1945–1952
The closing stages of the Second World War marked a watershed in the history of Left Communism, as was true for every other political tendency. Left Communists, like the Trotskyists, expected the war to end with at least the beginnings of a revolutionary wave of struggle similar to that which had marked the end of the First World War. Therefore strikes in Italy from 1942 onwards were of intense interest to them. Many Left Communists formerly in exile, in jail or simply inactive due to repression returned to active political activity in Italy. This had the result that new organisations identifying with Left Communism came into being and older ones dissolved themselves. We look at these organisations and in particular at the International Communist Party below.
If for the Italian Left the end of war marked a new beginning, it also did so for the German-Dutch Left. Although in Germany it was the case that the Communist Left tradition was all but extinguished, surviving only in the form of a few scattered groups holding councilist views, France, by comparison, saw an interesting development with the beginning of a conscious attempt to develop a synthesis of the two strands of Left Communism in the form of the Gauche Communiste de France, which built on pre-war contributions.
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