The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

and workers, the October 1939 issue denounced any form of patriotism: “We workers of every country want to
live and struggle against our enemy in our own country, against Dutch capitalism”. 1098
The bulletin, distributed in some barracks, appealed to soldiers not to adhere to either of the two camps: that of
“private capital” (France, Britain, Holland) or that of “state capital” (Russia, Germany, Italy). Conscious that
The Netherlands were living through a precarious peace and that the extension of the conflict would reduce the
country to “smoking ruins”, the militants proclaimed in the November issue: “The war has begun, the revolution
is coming”. They appealed to the proletariat of every country to struggle against all “the parasitic institutions:
State, Church, Party or Unions”. 1099
On 1 st May 1940, a few days before the surprise invasion by the German army, the De Geer (1870-1960)
government (1939-40), which included socialist (SDAP) ministers (Willem Albarda and Jan van den Tempel),
banned all demonstrations; the state of siege was soon proclaimed in the Netherlands. The application of article
33 of a law of 1848 permitted arbitrary internment. This affected certain members of the Dutch Communist and
nazi parties. A few days later the invasion ended with the occupation of the whole country. Soon Seyss-Inquart,
nominated by Hitler, took over the administration. The Gestapo arrived, with a list of militants to arrest,
including Sneevliet. 1100
The political work of Anton Pannekoek: The Workers’ Councils
For several years, up to 1944, the militants of the ‘councilist’ movement remained silent. They only intervened
individually in the strike of February 1941 (see below). Many of them, it is true, were being hunted by the
Gestapo. Before the war, the nazi government had demanded the extradition of Jan Appel.
Pannekoek himself managed to avoid being troubled during the occupation. Having ‘officially’ retired from
political life in 1921, he had become an astronomer of international renown working as a research professor at
the University of Amsterdam. From 1941, he had begun to draw up the first chapters of the book which was to
be published in 1946 under the title of The Workers’ Councils. 1101 These chapters show that Pannekoek did not
give in to discouragement and remained an indomitable adversary of capitalist society: “Fighting the enemy,
knowing his resources, his strengths and his weaknesses is necessary in any struggle. It is the one primordial
condition, which will permit us to avoid discouragement when we measure the forces of the enemy, and any
illusions when we have gained a partial success”. 1102
Like many revolutionaries at the time – particularly the Italian internationalist Left 1103 – Pannekoek was
convinced that the defect of Germany was inevitable: “The objective of the National Socialist dictatorship, the
conquest and domination of the world, makes it probable that it will be destroyed in the course of the very war
that it unleashed with this aim...”. 1104
However, contrary to other revolutionary groups in France and Italy and unlike the MLL-Front (see below),
Pannekoek did not think that revolution would come out of a German defect. He thought that history could not
repeat itself and that the forces of the Allies would do everything to prevent a new November 1918: “...contrary
1098 Soldaten brieven, No. 2, p. 3. The banner slogan read: “the workers have no country”.
1099 ‘De oorlog is begonnen, de revolutie komt’, in: Soldaten brieven, No. 3, p. 3. The struggle must be undertaken in every
country: “For all the workers of the world, the enemy is in their own country, inside and not outside the national frontiers”
(p. 2).
1100 Previously, it was the Dutch police who had the task of arresting Sneevliet, who was in Belgium on the 10 th May.
1101 The book came out under the pseudonym of P. Aartsz, in the ‘De Vlam’ editions. These editions were those of the
Communistenbond Spartacus .
1102 Les Conseils ouvriers (The Workers’ Councils) (Paris: Bélibaste, 1974), p. 219.
1103 See: Ph. Bourrinet, The ‘Bordigist’ Current 1919-1999, Italy, France, Belgium, op. cit.
1104 Les Conseils ouvriers, op. cit., p. 331.
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