The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

THE GROUP OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISTS (From left communism to council
communism)
INTRODUCTION
The origins of the GIC
The Group of International Communists (Groep van Internationale Communisten, GIC) was created in 1927.
The name of the group was a programme in itself: as internationalists, the group was fighting for the world
revolution. The title ‘group’ meant that with the failure of the KAPD, which still called itself a party, this was no
longer the time for artificially proclaimed parties. The period called for the defence, development and
enrichment of revolutionary positions within small groups, often isolated from the working class as a whole.
At the beginning, the GIC was numerically tiny. In 1927 it was made up of three militants who had come
directly out of the KAPN. 655 In 1930 it was a nucleus of no more than ten people. It was only during the 1930s,
when its audience grew, that the GIC became a stronger organisation: a maximum of 50 militants, which, in a
country as small as Holland, was by no means insignificant.
Initially established in Amsterdam, the group eventually spread to several towns, such as The Hague, Leiden,
Groningen, Enschede. 656 However, the GIC, which refused to consider itself a centralised organisation, did not
recognise local sections. It saw the nuclei established in different towns as groups in themselves. Finally, the
GIC declared itself to be a federation of different groups. It is symptomatic that the name which appeared on the
publications after 1928 was ‘Groups of International Communists’. This federalist spirit was very much in the
tradition of the anti-centralist AAU-E.
In fact, the Groups of International Communists represented a break with the party spirit which had, to a greater
or lesser degree, survived in the KAPN. The GIC did not take up the tradition of the KAPD, but that of the
German Unionen Movement. It did not see itself as a Dutch group, but as an expression of the German
‘Unionist’ movement; it was “a part of the council movement”, “a living part of the German Union
movement”. 657 While recognising the contribution of the KAPD, it rejected its conception of the party in the
domain of propaganda. Its external political activity was limited to public meetings whose themes were often far
removed from questions of political intervention. Refusing to launch itself into polemics with social democracy
and the Third International, as the KAPD had done, it considered that its main task was to develop the anti-trade
union tendencies among the workers.
655 Radencommunisme, “a review for the autonomous class movement”, produced by the ‘Groep van Radencommunisten
Nederland’, No. 3, 1948. The group, composed of Canne Meijer, B.A. Sijes and others, had split from the Spartacusbond in
1947.
656 Cf. C. Brendel, ‚Die Gruppe Internationale Kommunisten in Holland’, Jahrbuch 2 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch
Verlag, Dec. 1974). Web: .
657 PIC, No. 6, 1928. In this issue, the GIC declared itself to be the pupil of Gorter and Pannekoek and placed itself on “the
same terrain as the KAPD and the AAU”. Cf. also Canne-Meijer’s intervention at the unification congress of the AAU and
the AAU-E, in: Protokoll der Vereinigungs-Konferenz der AAUD und AAUE, 24.-27. Dezember 1931 zu Berlin, pp. 27-28).
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