The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

We see the same fascination for the Orient, as some soil of regenerator of the ‘old workers’ movement’ in the
chapter on ‘the rise of China’. 1114 Not that Pannekoek was given to infatuation with the nationalist movement of
Mao Zedong, whose partisans “under cover of communist ideas and slogans... are the heroes and champions of
capitalist development in China”. 1115 In fact, it was not “the label under which a mode of thought or action is
presented which determines the real content but its class character”. Despite the ‘communist’ label the CCP
remained a ‘bourgeois organisation’ in the same way as the Kuomintang of Chiang-Kai Chek.
Far from showing that a development of capitalism was impossible 1116 in the backward zones of the world in the
decadence of the system – a theoretical analysis of many revolutionaries at the time – Pannekoek considered a
Chinese bourgeois revolution possible. Without saying who would carry it out – Mao or Chiang – he believed in
“the accession of China to the status of a new capitalist world power” through “the intensity” of its “economic
development”. 1117 This ‘development’ would be carried out under the direction of American capital, without that
bringing into effect the installation of a ‘democracy’. On the contrary there would be “a dictatorship at the level
of central government, completed perhaps by a type of democratic autonomy at the level of the district or
village”. In effect this meant that the old system of despotism at a central level would co-exist with the more or
less autonomous village units.
These contradictory views on the evolution of Chinese capital did not call into question the role of the Chinese
proletariat. More than a presumed ‘development’, Pannekoek expected “a more rapid take off than in Europe of
a powerful movement of the working class”. 1118
Remarkably, the guide of the council communists foresaw that the upheavals at the end of war would lead to
‘decolonisation’. This, termed “self-determination” in his book, would benefit the indigenous upper classes:
“In these countries self-determination will not only be the prerogative of the upper classes; not only will their
members insert themselves in the subordinate ranks of the colonial administration of yesterday, but they will
finish up by occupying the leading places, assisted, it goes without saying, by white advisers’ and specialists
charged with ensuring that the interests of capital are served as necessary.” 1119 Thus the proletariat of the
colonies could struggle directly against its own national bourgeoisie, “independently for [its] class interests and
for liberty, alongside the western workers”. 1120
Such was the political vision of Pannekoek in 1944. Retiring in 1943, he devoted himself simultaneously to
writing his Memories of the workers’ movement and his Memoirs of an Astronomer. 1121 Perhaps feeling that his
life was in danger, with the proliferation of arrests and deportations in occupied Holland, he wanted to leave to
1114 Op. cit., p. 344.
1115 Op. cit., pp. 344-345.
1116 Op. cit., pp. 347-359.
1117 Op. cit., pp. 356-357.
1118 The partisans of the ‘Luxemburgist’ theory of the decadence of capitalism – such as the French Communist Left, and
before that the German and Dutch Lefts, except Pannekoek – showed the impossibility of bourgeois revolutions in what
would become the ‘Third World’. After the war, on the other hand, Bordiga & current, tried hard to show that the ‘revolt of
the coloured people’ would be the starting point for a formidable development of the productive forces.
1119 Op. cit., pp. 358-359.
1120 Op. cit., p. 359.
1121 Pannekoek’s archives were collated after his death by B.A. Sijes. Sijes prepared the edition of Herinneringen
(Memories) published by Van Gennep in Amsterdam, 1982. Herinneringen was written by Pannekoek by candlelight
because of the periodic power cuts. The Memoirs of an Astronomer was left to his son and grandson. It is interesting to note
that Pannekoek wrote his Herinneringen uit de arbeidersbeweging (‘Memories of the workers’ movement’) with a militant
concern: “It is necessary that the new conception [of councils] little by little penetrate the masses; from this comes the
necessity for a literature of propaganda which is easily readable and assimilated in its content. Clarification the greatest
force which makes the workers’ revolution possible; without this conception, without the clarification any movement of
revolt is deviated into a dead end or to failure. Our task must be the following: have a concern for good propagandist
literature: untingly, here in this country, but also in England Germany and America. The book by P. Aartsz (written in 1941-
42) must contribute to that” (Herinneringen uit de arbeidersbeweging, op. cit., p. 218).
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