The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

the future what was in fact an immediate task. The decapitation of the KPD in 1919, which deprived the party of
its best leaders, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, no doubt explained this conception.
In fact, in an intuitive way, Gorter developed an idea which was to become that of the whole communist left,
including the Italian left, after the Second World War. In the revolutionary parties, in contrast to the First and
Second Internationals, there would no longer be “great men” who had a crushing weight within the organisation.
The character of the revolutionary organisation was more ‘anonymous’ and more ‘collective’. 499 Gorter,
remarking on the situation in 1920, in an advanced country like Germany, wrote: “Have you not noticed,
comrade Lenin, that there are no ‘great’ leaders in Germany? They are all very ordinary men”. 500
The existence of ‘great men’ in a movement, the personalisation of the latter thus appears as a sign of weakness
and not of strength. It was more typical of underdeveloped countries where the consciousness and maturity of the
masses was at a lower level – hence the necessity for ‘leaders’ – than of the industrialised countries. In the latter,
the historic traditions of struggle created a much more homogeneous class consciousness. The importance of
‘leaders’ diminished in proportion to the degree of consciousness in more experienced fractions of the working
class.
The ‘West European revolution’ and ‘proletarian tactics’
The essential idea defended by the Dutch left was that the tactic put forward for Western Europe was too
‘Russian’ and thus could not be applied. As such, Lenin’s tactic “could only lead the western proletariat to its
ruin and to terrible defeats”. Unlike the Russian revolution, which had been supported by millions of poor
peasants, the revolution in the west would be purely proletarian. The proletariat in the advanced countries had no
potential allies, neither the peasantry nor the urban petty bourgeoisie. It could only rely on its numbers, its
consciousness and its distinct organisation. The proletariat was alone and had to face up to all the other classes of
society:
“The workers in Western Europe are quite alone. It will only be a very small layer of the petty bourgeoisie that
will help them. And the latter is not economically significant. The workers must shoulder the whole burden of
the revolution on their own. That is the big difference with Russia.” 501
What was true at the social level was even more true at the political level. The political forces which represented
the varying interests of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois strata, were not disunited but united against the
proletariat. In the epoch of imperialism, “The difference between liberal and clerical, conservative and
progressive, big and petty bourgeois, disappeared”. This had been shown by the imperialist war, and even more
so by the revolution. All the forces of the political apparatus formed a bloc against the revolutionary proletariat;
the unity of the proletariat in the revolution was opposed by the unity of bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces,
not their division: “… the revolution has made them even far more united in practice. Against the revolution, and
consequently against all workers – for the revolution alone can bring actual betterment to all workers –, against
the revolution they all stand together without a single ‘rift’.” 502
Consequently, the communist left rejected any possibility of a ‘tactic’ of forming united fronts with these parties,
however ‘left wing’ they were; it rejected the idea of a ‘workers’ government’ as advocated by the KPD(S) and
Lenin. The new historical period, the period of war and revolution, had erased the ‘differences’ between social
democracy and the bourgeois parties: “We might aver, to be sure, that these differences between the social
499 The former leader of the Italian Communist Party, Amadeo Bordiga, could thus write that “the revolution will be terrible
and anonymous”. This assertion by Bordiga after the war was nevertheless the a posteriori justification of the long
anonymity into which he fell between 1930 and 1944, in Neaple, where he had built only houses.
500 Gorter, op. cit., p. 429.
501 Gorter, op. cit., p. 424.
502 Gorter, op. cit., p. 466.
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