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The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

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“<strong>The</strong> present critique of the old parties is not only a critique of their practical policies, or of the behaviour of<br />

their leaders, but a critique of the whole old conception of the party. It is a direct consequence of the changes in<br />

the structure and objectives of the mass movement, the task of the [revolutionary] party lies in its activity within<br />

the mass movement of the proletariat.”<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>The</strong>ses showed historically that the conception of a workers’ party acting on the model of the bourgeois<br />

parties of the French revolution, and not distinct from other social strata, had become outdated with the Paris<br />

Commune. <strong>The</strong> Party aims, not at the conquest of the state but at its destruction:<br />

“In this period of the development of mass action, the political party of the working class was to play a much<br />

greater role. Because the workers had not yet become the overwhelming majority of the population, the political<br />

party still appeared to be the necessary organisation, which had to work to draw the majority of the population in<br />

behind the action of the workers, just as the bourgeoisie’s party acted in the bourgeois revolution; because the<br />

proletarian party had to be at the head of the state, the proletariat had to conquer state power.”<br />

Showing capitalism’s evolution after 1900, “a period of growing prosperity for capitalism”, the <strong>The</strong>ses showed<br />

the development of reformism within the social democracy. <strong>The</strong>y tend to reject the parties of the 2 nd<br />

International after 1900, given their evolution towards parliamentary and trades union opportunism. And they<br />

ignore the reaction of the communist lefts (Lenin, Luxemburg, Pannekoek) within it. Showing the “pretence of<br />

full democracy” within the classic social democracy, and the “complete split between the mass of members and<br />

the party leadership”, the <strong>The</strong>ses conclude negatively, and do not show the organisation’s positive contribution<br />

to the workers’ movement of the day: “<strong>The</strong> political party ceases to be a formation of the power of the working<br />

class. It becomes the workers’ diplomatic representative within capitalist society. It takes part in Parliament, and<br />

in the organisation of capitalist society, as a loyal opposition”.<br />

World War I opened a new period: that of the proletarian revolution. <strong>The</strong> <strong>The</strong>ses considered that the origin of the<br />

revolution lay in the absolute pauperisation of the proletariat, not in the change in period. Consequently, it was<br />

hard to see how the revolutionary period of 1917-23 differed from 1848, a period of ‘absolute pauperisation’<br />

characteristic of youthful capitalism: “<strong>The</strong> outbreak of the World War meant that the period of relative<br />

pauperisation was being succeeded by that of absolute pauperisation. This new evolution must necessarily push<br />

the workers into a revolutionary opposition to capital. At the same time, the workers also entered into conflict<br />

with the social democracy”.<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>The</strong>ses did not forget to emphasise the positive contributions of the post-war revolutionary wave: the<br />

spontaneous birth of “enterprise organisations and workers’ councils as organs of workers’ democracy within the<br />

enterprise, and organs of local political democracy”. However, the <strong>The</strong>ses minimised the revolutionary<br />

significance of Russia 1917; they only seemed to remember what followed it: the counter-revolution and state<br />

capitalism. <strong>The</strong>y saw in the 1917 revolution, the origins of the stalinist counter-revolution. Any process of<br />

‘degeneration’ was denied, and the Russian workers thus made responsible for the defeat of the Russian<br />

Revolution. <strong>The</strong> development of “state socialism” (i.e. state capitalism) was seen as “the result of the workers’<br />

and peasants’ revolutionary struggle”.<br />

Nonetheless, the <strong>The</strong>ses were lucid on the pernicious effect on the workers of the time, of the confusion between<br />

socialism and state capitalism: “... thanks to the Russian Revolution, the state socialist conception acquired a<br />

revolutionary halo which contributed largely to blocking the workers’ real revolutionary coming to<br />

consciousness”. 1205<br />

1205 In 1943, Pannekoek himself, despite his analysis of the Russian Revolution as ‘bourgeois’ showed that October 1917 had<br />

had a positive effect on class consciousness: “<strong>The</strong>n as a bright star in the dark sky the Russian revolution flared up and<br />

shone over the earth. And everywhere the masses were filled with anticipation and became restive, listening to its call for<br />

the finishing of the war, for brotherhood of the workers of all countries, for world revolution against capitalism. Still<br />

clinging to their old socialist doctrines and organisations the masses, uncertain under the flood of calumnies in the press,<br />

stood waiting, hesitating, whether the tale might still come true. Smaller groups, especially among the young workers,<br />

everywhere assembled in a growing communist movement. <strong>The</strong>y were the advance guard in the movements that after the<br />

end of the war broke out in all countries, most strongly in defeated and exhausted Central Europe.” [Les Conseils ouvriers,<br />

295

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