Left communism, or thecommunist left, is a position held by theleft wing ofcommunism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused byMarxist–Leninists andsocial democrats.^[1] Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authenticallyMarxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by theCommunist International after itsBolshevization byJoseph Stalin and during itssecond congress.^[2][3][4]

There have been two primary currents of left communism sinceWorld War I, namely the Italian left and the Dutch–German left. The Italian left tends to followBordigism and considers itself to beLeninist, but denounces Marxism–Leninism as a form ofbourgeoisopportunism materialized in theSoviet Union under Stalin. The Dutch–German left split fromVladimir Lenin prior to Stalin's rule and supports a firmlycouncil communist andlibertarian Marxist viewpoint as opposed to the Italian left which emphasised the need for an international revolutionary party.^[5] The Italian current of left communism was historically represented by theItalian Socialist Party and theCommunist Party of Italy but today is embodied in theInternationalist Communist Party of Italy,International Communist Party, and theInternational Communist Current. The Dutch–German current of left communism was historically represented by theCommunist Workers' Party of Germany,General Workers' Union of Germany, and theCommunist Workers' International.

Left communism differs from most other forms of Marxism in believing that communists should not participate in democratic elections, and some argue against participating in trade unions. However, many left communists split over their criticism of theBolsheviks.Council communists criticised the Bolsheviks for use of the party form and emphasised a more autonomous organisation of the working class, without political parties.

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 includedHerman Gorter,Antonie Pannekoek,Otto Rühle,Karl Korsch,Amadeo Bordiga andPaul Mattick.^[2] Other proponents of left communism have includedOnorato Damen,Jacques Camatte, andSylvia Pankhurst. Later prominent theorists are shared with other tendencies such asAntonio Negri, a founding theorist of theautonomist tendency.^[6]

Two major traditions can be observed within left communism, namely theDutch–German current and the Italian current.^[7] The political positions those traditions share are opposition topopular fronts, to many kinds ofnationalism and nationalliberation movements and toparliamentarianism.

The historical origins of left communism come fromWorld War I.^[8] Most left communists are supportive of theOctober 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 aproletarian orsocialist nature, arguing that it had simply carried out the tasks of thebourgeois revolution by creating astate capitalist system.^[9]

Left communism first came into focus as a distinct movement around 1918. Its essential features were a stress on the need to build acommunist party orworkers' council entirely separate from thereformist andcentrist elements who "betrayed the proletariat", opposition to all but the most restricted participation inelections and an emphasis on militancy. Apart from this, there was little in common between the two wings. Only the Italians accepted the need for electoral work at all for a very short period of time which they later vehemently opposed, attracting criticism fromVladimir Lenin in"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.^[10]

Left Bolshevism emerged in 1907 as theVpered group challengedVladimir Lenin's perceivedauthoritarianism and parliamentarianism. The group includedAlexander Bogdanov,Maxim Gorky,Anatoly Lunacharsky,Mikhail Pokrovsky,Grigory Aleksinsky, Stanislav Volski andMartyn Liadov. TheOtzovists, or Recallists, advocated the recall ofRSDLP representatives from theThird Duma. Bogdanov and his allies accused Lenin and his partisans of promotingliberal democracy through "parliamentarism at any price".^[11]: 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 theRussian Civil War and as the policies ofWar Communism satisfied their demands for a radical transformation of the economy. TheMilitary Opposition and theWorkers' Opposition inherited some characteristics and members of the Left Bolsheviks, as didGavril Myasnikov'sWorkers Group of the Russian Communist Party during the debates on theNew Economic Policy and the succession to Lenin. Most Left Bolsheviks were affiliated with theLeft Opposition in the 1920s, and were expelled from the party in 1927 and later killed duringJoseph Stalin'sGreat Purge.^[12]

