The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

to the previous history of Germany 1918, political power will not automatically fall into the hands of the
working class. The victorious powers will not allow it: all their forces, if necessary, will serve in the
repression”. 1105
The military defect of National Socialism would clearly leave American capital dominant in Europe: “...the
Allied armies will liberate Europe in order to permit its exploitation by American capitalism”. 1106
In fact, for the theoretician of the ‘councilist’ movement, the fate of the revolution was to be played out, in the
USA and not in a Europe “devastated, prey to chaos and misery, its productive apparatus, adapted to equipping
the war, completely worn out, its land and inhabitants exhausted...” … “The working class in America will have
to undertake the most difficult war against the capitalist world. This war will be decisive for its liberation and
that of the entire world”. 1107
This being said, Pannekoek was far from underestimating the subjective conditions of the revolution in the USA,
and in particular the factor of class consciousness:
“The main weakness of the American working class, is its bourgeois mentality, its total submission to bourgeois
ideas, to the black art of Democracy. The workers will only be capable of disentangling themselves from
capitalism the day that their spirits ascend to a more profound class consciousness, the day they regroup in a
stronger class unity and when they enlarge their vision to a class culture never before reached in the world.” 1108
As for the potential of the Russian proletariat following the war, he remained sceptical. In a chapter of his book
written in 1944 he noted that Russian state, capitalism had engendered “extermination camps for the work force
where millions of victims are crammed together in the plains and icy deserts of Siberia”. 1109 He considered that
the revolutionary impulse given to the Russian workers would come from central Europe, on condition that the
workers of this zone “undergo a profound change in their mode of thought and in their determination”, and
above all could “face the formidable material power of victorious world capitalism” as much as the “spiritual
forces” of bolshevism and nationalism. 1110
However, it was on Asia, and particularly Japan and China, that Pannekoek concentrated all his attention. He
was convinced that the end of the war would mark the dawn of a new era in these countries. 1111 It was inevitable
“that the Japanese ruling class would succumb” faced with “the colossal industrial resources of America”. This
defeat would allow an exploitation of the Japanese workers “under more modern forms” with the disappearance
“of the feudal forms of oppression”. 1112 Thus the installation of a more “modern” capitalism would permit the
proletariat of the ‘Empire of the Rising Sun’ to join the ranks of the world proletariat: “[...] the Japanese working
class will be able, on the same footing as their American and European class-fellows, to take part in the general
fight for freedom”. 1113
Pannekoek nonetheless did not exclude the possibility that following the defeat of Japan “with the collapse of
repressive power, a revolution of the peasants and workers would break out”. This forecast of an Oriental
‘November 1918’ was to prove false.
1105 Op. cit., p. 331.
1106 Ibid.
1107 Ibid.
1108 Op. cit., p. 278.
1109 Ibid.
1110 Op. cit., p. 376.
1111 Op. cit., p. 377.
1112 Ibid.
1113 Op. cit., p. 344. Pannekoek was optimistic for the future: “This war is one of the last convulsions in the irresistible
process leading to the unification of humanity; the struggle which will result from it will make this unity a community led
by itself” (p. 335).
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