The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The last, and by no means the least weapons of capitalism in the “front of ideological armament” were the
slogans on ‘the right of nations’ and the defence of ‘national independence’. Once again, as the Italian-
Abyssinian conflict had shown, the ‘national liberation struggle’ was used to dissolve the class front into a war
front. The starting point for the proletarian attitude was not the ‘independent nation’ but the independent class. In
reality, ‘the independent nation’ is composed of classes who are irreconcilably opposed to each other. It is the
phraseology of the bourgeoisie which transforms these classes into ‘the people’, the better to exploit the
oppressed classes and use them for its own ends. The “rights of a people have never been anything but the rights
of the ruling class”. 1020 The position of the GIC – which was identical to that of the Italian Left –was in absolute
opposition to that of Trotsky and the RSAP who came out in favour of Abyssinian independence and in support
of the Negus. Thus the organs of the RSAP asserted that “the slogan ‘the enemy is at home’ is not valid for
Russia and Abyssinia”. 1021 This position could only lead to abandoning internationalism and betraying the
proletariat. The GIC insisted that the RSAP was marching into the ‘Union sacrée’ and “was opening the door to
a future alliance with the bourgeoisie on the basis of a loyal opposition”. 1022
For the GIC it was clear that defeatism was the attitude of revolutionaries in every war. Internationalism meant
refusing to choose one camp against another: “...for workers, the question of who wins the war is a matter of
indifference”. 1023
The GIC followed the international situation closely right up to 1939. None of the peace declarations of the
various states, which were all engaged in a frantic arms race, could mask the reality of an approaching Second
World War. In October 1938 the GIC denounced the Munich agreement as a “fraud” which “merely deferred the
war”. 1024 This lucid position was far removed from that of the majority of Bilan who saw the agreement as an
inter-imperialist entente to “put off the spectre of revolution”. 1025
The GIC’s clarity on the inevitability of war can be explained in part by its explicit rejection of the new theories
developing within the revolutionary milieu at the time, particularly in the Italian Left, on the nature of war.
According to Vercesi, the Italian Fraction’s principal theoretician, the war economy made it possible for
capitalism to overcome its economic contradictions, and thus even made inter-imperialist economic contrasts
secondary. 1026 War no longer had economic roots, but social ones: it had become a war against the proletariat, a
war to destroy the proletariat. To this end the bourgeoisie of all countries was diverting its contradictions into
“localised wars”. There were no more imperialist antagonisms, but an “inter-imperialist solidarity” against the
proletariat.
The GIC was led to combat such a ‘theory’, which totally blinded its adherents to the approaching war, because
it also appeared, albeit in an isolated way, in the ranks of international council communism. In 1935, the French
councilist ‘groupe de discussion révolutionnaire prolétarien’ 1027 put forward positions close to Vercesi’s at the
‘Second conference of opponents of war and the Union sacrée’. 1028
1020 Räte-Korrespondenz No. 14, Dec. 1935, ibid.
1021 De Nieuwe Fakkel, Oct. 18, 1935.
1022 ‘Trotsky en het interview van Stalin’, in: PIC, No. 7, April 1936.
1023 Räte-Korrespondenz No. 14, Dec. 1935, ibid.
1024 GIC pamphlet, late 1938, De Zwendel van Munchen.
1025 Communisme, No. 19, Brussels, Oct. 1938.
1026 For more on the positions of Vercesi, whose real name was Ottorino Perrone, see our work on the Italian communist left,
1980.
1027 This was in fact the ‘Groupe d’études révolutionnaires prolétarien’, which was in contact with the Italian Communist
Left in France. In 1936, Bilan proposed to this group to hold “common conferences of information”, which would be
stepping stones towards “laying the foundations for a communist organism in France” [Bilan, No. 32, July 1936.]
1028 This Conference, called by the ‘Committee against the war and the Sacred Union’, took place in September 1935, in
Saint-Denis (a working-class suburb, North of Paris, Jacques Doriot’s stronghold, ex-leader of the French CP, who built in
1936 his own fascist organisation, the Parti Populaire Français [PPF]). The conference brought together an eclectic
collection of groups: anarchists, pacifists, Révolution prolétarienne, and Union communiste. The latter was forced to
recognise that the conference had been a failure [see Bulletin d’informations et de liaison No. 2, Nov. 1935, published by
Union communiste).
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