The Communist Workers' Party of Germany (; KAPD) was an anti-parliamentarian and left communist party that was active in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

during the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

. It was founded in 1920 in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

as a split from the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...

(KPD). Originally the party remained a sympathising member of the

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

. 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 the Communist Workers International. The Entschiedene Linke joined the KAPD in 1927.

History

The roots of the KAPD lie in the left-wing split from the

Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany ( , SPD ) is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together w ...

(SPD), calling itself the International Socialists of Germany (ISD). The ISD consisted of elements which were to the left of the

Spartacus League The Spartacus League () was a Marxism, Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. It was founded in August 1914 as the International Group by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and other members of the So ...

Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg ( ; ; ; born Rozalia Luksenburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary and Marxist theorist. She was a key figure of the socialist movements in Poland and Germany in the early 20t ...

and

Karl Liebknecht Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; ; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German politician and revolutionary socialist. A leader of the far-left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Liebknecht was a co-founder of both ...

. The Spartacists and the ISD entered the

Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (, USPD) was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of anti-war members of t ...

(USPD), the

centrist Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policie ...

splinter of the SPD, in 1915 as an autonomous tendency within the party. The left wing of the USPD, consisting of Spartacists and ultra-left council communists went on to form the

(KPD) in 1918. In 1920, the ultra-lefts of this party, mainly consisting of council communist members whose origins lay in the ISD, split from it to form the KAPD.

Founding Conference, 4–5 April, 1920 Berlin

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 under

Paul Levi Paul Levi (; 11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After bein ...

. Their main goal was an immediate abolition of bourgeois democracy and the constitution of a dictatorship 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 with

democratic centralism Democratic centralism is the organisational principle of most communist parties, in which decisions are made by a process of vigorous and open debate amongst party membership, and are subsequently binding upon all members of the party. The co ...

, participation in elections, and activism within reformist trade unions, unlike the KPD. The Dutch communist theoreticians

Anton Pannekoek Antonie "Anton" Pannekoek (; 2 January 1873 – 28 April 1960) was a Dutch astronomer, historian, philosopher, Marxist theorist, and socialist revolutionary. He was one of the main theorists of council communism (). Early life Anton was born ...

and

Herman Gorter Herman Gorter (; 26 November 1864 – 15 September 1927) was a Dutch poet and council communist theoretician. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers, a highly influential group of Dutch writers who worked together in Amsterdam in the 1880 ...

played an important role within the KAPD; they had, on the model of the KAPD, formed the Communist 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. The origins of the KAPD's establishment lay in the

Kapp Putsch The Kapp Putsch (), also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch (), was an abortive coup d'état against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to ...

. 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 the Bielefeld Agreement of 24 March 1920 the KPD had consented to the disarmament of the

Ruhr Red Army The Ruhr Red Army or Red Ruhr Army () was a paramilitary of 50,000 to 80,000 left-wing workers that fought in the Ruhr uprising in Weimar Germany from 13 March to 6 April 1920. The Ruhr Red Army was formed in Germany's Ruhr region in reaction ...

. 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 the

General Workers' Union of Germany The General Workers' Union of Germany (; AAUD) was a factory organisation formed following the German Revolution of 1918–1919 in opposition to the traditional trade unions. The AAUD was formed by the left communists in the Communist Workers' ...

(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.

First Ordinary Party Congress, 1–4 August 1920

The Congress was held in the ''Zum Prälaten'' restaurant, Berlin. In August 1920, the founding members of the Hamburg branch were expelled,

Heinrich Laufenberg Heinrich Laufenberg (19 January 1872 – 3 February 1932) was a leading German communist and one of the first to develop the idea of National Bolshevism. Laufenberg was a history academic by profession and was also known by the pseudonym Karl Erle ...

and Fritz Wolffheim, who had advocated National Bolshevist ideas. Two months later another founding member,

Otto Rühle Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle (; 23 October 1874 – 24 June 1943) was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First World War, First and Second World Wars as well as a Council communism, council communist theorist. Early years Otto was ...

