Lesser-spotted Comrades - Paul Levi
by Paul Murphy
The first of a regular column highlighting the lives and contributions of lesser-known Marxists.
Article originally published in Issue 1 of Rupture, Ireland’s eco-socialist quarterly, buy the print issue:
Paul Levi was born into a bourgeois Jewish family in 1883, studying in both Germany and France, before qualifying as a lawyer. His defence of Rosa Luxemburg when facing trial for an anti-war speech was a key turning point, politically and personally.
He became a convinced internationalist, one of 12 delegates to found the ‘Spartakus’ group together with Rosa Luxemburg, as well as starting a passionate love affair with her. When she and Karl Leibknecht were murdered in January 1919, Levi was propelled into leadership.
He proved himself a creative strategist, developing and applying the method of the united front. This was epitomised in the ‘Open Letter’ appealing to the SPD, the KAPD and the trade unions to engage in a joint struggle for five basic demands.
In emphasising the need to win the masses, he was placing himself on the ‘right’ of the party. Together with his perceived arrogance, it earned him the hatred of those to his left. The ultra-lefts in the KAPD, who Levi had expelled, christened him “the Judas of the German Revolution.”
However, ultra-leftism was also present within Levi’s party and the Communist International. They advocated that Marxists must always be on the front foot, seeking to initiate a revolution. They got their opportunity when a breach opened up between Levi and Karl Radek about how to deal with divisions within the Italian Communist Party. Levi lost an important vote and resigned his leadership.
He was expelled within weeks, after the ultra-lefts put their ideas into action. This was the ‘March Action’ in 1921 - a disastrous attempt to provoke a revolution - with armed action and largely unheeded calls for general strikes. The result was savage repression of party activists, and 200,000 members leaving the party.
Levi responded with his pamphlet ‘Our Path: Against Putschism’, a searing public indictment of the action and the theory which inspired it. For this, he was expelled.
The ‘March Action’ was central to the controversies that unfolded at the Third Congress of the Communist International in the summer of 1921. Lenin defended Levi’s expulsion on the grounds that his pamphlet lacked “the spirit of solidarity with the party”, while agreeing with him politically and subjecting the ‘theory of the offensive’ to ruthless criticism.
Behind the scenes, he pleaded with Clara Zetkin for Levi to submit to discipline, suggesting he could write anonymously for the party press, and saying “in three or four months time I shall demand his readmission in an open letter.”
For Levi, however, it was too much. He bitterly founded a new organisation, the Communist Workers Group and rejoined the SPD in 1922. As an MP, he remained on its left until his death in 1930 in possible suicide.
Further reading:
Editor David Fernbach, ‘In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi’ (2011)
Pierre Broue, ‘The German Revolution: 1917-1923’ (1998)
Editor John Riddell, ‘To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921’ (2015)