Paul Mattick

Paul Mattick ( born March 13, 1904 in Stolp, Pomerania, † February 7, 1981 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was a German economist, Council Communist and political writer. Mattick emigrated in the 1920s in the USA, where he was an active member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He worked on a theory of capitalist crisis and criticized the works of JM Keynes, especially his assertion that government intervention could solve economic crises.

Life and work

1904 Paul Mattick was born in Pomerania, and grew up in Berlin in a communist- dominated family. Already with 14 years Mattick was a member of the Free Socialist Youth ( FSJ ) of the Spartacus League. He began in 1918 an apprenticeship as a toolmaker at Siemens, where he was elected during the November Revolution, the representative of apprentices in the workers' firm.

Mattick, who had been involved in many actions during the revolution and arrested several times and threatened with death, contributed by the progressive radicalization of the left - oppositional tendency of the Communists in Germany. As part of the split of the " KPD ( Spartacus ) " in Heidelberg, he joined in the spring of 1920, the newly founded Communist Workers Party of Germany ( CAPD ) at. Participation he was " Red Youth", the youth organization of CAPD in the publication of a newspaper.

At the age of 17 years - ie in 1921 - drew Mattick to Cologne some time there to work at Klöckner, to strikes, riots, and his re-arrest every prospect of further employment zunichtemachten. During his work as an organizer and agitator of the KAP and the General Workers Union ( AAU) in the Cologne area, he met in January Appel know. He also made ​​contacts with intellectuals, writers and artists from the General Workers' Union, founded by Otto Rühle - Unit Organization ( AAUE ).

1926 emigrated Mattick in the U.S. because he had already been out of work for several years, and. His contacts with the KAP and AAU in Germany, however, he kept up because of the continuing decline of the radical mass movement and the associated hopes of a revolution, especially after 1923.

In the U.S., Mattick dealt systematically with the theoretical foundations, especially the works of Karl Marx. The publication of Henryk Grossmann's major work, The accumulation and breakdown of law Capitalist system in 1929 was an important event for Mattick. This fact brought Grossmann Marx's theory of accumulation, which was completely forgotten, back to the focus of the discussions of the labor movement. For Mattick took Marx's " Critique of Political Economy ", rather than a purely theoretical aspect, a direct impact on his own revolutionary setting.

From this time on, Mattick completely focused on Marx's theory of capitalist development, its inherent contradictory logic and their inevitable crisis as the basis of the political thought of the labor movement.

Towards the end of the 1920s drew Mattick to Chicago, where he sought to unite the various ethnic German labor unions. In 1931, he tried the Chicago Arbeiter Zeitung again to bring into being a very traditional embossed paper that had been temporarily released from August Spies and Joseph Dietzgen. The success was, however.

Mattick was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW). The IWW was the only revolutionary organization in America who wanted to unite all workers with the aim of preparing a big shock to overthrow capitalism through national and sectoral boundaries. The best time of the organization with militant subversion, however, was gone early thirties to the end, so that only the burgeoning unemployed movement brought the IWW brief regional feed. 1933 designed Mattick in Chicago, a new program for the IWW, in which he tried to create the organization a more solid Marxist basis based on Grossman's theory. A 1933, same time as the "seizure of power " of the NSDAP finished speaking German IWW pamphlet said: The death agony of the capitalist system and the task of the proletariat.

In 1934, Mattick along with friends of the IWW and some excluded from the Leninist Proletarian Party, the United Workers Party, later renamed to Group of Council Communists. This group was in close contact with the remaining German and Dutch groups of left communists in Europe and published the journal International Council Correspondence. This evolved in the course of the thirties to the Anglo-American parallel to the councils correspondence of the Dutch Group of International Communists ( Holland ) ( GIC (H)). It translated articles and debates from Europe and published them along with economic analyzes and critical political commentary on current events in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

In addition to his work in a factory Mattick organized not only the technical aspects of editing, but was also the author of most of the posts that appeared in this newspaper. Among the other authors who like to regularly contributing to issue, Karl Korsch was with the Mattick in 1935 and came into contact with the connected him after his emigration to the USA in 1936 for many years a close friendship.

