The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

distribute the land, and to enlist peasants into the Red Army. Once again defending his position on Brest-
Litovsk, he described the latter as ‘capital democratic’. Finally, he considered that the Russian Revolution had
taken “proletarian communist’ measures”, like the formation of the Soviets and the enrolment of the workers in
the Red Army: “The calls of Russia and the Third International for revolution, civil war, the formation of
workers’ and soldiers’ councils and of a Red Army, were proletarian and communist”. 635 But, finally, “no class
dictatorship was possible (in Russia) for the good reason that the proletariat was too weak and too powerful the
peasantry ”. 636
Gorter’s real contribution, at the end of his evolution from the Response to Comrade Lenin onwards, was to
show that the proletarian revolution is on the agenda even in the most backward countries. Clearly rejecting the
slogans of ‘the right of peoples to self determination’, and ‘national liberation’, Gorter insisted that
“communists’ tactics are no longer the same as when the Communist Manifesto was written”. 637 Particularly in
Asia, a true International should call the proletariat “to separate immediately from the bourgeois parties and take
a completely independent position”. Although Gorter did not completely reject the possibility of bourgeois
revolutions in the epoch of “capitalism’s mortal crisis”, he refused to allow that a proletarian revolution could
emerge from a bourgeois one. Workers in Asia could only count on their own strength, and could only ally
themselves with the proletariat of the industrialised countries. The role of an International is to apply the same
principles and the same tactics throughout the world. Unlike the Berlin tendency, which thought it impossible to
form a KAP in the underdeveloped countries, and even contrary to the Essen tendency which only thought it
possible in countries tied to Germany, Gorter declared forcefully that revolutionary parties had to appear in
every country in the world, with the same communist principles: “[the KAI] wants, through new organisations,
to transform every worker in Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia into a conscious communist”. 638
Nonetheless, the KAI’s programme suffered from an immense pessimism, which rendered the existence of a new
International still more dubious. Gorter considered that the vast majority of workers throughout the world were
enemies of the revolution:
“The European workers under the guidance of the Third International are not alone in being enemies of the
world revolution; the same is true now for the workers in Asia... We can calmly declare that the world proletariat
as a whole has, up to now, been hostile to communism. Moreover, all the classes of all the capitalist states are
enemies of the revolution.”. 639
This was to declare the battle lost before having fought it. And if the real communists were only a minority, then
the world revolution was lost and an International, in a period of counter-revolution, was a non-sense. Gorter’s
voluntarism was born of pessimism.
How then are we to believe that Gorter and the Essen tendency were confidently expecting “a rapid renaissance
of the revolution”, especially in Germany? It was difficult to accord any credibility to Gorter when he declared,
at the cost of flagrant self-contradiction, that the KAI was at one and the same time a small nucleus, and that it
regrouped hundreds of thousands of workers, the Unionen even bringing together millions! 640
In reality, Gorter soon separated from the Essen tendency, to place himself ‘outside the fractions’. In one of his
last pamphlets, published in 1923, although he supported the Essen tendency theoretically, Gorter declared his
635 Gorter, op. cit., p. 45.
636 Gorter, op. cit., p. 38.
637 Gorter, op. cit., p. 48.
638 Gorter, op. cit., p. 56.
639 Gorter, op. cit., pp. 47 and 50.
640 H. Gorter, Die Klassenkampforganisation des Proletariats, op. cit. Before joining the KAI, Gorter completely
contradicted the conception of a selected party nucleus, by calling for an organisation of millions of conscious communists,
and ‘Unionen’ that were to regroup between 10 and 25 million members!
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