Talk:Left communism

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Hi. I have added several links that could be of use for those interested in learning more on the subject. I hope that no one rejects. /Swedish left commie

I hope people don't mind my outline for a contribution to 1952-2004? I firmly feel that the Bordigist style left-communism is limited (see my contributions on the topic to council communism) and doesn't particularly represent the initial broad spread of left-communism in the 1916-23 revolutionary upsurge /let alone/ the theoretical and material underpinnings of the left-communist groups. Today, when the Bordigist positions are largely irrelevent to workers, and radicals, and are barely relevent to workerist communists and anarchists we should recognise the actual use of "left communist" in modern parlance as a way of denoting more worker-oriented, more democratic and anti-cooption communist movements. Where else would you fit Autonomism if seriously approaching the issue?Fifelfoo 23:27, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I do objedct to your outline for the period 1952-2004. When I wrote the orignal article I intended to continue the story to date. And the story relates to the Left Communist traditon of the groups coming from or relating to the KAPD and/or the Italian left associated with Bordiga. if we follow your outline where now am I tpo place this material?

I also object to many of your suggestions for inclusion because they deal with groups and individuals who are not part of the Left communist tradition although they may draw on that tradition. I can only suggest that you create new entries for many of those you mention in your outline. I hope to do some more owrk on the ntry over the course of this week and I'm afraid i shall delete much of your material. I hope you can move it elsewhere.

Perhaps I should also add that a great deal of your material is couched in such a fashion as not to be NPOV which is the polict here. For example you refer to the Bordigists as sectarian. Sure they are but without explanation and used as condemnation such a terminology has no place here.

Jock Haston

Dear Jock,
I actually disagree with you about where to include those other guys, and I'll lay that out below. Just to begin though, I'm quite happy for you to heavily edit the article. You seem to have a more immediate connection with Left Commos than I do. The Bordigists (ICC and ?ICT?) are pretty much sectarian in every instance I've run into them. Given, however, that that means one old fart and a single rack of outdated journals in a single bookstore in Australia, this ain't good. The ICC etc. pubs are, however, objectively sectarian at the moment--that needs to be argued out in more than just one line though. (I never meant it as derrogation, the ICC etc just don't play nice / democratically with other revs at the moment).
Who should be included in Left Communism?
My central argument is that the current LC trends are almost entirely disconnected from the intial "Zimmerwald" style internationalist LCs. As much as current Trots are disconnected from 1904 Bolshevism. Additionally, putting Pannenkoek & the other councilists in an LC article is a bit iffy if we're taking a historicist definition of what LC is. Whereas, if we compare movement in their activities and platform to the activities and platform of the LCs, and note any movement accepting that they draw on the LCs, or arising in their own historical moment as "left" communists, we should have a broader article.
I can accept your argument that the article should deal fundamentally with historically linked LC (the year dot to 1945 section for example). But we should have sub-sections stubbing off to other commo/anarcho movements that claim, or organically took up, LC positions.
Fifelfoo 23:04, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To return to the fundamental point the various tendencies which draw on Left Communism are not in fact Left Communist and rarely make such a claim. And the authentic Left Communist groups such as the ICC and IBRP strongly dispute such claims. A claim which historians of the revolutionary movement would largely agree with in my experience. You refer to the article I've written thus far as having an historicist view of LC and if you wish to use such a terminology then I'll plead guilty. But LC is a tendency, or set of tendencies, that claims to be Marxist and therefore historical materialist. For my part I dispute their clams to properly understand Marx but I concur with with them that Marxism is based on historical materialism and, in your terms, is therefore historicist. Theres no getting around that. That the ICC and IBRP, who are not Bordigist by the way, and the various ICP's are terribly sectarian is of no concern to this entry. The policy of this wiki is that entries are NPOV and it follows that stating that these tendencies are sectarian is not NPOV. What can be said and will be said is tht many consider them to be sectarian. One minor point you raise is the mention of Pannekoek in the article. Your absolutely correct that his work is best discussed in the entry dealing with Council Communism and in a biographical entry. That wil be done I hope in the course of time. One of the themes of this article is that Councilism as a tendency came out of Dutch-German Left Communism which is why specific discussion of that current ends, properly speaking in the aftermath of WW2. The problem is at the moment that I have not completed the section on the German-Dutch LC or the later post WW2 sections. Bear with I'll get to it! Where I agree with you is that the article needs to point oput that LCism has been an influence on a number of other tendencies and currents. This is best done in a concluding section which I'll incorporate into the structure either today or tomorrow depending on the pressure of time. Your also correct that I have some connection with Left Communism in that I'm friendly with one of them and have read their lit in the past. But my main connection with them is as a subject of historical study. I have no time for the groups that stand in the LC tradition today. My assumed name will give you an idea of my politics but only a rough idea I must warn you. Check the entry on the real JH which I mostly wrote btw.