When the European Council Communism in the second half of the 1930s officially disappeared and was pushed into the ground, named the Mattick Correspondence to: From 1938 on she was called Living Marxism and New Essays from 1942.

In addition to Karl Korsch and Henryk Grossmann Mattick was also in contact with Max Horkheimer's Institute for Social Research, later the "Frankfurt School". Mattick 1936 wrote an extensive sociological study of the American unemployed movement for this Institute, in whose archives it " New Criticism" encamped until the publication in 1969 by the SDS -Verlag.

After the U.S. entry into the Second World War and the subsequent persecution of the intellectual left, this was eliminated by Joseph McCarthy, whereupon Mattick retired from political life in the early 1950s. He moved to the country, where he chatted with odd jobs and his work as a writer on water. In the postwar period Mattick took - as well as other - only occasionally on smaller political activities in part and wrote from time to time short articles for various magazines.

Starting up into the 1950s Mattick be devoted in the 1940s, the works of John Maynard Keynes and wrote a number of critical comments and articles on the Keynesian theory and practice. In this work he developed Marx's and Grossman's theory of capitalist development continues to encounter new phenomena and phenomena of modern capitalism critical.

During the general changes in the political landscape and the recurrence radical thought good in the 1960s, Paul Mattick provided some sophisticated and important political posts: One of the major works of Marx and Keynes. The Limits of Mixed Economy (1969 ), which translated into several languages ​​had a pretty big impact on the after - soixante student movement. Another important work was Critique of Herbert Marcuse - The one- dimensional man in class society in the Mattick decided the thesis rejected, after which the proletariat in Marx's understanding had become a " mythological concept " in an advanced capitalist society. Although he agreed with Marcuse's critical analysis of the prevailing ideology, Mattick pointed out that the theory of one-dimensionality only existed as an ideology itself. Marcuse confirmed in the result that Mattick's critique was the only serious, which was subjected to his book.

By the end of the 1970s there were numerous new and old articles from Mattick in different languages ​​in a variety of publications. In the academic year 1974/75 Mattick was a visiting professor at the "red" Roskilde University in Denmark. There he lectured on Marx's critique of political economy and the history of the labor movement and participated in seminars critical of other guests, such as Maximilien Rubel, Ernest Mandel, Joan Robinson and others. In 1977 he finished his last major lecture tour at the University of Mexico City. His only two appearances in the former West Germany he had in Berlin in 1971 and in 1975 in Hanover.

In these last years of operation succeeded Mattick so to win over younger generations from some supporters for his worldview. In 1978, an extensive collection of his over forty years of activity under the title Anti- Bolshevik Communism.

Paul Mattick died in February of 1981 and left behind a nearly perfected manuscript for another book, which was later revised by his son, under the title of Marxism - Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie? appeared.

Paul Mattick was married since 1945 with Ilse Mattick ( 1919-2009 ). Their son, the philosopher and economist Paul Mattick, Jr., was born in 1944.

Selected Works

  • Critique of Herbert Marcuse. One-Dimensional Man in Class Society. From the American Hermann Huss. European publishing house, Frankfurt 1969.
  • Lenin. Revolution and politics. Essays by Paul Mattick, Bernd Rabehl, Yuri Tynjavow and Ernest Mandel, Frankfurt am Main, 1970.
  • Marx and Keynes. The limits of the " mixed economy ". European publishing house, Frankfurt 1974.
  • Critique of the neo-Marxists and other essays. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  • Spontaneity and organization. Four experiments on practical and theoretical issues of the labor movement. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1975.
  • Anton Pannekoek, Diethard Behrens, Paul Mattick: Marxist Antileninismus. Ça Ira, Freiburg 1991.
  • The revolution was a great adventure for me. Paul Mattick in conversation with Michael Buck Miller, restlessness Verlag, Münster, 2013.
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