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Although I can’t really remember how I made a connection between the 1923 abortive German revolution and the evolution of the “Leninist” organizational model, about 20 years ago I wrote a series of six articles collected under the title “The Comintern and German Communism” that broke with the “heroic Comintern” mythology of the Trotskyist movement. I broke with the illusions of my youth after reading Werner Angress’s 1963 “Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-1923”, which convinced me that the German CP would have been better off if it had simply ignored the Comintern’s advice.
Much of the same story was told by Pierre Broué in his “The German Revolution, 1917-1923” that was published by Haymarket in 2006 although he was a bit more willing to give the Comintern the benefit of the doubt. Written in French in 1971, this was the first English-language translation. Although a life-long Trotskyist, Broué was unsparing in his assessment of the German events. You can read his book online and see for yourself. I have not read it but doubt that there’s anything in it that would encourage socialists today to look back at the early 1920s Comintern, prior to Stalin’s usurpation of power, as a model to emulate.
There were two fiascos that Angress described. The first was the infamous “March Action” of 1921 when the CP went off the deep end, trying to carry out a revolution that most workers were not willing to participate in. This account is contained in three chapters that is linked to here.
So disastrous was this action and so unwilling the CP ultraleft leaders to properly take responsibility for it, that Paul Levi—a critic of the leadership and former party chairman—took the extraordinary measure of writing a public critique that led to his expulsion for “breaking discipline”. His “Our Path: Against Putschism” took no prisoners. Despite being ostracized from the German CP and the Comintern, Lenin incorporated Levi's united front strategy as a way of preempting ultraleft, putschist actions in the future.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2019/06/05/werner-angresss-stillborn-revolution-the-communist-bid-for-power-in-germany-1921-1923-part-four/
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