The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

went for the question of the party, on which the movement was far from unanimous (see below). All these
questions went beyond the immediate framework of the war in order to open up and enlarge a theoretical vision
of Marxism.
Pannekoek’s activity during the war was theoretically independent. 1128 It can be compared to that of Bordiga. For
the first time in the history of the workers’ movement, some recognised ‘leading figures’ abandoned all
revolutionary activity within an organisation in order to withdraw into theoretical studies, even to dedicate
themselves to their professional activity. Following from a distance the activity of the organisations claiming
their orientation they contributed to it sometimes – and this was mach more true of Pannekoek than of Bordiga in
the 1930s – they never underwent either exile or the illegality required for militant work. Despite their fidelity to
the revolutionary cause, they look refuge in the silence of their studies. Their contributions became personal and
exterior to their movement.
The personal nature of Pannekoek’s contribution allows a better understanding of its limits. Outside the battle of
fractions, he seemed – like Trotsky before the First World War – to have a more serene and lucid view of the
historic course followed by capitalism in these years of war. On the basis of his revolutionary experience, he
could grasp the consequences of the war for the workers’ movement: the confirmation of a defect and not, as in
1917-18, the opening of a period of social upheaval. He understood that the end of the war would not mean the
proletarian revolution in the colonies – which could only come from the developed countries, and in the first
place, according to him, the USA – but the domination of the indigenous bourgeoisie.
More ambiguous was his vision of a possible development in the backward areas, since described as the ‘Third
World’, or as the ‘developing countries’. Like Bordiga, he thought that these countries could become new
economic and social poles. In some way the history of capitalism would repeat the 19 th century. But whereas
Bordiga supported the struggles of national liberation and ‘coloured people’ 1129 – in the tradition of the Baku
Congress 1130 – Pannekoek defended the principle of a workers’ struggle for international social liberation.
The theory of consciousness defended in The Workers’ Councils was contradictory. According to him, the
physical disappearance of the proletariat in the war was the reason for the disappearance of the ‘class for itself’
as a class conscious of its aims. For Pannekoek the dominant idea was that class consciousness could only be a
reflection of the general consciousness of the class at a given moment (real consciousness or level of
consciousness). Consequently the smothering of this real immediate consciousness led to the disappearance of
class consciousness, as a political revolutionary consciousness. Since class consciousness was not seen also as a
product of revolutionary organisations, it could only exist as an individual consciousness: “thought by oneself, a
knowledge acquired by oneself of the method for determining what is true and right”. 1131 Thus, class
consciousness, far from being a collective product, emerged through “self-education... through the intensive
activity of each brain”. This made class consciousness, as a generalised consciousness of the class, more the fruit
of a self-education than a maturation in depth coming to the surface in the form of mass movements.
1128 It is this independence of spirit that Pannekoek claimed: “Through my material situation made possible by a bourgeois
position, scientific work and teaching in the service of bourgeois science, I was completely independent and without
prejudice as regards the workers’ movement; I had no duty to accomplish; I can calmly reorient myself and arm for a new,
better and more general vision. Independence of existence is the condition for independence of thought. And that, perhaps,
still can continue to bear fruit.” [Herinneringen, op. cit., pp. 21-81.]
1129 See Bordiga, I fattori di razza e nazione nella teoria marxista (Milan: Iskra edizioni, 1979). Bordiga, however, unlike
Pannekoek, left the Marxian framework behind when he substituted the concept of race and nation for that of class, exalting
the ‘revolt of coloured peoples’ –’black’, ‘yellow and olive’ (sic) in the Third World.
1130 See John Riddell, To see the dawn, Baku 1920, First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993).
At the time the Dutch Communist Party, to which Pannekoek belonged, launched an appeal to the peoples of the Orient:
“Brother Hindus! [Indonesians] Join up with your oppressed brothers of the Orient who, in their turn, revolt against the
English capitalists, allied to your oppressors: the Dutch capitalists!” (p. 220).
1131 Op. cit., pp. 490-494.
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