Jock Haston (who was a registered user but fogets passwords and never writes them down)

I've inserted a comment at the end of the article, which I also wish to reproduce here:

Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for whoever wrote all the above sections - his or her knowledge on the history of Left Communism is truly encyclopedic. However, this is too much. The article is an information overload even for one with an interest in politics - not to mention the casual reader! It goes into FAR too much detail over the most obscure little groupings. Most readers will get terminally bored before they finish reading the fist half of the article. A shorter article which presents the history of Left Communism in more general terms and which pays more attention to Left Communist views and ideas would be preferable to what we have now.
User 86. ... was you Jock, right? I agree from an editorial perspective. When we reach a critical mass with subsections they should be spun off into articles. Wikipedia is trying to be an encyclopedia of 'all human knowledge. We shouldn't remove the minutae (though we should say "these groups had less than 10 members" when that's true). But the main article should summarise the entire history, and use the national article style for subarticles (see Australia for an example). How about that idea? I think there's too much here, but that wikipedia can cope with subarticles on history 1930-1945 etc.Fifelfoo 23:12, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No User 86 was not Jock Haston. And I do not like the edits which I consider vandalism. If I get the time I intend to recvert to the earlier version of the article and add more detail. This is for the following reasons. 1 Objections to too much detail are not valid. The wiki can take masses of information and there is no set length for an entry. And I wopuld argue that this entry has an integrity that I think stands on firmer ground than most of the rather dodgy entries in the Communism series. I mean communist states! An idiocy how can there be a communist state? Such a oafish idea should not be in any kind of an encyclopedia. 2 Much of the detail cannot be hived of into separate spin off articles as these tiny groups were intimately related to each other. Separate articles for say the French Fraction of the Communist Left and the Italian Fraction would be meaningless given that they shared ideas and personel. 3 The conception of a Communist Left must be historicaol given the tweo strains that contribute to its formation. Therefore they must be dealt wioth together up until the demise of a specifically German-Dutch Left Communist current circa 1933 and the development of Council Communism out of it. However to reassure you guys things get simpler after 1945 and even more after 1968. The reason for this being that after the war no more than a cursory reference is needed to the German-Dutch current. More importantly after 1968 the current groups begin to take shape and they can be easily dealt with in articles specific to them ie ICC, IBRP, ICP(PC) to mention only the most important. Relatively speaking of course! Numbers in the Left Communist groups will be mentioned at the end. I would have included such data where avaiable in the article but felt it distracted from the flow of developments.

Jock Haston

As I was about to go off line I realised that in fact if you look at the little paragraph on the Revolutionary Communists in the tnry you will find 3 or 4 links to blank articles. But in fact there is so little about this current available in English that any article on them would barely be any longer than the material in this entry and cutting the amount of data on them here would be tantamount to eliminating them altogther. In other words rather than being over burdened with too much detail I believe this article has stripped the story of Left Communism to bare bones already. Any less detail or information and things would be badly distorted. Anyhow I hope to get back to the article in the next 48. But real life politics may make than difficult.

Jock Haston (not a Left Communist)

Contents

[edit] Merger

Should this article by merged with Council communism? --Soman 18:41, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

No. Different phenomena, although elements of one are a subset of the other, and vice-versa. As currently, they should link to each other where relevent. Fifelfoo 02:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
And if they are to exist as separate articles, some material needs to be shifted from one to the other and differences needs to be clarified. --Soman 07:59, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Leninist groups of the Communist Left

Since 1965, there's an important and (nowdays) big political party that refers to the Left communism: it is called Lotta Comunista (communist struggle), born in Italy with Arrigo Cervetto and now present in Europe too. It uses as subtitle of its paper "leninist groups of the communist left".

[edit] 84.160.224.182

I reverted additions by 84.160.224.182 for chronological and POV reasons. 84.160.224.182 mentioned the split between Bordiga and Damen in the 1950's paragraph, but it is previously descussed in the Italy and the 1920's section. Which is correct? Also the POV introduced "by the way Stalinism invented Leninism" is too complicated to shoehorn in here. DJ Silverfish 15:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lenin

How about some mention of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder paper, which greatly influenced mainstream Communists against this movement? Rlquall 23:53, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jock's Back

I've updated the bibliography at the end of the article. In a couple of weeks I'll expand the article again and bring it up to 1968. Hopefully it will be easy enough to cover post-68 developments. Above the question is asked as to when the damen group was formed. The answer is that Damen helped lead the Fraction from 1926 onwards. he was then a leading member of the ICP. The split in the ICP in the fifties might then be seen as the founding of a Damen group with positions distinct from those of Bordiga. Hopefully I can make things clearer after some more work on the essay. Someone else makes the point that Lenins Left Wing Communism is not mentioned. A major error on my part I confess and easily rectified. Jock Haston

Hmm,

The Russian Communist Left section seems out of place. While this group may have had the name left communist, it clearly did not have either the politics or the historical influences of other groups now labeled Left Communists (and those group indeed might not label themselves left communists). Thus it might deserve a different place other than the first form of left communism mentioned.

Still, this is actually an excellent entry over-all. Ironic that such "sectarian" topic is actually covered with more NPOV than many mainstream topics I've seen.

Hans Joseph Solbrig 05:44, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

A merger proposal with Left Stalinism has been tagged on this page. I vote no, as that article relates to something completly different. --Soman 08:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Why the article merger? The reasoning seems pretty superficial and based on a misunderstanding — Left communism & Left Stalinism refer to very different movements. I concur with Soman's vote; no.

Mds 16:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Iran & Iraq

I think one could state that the Worker-Communist Parties of Iran and Iraq have political similarities with Left Communism, but are not Left Communists per se and do not originate in the Left Communist tradition. --Soman 13:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

This sounds fair to me. They seem to be moving towards third campism anyway. Do we have any references for this? Warofdreams talk 18:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I have edited the "Further reading" to include the ISBN numbers for the ICC books and a link to a brief summary of the communist left by the ICC as well as the MIA page on the subject. I also removed the reference to the ICC book on the Dutch-German Left as being an "unauthorised reprint" of Bourrinet's thesis: if anything it is the other way around, since Bourrinet actually began writing this book when still a member of the ICC and drafts of the first chapters were first published from 1979 onwards in the ICC's International Review. EverHopefull 09:59, 23 June 2007 (UTC)