Communist working group

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The Communist Working Group (KAG) was a split from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1921 to 1922 and emerged as a result of criticism of the KPD-led March uprising of 1921. It was led by the former KPD chairman Paul Levi .

Development of the KAG

In the brochure Our Way. Against the putschism , Levi had publicly criticized the putschist tactics of the KPD in the March uprising in 1921 , the so-called "offensive theory". After maintaining this criticism of the German and international leadership of the Communists, he was expelled from the KPD at the instigation of the majority of the Comintern leadership around Zinoviev and the majority of the party executive. The majority of the Reichstag parliamentary group , however, supported Levi's criticism. Lenin regretted that Levi ended up as a “deviator”: “Levi lost his head. He was, however, the only one in Germany who had someone to lose. ”Levi and others who had been expelled from the VKPD or who left the VKPD, such as co-chairman Ernst Däumig as well as Adolph Hoffmann , Bernhard Düwell , Otto Brass and Richard Müller joined the Communist Working Group (KAG ) together. Clara Zetkin , who shared Levi's criticism, resigned from her board positions, but remained in the KPD.

Split up in 1922

The bulk of the investment company merged in spring 1922 again with the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Communist Party had split in December 1918 by the. With the vast majority of the USPD members, a large number of the former KAG members also joined the SPD at the end of 1922, few like Paul Wegmann or Oskar Rusch remained in the “rest of the USPD”. Some KAG members such as the four Reichstag members Georg Berthelé , Emil Eichhorn , Heinrich Malzahn and Hermann Reich did not go this way, the first three returned to the KPD, Reich initially became a guest of the KPD parliamentary group.

KAG No. 2

The short-lived “ultra-left” KPD spin-off founded in 1926 by members of the state parliament Otto Geithner , Agnes Schmidt and Hans Schreyer in Thuringia had no organizational or programmatic continuity with the KAG that existed from 1921 to 1922. In the state elections in 1927 she won 0.47 percent of the vote. Under Geithner there was a collaboration with Karl Korsch for some time . The group later joined the Socialist Workers' Party in Germany .

See also

literature

  • Charlotte Beradt : Paul Levi. A democratic socialist in the Weimar Republic. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1969.
  • Paul Levi: Between Spartacus and Social Democracy. Writings, essays, speeches and letters. Edited and introduced by Charlotte Beradt. European publishing house among others, Frankfurt am Main among others 1969.
  • Bernd Dieter Fritz: The Communist Working Group (KAG) in comparison with the KPO and SAP. A study on the political ideology of German “right” communism during the Weimar Republic. Bonn 1966 (Bonn, University, dissertation, 1966).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charles Bloch: Paul Levi - a symbol of the tragedy of left socialism in the Weimar Republic . In: Walter Grab , Julius H. Schoeps (ed.): Jews in the Weimar Republic . Burg-Verlag, Sachsenheim 1986, ISBN 3-922801-94-3 , pp. 244–262, quotation p. 249.
  2. ↑ Marcel Bois: Communists against Hitler and Stalin. The left opposition of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. An overall picture. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1282-3 , p. 537, (also: Berlin, Technical University, dissertation, 2014).

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