The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The GIC’s propaganda remained very general and ‘economistic’: it restricted itself to discussing factory
organisations and the future ‘communist economy’. 658 This form of activity was much closer to that of the AAU-
E than to that of the AAU which, since it was linked to the KAPD, developed a more political type of
propaganda.
The GIC, which declared itself to be council communist (Rätekommunist) rather than left communist
(Linkskommunist) – a noteworthy difference – took up a councilist orientation in both theory and practice (see
Chapter 7).
The GIC press
At first, in 1927, the internationalist communists limited themselves to distributing the press and pamphlets of
German council communism, organised in the Unionen. But they had actually first appeared as a group in 1926
by bringing out a pamphlet of the KAPD, with a preface written by them. This pamphlet, which had created
quite a fuss in Germany, revealed how Russia had been arming the Reichswehr since 1922. 659 It denounced the
passage of the Russia of 1917 into the camp of the armed counter-revolution. It argued that “the road taken by
the Russia of the NEP, i.e. the road of Leninism, led to the defence of capitalist fatherlands by the proletarians,
who have no fatherland, and thus to the crime of social democracy of 4 th August 1914”. 660 The publication of
this KAPD pamphlet did not imply that there was a theoretical agreement with the latter, especially on the
question of the party, but it did express a solidarity with the German revolutionary movement. 661
It was only from 1928 onwards that the GIC published its own press: Persmateriaal van de Groepen van
Internationale Communisten (‘press material of the GIC’, or PIC) in Dutch and German. In addition to this
theoretical review there were numerous pamphlets, designed to be more propagandistic, more contemporary and
more accessible to the workers. 662 Later on, with the growth of unemployment, the GIC brought out an
agitational sheet distributed amongst the unemployed in Amsterdam: Proletenstemmen (‘Proletarian Voices’),
from 1936 up until the war. The tone was very combative and the content very lively.
As part of the international council communist movement, the GIC always had the concern to maintain and even
strengthen its international contacts. This was in marked contrast to the situation in the 1950s, when the Dutch
councilist groups shut themselves up in Holland, entering a state of isolation that even the events of 1968 hardly
penetrated. Between 1927 and 1940, however, the GIC made a real effort towards clarification and regroupment
at an international level. In this sense, up until 1933, the PIC was brought out in German in order to contribute to
the international debates within the council communist movement. After 1933, when the German groups had to
enter into total illegality and had great difficulty in bringing out their clandestine publications, the GIC published
Proletarier, 663 which was to be the theoretical review of the KAU, then Räte-Korrespondenz between 1934 and
1937. Like Mattick’s International Council Correspondence in the USA, this was a real organ for international
discussion in the revolutionary milieu. The abandonment of Räte-Korrespondenz in 1937 was the sign that the
GIC was beginning to withdraw into the Dutch-speaking sphere (which included Belgium). Its replacement by
658 Ibid, p. 5.
659 Von der Revolution zur Konterrevolution: Russland bewaffnet die Reichswehr, KAPD pamphlet, Berlin, 1927. To
denounce the scandal of the close co-operation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army (the so-called ‘Granaten-
Skandal’), the KAPD addressed an open letter to the central committee of the KPD. Not surprisingly, the KPD did not reply.
660 Ibid, p. 14.
661 Unlike the GIC, the KAPD strongly emphasised the necessity for a party as the ‘brain’ and ‘compass’ of the revolution.
662 The GIC press was distributed free of charge, except for the theoretical review Radencommunisme, which had to be paid
for between 1938 and 1940. 1,000 copies of Proletenstemmen were given out free each week. In 1938, the overall monthly
production of the ‘councilist’ press stood at 11,000 [letter from Canne-Meijer to Mattick, 6 th January 1938, coll. Canne-
Meijer 100 A).
663 The periodical was ‘officially’ published in Amsterdam. It seems, in fact, that it was illegally published in Berlin.
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