The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

In a contradictory way, the GIC republished the Grundprinzipien in Dutch in the 1930s. Here it was asserted that
“Russia had, as far as industry was concerned, to set up an economic life along communist principles” in
1920. 802 In fact, the GIC had not completely abandoned the old conception held by the Dutch and German lefts
of a “dual revolution”, part bourgeois, part proletarian. In November 1936, the following phrase appeared: “The
revolution of 1917 remained a bourgeois revolution. Its proletarian elements were beaten”. It was also stated that
the Russian revolution became completely capitalist after 1931: “...it became capitalist with the abolition of the
last freely elected workers’ councils. From 1931, the Russian economy rid itself of all elements foreign to its
capitalist structure”. And the GIC concluded by affirming the need for a new October 17 in Russia: “The day
will come when Russia, once again, as in the heroic days of October, but more powerfully, will again hear the
war-cry ‘all power to the Soviets’.” 803
In practice, particularly with the events in Spain, the GIC was still a long way from rejecting the Russian
revolution and the bolshevik party as ‘bourgeois’. Both remained a ‘revolutionary reference point’. 804
Towards a new workers’ movement? — The Theses of the GIC (1935)
Like the Theses on Bolshevism, the theses Towards a new workers’ movement are the culmination of a whole
evolution by the GIC, from 1927 onwards. Written by Henk Canne-Meijer in 1935, and translated into several
languages, they provoked some very lively debates in the international council communist movement. 805 They
were basically a theorisation of the defeat of the world proletariat marked by Hitler’s arrival in power. By
proclaiming the bankruptcy of all past organisations, including revolutionary organisations, by rejecting the need
to form centralised political patties and the possibilities of a new International – or rather of an international
regroupment of council communist organisations – the GIC’s theses made no small contribution to the
disintegration of the ‘councilist’ movement after 1935. The Copenhagen conference of 1935 was a decisive stage
in this process of disintegration.
A theory of defeat
Canne-Meijer’s text was in the first place an acknowledgement that the workers’ movement had been crushed:
Germany in 1933, the Asturias and the unemployed workers movement in Amsterdam in 1934. Capitalism had
greatly strengthened itself politically “through development towards fascism and National Socialism” and “the
end of the democratic development of society” which had characterised the 19 th century. The consequence of this
was that the open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie “had left the workers with a feeling of powerlessness”. But this
powerlessness was not simply the result of the “strengthened deployment of forces by the bourgeoisie”; rather it
was the product of the eradication of the workers’ class consciousness. The workers were bogged down in
corporatism which led to inevitable defeats: “The cause of these defeats resides in the fact that a professional
category is far too weak to bring down capitalism... Workers feel more connected to a professional group than to
the class in general”. This powerlessness was also the fruit of the workers’ conservative attachment to the old
workers’ movement, to the unions and the political parties, which in the 19 th century had been a valid form for
the development of class consciousness in the struggle for democratic rights and social improvements, but were
802 Grundprinzipien Kommunisticher Produktion und Verteilung, 1930 (reprint Berlin: Rüdiger Blankertz Verlag, 1970),
p. 11.
803 Quotations from PIC, No. 18, Nov. 1936.
804 See Chapter 9 on the response of the Dutch internationalist communists to the events in Spain.
805 ‘Naar een nieuwe arbeidersbeweging’, in: PIC, Nos. 4 & 5, April and May 1935; Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 8/9,
April/May 1935; ICC, No. 11, August 1935. Reprinted in German: Gruppe Internationaler Kommunisten Holland
(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1971), pp. 139-167.
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