The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

esult from new forms of organisation and thought. Revolutions are constructive periods in the evolution of
humanity”. This is why “while armed action also plays a great role in the class struggle”, it is in the service of a
goal: “not to break heads, but to open minds”. In this sense, the dictatorship of the proletariat was the
proletariat’s freedom in creating true workers’ democracy: “Marx’s conception of the proletarian dictatorship
appears identical to the workers’ democracy of the council organisation”.
However, Pannekoek’s conception of workers’ democracy evacuated any potion of its power against other
classes, and the state. The councils appeared simply as the reflection of different opinions among the workers.
They were to be a parliament, where different working groups would co-exist, but without either executive or
legislative powers. They were not instruments of proletarian power, but informal assemblies: “The councils do
not govern; they transmit the opinions, intentions, and will of the working groups”.
As so often in The Workers’ Councils, one assertion is followed by its opposite, such that it is difficult to trace
any coherent line of thought. Whereas in the passage we have just quoted, the workers councils appear without
power, they are later defined as powerful organs “which must fulfil political functions”, and where “what is
decided is put into practice by the workers”. This implies that the councils “establish the new rule of law”.
By contrast, there is nowhere any mention of an antagonism between the councils and the new state produced by
the revolution. Although the Russian Revolution posed the question, Pannekoek seems implicitly to consider the
councils as a state, whose role will be more and more an economic one, once the workers have “made
themselves masters of the factories”. The councils would then cease to be political organs, to be “transformed...
into organs of production”. 1234 In this light, it is hard to see how Pannekoek’s theory of the councils differed
from that of the bolsheviks after 1918.
The ‘Brussels International Conference’ (25–26 May 1947)
In the space of two years – from 1945 to 1947 – the divide narrowed between the theoretical conceptions of the
Communistenbond Spartacus and the ‘councilist’ theories of the GIC and Pannekoek, although the latter was
never a militant of the Bond. 1235
There are many factors to be taken into account to explain the sharp contrast between the Bond of 1945 and the
Bond of 1947. Initially the influx of militants after May 1945 had given the impression that a revolutionary
period was opening up; the Bond believed that the revolution would arise inevitably from the war. Its hopes were
reinforced by the outbreak of ‘wildcat’ strikes in June 1945 in Rotterdam, directed against the unions. More
profoundly the organisation did not believe in the possibility of a reconstruction of the world economy, but
thought in August 1945 that “the capitalist era in the history of mankind is coming to an end”. 1236 This sentiment
was echoed by Pannekoek, who wrote: “Today we are witnessing the beginning of the collapse of capitalism as
an economic system”. 1237
However, with the beginning of the reconstruction period, the Bond soon had to acknowledge that neither
revolution nor economic collapse were imminent. Nevertheless the Bond and Pannekoek always remained
convinced of the historical perspective of communism; certainly, “a large part of the road towards barbarism is
behind us, but the other road, the road towards socialism, remains open”. 1238
1234 The Workers’ Councils, chapter on ‘The Workers’ Revolution’.
1235 Pannekoek only had individual contacts with the old members of the GIC: H. Canne-Meijer, B.A. Sijes.
1236 ‘Het zieke kapitalisme’ (Sick Capitalism), in: Maandblad Spartacus, No. 8, August 1945.
1237 In The Workers’ Councils, ibid. This idea of a collapse of capitalism contradicted another thesis in The Workers’
Councils: the idea that capitalism would undergo a new phase of expansion as a result of decolonisation: “Once it had
brought under its rule the teeming millions of China and India’s fertile plains, capitalism will have fulfilled its essential
tasks”.
1238 Maandblad Spartacus, No. 8, August 1945.
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