, was expelled. From 1920 to 1921 the KAPD was a coopted member of the

Third International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internation ...

. In 1921 the KAPD cooperated again with the KPD during the

March Action The March Action ( or , i.e. "The March battles in Central Germany") was a failed communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communi ...

. 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 around Alexander Schwab,

Arthur Goldstein Arthur Goldstein (18 March 1887 in Lipine, German Empire – 1943 in Auschwitz, German-occupied Poland) was a German Jewish journalist and communist politician. Life Goldstein joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1914, and wa ...

Bernhard Reichenbach Bernhard Reichenbach (Berlin, 1888 – London, 1975) was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He was a member of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany and acted as their delegate to the 3rd World Congress of the Com ...

and Karl 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 the

Communist Workers' International The Communist Workers' International (, KAI) or Fourth Communist International was a council communist international. It was founded around the ''Manifesto of the Fourth Communist International'', published by the Communist Workers' Party of ...

, but dissolved in 1927. The Berlin Tendency was the larger and more enduring group, surviving until 1933, when it merged into the Communist Workers' Union.

Affiliated ''unions''

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 organising

workers' councils A workers' council, also called labour council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of poli ...

. A section led by

, based in

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

, split from the AAUD, forming the General Workers' Union of Germany – Unitary Organization (AAUD-E).

Kommunistische Arbeiter Jugend

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.

Relations with the Comintern

The delegates of the KAPD to the

2nd World Congress of the Comintern The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communism, communist and Revolutionary socialism, revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, h ...

were scorned and their speeches were restricted to a mere ten minutes. This was following the publication of

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's '' Left Wing Communism'', which was written as a critique of the left-wing ideas of the KAPD, among other left-communist parties, including the KAPN. The ''Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution'', 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. 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."

Relations with the Italian Communist Left

The German left-communist opposition is sometimes confused with the Italian Communist Left or "Sinistra Comunista", which formed the

Communist Party of Italy The Italian Communist Party (, PCI) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It was established in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy (, PCd'I) on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Part ...

(PCd'I), and is today represented by the International Communist Party among others. While both opposed the Comintern, these two ''lefts'' 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. 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 two ''lefts'' because of fundamental political divergences and stated: ''(...) We agree with Lenin's theses n the Party's roleat the 2nd Congress. (...)''.

Newspapers and journals related to the KAPD

The party published a paper, ''Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung''. It also published a monthly theoretical magazine, '' Der Proletarier'', between 1920 and 1927.

Prominent members of the KAPD

* Jan Appel * Adolf Dethmann *

* Antonie Pannekoek * Franz Jung *

Karl Korsch Karl Korsch (; August 15, 1886 – October 21, 1961) was a German Marxist theoretician and political philosopher. He is recognized as one of the "dissidents" that challenged the Marxism of the Second International of Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhan ...

* Paul Mattick * Franz Pfemfert *

Adam Scharrer Adam Scharrer (13 July 1889, Kleinschwarzenlohe – 2 March 1948, Schwerin) was a German people, German writer. He was born to Johann Scharrer and Margareta Haas. He joined the Communist Workers' Party of Germany in 1920. He remained active in ...

* Karl Schröder * Ernst Schwarz * Fritz Wolffheim

References

External links

KAPD Archive
at

Marxists Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive, also known as MIA or Marxists.org, is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Enge ...

Kurasje - The Council Communist ArchiveLibertarian Communist Library KAPD archive
*Gilles Dauvé / Denis Authier

{{Authority control 1920 establishments in Germany 1933 disestablishments in Germany

Council communist organizations Defunct communist parties in Germany Left communism in Germany Political parties disestablished in 1933 Political parties established in 1920 Political parties in the Weimar Republic Revolutions of 1917–1923