Left communism emerged in both countries together and was always very closely connected. Among the leading theoreticians of the more powerful German movement wereAntonie Pannekoek andHerman Gorter, and German activists found refuge in the Netherlands after theNazis came to power in 1933. The critique ofsocial democraticreformism can be traced back before World War I since in the Netherlands a revolutionary wing of social democracy had broken from the reformist party even before the war and had built links with German activists. By 1915, theAntinational Socialist Party was founded byFranz Pfemfert and was linked toDie Aktion.^[13] After the beginning of theGerman Revolution in 1918, a leftist mood could be found among sections of the communist parties of both countries. In Germany, this led directly to the foundation of theCommunist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) after its leading figures were expelled from theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD) byPaul Levi. This development was mirrored in the Netherlands and on a smaller scale inBulgaria, where the left communist movement was to mimic that of Germany.

When it was founded, the KAPD included some tens of thousands of revolutionaries. However, it had broken up and practically dissolved within a few years. This was because it was founded on the basis of revolutionary optimism and a purism that rejected what became known as frontism.Frontism entailed working in the same organisations as reformist workers. Such work was seen by the KAPD as unhelpful at a time when the revolution was thought to be an imminent event and not merely a goal to be aimed at. This led the members of the KAPD to reject working in the traditionaltrade unions in favour of forming their ownrevolutionary unions. Theseunionen, so called to distinguish them from the official trade unions, had 80,000 members in 1920 and peaked in 1921 with 200,000 members, after which they declined rapidly. They were also organisationally divided from the beginning, with those unionen linked to the KAPD forming theGeneral Workers' Union of Germany (AAUD) and those inSaxony aroundOtto Rühle who opposed the conception of a party in favour of a unitary class organisation being organised as theGeneral Workers' Union – Unified Organization (AAUE).

The KAPD was unable to reach even its founding congress prior to suffering its first split when the so-called National Bolshevik tendency aroundFritz Wolffheim andHeinrich Laufenberg appeared (this tendency has no connection withmodern political tendencies in Russia which use the same name). More seriously, the KAPD lost most of its support very rapidly as it failed to develop lasting structures. This also contributed to internecine quarrels and the party actually split into two competing tendencies known as the Essen and Berlin tendencies to the historians of the left. The recently establishedCommunist Workers International (KAI) split on exactly the same lines as did the tinyCommunist Workers' Party of Bulgaria. The only other affiliates of the KAI were theCommunist Workers Party of Britain led bySylvia Pankhurst, theCommunist Workers' Party of the Netherlands (KAPN) in the Netherlands and a group in Russia. The AAUD split on the same lines and it rapidly ceased to exist as a real tendency within the factories.

Left communists generally supported the Bolshevikseizure of power in October 1917 and entertained enormous hopes in the founding of theCommunist International, or Comintern. In fact, they controlled the first body formed by the Comintern to coordinate its activities inWestern Europe, the Amsterdam Bureau. However, this was little more than a very brief interlude and the Amsterdam Bureau never functioned as a leadership body for Western Europe as was originally intended. The Vienna Bureau of the Comintern may also be classified as left communist, but its personnel were not to evolve into either of the two historic currents that made up left communism. Rather, the Vienna Bureau adopted theultra-left ideas of the earliest period in the history of the Comintern.

Left communists supported theRussian Revolution, but did not accept the methods of the Bolsheviks. Many of the Dutch–German tradition adoptedRosa Luxemburg's criticism as outlined in her posthumously published essay entitledThe Russian Revolution. The Italian left communists did not at the time accept any of these criticisms and both currents would evolve.

To a considerable degree, Lenin's well knownpolemicLeft-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder^[10] is an attack on the ideas of the emerging left communist currents. His main aim was to polemicise with currents moving towards pure revolutionary tactics by showing them that they could remain based on firmly revolutionary principles while utilising a variety of tactics. Therefore, Lenin defended the use of parliamentarism and working within the official trade unions.

