Left radicals in Bremen

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The Bremen Left Radicals (often also called Bremen Left ) emerged in 1905 as a radicalization of the Bremen local group of the SPD . During the First World War they were the basis for the International Socialists of Germany (ISD) and the International Communists of Germany . The group merged with the Spartacus group to form the KPD in early 1919 .

History up to the First World War

The mass strike debate and the related theoretical positions of Rosa Luxemburg of 1906 had a strong impact in Bremen. A year earlier, a radicalization process had already taken place under the influence of left-wing teachers. The left wing has since had a majority in the local party. He also dominated the Bremer Bürger-Zeitung , the party newspaper of the local SPD. The current majority of the SPD in Bremen rejected the previous reformism and pleaded for a decisive fight against the bourgeoisie .

In the course of the mass strike debate, the Bremen left-wing radicals had made their position clearer, partly on the basis of the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. In addition to parliamentary work, they also considered extra-parliamentary action to be necessary. On several occasions in the following years, on current occasions, they called on the party leadership in Berlin to initiate such extra-parliamentary actions in vain. The party leadership finally rejected political mass strikes in connection with the protest actions against the Prussian three-class suffrage in 1910. The Bremen party thus came into conflict with the party as a whole.

In this phase of substantive detachment from the party as a whole, the Dutch astronomer and socialist Anton Pannekoek played a central role. In 1909 he came to Bremen to do scientific party education. His own theoretical positions and the Bremen radicals merged. In addition, the radical teacher Johann Knief played a central role within the Bremen radicals. In 1911 he gave up his teaching job and became editor of the Bremer Bürger-Zeitung. Further influence exercised from 1912 Karl Radek and from 1913 Paul Frölich .

Before the First World War, the Bremen left radicals were the organizationally strongest group on the extreme left wing of the SPD. At the party congresses, however, they hardly stood out independently from the group around Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht . At the theoretical level, they, and especially Pannekoek, championed quite independent approaches. In the Neue Zeit between 1911 and 1913 , Pannekoek and Karl Kautsky fought a sharp argument, particularly on the subject of the mass strike.

Pannekoek criticized the Marxist center, to which Kautsky belonged, because it pursued a strategy of exhaustion towards the state and the bourgeoisie and not a strategy of subjugation. Pannekoek (like Rosa Luxemburg in a similar form) accused the center of drifting ever closer to revisionism . There were differences between the Bremen team and Rosa Luxemburg on certain individual issues. In essence, they agreed on the criticism of imperialism and derived from this the need for offensive revolutionary mass actions. The people of Bremen expressed sharp criticism of the full-time apparatus in the party and the free trade unions. Their relatives were identified as the main opponents of mass actions. The importance of parliamentary work was relativized and the Bremen people were increasingly critical of the unions. Experiences from the shipyard workers' strikes in 1910 and 1913 also played a role. During the strikes, the union leadership tried to convey what the Bremen radicals rejected and demanded that the leadership should trust the “revolutionary instinct” of the masses. Pannekoek said: “The mass of fighting workers is revolutionary; the majority of union officials are revisionist. "

This trust in the “independence of the masses” became characteristic of the left-wing radicals in Bremen. On the other hand, it rejected the primacy of organization, as it was particularly widespread among the trade unions. The people of Bremen did not flatly reject parliamentary work, but in terms of gaining power it played a less important role than “direct action by the masses”. In the opinion of the radicals, the trade unions should not do practical work to improve the situation within the capitalist system, but rather train the workers in the class struggle .

They met with fierce resistance in the union camp. In the last few years before the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg and Pannekoek fell out over detailed issues. The left-wing radicals in Bremen failed to get in touch with other radical groups and remained largely isolated.

First World War and Revolution

Only during the First World War did the radical groups converge. Essentially two trends emerged. The Spartacus group gathered around Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring and Rosa Luxemburg and others. The second group published the Rays of Light from 1916 and, a short time later, the Workers' Policy. This group initially consisted of the Bremen left-wing radicals such as Knief, Pannekoek, Frölich and Radek. Since 1915 they called themselves International Socialists of Germany (ISD). However, the Bremer lost influence at times because the Bremer Bürgerzeitung fell to the MSPD , Knief was drafted into the military and Pannekoek was expelled. The Berlin group around Julian Borchardt now played an important role at times before he gave up. Since 1916, the journal Arbeiterpolitik der Bremer Radicals was the most important mouthpiece of the ISD.

The two directions (ISD / Spartakists) differed particularly in their attitude towards the inner-party opposition in the SPD and the USPD. The ISD and its representatives in Bremen spoke out very early on in favor of a split from the SPD and stayed away from the USPD after the breakup. Instead, they wanted to found the International Socialist Party of Germany in Berlin at the end of August 1917. The police did not intervene. The ISD stood on the floor of the Zimmerwald manifesto on Lenin . After the November Revolution, the Bremen Radicals and the ISD gained support. The organization was now called International Communists of Germany. It also gained followers in Hamburg , Hanover , Cuxhaven , Göppingen and elsewhere.

Only after the November Revolution was there a rapprochement with the Spartakusbund and at the turn of the year 1918/19 the merger to form the KPD. At the founding party congress, the opposites came to the open event.

In Bremen itself, the radicals played an important role in the workers 'and soldiers' council and in the formation of the Bremen council republic .

The party leadership of the KPD around Paul Levi attacked the northern German radicals in Hamburg and Bremen. These formed an internal party opposition in the KPD under the leadership of the Bremen radicals, but could not prevail.

literature

  • Hans Manfred Bock : History of left radicalism in Germany. One try. Frankfurt am Main, 1976 pp. 76-93.
  • Gerhard Engel : Johann Knief - an unfinished life. Berlin 2011.