an anti-parliamentarian andleft communist party that was active inGermany during theWeimar Republic. It was founded in 1920 inHeidelberg as a split from theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD).[1] Originally the party remained a sympathising member of theCommunist International. In 1922, the KAPD split into two factions, both of whom kept the name, but are referred to as the KAPD Essen Faction and the KAPD Berlin Faction.
The KAPD Essen Faction was linked to theCommunist Workers International. TheEntschiedene Linke joined the KAPD in 1927.[2]
The roots of the KAPD lie in the left-wing split from theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), calling itself theInternational Socialists of Germany (ISD). The ISD consisted of elements which were to the left of theSpartacus League ofRosa Luxemburg andKarl Liebknecht. The Spartacists and the ISD entered theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), thecentrist splinter of the SPD, in 1915 as an autonomous tendency within the party. The left wing of the USPD, consisting of Spartacists andultra-left council communists went on to form theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1918. In 1920, the ultra-lefts of this party, mainly consisting ofcouncil communist members whose origins lay in the ISD, split from it to form the KAPD.[3]
The KAPD was formed on 4 April 1920 by members of the left wing of the KPD who had been excluded at the Heidelberg Party Conference of the KPD (20–23 October 1919) by the central leadership underPaul Levi. Their main goal was an immediate abolition of bourgeois democracy and the constitution of adictatorship of the proletariat, although they decided against a one-party dictatorship in the Russian model. The KAPD especially rejected the Leninist form of organisation along withdemocratic centralism, participation in elections, and activism within reformist trade unions, unlike the KPD. The Dutch communist theoreticiansAnton Pannekoek andHerman Gorter played an important role within the KAPD; they had, on the model of the KAPD, formed theCommunist Workers' Party of the Netherlands (KAPN), which however never attained a similar status to that of the KAPD.
The conference was attended by 11 delegates from Berlin with 24 from further afield, who together represented about 38,000 members.[4]
The origins of the KAPD's establishment lay in theKapp Putsch. In the view of KPD's left wing, this event had shown that the behaviour of the KPD party leadership was synonymous with giving up the revolutionary fight, as the KPD's position on the general strike had changed several times, and in theBielefeld Agreement of 24 March 1920 the KPD had consented to the disarmament of theRuhr Red Army. The Berlin district group on 3 April 1920 called a congress of the left wing. There it was decided to form the KAPD. The delegates, according to estimates, represented 80,000 KPD members. The newly formed party advocated the ending of parliamentary activities, and the active fight against the bourgeois state. In the coming period it worked closely with theGeneral Workers' Union of Germany (AAUD). The main bastions of the party were in Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and East Saxony, all places in which a large part of KPD members switched allegiance to the new party.
The Congress was held in theZum Prälaten restaurant, Berlin. In August 1920, the founding members of the Hamburg branch were expelled,Heinrich Laufenberg andFritz Wolffheim, who had advocatedNational Bolshevist ideas.[5] From 1920 to 1921 the KAPD was a coopted member of theThird International.
In 1921 the KAPD cooperated again with the KPD during theMarch Action. This was triggered by Weimar Republic troops marching into the industrial region of Central Germany, and the KAPD and KPD's fear that the military intended to occupy the factories.
In 1921 a further fragmentation occurred, when parts of the AAUD around Rühle, Franz Pfemfert and Oskar Kanehl broke off from the KAPD and formed the AAUE.
After 1921, when the KAPD still had over 43,000 members, the party's influence declined more and more, and it separated in 1922 into the Berlin Tendency and the Essen Tendency aroundAlexander Schwab,Arthur Goldstein,Bernhard Reichenbach andKarl Schröder. The main reason was the Essen Faction's rejection of participation in workers' struggles in factories, in a situation seen as revolutionary. The Essen Tendency founded theCommunist Workers' International, but dissolved in 1927. The Berlin Tendency was the larger and more enduring group, surviving until 1933, when it merged into theCommunist Workers' Union.[6]
The AAUD was formed to combine factory organisations in opposition to the traditional trade unions, and was affiliated with the KAPD. The German leftists who formed the AAUD considered organising based on trades as being an outmoded form of organisation and instead advocated organising workers based on factories, thus forming the AAUD. KAPD leaders also considered the AAUD appropriate because it broke from the older, less revolutionary workers' organisations. The factory organisations in the AAUD were the basis for organisingworkers' councils.
A section led byOtto Rühle, based inEssen, split from the AAUD, forming theGeneral Workers' Union of Germany – Unitary Organization (AAUD-E).[3]
The youth wing of the party was the Kommunistische Arbeiter Jugend (KAJ) or Communist Workers Youth. They published a "struggle-organ",Rote Jugend, or Red Youth.[7]
The delegates of the KAPD to the2nd World Congress of the Comintern were scorned and their speeches were restricted to a mere ten minutes. This was following the publication ofLenin'sLeft Wing Communism, which was written as a critique of the left-wing ideas of the KAPD, among other left-communist parties, including the KAPN. TheTheses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution,[8] adopted by the 2nd World Congress also explicitly criticize KAPD for their position about the role of the Communist Party. Following the exclusionary attitude shown towards them by the Comintern, the KAPD broke with the International in 1921.[9] Historian E.H. Carr has argued that the 2nd World Congress—to some extent unintentionally and unconsciously—was the first to "establish Russian leadership of Comintern on an impregnable basis."[10]
The German left-communist opposition is sometimes confused with the Italian Communist Left or "Sinistra Comunista", which formed theCommunist Party of Italy (PCd'I), and is today represented by theInternational Communist Party among others. While both opposed the Comintern, these twolefts had fundamental political differences- the role of the party, trade unions, class organisations and parties, anti-parliamentarism in principle, and others. Sinistra held same criticism towards KAPD as the Comintern on 2nd World Congress and these differences were not mended even as the Comintern grew increasingly distant from them both.[11] Amadeo Bordiga, leader of the Sinistra in that time, who met members of KAPD in person in Berlin on his route to Moscow, in a 1926 letter to Karl Korsch he was skeptical of any joint action between the twolefts because of fundamental political divergences and stated:(...) We agree with Lenin's theses [on the Party's role] at the 2nd Congress. (...).[12]
The party published a newspaper,Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung. On Mondays, the weeklyKommunistische Montags-Zeitung was published. It also published a monthly theoretical magazine,Der Proletarier, between 1920 and 1927.[13]
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