The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Spartacus, organ of the LAO, while exalting Van der Lubbe – “an intrepid fighter, ready to sacrifice himself for
communism” 771 – had an intermediary and contradictory position on the significance of individual terrorist acts.
On the one hand, the LAO declared that: “We do not advocate individual terror as a method of struggle of the
working class” (idem). On the other hand, it implicitly supported it: “that does not mean that we reject every
individual action...” (idem). In effect, the LAO ended up defending the position that individual terrorist action
could bring the working classes into action: “The gesture of Van der Lubbe could be the signal for generalised
workers’ resistance over the heads of the goons of the socialist and communist parties” (idem).
The position of the Radencommunist group was practically the same. It denied that the act of Van der Lubbe was
one of individual desperation, corresponding to a profound disorientation in the proletariat: “Moreover this act
must not be considered as an individual act, but rather a spark which, in this violently strained situation, could
bring about the explosion”. 772 In this way, the groups rejected the evidence of history: a terrorist action,
individual or not, may be used by the dominant class to reinforce its oppression and its repression of the
proletariat. In the final analysis, their position was very close to that of the Social-Revolutionaries before 1917 in
Russia.
The second tendency sharply rejected the use of individual acts and terrorism as a method of class struggle. This
was the case with the Arbeidersraad group (the Korpers’ group) – which came from the KAPN – and of the GIC.
But their reasons were radically different. For De Arbeidersraad – it had been said at Van der Lubbe’s trial that
he was a member of the KAPN – it was more a question of rejecting the person of Van der Lubbe than defending
a classic position of the Marxist movement that “the motor force of the workers’ revolution has never been
individual terror or putschism, but the crisis of capitalism itself”. 773 By insisting heavily on the fact that nobody
amongst them had “heard of Van der Lubbe”, and that his action could have “a counter-revolutionary effect”, it
clearly refused any elementary solidarity with a victim of repression. This ambiguous attitude heralded a
political evolution which led certain members towards trotskyism, and finally the Communist Party. 774
The attitude of the GIC was much less ambiguous. While declaring its solidarity with Van der Lubbe as a victim
of nazism and stalinism, the GIC insisted that the young Dutch worker had clearly shown a “death wish in such
an act”, but that no-one should “reproach him for it”. 775 Once this solidarity was clearly proclaimed the GIC
repeated the position of the German communist left in the 1920s.
“The task of a real revolutionary grouping can only be to reinforce the class by spreading a clear conception of
social relations, of the questions of organisation and tactics. It is not up to us to make the masses move; that can
only be the necessary result of social relations. Our task is only to help the masses in movement to find the right
track”. 776
More profoundly, Pannekoek – in an article in the PIC 777 – showed that any personal act’ like that of Van der
Lubbe, could only obscure the class consciousness of the proletariat. The ‘personal act’ could only have value
771 Spartacus, No. 19, March 1933.
772 Ibid., ‘De brand in het Rijksdaggebouw. De meening van de Int. Communisten en KAP’ers’, in: Spartacus, No. 19,
9 th March 1934.
773 Verklaring, in: De Arbeidersraad, Amsterdam, 2 nd October 1933.
774 This was the case with the Korpers. Frits Kief (1908-1976), an electrical technician of German origin was the husband of
Rosa Korper (Bram Korper’s sister), and wrote in the weekly anarchist review De Arbeider. He joined the Dutch Resistance
during the war. After 1945, journalist; he was editor of the review De Vlam (1946-52), legal continuation of the
underground socialist-pacifist review De Vonk (1941-45). He was active until 1959 in the PvdA – in a left-wing tendency
(‘Sociaal-Democratisch Centrum’ – SDC) –, which he left. He became member of the PSP (Pacifist Socialist Party) in 1965,
then propagandist of the “freethinkers movement”. [See: H. de Liagre Böhl, ‘Kief, Carl Friedrich (1908-1976)’, in
Biografish Woordenboek van Nederland 4, The Hague 1994.]
775 Spartacus, No. 19, 9 th March 1933. The GIC’s leaflet has also been translated into French in the Revue anarchiste,
No. 19, Paris, March 1934, pp. 41-42.
776 GIC leaflet, in: Spartacus, No. 19, 9 th March 1933.
777 (Pannekoek) PIC No. 7, March 1933. Pannekoek‘s text on Van der Lubbe was published in 1983 by Comsopolis of
Leiden. In English, web: .
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