The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

growing uncertainty of existence is compelling the working class to fight for a communist mode of
production...” 935
It is worth noting that the phrase on the inevitability of world war was soon withdrawn. Convinced that war was
inevitable, especially after 1935, the GIC nonetheless refused to succumb to a fatalistic vision, as long as the
resources of the working class had not been exhausted. This conception, which relied on the factor of will in the
class struggle, appeared in the GIC’s economic theory, which rejected the idea of an ‘automatic’ collapse of
capitalism, leading no less ‘automatically’ to revolution. Here the GIC rejected certain ‘fatalistic’ interpretations
which had grown up amongst the German communist left, but rejected too Rosa Luxemburg’s conception of the
decadence of capitalism.
a) Theoretical differences in the council communist movement
It is highly significant that the GIC rejected the theory of capitalism’s ‘mortal crisis’, which had been the
cornerstone of the whole German left communist movement. Here it was simply following Pannekoek, who had
from the start criticised Rosa Luxemburg’s theory set out in The Accumulation of Capital. 936 In Holland only the
Arbeidersraad group continued to defend the ‘Luxemburgist’ conception which had formerly been shared by the
whole Essen tendency. 937 In Germany, the council communist movement remained faithful to Luxemburg’s
theses.
In 1933, a lively discussion began in the international council communist movement, where Henryk
Grossmann’s theses had begun to wield considerable influence. Grossmann was a German social-democrat
economist who believed that the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse could be demonstrated solely by referring
to Marx’s theoretical schemas of the enlarged reproduction of capital. Using these schemas, Grossmann claimed
to be able to show why Rosa Luxemburg’s theory was wrong. The crisis of capital was due, not to the saturation
of the market and the impossibility of realising surplus value in solvent markets, but to the tendency for the rate
of profit to fall. The cause of crises lay, not in the sphere of capital circulation, but solely in the sphere of
accumulation. Capitalism’s major problem was an excessive accumulation of constant capital and thus an
insufficiency of surplus value. The growth of constant capital was too great and too rapid in relation to that of
surplus value. Thus, whereas Marx talked about overaccumulation bringing about the crisis, of an excess of
surplus value that could not find a field for investment, Grossmann saw the origin of the world crisis in a
growing insufficiency of surplus value, in a scarcity of capital that no longer allowed a sufficient rate of
accumulation. The fall in this rate led to a fall in production, and consequently a fall in the mass of surplus value.
It followed, through a purely economic, indeed almost mathematical process, that capitalism would collapse. The
system would enter its ‘final’ crisis. 938 In a somewhat abstract and fatalistic manner, Grossmann elaborated a
theoretical schema of a cycle of crisis every 35 years, ending up with the ‘mortal crisis’.
Grossmann’s theses had a big echo in the Dutch and American lefts. As early as 1930, the GIC had said that
Grossmann’s ideas were ‘remarkable’ 939 , and it is undeniable that a strong minority of the Dutch group were
fascinated by the idea the development of capitalism leads to increasingly violent crises, expressed in ever
growing unemployment and a greater and greater dislocation of the productive apparatus, so that millions of
935 PIC, No. 18, Nov. 1932. The paragraph on the inevitability of war only appeared in this issue and was cut out in the next
one, without the slightest explanation.
936 In 1913 Pannekoek violently criticised Luxemburg’s theory in Die Neue Zeit, a critique he took up again in 1933 in
Proletarier, No. 1, ‘Die Zusammenbruchstheorie des Kapitalismus’ (unsigned).
937 ‘Wereldcrisis. Wereldrevolutie’, in: De Arbeidersraad, Nos. 8 & 9, Aug. and Sept. 1935).
938 A summary of Grossmann’s major book can be found in: J. Duret: Le marxisme et les crises, 1933 (reprint: Paris:
Éditions d’aujourd’hui, 1977). In German: Das Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems,
(Leipzig, 1929; reprint: Frankfurt/Main: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1970). English translation: The Law of Accumulation and
Breakdown of the Capitalist System (London: Pluto Press, 1992).
939 ‘Een merkwaardig boek’, in: PIC, No. 1, Jan. 1930.
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