The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

iting, since the Dutch RSAP and the trotskyist groups were denounced as agents of the Popular Front, and
finally, “on the side of their own democratic bourgeoisie”. 1068 But given the existence of an important libertarian
milieu in Holland, which was moreover very heterogeneous on the Spanish question, the GIC’s press gave
priority to the political and theoretical struggle against the anarchist current. 1069
Right up to May 1937, the GIC made a profound critique of the practice of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism. From
the outset, it denounced the CNT’s appeal to the Spanish workers to go back to work and the barracks. By
joining the antifascist government, and by proclaiming the priority of the fight on the military front, the CNT
integrated itself into the state. 1070 As the GIC pointed out, anarchist socialisation’ was nothing other than state
capitalism, with production managed by the unions. 1071
The events in Spain finally showed in practice the “bankruptcy of anarcho-syndicalist conceptions”. 1072 The
libertarian principle of “freedom for all”, was expressed as “freedom for all the anti-fascist currents”, the
enemies of the revolution: “... their conception of ‘freedom for all the anti-fascist currents’ is freedom for the
saboteurs of the proletarian revolution”. The rejection of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ by the CNT, a
corollary of the anarchist refusal to take power, finally led the CNT “to forbid the workers themselves taking
into their own hands the economic and political functions of society” (idem). This would be to “exercise a single
dictatorship over the working class” (idem). The anarchist rejection of ‘politics’ turned into the participation of
the CNT in the political game of the bourgeoisie: elections, participation in the anti-fascist United Front. Finally,
anarcho-syndicalism as a “politico-economic principle”, “leads to defect. 1073
If the GIC proclaimed the revolutionary will of the anarchist workers, it was to better underline how the doctrine
and practice of anarchism was foreign to the proletariat.
Faithful to Marxist analysis, the GIC defined the whole anarchist current ‘non-proletarian’ and ‘petty bourgeois’.
The Spanish ‘test of fire’ inevitably led the anarchists into the camp of the bourgeoisie. The ‘anti-statists’
became the parties of government in order “to play in Spain the role that the left social-democrats, the
‘Independents’, had played in Germany”. 1074
As a current, anarcho-syndicalism henceforth stood outside the ‘proletarian camp’. In every country, including
Holland, “the feeble resonance of the Spanish revolution pushed a great part of the anarchists into the camp of
the bourgeoisie”. Henceforth, the defeat of the anarchist current would be “the precondition for the forward
march of the revolution”, in order to avoid the total defeat of the Spanish proletariat. 1075
The events of May 1937 in Barcelona, where the armed workers confronted the forces of the Popular Front,
wholly vindicated the GIC’s analysis. The appeal by the anarchist ministers for the workers to lay down their
arms showed “the CNT is one of those mainly responsible for wiping out the insurrection, because it
demoralised the proletariat at the very moment it moved against the democratic reaction”; this attitude of the
1068 ‚Klassenkampf in Spanien’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz , No. 18-19, August 1936.
1069 Whereas most of the important groups in the Netherlands took the side of the CNT, other small anarchist grouplets’, like
the BAS and the AMV, made pacifist propaganda, hostile by principle to violence and the use of arms in the class struggle.
Cf. ‘Het Nederlandsche anarchisme tegenover de Spaansche revolutie’, in: PIC, No. 2, Jan. 1937.
1070 The CNT was quick to theorise its integration into the Republican state: “The entry of the CNT into the central
government is one of the most significant events of the political history of our country... At the present time, the
government as an instrument of control of the organs of the state has ceased to be a force of oppression of the labouring
class, just as the state no longer appears as separating society into classes. And both will stop oppressing the people all the
more as members of the CNT work with them.” (Solidaridad obrera, Barcelona, 4 th Nov. 1936).
1071 For the GIC, the existence of the Central Economic Council and Militias Committee, on the basis of the united front of
the parties of the left, inevitably led to State capitalism [cf. ‘Het anarcho-syndicalisme in de Spaansche revolutie’, in: PIC,
No. 16, Oct. 1936.]
1072 PIC, No. 16, Oct. 1936, idem.
1073 ‘Het anarchosyndicalisme in de Spaansche revolutie’, in: PIC, No. 16, Oct. 1936.
1074 ‘Federatie van Anarchisten in Nederland’, in: PIC, No. 12, August 1937.
1075 ‘Het Nederlandsche anarchisme tegenover de Spaansche revolutie’, in: PIC, No. 2, January 1937.
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