By Paul Levi
David Fernbach (ed. & Intro)
Paul Levi is still probably the most fascinating and debatable figures within the early background of the Communist move. As chief of the KPD after the homicide of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, he effectively outfitted up a celebration of a 3rd of 1000000 individuals, yet through 1921 Comintern strain for ‘Bolshevisation’ compelled Levi’s resignation and expulsion. until eventually his early dying in 1930 he remained ‘a progressive socialist of the Rosa Luxemburg school’ (Carl von Ossietsky), and used to be defined by means of Albert Einstein as ‘one of the wisest, such a lot simply and brave people i've got come across’. the 1st English variation of Levi’s writings fills a long-standing hole within the records of German Communism.
Reviews:
Mit [Fernbach's] Auswahl der Texte legt der Band [...] einen anderen Schwerpunkt als die auf Deutsch zugängliche Sammlung, .... Zugleich werden so einige Artikel Levis zugänglich, die auf Deutsch – soweit ersichtlich – nur im unique, nicht aber in einem Nachdruck vorliegen. Gerade dieseTexte sind sehr spannend, zeigen sie doch Levi als politischen Denker, der für innerparteiliche Demokratie Stellung bezieht, und sich als scharfsinniger Analytiker der politischen Lage in der Weimarer Republik erweist.
Thilo Scholle, Magazin 188: 65
Seit 1969 hat es in Deutschland keine version der Schriften Paul Levis mehr gegeben, weder in der DDR, wo er bis 1983 als Verräter galt, noch im Westen, wo er in Vergessenheit geraten conflict. Insofern füllt die unlängst erschienene englischsprachige Levi-Ausgabe eine Lücke. [...] Gegenüber der Ausgabe von 1969 hat Fernbach intestine ein Viertel der Texte vollständig neu ediert, darunter zwei Artikel zu den Räte-Experimenten in Budapest und München sowie einen Schlüsseltext Levis, das vierzig Seiten umfassende Protokoll seiner Verteidigungsrede vor dem Zentralausschuss der deutschen Kommunisten im Mai 1921. Einleitung und Bibliographie spiegeln weitgehend den aktuellen Stand der historischen Kommunismusforschung wider.
Rolf Wörsdörfer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 23 may perhaps 2012.
With this skillfully edited number of Levi's speeches and writings, Fernbach, lengthy tested as a number one scholar of Marxism, makes a big contribution to knowing the Left in Europe within the years after WW I.
Highly advised. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
Choice, March 2012
Levi’s writings in English [...] enable English-reading socialists to acquire a fuller figuring out of the German innovative interval after the 1st international battle, a interval wealthy in classes for anti-capitalists at the present time. [...] Brill and David Fernbach have performed a provider to the left in making them to be had to the English reader.
Stuart King, in everlasting Revolution, vol. 22 (Winter 2012), pp. 29-34.
Contents:
Introduction
Part One: top the KPD
Address to the Founding Congress of the KPD
Letter to Lenin (1919)
The Munich adventure: An Opposing View
The Political state of affairs and the KPD (October 1919)
The classes of the Hungarian Revolution
The World-Situation and the German Revolution
The starting of the concern within the Communist celebration and the International
Letter to Loriot
Part : The March Action
Our course: opposed to Putschism
What Is the Crime? The March motion or Criticising It?
Letter to Lenin (1921)
The calls for of the Kommunistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft
Part 3: The Soviet Question
Letter to Clara Zetkin
Introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet The Russian Revolution
Introduction to Trotsky, the teachings of October
The Retreat from Leninism
After Ten Years
Approaching the End
Return
Part 4: The German Republic
The homicide of Erzberger
The wishes of the Hour
Why we're becoming a member of the United Social-Democratic Party
The Assassination of Rathenau
The state of affairs after Rathenau’s Death
The Reich and the Workers
The Defenders of the Republic
After the Oath
Read or Download In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi (Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume 31) PDF
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Extra resources for In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi (Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume 31)
As a definite army author as soon as stated relatively properly in the course of the war-aim debates, if a person is to leap a metre, the bar should be set at . metres and never . . the belief of a ‘final victory’ at once associated with this common assault can't be separated from the anarcho-syndicalist notion of the overall strike or common rebellion initiated through selection of the service provider. This element of departure and this ultimate aim are what characterise so-called ‘direct action’. And, the place I vary totally and fully from the KAPD and from the current orientation of the KPD is exactly in that I reject this anarchist trust in miracles and say that it really is very unlikely, a monstrosity, to move from someday to the following from the protective to the offensive, from passivity to task, or even though you're keen on to place it, at the foundation of a choice of the social gathering or a party-body or a specific comrade who sees himself as an excessive amount of of a genius for phrases. And, at this element, comrades, I do certainly arrive on the nub of intended ‘Menshevism’, because the time period has been lately used: the social gathering has long gone from the protective to the offensive and is now at the assault and suffering to ‘force the improvement of the revolution’. if this is the case, then the Zentrale, and people who make this project, needs to, in my view, additionally proclaim this concept with its promise of victory overtly and ahead of the loads whom they nonetheless search to win over. The Zentrale, notwithstanding, skilled a impressive trouble right here. on the first second of the 1st motion at the ‘new line’ of the ‘offensive’, the Zentrale issued an charm which acknowledged, between different issues: ‘The counter-revolution has picked a fight…’. ‘The fight has been compelled upon us…’. ‘Rise up with us,’ it went directly to say, ‘in universal defence by contrast villainy. ’ therefore, instantly after the wonderful fanfare, whilst it was once already transparent how issues have been going flawed, an assault of embarrassment. nobody is ready to any extent further to recognize the fantastic offensive. The Zentrale says, this isn't what we meant; the ECCI says, this isn't what we meant; the representatives of the ECCI say, this isn't what we meant, and so – allow the comrades back name this ‘sentimentality’ in the event that they like! – it really is truly within the ultimate example the staff who meant it, who gave out the thesis of ‘forcing’ the revolution, and of transition from the ‘defensive’ to the ‘offensive’. And, then, anything extra. I say that the total concept of ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’, of the ‘offensive’ and the ‘defensive’, of the ‘transition from agitation • half : The March motion to action’, some of these are useless and synthetic differences, and entirely unpolitical interpretations and word-games. months in the past – this is often how fast issues switch – months in the past during this very room,8 I learn out to the comrades a paragraph from Comrade Rosa Luxemburg, with no listening to contradiction from any part. It learn as follows: The stipulations for social-democratic task are extensively diversified. This derives traditionally from the basic classification fight.