The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

political sleep by the crisis of the KAPD (see above). This silence contrasted strongly with Gorter’s continual
involvement in political activity until his death, and this despite serious illness. 678 Pannekoek could not really be
considered to be a member of the GIC, since he participated very episodically in the meetings of the group. He
was above all a regular and important collaborator both with Persmateriaal (PIC) and Räte-Korrespondenz, not
to mention his numerous articles for Mattick’s International Council Correspondence. His contributions always
stood out because of their great theoretical clarity and their concern to respond to the problems of the class
struggle. The Pannekoek of the 30s was not the same as the Pannekoek of the 20s, who had recognised the
necessity of the party. Believing that organised political activity was a survival of a time he considered out of
date, he was content to be the ‘mentor’ of the GIC on the theoretical level, without intervening in its internal
debates. Canne-Meijer acted as an intermediary who kept him informed about the life of the group. 679 This
attitude was absolutely new in the history of the revolutionary movement and expressed an implicit rejection of
organised militant activity. The ‘place of honour’ accorded to Pannekoek helped to maintain all the vagueness in
the conception about who was a member of the group. The GIC thus appeared as a circle of friends widened to
include those outside the circle. This was not only the case with the Dutch group, since Mattick’s group in the
USA – but at the end of the 30s – had the same conception, with Korsch occupying a similar role to that of
Pannekoek. 680
Another element, very representative of the political life of the GIC, Jan Appel, had a more militant activity in
the group. Like Paul Mattick, Appel was one of those revolutionary workers who had left Germany in the midtwenties
for both professional and political reasons, and who continued their political activities in the German
émigré milieu. 681 But this activity soon went beyond the confines of this milieu. Like Mattick, Appel had been a
678 This difference in attitude between Gorter and Pannekoek could also be found in the Italian Communist Left. Whereas
Bordiga withdrew from political activity between 1929 and 1944, Damen continued his militant work; it was he, and not
Bordiga, who was the real founder of the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt.), formed in 1943 in the north of Italy.
679 We find the same behaviour with Bordiga after 1945; he was not a formal member of the PCInt. Intervening from time to
time in the meetings of the Party, he had intermediaries like Bruno Maffi (1909-2003), pleasantly referred to by the
militants as the ‘ghost-writers’, who explained the thoughts of the ‘master’. But unlike Bordiga’s texts, which under no
circumstances could be criticised, Pannekoek’s were submitted to reflection and criticism within the GIC.
680 There is an extremely interesting and significant testimony by Henk Canne-Meijer concerning Pannekoek‘s activities on
the margins of the GIC: “(Pannekoek) was always at our side with all his heart and he participated again in the work ...
(Pannekoek) was a ‘pure theoretician’; he was not a fighter as we saw it. He only gave his analyses and conclusions; he
never sought to follow them up. He never participated in the life of the organisation. He did not have the time for it. One of
us reproached him for staying in such a comfortable position, for being a ‘man of science’ when our task was to bring
science to man. He gave his analyses and we squabbled over them. He was an extremely modest man who did not display
the least arrogance, and did not take position on questions if he was not absolutely sure of his judgement. We often said:
Pannekoek says: ‘that may be, but it may well be quite different’. In practice, we did not make any advances in this way,
since whatever happened we had to make decisions, but very often we weren’t very sure they had been the right ones. This
was the whole difference between the ‘pure theoretician’ and the fighter.” [Letter from Canne-Meijer to Paul Mattick,
around 1930; collectie Canne-Meijer, 100 A, IISG Amsterdam; cited by B.A. Sijes, in: A. Pannekoek, Herinneringen,
pp. 18-19, Amsterdam, 1982). Thus, in 1930, Pannekoek appeared to the members of the GIC as a ‘good fellow traveller’
who refused any concrete militant activity in the group. In the 1930s Pannekoek’s political activity seemed to be secondary
to his scientific activity as an astronomer, upon which he had been engaged full time since 1921. We should however note
that Pannekoek’s scientific visits abroad, like the one to the USA in 1936, were also set to make contact with the council
communist movement. In 1936, Pannekoek probably met Paul Mattick. And from this date, the Dutch theoretician’s
English-language contributions in International Council Correspondence became more frequent. Pannekoek’s contributions
to the council communist movement in the 1930s were huge in number and could easily fill several volumes. But they were
entirely posed the level of Marxist theory and never entered into practical organisational questions. It does not appear that
Pannekoek took part in any of the GIC’s meetings, except once or twice in an informal way. This separation between theory
and practice was absolutely new in the revolutionary workers’ movement. It cannot only be explained by the fact that
Pannekoek had such heavy tasks in the scientific domain. It had is basis both in the GIC’s fluid conception of organisation
and in the absence of links with the proletariat in a period which was profoundly unfavourable for revolutionary activity.
681 Jan Appel (1890-1985) [pseudonyms: Max Hempel, Jan Arndt, Jan Vos]. Active in the SPD from 1908. He saw military
service from 1911 to 1913, and thereafter as a soldier in the War. In October 1917 he was demobilised and sent to work in
Hamburg as a shipyard worker. In October 1918 he called a strike of armaments workers. “Our slogan was: ‘For Peace!”.
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