The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

At its 3 rd Congress, the Komintern, through Trotsky 563 was much more lucid than Gorter, but with the idea of
pursuing the tactic of ‘united fronts’ and parliamentarism: “The situation must become more and more
favourable to us, but also more and more complex. We will not win victory automatically. The ground beneath
our enemy’s feet is undermined, but our enemy is strong, it knows how to manoeuvre and is guided by cool
calculation... The greater the peril, the more a class, as much as an individual, stretches all its living force in the
struggle for its survival”. And Trotsky concluded: “In 1919 we said it was a question of months. Today we say:
it is, perhaps, a question of years”. 564
In fact the German and Dutch left communist current found itself completely isolated in the Komintern, even
before making its voice heard for the last time at a Congress of the International. There were few reactions
within the International against the politics of the Russian state, and the Komintern tactic of Clara Zetkin, who
defended Levi’s point of view, was supported by Lenin before the Congress. But for the Dutch, as for the
Germans, it was a question of battling to the end to save the Russian Revolution and the world revolution by
detaching the 3 rd International from the hold of the Russian state: “We must act by every means so that Russia
remains a proletarian power. But if we are to take account of the conditions of the West European revolution,
then our goal must be to detach the 3 rd International politically and organisationally from the policy of the
Russian state. The next step on the way to this goal seems to us to be the building of a political organ in Western
Europe, which in the closest contact with Moscow allows us to obtain a continual independence in all political
and tactical questions as they affect Western Europe.” 565
This proposal, taken up again in 1926 by Bordiga, nonetheless left to one side the question of the political
control of the Russian state and of the Bolshevik Party by the 3 rd International. It looked like wishful thinking,
that Pannekoek also shared. According to him, with the March Action “the spiritual leadership of the Western
European revolution passed from Russia to Western Europe itself”. For the workers of Europe the Russian
proletariat and its leaders had become above all “simply a companion in struggle and an ally”. 566
Although condemned to isolation, and treated as anarchists or left social revolutionaries by the Russian leaders
of the Komintern, there was not yet any question of the communist left forming an International and still less a
league of discontents. 567 The German-Dutch left rejected all alliances or fronts with anarchists, even when it had
been excluded from the Komintern. In a reply to the anarchist Erich Mühsam, who had once been a member of
the VKPD (15 days only in Sept. 1919), but was eventually excluded from it, and proposed a front of all those
excluded, Pannekoek in the name of the left answered no, categorically and without appeal. Even excluded from
the 3 rd Congress, the Dutch and German lefts maintained solidarity with the Bolsheviks:
“You want to form a league of all the revolutionary groups excluded by Moscow. We do not want to because
such a league must itself become the declared enemy of Moscow. We feel, despite the exclusion of our tendency
by the Moscow congress, complete solidarity with the Russian Bolsheviks... We remain solid, not only with the
Russian proletariat but also with the bolshevik leaders, although we must criticise in the firmest way their
conduct within international communism.” 568
Pannekoek’s response was farsighted: after Kronstadt and the March Action, the definitive exclusion of the
communist left from the Komintern was on the agenda. The first to suffer it was the Dutch Left itself.
563 Speech by Trotsky, published in the form of a pamphlet: Nouvelle Etape (New Stage) [Paris: Librairie de L’Humanité,
1922]. In a penetrating manner, Trotsky emphasised that: “Humanity does not stay still. Its equilibrium, following the
struggles between classes and nations, is unstable. If a society cannot rise, it falls; and if no class exists which can raise
itself, it decomposes and opens the way to barbarism” (idem. p. 76). Less ‘clever’ was the forecasting of a war between the
USA and Great Britain, before 1924.
564 Quoted by P. Broué, op. cit., p. 516.
565 KAZ (Berlin), 1 st May 1921.
566 A. Pannekoek, ‚Sowjet Russland und der west-europäische Kommunismus’, in: Proletarier, No. 6, June 1921.
567 Cf. Trotsky, Nouvelle Etape, op. cit., pp. 111-114. Trotsky’s assimilation of the KAPD to a group of ‘adventurers’,
‘anarchists’ and ‘left socialist revolutionaries’ heralded their exclusion.
568 Die Aktion, No. 11-12, 19 March 1921.
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