ABSTRACT
The Communist Party of Germany represented a form of organization new in Europe, the first of its type, whose many other versions grew to maturity only after the Second World War. At the Leipzig Trade-Union Convention in June 1922, only 90 of the 694 delegates were Communists. One of the principal differences between Left and Right Communists was their interpretation of the relation of factory councils to trade-unions. The Communists “in power in the hamlets and towns of Central Germany underestimated the force of the counter revolution; the Communists of the great industrial regions held in contempt “the democratic illusions of their comrades in socialist Thuringia and Saxony. The emphasis of the convention was insistently returned to the question of whether Communists should enter the state governments of Saxony and Thuringia. Moreover, a Communist mass party was most desirable as a Russian pressure group, as a reserve for developing a possible alternative line in the future.
