Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union – Einheitsorganisation

The Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union – Einheitsorganisation (AAUE or AAU-E) (English: General Workers' Union – Unified Organization) was an anti-parliamentarian council communist organisation established in Germany in October 1921. It was a split from the General Workers' Union of Germany (AAUD).

History

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Otto Rühle was involved in setting up the AAUE as an organisation which combined the political and economic aspirations of communist workers in a single (einheits) organisation.[1] This occurred following his trip to Russia as a representative of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) at the Second World Congress of the Communist International. He travelled around Russia before the Congress and formed a very negative view of the Bolshevik regime. He advocated a very different way to realise a communist revolution which came to be adopted by the AAUE:

"Everyone must become in his consciousness a living bearer of the revolutionary struggle and creative member of the communist build-up. The necessary freedom therefore will however never be won in the coercive system of centralism, the chains of bureaucratic-militaristic control, under the burden of a leader-dictatorship and its inevitable accompaniments: arbitrariness, personality cult, authority, corruption, violence. Therefore transformation of the party-conception into a federative community-conception on the line of councilist ideas. Therefore: supersession of external commitments and compulsion through internal readiness and willingness.Therefore: elevation of communism from the demagogic prattle of the paper cliché to the height of one of the most internally captivating and fulfilling experiences of the whole world."[2]

References

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  1. ^ Prichard, Alex; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Berry, Dave (2012). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. Palgrave Macmillan.
  2. ^ Rühle, Otto (1920). "Report from the Congress of the Third International in Moscow by Otto Ruhle of the Communist Workers Party of Germany". Die Aktion. October Nr. 39/40.