As theKronstadt rebellion occurred at a time when the debate on tactics was still raging within the Comintern, it has been wrongly seen as being left communist by some commentators. In fact, the left communist currents had no connection with the rebellion, although they did rally to its support when they learned of it. In later years, the German–Dutch tradition in particular would come to see the suppression of the revolt as the historic turning point in the evolution of the Russian state after October 1917.

Many small currents to the left of the mass communist parties collapsed at the beginning ofWorld War II and the left communists were initially silent too. Despite having foreseen the war more clearly than some other factions, when it began they were overwhelmed. Many were persecuted by either German Nazism or Italian fascism. Leading militants of the communist left such as Mitchell, who was Jewish, were to die in theBuchenwald concentration camp.

Meanwhile, the finalcouncil communist groups in Germany had disappeared in the maelstrom and the International Communist Group (GIK) in the Netherlands was moribund. The formercentrist group led byHenk Sneevliet (theRevolutionary Socialist Workers Party, RSAP) transformed itself into theMarx–Lenin–Luxemburg Front. In April 1942, its leadership was arrested by theGestapo and killed. The remaining activists then split into two camps as some turned to Trotskyism forming the Committee of Revolutionary Marxists (CRM) while the majority formed the CommunistenBond-Spartacus. The latter group turned tocouncil communism and was joined by most members of the GIK.

In 1941, the Italian fraction was reorganised in France and along with the new French Nucleus of the Communist Left came into conflict with the ideas which the fraction had propagated from 1936, namely of the social disappearance of theproletariat and localised wars and so on. These ideas continued to be defended by Vercesi in Brussels. Gradually, the left fractions adopted positions drawn from German left communism. They abandoned the conception that the Russian state remained in some way proletarian and also dropped Vercesi's conception of localised wars in favour of ideas onimperialism inspired byRosa Luxemburg. Vercesi's participation in aRed Cross committee was also fiercely contested.

The strike at FIAT in October 1942 had a huge impact on the Italian fraction, which was deepened by the fall of Mussolini's regime in July 1943. The Italian fraction now saw a pre-revolutionary situation opening in Italy and prepared to participate in the coming revolution. In 1943 theInternationalist Communist Party was founded byOnorato Damen andLuciano Stefanini, amongst others. By 1945 the party had 5,000 members all over Italy with some supporters in France, Belgium and the US.^[14] It published aManifesto of the Communist Left to the European Proletariat, which called upon workers to put class war before national war.^[15]

In France, revived by Marco in Marseilles, the Italian fraction now worked closely with the new French fraction, which was formally founded in Paris in December 1944. However, in May 1945 the Italian fraction, many of whose members had already returned to Italy, voted to dissolve itself so that its militants could integrate themselves as individuals into theInternationalist Communist Party. The conference at which this decision was made also refused to recognise the French fraction and expelled Marco from their group.

This led to a split in the French fraction and the formation of theGauche Communiste de France (GCF) by the French fraction led by Marco. The history of the GCF belongs to the post-war period. Meanwhile, the former members of the French fraction who sympathised with Vercesi and the Internationalist Communist Party formed a new French fraction which published the journalL'Etincelle and was joined at the end of 1945 by the old minority of the fraction who had joinedL'Union Communiste in the 1930s.

One other development during the war years merits mention at this point. A small grouping of German and Austrian militants came close to left communist positions in these years. Best known as the Revolutionary Communist Organisation, these young militants were exiles fromNazism living in France at the start of World War II and were members of the Trotskyist movement but they had opposed the formation of theFourth International in 1938 on the grounds that it was premature. They were refused full delegates' credentials and only admitted to the founding conference of the Youth International on the following day. They then joinedHugo Oehler's International Contact Commission for the Fourth (Communist) International and in 1939 were publishingDer Marxist inAntwerp.

