ISBN: 9780951534205 - open letter to comrade lenin: a reply to "left wing communism - an infantile disorder" (2 Ergebnisse)

Pamphlet. 41p., 8x11.5 inches, very good. Reprint of the left-communist piece with a new five-page introduction by the staff of the British journal.

Soft cover. Zustand: Very Good. 41 pages. The "Open Letter to Comrade Lenin" is a foundational 1920 political pamphlet written by Dutch poet and council communist theoretician Herman Gorter. It serves as a direct, methodical rebuttal to Vladimir Lenin's famous work, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Gorter wrote the text on behalf of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) to defend the tactics of the European "Left Communists" against the rigid revolutionary models being enforced internationally by the Third International. Gorter argued that a "one size fits all" approach to revolution was a dangerous mistake because the material and social conditions of Western Europe differed fundamentally from those of Russia: • Isolation of the Proletariat: Gorter pointed out that while the Russian Bolsheviks succeeded by building an alliance with millions of poor peasants, Western European workers stood entirely alone. In the West, nearly all other social classes were deeply aligned with a highly organised and powerful capitalist system. • Rejection of Trade Unions: Lenin advocated that communists should work within existing trade unions to radicalise them. Gorter completely rejected this, arguing that Western trade unions had become highly bureaucratised, counter-revolutionary instruments of capitalist exploitation. He argued that workers needed to completely destroy them and build fresh, democratic industrial workshop organisations (Unionen) instead. • Opposition to Parliamentarism: While Lenin favoured participating in bourgeois parliaments for strategic agitation, Gorter claimed that parliamentarism ideologically enslaved the Western working class. He argued that voting fosters passivity and a reliance on leaders, whereas a genuine revolution required direct, autonomous mass action by the workers themselves. • Critique of Opportunism: Gorter warned that the Comintern was sliding into opportunism by pursuing short-term compromises, high-centralism, and top-down party dictatorship, which would ultimately lead to state capitalism and detached bureaucracy rather than true socialism. (SL#125/20).…