Council and Left Communism (from 1920)

During the 1920s, there emerged, from Dutch and German communism, a council communist current that distanced itself both from the Soviet Union's Marxism-Leninism and from social democracy's reformism, and which struggled for theoretical and political independence. Within this development, insistence on the principle of council democracy (as opposed to authoritarian party rule) played a decisive role.

Well-known exponents of this current include Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick, Cajo Brendel, Willy Huhn, Victor Serge and Maximilien Rubel. Bordigism, named after the first chairman of the Italian Communist Party, Amadeo Bordiga, can also be considered an example of left communism. The ideas proper to classic council communism continued to circulate after the Second World War and influenced more recent currents of Marxism.