The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

America. Trotsky reproached Gorter, not without justification, for using the “meridian argument”, envisaging
two tactics based simply on economic geography. 515 Indeed Gorter did set up a rigid and rather simplistic
frontier between two tactical possibilities:
“If you go from the east of Europe to the west, at a particular point you cross an economic frontier. It goes from
the Baltic to the Mediterranean, more or less from Danzig to Venice. This is a line which separates two worlds.
To the west of this line, industrial, commercial and bank capital united in financial capital and developed to the
highest degree, rules almost absolutely. Agrarian capital is subordinated to this capital or has already been
unified with it. This capital is highly organised and is concentrated in the most solid governments and states in
the world. To the east of this line there is neither this immense development of capital concentrated in industry,
commerce, transport and banks, nor its absolute rule, and consequently there are no solidly constructed modern
states.”. 516
In fact, this ‘meridian argument’ mixed up two different problems. Like Marx and Engels 517 , Gorter, firmly
believed that the epicentre of the world revolution would be in Western Europe: from this epicentre the
revolutionary earthquake would reverberate around the world. Unlike Trotsky at a later date, Gorter was never in
favour of building a ‘United Socialist States of Europe’, which was a sort of pan-Europeanism, even a kind of
European national-communism. For Gorter, as for the Bolsheviks, the revolution could only be world-wide.
The second problem was that of the unity of the world-wide tactics of the proletariat on the basis of new
principles (the dictatorship of the councils, the boycott of elections, the rejection of trade unionism) established
by revolutionary experience. Gorter seemed to think that Lenin’s tactic was fine for Russia, but not for Europe.
In fact, Gorter showed that the revolution in Russia had been carried out against parliament, and without the
unions, by basing itself on the factory committees and soviets. And it was “only after the revolution” that the
alliance with the peasantry was made.
The weakness of Gorter’s argument did not lie in his insistence on the decisive role of the western proletariat in
the world revolution, but in his lack of insistence on the unity of principles and tactics between the developed
and the underdeveloped countries. It was only later, in 1923 (see below) that Gorter was to argue that the left
communist tactic was also valid in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, where the proletariat had to be
rigorously independent of all bourgeois parties and ally itself with the proletariat of the developed countries, to
form a single unity.
Pannekoek’s position was much less ambivalent. He had in 1920 criticised Gorter quite strongly, if not directly:
“To consider the world revolution solely from a West European standpoint is to prevent oneself from grasping
its universal significance”. 518
Pannekoek insisted more than Gorter on the unity of the revolutionary struggle across all ‘meridians’, across all
continents: “It falls to the workers of Western Europe and the USA, in unity with the multitudes of Asia, to carry
through to the end their struggle to do away with the capitalist system. This struggle is only just beginning.
When the German revolution has passed a crucial stage and has linked up with Russia, when the struggles of the
revolutionary masses break out in Britain and America, when India is on the verge of insurrection, when
515 Bulletin communiste, No. 34, 18 August 1921, ‘Réponse au camarade Gorter’ by Trotsky. Gorter – secunded by Schröder
(pseudonyms: Karl Wolf, or Zech, then Ernst Lichtenberg) – made an hour and a half long speech to the Executive. Despite
his repeated protests, his speech was not published by the Komintern’s Executive. Karl Schröder made mention of his trip to
Moscow with Gorter (the Dutch Heemskerk) in his autobiografical novel Die Geschichte Jan Becks, Berlin, 1929.
516 Gorter, op. cit., in Die Linke gegen die Partei-Herrschaft, op. cit., p. 432.
517 See Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847: “The communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but
must take place simultaneously in all civilised countries, that is to say, at least in England, America, France and Germany
[...] It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world and will radically alter the course of development
which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace. It is a universal revolution and accordingly must
have a universal range.”
518 K. Horner (Anton Pannekoek), Weltrevolution und kommunistische Taktik (Wien: Arbeiterbuchhandlung, 1920). [French
translation, in S. Bricianer, Pannekoek et les conseils ouvriers, op. cit., p. 194.]
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