The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

All these accusations fail to stand up when you look at Gorter’s pamphlet, which alongside Pannekoek’s remains
the most strong critique of the Komintern in 1920.
‘Historic course’ and opportunist tactics
In his pamphlet Left Wing Communism, Lenin argued that the ‘left’ was giving in to “revolutionary impatience”,
which was a “disease of growth”. While this charge could be levelled at the British and German lefts, it was
certainly not true of the Italian and Dutch. 483 Pannekoek emphasised that “the revolution in Western Europe is a
long process”. 484 Even before Lenin affirmed at the Second Congress that “there is no situation which offers
absolutely no way out” for the bourgeoisie 485 , Pannekoek – in August 1919 – had written that “the collapse of
capitalism” did not mean that any reconstruction was impossible: “...it is quite possible that capitalism could
once again pull itself out of this crisis”. 486 The Dutch Left was thus very far from the immediatist conception,
which did exist within the Komintern, that the revolution was an inevitable phenomenon. Although later on, in
1922, Gorter did – for a short time 487 – take up the “theory of the death crisis” defended by the Essen tendency
of the KAPD, this was not at all the case in 1920.
In his Reply to Lenin, Gorter showed that the historic course towards world revolution in 1920 depended very
much on the subjective conditions:
“The example of Germany, Hungary, Bavaria, Austria, Poland and the Balkan countries teaches us that crisis and
poverty are not enough. The most frightful economic crisis has already arrived, and yet the revolution has not.
There has to be another factor that leads to revolution, and whose absence will abort the revolution. This factor is
the spirit of the masses.” 488
This “spirit of the masses” was defined more precisely as class consciousness by Pannekoek, who judged
Gorter’s formulation too idealistic. 489 The proletarian vanguards which determined and oriented the
revolutionary course were part of this consciousness. Now, as Gorter underlined, “with the exception of
Germany, a real vanguard does not exist”. The revolutionaries of Western Europe were lagging behind: “from
this point of view they are in the same stage as the Bolsheviks were in 1903”. 490 The error of the Russians in the
Komintern was to try to make up for this delay through tactical recipes which expressed an opportunist approach
where clarity and an organic process of development were sacrificed in favour of an artificial numerical growth
at any cost.
483 The most “impatient” elements in the left wing of the PSI were those of Gramsci’s Ordine Nuovo in Turin. See:
A. Gramsci, Selections from political writings (1921-1926), translated and edited by Quintin Hoare (London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1978).
484 Pannekoek, Weltrevolution und kommunistische Taktik (Wien: Verlag der Arbeiterbuchhandlung, 1920). English
translation as ‘World Revolution and Communist Tactics’, in: Pannekoek and Gorter’s Marxism, edited by D.A. Smart
(London: Pluto Press, 1978).
485 Lenin, Discours aux congrès de I’Internationale Communiste, p. 66 (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1973).
486 K. Horner, Der Zusammenbruch des Kapitalismus (‘The collapse of capitalism’) in: Die Kommunistische Internationale,
No. 4/5, 1919. In 1919, the organ of the Komintern published texts by the Dutch and British communist lefts; after 1920,
there were no more. An obvious change.
487 In a letter to the Dane Andersen-Harild dated 10 th April 1926, Gorter criticised the conception of the death crisis of
capitalism” which appeared in the KAPD as “a dogma” [Gorter’s emphasis] “instead of being seen as a possibility or rather
a probability”. A clear critique of any “revolutionary fatalism”, this letter can be found at the Arbejderbevaegelsens
Bibliotek og Arkiv (ABA) in Copenhagen, which contains important material from the German and Danish communist
lefts.
488 All following Gorter’s quotations come from the German version of the Gorter’s book: Offener Brief an den Genossen
Lenin (1920), in Die Linke gegen die Partei-Herrschaft (Olten & Freiburg/Breisgau: Walter Verlag, 1970), pp. 416-495.
489 Pannekoek’s article ‘Marxismus und Idealismus’, published in: Proletarier, theoretical organ of the KAPD, No. 4, Feb.
1921, was an indirect response to Gorter.
490 Gorter, in Die Linke gegen die Partei-Herrschaft, op. cit., pp. 485-486.
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