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The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

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<strong>The</strong>se factory organisations (Betriebs-Organisation), and not the ‘factory nuclei’, alone could “lead the<br />

struggle”. In general, they would disappear when the struggle ended. In any case, they could not become<br />

permanent organisations. <strong>The</strong>ir permanence was conditioned solely by the upsurge of the revolution.<br />

After the struggle, only the ‘factory nuclei’ would remain, as a place of propaganda for the organisation of the<br />

class, of which they were the seed. <strong>The</strong>y would be the most active and most conscious part of the class. Thus the<br />

Union would always remain a small nucleus.<br />

If the class struggle had to be “free from any party”, then logically any political organisation in party form must<br />

be rejected in favour of a revolutionary syndicalist type organism, like the IWW. But for the GIC, this was by no<br />

means the case. Thus the GIC energetically rejected Mattick’s proposal to make the AAU a section of the IWW<br />

in Europe. 720 This was out of the question, since the IWW rejected all party action. In fact, the GIC rejected the<br />

existence, not of a political organisation, but of mass parties “leading” the mass struggle, which it saw as a<br />

survival of a bygone period. It is significant that Pannekoek had rapidly modified his position on the party<br />

question. For him, the vanguard party aspiring to ‘lead the class’, had given way to ‘nucleus groups’, which<br />

fulfilled the role of ‘organisations of ideas’. 721 It is in this sense that one can call them ‘parties’. <strong>The</strong>y were<br />

necessary only as an expression of the “spiritual struggle inside the movement”. As the KAPD pointed out,<br />

however, this theory looked like a rejection of the party. 722 It was the beginning of a process which was to lead<br />

the GIC and Pannekoek to reject all parties, even revolutionary ones (see Chapter 7).<br />

In fact the GIC made a complete separation between the two principal functions of a revolutionary party:<br />

theoretical struggle (“clarification”), and intervention in the class struggle. <strong>The</strong> AAU was an organisation of<br />

intervention, and the ‘parties’ – the opinion organisations – coexisted with it. Like the unitary ‘organisation of<br />

the class’, the AAU must prevent the formation of political fractions within itself 723 , and leave its members free<br />

to organise themselves outside, in the ‘parties’. 724 This was the opinion of a majority of the GIC, which while<br />

rejecting the conception of the AAU-E against any kind of ‘party’, believed the existence of a ‘dual organisation’<br />

to be necessary. But the two organisations must be rigorously separated, and in any case the AAU must not be<br />

dominated politically by a party. This was also the opinion of the AAU.<br />

It was on this basis that the merger of the AAU and the AAU-E took place at the unification conference held in<br />

Berlin, from 24 th to 27 th December 1931. <strong>The</strong> new organisation, the KAU (<strong>Communist</strong> Workers’ Union)<br />

regrouped the 343 members of the AAU and the 57 members of the AAU-E. 725 Like the KAPD, it saw itself as a<br />

‘vanguard’, a proletarian ‘elite’. 726<br />

720 PIC (in <strong>German</strong>), March 1931, ‚Die Unterschiede zwischen der Auffassung der IWW in Amerika und der AAU in<br />

Deutschland’.<br />

721 ‘Over het vraagstuk van de partijen’, PIC, No. 7, May 1932. All Pannekoek‘s anonymous articles in the PIC can be<br />

recognised by an asterisk in the IISG collection in Amsterdam.<br />

722 Proletarier, No. l, Feb. 1933, ‚Zur Frage der Partei’, by Michel Blanc. <strong>The</strong> author of the article, in the last issue of the<br />

KAPD’s theoretical review, remarked that “Now, comrade Pannekoek is trying to spread an ideology hostile to the party<br />

with Marxist foundations”.<br />

723 PIC, undated (July 1931?), Die Gruppe internationaler Kommunisten Hollands zum Programmentwurf der AAU. This<br />

issue contained two texts by Pannekoek – unusually, under his real name – on the concept of the party as a ‘nucleus-group’.<br />

An issue from 19 th December 1931 – to be found in the IISG – contains several texts by the GIC, from both majority and<br />

minority on the question of the ‘dual organisation’ and the formation of fractions’ in the unions. <strong>The</strong> minority defended the<br />

AAU-E view hostile to all parties, be they nucleus-groups’ or ‘dual organisations’.<br />

724 PIC, 19 th December 1931, idem, Zur Frage der Doppelorganisation (majority view): “We thus arrive at the conclusion, in<br />

opposition to the AAU-E, that one must leave Union members free to organise themselves in parties, precisely because we<br />

are for the free expression of opinion, because we want to prevent the political struggle becoming a struggle for power<br />

inside the working class”.<br />

725 F. Kool, Die Linke gegen die Partei-Herrschaft, op. cit., p. 152.<br />

726 See Arthur Michaelis, the most conspicuous personality of the KAU, during its founding Congress: “We are also a<br />

vanguard, an elite...” [Protokoll der Vereinigungs-Konferenz der AAUD und AAUE 24.-27. Dezember 1931 in Berlin<br />

(Berlin: 1932), p. 22). Yet an anti-centralisation conception existed alongside this vision. <strong>The</strong> KAU was a decentralised<br />

organisation: its organs were located in several different towns. Arthur Michaelis (1896-?), employee, prisoner of war, had<br />

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