The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

“If the proletariat in the ‘democratic’ countries really enters into movement, it then finds the whole of bourgeois
power turned against it. In this respect there is not the slightest difference between ‘democracy’ and fascism,
whatever the state form. ‘Democracy’ is even, in some ways, a more effective weapon for the bourgeoisie than
naked state violence, since it makes it possible to use particular demands to derail a rising movement. When
dictatorial governments can no longer repress a mounting revolutionary movement, the bourgeoisie often resorts
to ‘democracy’ as we saw in Russia in February 1917 and Germany in November 1918 [...] as soon as a
revolutionary movement breaks out, the fascist enemy is no more dangerous than the ‘democratic’ enemy.” 954
For this reason, the workers had to reject the slogan ‘defend democratic rights’ raised by the left parties and
trotskyist groups. This was not just an illusion, but a bourgeois mystification aimed at preventing workers from
fighting against the capitalist order, whether ‘fascist’ or ‘democratic’. The duty of the proletariat was therefore to
fight, not just against a particular form of capitalism, but against all its political expressions, right and left:
“The workers have never possessed such political rights. Political rights have only been accorded when the big
workers’ organisations have given their assurance that they would not be abused [...] The rights that workers can
use within the recognised workers’ organisations only serve to integrate the workers into the democratic order
[...] The workers always and everywhere must fight against capitalism, and it makes little difference whether it
uses democratic or fascist forms of government. Whether under fascism or democracy, the wage labourers are
exploited by capital.” 955
The GIC and the Dutch council communists, showed that fascism and democracy were two complementary
methods of capitalist government, adapted to the social and economic situation. 956 Democracy prepared the
crushing of the proletariat; fascism finished off the job. fascism was “...to a large extent, the consequence of the
bankruptcy of the 2 nd and 3 rd Internationals”. 957 It was the general crisis of capitalism which allowed fascism to
come to power, drawing its support from the middle classes.
In fact, from the capitalist point of view, fascism was far better adapted to the situation of world economic crisis.
It was part of the general tendency towards state capitalism (see below). ‘Democracy’ could not escape this
tendency towards the concentration of the economy into the hands of the state. The phenomenon of
totalitarianism, both on the economic and political level, had put an end to classical liberal democracy; the latter
corresponded to the phase of ‘youthful capitalism’ (jong-kapitalistisch), when parliament had been the “meeting
place for opposing interests within the ruling class”. 958 The unity of the bourgeoisie, which had reached the stage
of monopoly capital, was forged not only in the face of the revolutionary danger, as Pannekoek and Gorter had
said in the 1920’s, but also in periods of open crisis. Contrary to the German council communists, who saw
nazism as a circumstantial, passing phenomenon, the Dutch saw it as the expression of a new period of
capitalism. 959 In the highly developed countries, there had been a progressive evolution from ‘democracy’ to the
totalitarian nazi-fascist system. The concentration of capital in the hands of the state, the suppression of
954 ‚Fascisme en arbeidersklasse’, in: PIC, No. 7, July 1935, p. 6.
955 ‚Klassenkampf im Kriege’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 14, Dec. 1935.
956 The councilist group in The Hague, which published De Radencommunist in 1933, the councilist group Discussie that
began in 1934, the ‘working group’ which published the Spartacus newsletter from 1937 onwards; the Proletenstemmen
working group, named after its agitational newsletter and linked to the GIC: all these groups had the same political positions
as the GIC, but without its theoretical coherence. Still less organised, and with less sense of the need for organisation, they
were essentially agitation groups which intervened at factory gates and unemployment offices as isolated working class
revolutionary elements, not as revolutionary political groups.
957 PIC, No. 7, July 1935.
958 ‘Parlementarisme en democratie’, in: PIC, No. 4, March 1934.
959 See Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 16/17, May 1936: “...our appraisal of the period was that we would have to work for the
long term, which meant not so much calling for the direct struggle but clarifying why the old workers’ movement had
collapsed without resistance, and tracing the lines of development of a new workers’ movement [...] Our conception was not
very well understood at the time, precisely because the German comrades had a different appreciation of the situation. They
believed the time had come for mass revolutionary propaganda, their analysis of the situation was expressed in the slogan
‘now to the masses’.”
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