The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

workers’ movement was “destroyed”, underestimating its ideological weight, even in clandestinity.
According to them, “young forces” would emerge and find in the literature of the KAU, the KAPD, and of
Rote Kämpfer the source of their clarification. This hope was to be quickly dashed. Pannekoek affirmed that
communism “would be constructed on totally new bases”. That meant that there was no longer a continuity
in the workers’ movement, through its ‘left fractions’. In a sense, everything had to begin again from scratch.
This method, totally different from that of the Italian communist left at the time heralded the theory of the
‘new workers’ movement’ which was to prove fatal to council communism. 760
Dutch Council Communism and Van der Lubbe
It was the significance of Van der Lubbe’s torching of the Reichstag (27 Feb. 1933), more than Hitler’s coming
to power, which focused the debates within Dutch council communism. The latter was profoundly divided on the
question of ‘exemplary acts’ and of individual violence against symbols of bourgeois order.
Marinus Van der Lubbe, born in 1909, was a young mason worker from Leiden. He had been from 1925 till
1931 in the Dutch CP. He left on adopting anti-parliamentarist and council communist positions. Highly active
in the unemployed movement and in the workers’ strikes that broke out in various towns. After leaving the
Unemployed Agitation Committee (WAC) – led by the CPN – he had been in Oct.-Nov. 1932 the main editor of
the review for unemployed people in Leiden: Werkloozenkrant, which called for autonomous action committees,
independent from any political party. Van der Lubbe was a worker wholly devoted to the proletarian cause.
Pensioned off following an injury at work which threatened eventually to blind him, he devoted all his time to
militant activity. He soon made contact with Eduard Sirach’s LAO and helped in its propaganda work. If he had
any contacts with the GIC in Leiden, they remained personal. 761 Van der Lubbe was never a member of the GIC,
even if he sympathised with their positions and was a reader of the PIC.
After several trips to Germany and around Europe (Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria) to discover by himself the
real state of the class struggle, Van der Lubbe decided to go to Berlin in February 1933, shortly after Hitler’s
nomination as Chancellor (30 th January). He arrived to Berlin on the 18 th . He took part to meetings of SPD and
KPD and searched contact with homeless in Berlin (‘Obdachlosen’). He could have had political contacts (23
and 25.2.1933) with German council communists, with Alfred Weiland and some members of the KAU, who
eyed suspiciously the young Dutch worker. He was – according to Weiland 762 – very enthusiastic for the recent
mutiny – near the coasts of Indonesia – led by the sailors of the Dutch battleship Zeven Provinciën (4-10
February), to protest salary cuts of 10 percent, which was finally bloodily crushed by aviation, on order of the
Colijn Cabinet.
In the night of the 25 th February, he tempted to arson an office for unemployed and a castle in Berlin, without
any result. After leaving the capital, he returned to Berlin to arson the Reichstag. His decision to burn down the
Reichstag may have been a personal one 763 motivated as much be the naive belief that his ‘exemplary action’
760 See: Ph. Bourrinet, The ‘Bordigist’ Current 1919-1999, Italy, France, Belgium, op. cit.
761 Van der Lubbe had personal and political contacts with Piet van Albada, a medical student, brother of the astronomer
Bruun van Albada, the stone mason and ex-CPN Simon Harteveld, and the De Vink brothers, Izaak [Sjaak] – a taxi driver –
and Jacobus [Koos]. Within the GIC in Leiden was active Axel Koefoed, who was in charge of the international ties.
According to an old member of the GIC, Lieuwe Hornstra, Van der Lubbe “had no contact with the GIC. Personally, with
people like Koos de Vink for example, certainly: but not organisationally” [cited in the book by H. Karasek, op. cit., p. 81).
762 This testimony of Weiland seems very dubious. AAU and KAU have no contact with van der Lubbe and the LAO. See:
N. Jassies, Marinus van der Lubbe et l'incendie du Reichstag (Paris: Ed. antisociales, 2004).
763 The attempts to present Van der Lubbe as a ‘nazi agent’ were ‘demolished’ by the ‘Red Book’ (Roodboek), edited by Lo
Lopes Cardoso, a former member of the KAPN, and published in 1933: [M. Dekker, L. Lopes Cardoso, B. Verduin, A. van
Agen] Roodboek. Van der Lubbe en de Rijksdagbrand. Publikatie van het Internationaal Van der Lubbe Comité. [German
translation: Rotbuch. Marinus van der Lubbe und der Reichstagsbrand (Hamburg: Edition Nautilus, Verlag Lutz
Schulenburg, 1983).] See also the book of M. Kubina, Fall Weiland. Von Utopie, Widerstand und kaltem Krieg. Das
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