"This work is a revised and English translation from the Italian edition, entitled Alle origini del comunismo dei consigli. Storia della sinistra marxista olandese, published by Graphos publishers in Genoa in 1995."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Introduction -- Origins and Formation of the ‘Tribunist’ Current (1900–14) -- Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International -- The Dutch Tribunist Current and the First World-War (1914–18) -- The Dutch Left in the Comintern (1919–20) -- Gorter, the KAPD and the Foundation of the Communist Workers’ International (1921–7) -- The Group of International Communists: From Left-Communism to Council-Communism -- The Birth of the GIC (1927–33) -- Towards a New Workers’ Movement? The Record of Council-Communism (1933–5) -- Towards State-Capitalism: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, Democracy, Stalinism, Popular Fronts and the ‘Inevitable War’ (1933–9) -- The Dutch Internationalist Communists and the Events in Spain (1936–7) -- From the ‘Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front’ to the Communistenbond Spartacus (1940–42) -- The Communistenbond Spartacus and the Council-Communist Current (1942–68) -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Further Reading -- Addresses of Archival Centres -- Acronyms -- Index.

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The Dutch-German Communist Left, represented by the German KAPD-AAUD, the Dutch KAPN and the Bulgarian Communist Workers Party, separated from the Comintern (1921) on questions like electoralism, trade-unionism, united fronts, the one-party state and anti-proletarian violence. It attracted the ire of Lenin, who wrote his Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder against the Linkskommunismus , while Herman Gorter wrote a famous response in his pamphlet Reply to Lenin . The present volume provides the most substantial history to date of this tendency in the twentieth-century Communist movement. It covers how the Communist left, with the KAPD-AAU, denounced 'party communism' and 'state capitalism' in Russia; how the German left survived after 1933 in the shape of the Dutch GIK and Paul Mattick’s councils movement in the USA; and also how the Dutch Communistenbond Spartacus continued to fight after 1942 for the world power of the workers councils, as theorised by Pannekoek in his book Workers’ Councils (1946).

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