The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

support of the POUM and the CNT. Some ‘workers’ committees’ were certainly created, but they were more a
combination of the different parties and unions than real workers’ councils.
Was this really a proletarian revolution on the march, with its ‘collectivisations’ and the arming of the workers,
or was it a ‘bourgeois revolution’ to which the Spanish proletariat participated as a contributory force, or even
nothing more than proletarian convulsions diverted into the Popular Front and the military combat on the fronts?
Was it necessary to fight first on the ‘military front’, before fighting on the ‘class front’ against the Republican
government? Such were the concrete questions which were posed in the Internationalist camp at the time. In the
Netherlands, the anarchist groups and the semi-trotskyist RSAP of Sneevliet gave their ‘critical’ support to the
Popular Front government in the fight against Franco, in the name of anti-fascism. Their position was thus little
different from that adopted in Spain by the POUM and by the CNT, which then entered the government of the
‘Frente popular’.
In the Netherlands the question arose whether the council communist groups were going to support the anarchist
‘collectivisations’ and the CNT, whose positions were ‘anti-bolshevik’. Given that they considered that the
proletariat’s economic tasks took priority over the political task of destroying the state, one might expect that the
Dutch ‘councilists’ would be very ambiguous in their critiques of anarcho-syndicalism. At least this is what Paul
Mattick claimed in 1969 in his preface to the re-edition of the reviews of American council communism. 1035 He
claimed that the position of the council communists had been the following in 1936-37: “The anti-fascist civil
war of Spain [...] found the council communists almost naturally – despite their marxist orientation – on the side
of the anarcho-syndicalists, even though circumstances force the latter to sacrifice their own principles for the
prolonged struggle against the common fascist enemy”.
Nothing could be less true of the Dutch council communists who, criticised anarchist policy throughout the
Spanish civil war, and never once found themselves on the same side.
The divisions of the Dutch council communism
In 1936, the Dutch council communists were divided into 4 groups: apart from the GIC there were the two
groups coming out of the KAPN: De Arbeidersraad (The Workers’ Council) and the councilist group of The
Hague 1036 , which published the periodical Proletariër. These three groups described themselves as Marxist.
There also existed a fourth group which had split from the GIC. This group published the periodical Discussie,
an organ of the “workers’ groups of the left” “published by workers of the anarchist tendency” and distributed at
the unemployment offices. 1037 This group was in fact ‘anarcho-councilist’.
It was symptomatic that the ‘councilist’ milieu should find itself divided on the question of Spain. It created a
definitive Frontier between De Arbeidersraad and the other three groups. Despite its talk of the “power of the
1035 Reprint of International Council Correspondence, Living Marxism, and New Essays (New York: Greenwood Reprint,
1970). In Spanish, some important texts of the Dutch and German communist left on the Kominternvil war in Spain:
Expectativas fallidas (España 1934-1939). El movimiento consejista ante la guerra y la revolución españolas: artículos y
reseñas de Korsch, Mattick… (Barcelona: Alrede ediciones, 1999) [with a Cajo Brendel’s introduction; Carlos García
Velasco and Sergi Rosés Cordovilla, eds.]
1036 This group, which Cajo Brendel – one of the founders (with Jaap Meulenkamp) of the council communist group ‘Daad
en Gedachte’ – belonged to, first of all published the periodical De Radencommunist in 1933. It really constituted itself as a
group in 1935, close to the GIC. Following the Proletariër, it brought out the booklets Proletarische Beschouwingen
(Proletarian Reflections) from 1936 to 1938. To this date, Cajo Brendel collaborated with different periodicals, anarchist
included – De Vrije Socialist of Gerhard Rijnders (1876-1950), in 1938-39 –, without ever renouncing to defend his own
positions.
1037 Discussie, ‘organ of workers’ groupings of the left’; first issue in 1934.
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