Communist Party Opposition

The Communist Party Opposition (in German, "Kommunistische Partei-Opposition" or "KPD-Opposition" - KPD-O, KPDO or KPO) was a communist organisation functioning in Germany, formed during the Weimar Republic, and in existence between 1928 and 1939 (or 1940). It stood in opposition to the mainstream Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was affiliated to the International Communist Opposition (ICO).

Pre-History

The KPO represented the so called Right Opposition in the KPD in distinction to the Trotskyist or Trotskyist-sympathising Left Opposition and the pro-Comintern centre faction. It was led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer who had led the KPD between 1921 and 1923. They were expelled from the KPD after organising a meeting to combat what they saw as corruption in their party after its central leader Ernst Thälmann defended a protege Wittorf from charges of theft despite his guilt. Thälmann was deposed by the Central Committee only to be reinstated by Joseph Stalin through the agency of the Comintern. This move was seen as being connected to the struggle against the Nikolai Bukharin-Alexei Rykov group in the Soviet Communist Party with whom Thalheimer and Brandler sympathised.

Creation

Following the expulsion of the leading members of the Right Opposition in December 1928 the opposition began to publish a journal, "Gegen den Strom", and, at a congress held on December 30, 1928, they officially became the KPO. Most of their followers at this congress had formed part of a factional network with them since they were first demoted from the party leadership in 1923. The major exception was Paul Frölich, who had formed part of the conciliators' faction - that stood between the future KPO and the leadership. But, like Brandler and Thalheimer, he and his partner Rosi Wolfstein had been allies and pupils of Rosa Luxemburg.

The KPO counted approximately 1,000 members after its supporters had been expelled from the KPD, many of them local leaders of the party. In the years that followed they failed to recruit any further adherents from outside the party and gradually decreased in number. The KPO backed the KPD on most public issues but did stand their own candidates in some elections and ran other campaigns. Their members were also active in the trade unions, in contrast to the KPD - which launched a policy of forming dual or red unions in the so-called Third Period between 1929 and 1934. Due to the Third Period policy, through which the KPD refused to form a United Front with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) against the rising threat of the Nazi party, this became the fulcrum of most of the KPO's propaganda efforts.

Campaigning for a United Front as a small group did not give the KPO more influence with the general public, but the threat of the Nazis did lead to a leftward movement within the SPD. This leftist tendency in the SPD left that party in 1931 and organised themselves as the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP) which elements within the KPO felt they should join. After an internal struggle in which the majority of the KPO backed Brandler and Thalheimer, a minority led by Frölich and Jakob Walcher refused to accept the decisions of the fourth conference of the KPO, held in January 1932. The leadership replied to this challenge by stating that the breach of discipline implied the minority had excluded itself from the organisation. The minority responded by joining the SAP.

Exile and decline

The KPO was only able to work legally for one more year before the Nazis came to power in January 1933. It was to go underground immediately, in order to avoid persecution as far as possible. They were able to hold a conference in Denmark in April 1934, and maintain a national structure. However, in 1935, the Nazis stepped up the repression of all communist groups, and trials of KPO members were reported in Weimar, Jena and elsewhere. The organisation ceased to operate at a national level and was now confined to exile circles and the Saarland. In the Saarland, they were able to function legally for a little longer, due to its status as a French occupation zone. When a plebiscite was held on the matter of the region being returned to Germany, the KPO called on its supporters to vote for a "Räterepublik" (Soviet) Saarland, and to oppose unity with Nazi Germany. This was in contrast to the position of the KPD, which supported the Saarland remaining under the control of France.

In exile, with the leadership in Paris, the KPO continued to publish "Gegen den Strom". Politically, it continued the previous line of the KPO and was supportive of the Comintern and of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet union, its criticisms being reserved for the KPD. This however began to change with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the deepening of the Great Purges in Russia. A number of KPO militants in exile were to travel to Spain, and fought in the International Brigades that supported the Second Spanish Republic; some were to find themselves persecuted by the Stalinists, a fate they shared with militants belonging to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM).

There seems to have been a tendency within the KPO which wanted it to break more clearly from any support of Stalinism, and, in 1939, a Group of International Marxists appeared, after its founders left the ranks of the KPO. This group signed a declaration of independent socialist parties, many associated with the International Workers' Front, which had left the ICO and KPO. From this point on, there is little mention of either the new group or the KPO itself - with the fall of France, the leadership of the KPO had been forced to flee again, and the organisation was effectively dissolved.

Of the leading figures in the KPO, Brandler and Thalheimer were to spend the war exiled in Cuba, where the latter was to perish. Brandler returned to West Germany in 1949 and played a leading role in the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, which stood in the tradition of the KPO, but was never able recover its former influence. Brandler died in 1967, but the group still exists and is based in Hamburg.

ee also

*Right Opposition
*August Thalheimer
*Nikolai Bukharin