The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

draws in ever greater masses. [...] The first task to accomplish, and the most important, is propaganda to try to
extend the strike”.
This idea of extending the unofficial strike nonetheless contradicted that of factory occupations put forward by
Pannekoek. Like the militants of the Bond, Pannekoek had been highly influenced by the factory occupations of
the 1930s. Factory occupations have passed into history under the name of ‘Polish strikes’, ever since the Polish
miners were the first to apply this tactic, in 1931. Occupations then spread to Romania and Hungary, then to
Belgium in 1935, and finally to France in 1936.
At the time, the Italian Communist Left around Bilan, while saluting these explosions of workers’ struggle
showed that these occupations closed the workers in the factories, which corresponded to a counterrevolutionary
course leading to war. 1231 Moreover, a revolutionary course would be expressed essentially by a
movement of extension of the struggle, culminating in the emergence of the workers councils. The appearance of
the councils would not necessarily mean a stoppage of production and the occupation of the factories. On the
contrary, during the Russian Revolution, the factories continued to run, under the control of the factory councils;
the movement was not one of factory occupations, but the councils’ political and economic domination of the
productive process, through daily mass meetings. This is why, when the workers of northern Italy transformed
their factories into ‘fortresses’ during the occupation movement in 1920, it expressed a declining revolutionary
course. This was why Bordiga vigorously criticised Gramsci, who had become the theoretician of power in the
occupied factory.
For the Italian Communist left, it was necessary for the workers to break the ties attaching them to the factory, to
create a class unity that went beyond the narrow framework of the workplace. On this question, Pannekoek and
the Spartacusbond were close to the ‘factoryist’ conceptions of Gramsci in 1920. They considered the struggle in
the factory as an end in itself, given that the task of the workers was the management of the productive
apparatus, as a first step after the conquest of power: “... in the factory occupations is sketched that future which
relies on a clearer awareness that the factories belong to the workers, that together they form a harmonious unity,
and that the struggle for liberty will be fought to the end in and through the factories... Here, the workers become
aware of their close ties to the factory... it is a productive apparatus that they set in motion, an organ that only
becomes a living part of society through their labour.” 1232
Unlike Pannekoek, the Bond tended to ignore the different phases of the class struggle, and to confuse the
immediate struggle (unofficial strikes) with the revolutionary struggle (mass strike giving birth to the councils).
Any strike committee – whatever the historical period, or phase of the class struggle – was likened to a workers’
council: “The strike committee includes delegates from different companies. It is then called a ‘general strike
committee’; but we could call it ‘a workers’ council’. 1233
Pannekoek, by contrast, emphasised in his Five Theses on the Class Struggle (1946) that the wildcat strike can
only become revolutionary inasmuch as it is “a struggle against the state”; in this case, “the strike committees
will have to fulfil general, political, and social functions, in other words fulfil the tasks of workers’ councils”.
Pannekoek’s conception of the councils was far removed from the anarchist positions which were later to
triumph in the Dutch ‘councilist’ movement. Remaining faithful to Marxism, he rejected neither ‘class violence’
against the state, nor the ‘dictatorship’ of the proletariat. But neither of these could be an end in itself. Both were
strictly subordinated to the communist goal: the emancipation of the proletariat, made conscious by its struggle,
and whose principle of action was workers’ democracy. The revolution of the councils was not “a brutal and
imbecile force which only knows how to destroy”: “[...] Revolutions, on the contrary, are new constructions that
1231 See Ph. Bourrinet, The ‘Bordigist’ Current 1919-1999, Italy, France, Belgium, Chapter 4, op. cit.
1232 The Workers’ Councils, chapter on ‘The Factory Occupation’.
1233 See: Le Monde nouveau, 1947, p. 12. Like Pannekoek, the Bond had a tendency to see strike committees as permanent
organisms, which would remain once the struggle was over. Pannekoek thus called – since the strike was over – for the
formation of small independent unions, “intermediate forms [...] regrouping, after a large strike, the nucleus of the best
militants into a single union. Wherever the strike breaks out spontaneously, this union will be present with its experienced
organisers and propagandists” (The Workers’ Councils).
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