The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

committee is also of the opinion that the foundation, tactics and form of organisation of this KAI must be
adapted to the conditions of struggle of the proletarian revolution.
“The central committee declares that our policy towards the Soviet government is not determined by its present
attitude. Since the Soviet government acts as a factor in the proletarian revolution, the KAPD has the duty to
support it with an active solidarity. Should it leave this terrain and behave as an agent of the bourgeois
revolution, it must be firmly combated by the KAPD.” 588
The Russian question proletarian revolution or dual revolution was right at the heart of the debate in the KAPD.
Gorter, the KAPD and the building of the KAI
Gorter and the Dutch – except Pannekoek, who for political and professional reasons, retired from political
activity until 1927 589 – were very active in the debates in the KAPD. But, contrary to the years of 1919 and
1920, this activity proved mainly negative for the KAPD, for the confusion that it helped bring into it.
a) The Russian question: state capitalism, party and International
The Dutch theoreticians were late in making a critical evaluation of the course followed by the Russian
revolution. Until 1920 their position was that the Russian revolution was orientated towards communism. They
carefully distinguished the politics of the Bolshevik Party in the International from the economic policy which
was followed by it and the state. Pannekoek affirmed that in Russia: “Industry, centralised to a very great extent,
avoids all form of exploitation” something which the Bolsheviks never claimed, given the transitory nature of
the new economy. And he concluded that Russia could not endure the decadence of capitalism; on the contrary it
was “engaged in opening to a new civilisation” which would make it “the centre of the new world communist
order”. 590 If, nevertheless, Pannekoek emphasised the danger of a “new bureaucracy”, he did not see it bringing
the counter-revolution. The danger of counter-revolution would come essentially from the outside: the insertion
of the Soviet state into a modus vivendi with world capitalism, through diplomacy. State capitalism was not a
question at all. For Gorter and Pannekoek the Russian revolution was proletarian in the same way as the
Bolshevik Party.
Gorter, however, very early, from 1918, thought that the peasantry embodied the mortal danger for the Russian
revolution. In a letter to Pannekoek, he wrote: “The greatest danger for Soviet Russia is not the counterrevolution,
and perhaps not even the Entente, but the peasants”. 591 This obsession with the peasantry as the only
counter-revolutionary factor appeared in 1921 after the crushing of the revolt of workers and sailors in Kronstadt
and with the NEP, in a pamphlet entitled: The Moscow International published by the KAPD. 592 Gorter’s
analysis of the nature of the Russian state and the Komintern was purely phenomenological. According to him
the Russian state had become ‘petty bourgeois’, just like the 3 rd International. The Russian revolution became a
dual revolution, “in a small part proletarian communist; for the greater part, democratic peasant”. Such an
analysis, which was overhasty to say the least, was poles apart from Marxism. The peasantry, like the petty-
588 Idem, KAZ (Berlin), No. 219.
589 Pannekoek retired from the workers’ movement as much to devote himself to his work in astronomy as to, in his own
words, ‘orientate’ himself personally in the debates in the KAPD, without belonging to a party. This conception is similar to
that of Bordiga who withdrew from the revolutionary movement for 15 years. But Pannekoek theorised this retreat from
militant activity: “I consider the party form and the conception of belonging to a party in large part a survival of the old
socialist period of the workers’ movement, which, while inevitable in certain respects, is however totally harmful. For these
reasons I remain outside [the KAPN]” [Letter to the secretary of the KAPN, 12 March 1927, in: Canne-Meijer Archives,
map 37, IISG, Amsterdam.]
590 In: S. Bricianer, Pannekoek et les conseils ouvriers, op. cit., p. 193.
591 Quoted by Gorter, Die Moskauer Intemationale (Berlin: KAPD Verlag, July 1921), p. 5.
592 The text of the pamphlet was also published in Proletarier, theoretical organ of the KAPD, No. 7, July 1921.
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