The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

indivisible unity operating like the laws of nature. And it is this unity which leads to the collapse of
capitalism”. 948
Thus, for fear of falling into a fatalistic vision of revolution, and of underestimating the factor of consciousness
as a decisive element in the collapse of capitalism, Pannekoek and the GIC rejected, not without reason, the
ambiguous idea of a mortal crisis: “Only the workers can transform this crisis into a mortal crisis”. 949
But in rejecting the somewhat fatalistic conceptions of Grossmann and Mattick, the GIC abandoned the entire
heritage of the German Left’s crisis theory. The crisis of 1929 was seen, not as a generalised crisis expressing
the decline of the capitalist system, but as a cyclical crisis. In a pamphlet published in 1933, the GIC asserted
that the Great Crisis was “chronic” rather than permanent, even since 1914. 950 Capitalism was like the legendary
phoenix, endlessly reborn from its own ashes. After each “regeneration” by the crisis, capitalism reappeared
“greater and more powerful than ever”. 951 But this “regeneration” wasn’t eternal, since “the flames threaten the
whole of social life with an increasingly violent death”. Finally, only the proletariat could give the capitalist
phoenix the “death blow” 952 and transform a cycle of crisis into a final crisis. This theory was thus contradictory,
since, on the one hand, it was a vision of cyclical crises as in the 19 th century, with capitalism constantly
expanding, in permanent ascendancy; on the other hand, it described a cycle of increasingly lethal destructions
and reconstructions.
The GIC’s contradictions on the nature of crises in the 20 th century lay in its explanations of their causes. For the
GIC, the crisis of 1929 was not a crisis of overproduction, caused by the shrinking of the capitalist market, but a
crisis of “profitability” in the sphere of accumulation. Overproduction was a phenomenon resulting from the fall
in capitalism’s profits; it was “not the cause of the crisis” 953 but its consequence, when – due to an insufficient
return on capital –accumulation ceased expanding. This explanation, which denied the problem of the market,
had much in common with Grossmann’s theories: the GIC simply rejected their political implications. The GIC’s
hesitations in the domain of crisis theory had consequences in the political domain. Convinced that the
revolution was not a merely economic question but a question of consciousness and will, after 1933 it sought
essentially to define the political positions of the council communist movement.
Fascism and anti-fascism
After 1933 it became clear that fascism was not just a local phenomenon, limited to one country like Italy. It was
not restricted to the countries defeated in the World War, or to backward, largely agricultural countries. It had
taken power in a big industrialised country like Germany and was growing in others, like Britain and France,
which had been the victors in the war. Holland, a ‘neutral’ country had also seen fascism grow after 1932: the
NSB, headed by Jan Baars and Anton Mussert developed rapidly in a country hit hard by unemployment.
The positions adopted by the Dutch Left on democracy and anti-fascism were not very different from those of
the German and Italian Lefts.
The Dutch council communists energetically refused to consider democracy as a lesser evil than fascist
dictatorship. From the proletarian point of view, there was no difference between democracy and fascism: they
were both different methods for imposing the bourgeoisie’s dictatorship over the proletariat. While the fascist
regime was based on terror, the ‘democratic’ regime was the bourgeoisie’s best weapon for derailing the class
struggle:
948 Ibid., Authier & Barrot.
949 Ibid.
950 See: De beweging van het kapitalitisch bedrijfsleven, op. cit.
951 Op. cit., p. 19.
952 Ibid.
953 Op. cit., p. 26.
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