With the beginning of the war, they took the name Revolutionary Communists of Germany (RKD) and came to define Russia as state capitalist in agreement with Ante Ciliga's bookThe Russian Enigma. At this point, they adopted a revolutionary defeatist position on the war and condemned Trotskyism for its critical defence of Russia (which was seen by Trotskyists as adegenerated workers' state). After the fall of France, they renewed contact with militants in the Trotskyist milieu in Southern France and recruited some of them into theCommunistes Revolutionnaires (CR) in 1942. This group became known asFraternisation Proletarienne in 1943 and thenL'Organisation Communiste Revolutionnaire in 1944. The CR and RKD were autonomous and clandestine, but worked closely together with shared politics. As the war ran its course, they evolved in a councilist direction while also identifying more and more with Luxemburg's work. They also worked with the French Fraction of the Communist Left and seem to have disintegrated at the end of the war. This disintegration was sped no doubt by the capture of leading militant Karl Fischer, who was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was to participate in writing theDeclaration of the Internationalist Communists of Buchenwald when the camp was liberated.

The year 1952 signalled the end of mass influence on the part of Italian left communism as its sole remaining representative, the Internationalist Communist Party, split in two sections: the group led by Bordiga took the nameInternational Communist Party, while the group around Damen retained the nameInternationalist Communist Party. The Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) dissolved in the same year.^{[citation needed]} Left communists entered a period of almost constant decline from this point onwards, although they were somewhat rejuvenated by theevents of 1968.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of left communism ideological currents existed in China during theGreat Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). For example, the Hunan rebel group theShengwulian argued for "smashing" the existing state apparatus and establishing a "People's Commune of China" based on the democratic ideals of theParis Commune.^[16]

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.^[17] A tendency calledcommunization 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.^[18] Outside of France, various small left communist groups emerged, predominantly in the leading capitalist countries.^{[19][20][21][22]} In the late 1970s and early 1980s theInternationalist Communist Party initiated a series of conferences of the communist left to engage those new elements, also attended by theInternational Communist Current.^[23] As a result of these, in 1983 the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (later renamed as the Internationalist Communist Tendency) was established by theInternationalist Communist Party and the BritishCommunist Workers' Organisation.^[24]

Prominent post-1968 proponents of left communism have includedPaul Mattick andMaximilien Rubel. Prominentleft communist groups existing today include theInternational Communist Party, theInternational Communist Current and theInternationalist Communist Tendency.^[25] 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 theworkerist andautonomist movements in Italy; Kolinko, Kurasje, Wildcat;^[26] Subversion and Aufheben in England;Théorie Communiste, Echanges et Mouvements and Démocratie Communiste in France; TPTG^[27] and Blaumachen^[28] in Greece; Kamunist Kranti in India; and Collective Action Notes and Loren Goldner in the United States.

• Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils (2007) (includes texts byHerman Gorter,Antonie Pannekoek,Sylvia Pankhurst andOtto Rühle). St. Petersburg, Florida: Red and Black Publishers.ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8.
• Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Writing. Allison & Busby, 1984.
• Pannekoek, Anton.Workers Councils. AK Press, 2003. Introduction byNoam Chomsky
• The International Communist Current, itself a left communist grouping, has produced a series of studies of what it views as its own antecedents. In particular, the book on the Dutch–German current, which is by Philippe Bourrinet (who later left the ICC), contains an exhaustive bibliography.
  • The Italian Communist Left 1926–1945 (ISBN 1897980132).
  • The Dutch-German Communist Left (ISBN 1899438378).
  • The Russian Communist Left, 1918–1930 (ISBN 1897980108).
  • The British Communist Left, 1914–1945 (ISBN 1897980116).
• Also of interest is volume 5 number 4 of Spring 1995 of the journalRevolutionary History. "Through Fascism, War and Revolution: Trotskyism and Left Communism in Italy".
• In addition, there is a good deal of material published on the Internet in various languages. A useful starting point is theLeft Communism collection published on theMarxists Internet Archive.