The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Russian capitalism. It was only conceivable in the absence of a real bourgeoisie and as the result of a revolution:
“In Russia, the bourgeoisie was liquidated by the revolution and its power destroyed [...] State capitalism could
arise because a powerful bourgeoisie was lacking”. In the end, state capitalism was seen as the product not of a
counter-revolution but of the class struggle, and it was ‘revolutionary’ in the sense that it affected the passage
from “barbarism” to “developed capitalism”. In this sense, it was a ‘special case’ whose foundation was more
political than economic: “...each case is a particular case; each country has a particular form of political
development.” 987
This rejection of the theory of a general tendency towards state capitalism outside the special case of Russia was
justified by the theoretical blunders of the German council communists. The GIC wanted to close the door to the
conception that “state capitalism would everywhere become the most developed form of capitalism” and would
thus constitute “a necessary transition phase between capitalism and communism”. 988 As Marxists, the GIC
condemned in advance the idea – developed by Socialisme ou Barbarie in the 1950’s 989 – that state capitalism
was “a new system” with a “new ruling class”. Even in the Russian case, it was not at all a new system. Russian
state capitalism remained a capitalist system in which the new ruling class was only new chronologically, not
structurally. Organised in the Russian party – which the GIC, not seeing the discontinuity between Lenin and
Stalin, still called ‘bolshevik’ the bureaucracy had taken on “the same role as the private capitalists in their
countries” and had itself become the bourgeoisie. 990
In this way Pannekoek and the GIC showed that state capitalism did not constitute a historic ‘solution’ to the
crisis of capitalism. Without using the theory of capitalist decadence, they rallied to Mattick’s position that in the
era of the “permanent crisis” 991 , there could be no rationalisation of capital through state planning. Paradoxically,
this could only reinforce the anarchy of the capitalist system: “Capitalist ‘planning’ only increases the absence of
any plan”. 992
Thus, as in the analysis of the crisis, there was a lack of homogeneity and cohesion in the council communist
movement on the question of state capitalism. Faced with a novel phenomenon, the Dutch, like the Germans,
groped their way forward. The differences between the GIC and the German groups were by no means as clearcut
as they may have appeared at first. The Germans were far from defending the idea of a ‘new system’ that had
overcome the contradictions of capitalism. In a more elaborated response to the GIC they showed that state
capitalism could only slow down the permanent crisis, not overcome its basic contradictions. It was not a new
system but a phase of evolution: “In this state capitalist phase of evolution – which is expressed most clearly in
the German and Soviet Russian conditions – the contradictions of capitalist society have not been overcome, but
only displaced, concentrated, openly appearing as a contradiction”. 993
At the same time, within the GIC Pannekoek himself, who was the most determined opponent of the Germans’
theory, paradoxically adopted their conclusions. In an article published in the organ of the American council
communists in 1936, under the pseudonym of John Harper, he admitted that there was a general tendency
987 Ibid.
988 ’Antwort der GIKH’, op. cit.
989 The group ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’, which published the periodical of the same name after 1949, came out of trotskyism.
Its dominant personality was Cornelius Castoriadis – his pseudonyms were Chaulieu or Cardan or Coudray – who ceased to
be a Marxist after the 1960’s.
990 ‚Sowjet-Rußland heute’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz No. 20, Dec. 1936.
991 The GIC published Mattick‘s text on the ‘Permanent Crisis’ in PIC, No. 8, August 1935. In No. 9 of August 1935, it
criticised the “mechanical and schematic conceptions” in Mattick’s ‘Grossmannite’ view.
992 P(aul) M(attick)], ‚Erwiderung der amerikanischenen Genossen’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz, No.18/19, cited above.
Mattick, like the GIC, denied capitalism’s evolution towards state capitalism. This could only be conceived on the Russian
model, and required “a revolutionary overthrow, the suppression of the present possessing class”.
993 ‘Anti-kritik der deutschen Genossen’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz, ibid. The German council communists concluded that
state capitalism, the expression of a “latent, persistent crisis”, involved the absorption of civil society by the state: “All the
essential functions of society are more and more being taken over by the state apparatus, which ends up dominating the
whole of social life and, as a parasitic body, threatens to smother it entirely”.
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