Ultraleftists lamentations

This short text (also available on-line) has the dramatic title "The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against Bolshevism". It was first published in 1939. The author, Otto Rühle, was a German Marxist who had left the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1920 and participated in the founding of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD).

The politics of the KAPD were less authoritarian than those of the official Communist movement, but they were also more sectarian, ineffectual and confused. The KAPD refused to stand in elections or work in the labour unions, instead creating a "revolutionary" workplace organization all its own, the Allgemeine Arbeiter Union (AAU). It's safe to assume that the AAU was really a KAPD double. Rühle soon reached the conclusion that all political parties were obsolete or counter-revolutionary, left the KAPD and founded his own little group, with the impossibly long name Allgemeine Arbeiter Union - Einheitsorganisation (AAU-E).

Lenin was not amused and attacked KAPD and similar "ultralefts" in his famous book "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder". Rühle's hysterical article from 1939 could be seen as a belated rejoinder to the Soviet Russian leader.

As already mentioned, Rühle's piece is rather short and of relatively little interest. The parallels said to exist between Bolshevism and fascism are the usual ones: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, "state capitalism", etc. In Rühle's opinion, Lenin was responsible for creating the system later taken over by Stalin.

The author comes across as bitter and demoralized, claiming that Lenin's tactics led to the defeat of the German revolution. Rühle had met Lenin in Moscow during a Comintern congress, and seems to have grown to hate the man over the years. Since the KAPD and the AAU-E were micro-groups, it's difficult to the take the authors' animus seriously. Does he really believe that the AAU-E could have organized a revolution in Germany? Rühle even claims that when the Nazis banned all Communist literature, they deliberately excepted Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" from the ban!

This edition of Rühle's tirades carries a foreword by Alfredo Bonanno, the notorious insurrectionary anarchist and convicted bank robber. Bonanno pitches his own ideas about democracy really being fascist in disguise, but otherwise says very little. He certainly doesn't say much about Rühle!

When everything is said and done, "The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against Bolshevism" is nothing more than the wounded lamentations of a lonely ultraleft.