The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

communism extends from the Rhine to the Indian Ocean, then the world revolution will enter its most violent
phase.” 519
But on the other hand, in 1920, with the new defeat of the German proletariat, Pannekoek showed more
scepticism about the capacity of the proletariat of Western Europe to be the focus of the world revolution. He
even came out with lyrical declamations about “the great revolt of Asia against West European capital
concentrated in Britain”, which would join up with the proletarian revolution in the west and make Moscow the
“capital of a new humanity”. 520 This enthusiasm and fascination for the ‘multitudes’ of Asia prefigured the Baku
Congress where sermons would be preached about the ‘revolutionary holy war’ of the East against the West.
Pannekoek did not go that far, but he went close enough when he more or less supported national liberation
movements in Asia which he hoped – despite their nationalism, which Gorter had pointed out – would “adopt a
communist mentality and a communist programme”. This enthusiasm for the ‘multitudes of Asia’, which was
untypical of the scientific Pannekoek, was short-lived. In 1921, the break with the Komintern – when the
Russian question was being posed by Kronstadt and the NEP – put an end to Pannekoek’s hopes of making
Moscow the “capital of a new humanity”.
It took much courage for Pannekoek, and above all Gorter, to criticise Lenin, who was already the object of a
veritable cult in the Komintern. Accused of childishness, both of them – as spokesmen of the Dutch, German and
British left communists – demonstrated a great maturity, and the maturation of their theory. The Dutch Left’s
Reply to Lenin remains left communism’s only systematic, argued and solid response to the positions developed
by the Lenin’s current.
519 In S.Bricianer, op. cit., p. 197.
520 Idem, p. 198.
144