The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The onset of the Cold War left the Bond undecided about the historical course of the post-war period. On the one
hand it believed, together with Pannekoek, that the post-war period was opening up new markets to American
capital linked with reconstruction and decolonisation and even with the arms economy. On the other hand each
strike appeared to the Bond as a “small-scale revolution”. Although the strikes more and more took place in the
context of the confrontation of imperialist blocs, ‘Spartacus’ thought at the time that “it is the class struggle that
is holding back preparations for a third world war”. 1239
In a historical course that was profoundly depressing for the revolutionaries of the period, the expected
revolution did not come. The moral authority of Pannekoek and Canne-Meijer weighed more and more in favour
of a return to the mode of functioning that had prevailed in the late GIC. In the spring of 1947 criticisms on the
concept of the Party began to be expressed openly. The former members of the GIC pressed for a return to the
structure of ‘study groups’ and ‘working groups’. In fact this return had been prepared from 1946 on, when the
Bond had asked Canne-Meijer to take the responsibility for the edition of a review in Esperanto, and so to form
an Esperantist group. 1240
In effect, separate groups were forming inside the Bond. In their intervention the Bond’s militants tended more
and more to consider themselves as a sum of individuals in the service of workers’ struggles.
Meanwhile, despite the non-revolutionary historical course it was later forced to acknowledge, the
Communistenbond was not isolated. 1241 In Holland the group ‘Socialisme van onderop’ (‘Socialism from
below’), led by the anarchist antimilitarist Albert de Jong, had been formed. But it was above all with Flemish
speaking Belgium that the Bond maintained its closest contacts. In 1945 a group very close to the Bond had been
formed, which published the review Arbeiderswil (‘Workers’ Will’). Later it took on the name of ‘Vereeniging
van Radensocialisten’ (‘Association of council-socialists’). The group declared itself in favour of the ‘power of
the councils’ and of ‘antimilitarism’. It was very close to anarchism in its organisational principle of
federation. 1242
This political environment dominated by localist groups encouraged the Bond to withdraw within Holland.
Nonetheless, in 1946 the Bond took care to make the positions of the bordigist current known to its members, by
translating the Declaration of Principles of the Belgian Fraction of the Communist Left. 1243 In July 1946, Canne-
Meijer moved to Paris in order to make contact with different groups like the GCF (Internationalisme) which
had come out of bordigism. Theo Maassen renewed this effort by making contact with the internationalist milieu
in France. It is noteworthy that the contacts were taken up by former members of the GIC and not by the ex-
RSAP, who only maintained political contact with the group around Vereeken. The former, who originated in
the council-communist movement of the 1920s and 30s, had already discussed with the ‘bordigist’ current
regrouped around the periodical Bilan.
In 1947 the Bond remained very open to international discussion and hoped to break out of its national and
linguistic limitations: “The Bond in no way wants to be a specifically Dutch organisation. State frontiers – the
result of history and capitalism – are to it nothing but obstacles to the unity of the international working
class”. 1244
1239 ‘Nog twee jaren’ (Two more years), in: Spartacus (Weekblad), No. 22, 31 st May 1947.
1240 The Bond had asked Canne-Meijer to bring out in 1946 a periodical in Esperanto: Klasbatalo. In 1951, another attempt
was made to bring out Spartacus in Esperanto. The intellectuals’ fixation on this language explains the relatively small
efforts made by the Bond to publish its texts in Esperanto.
1241 The 1950 Preface of Grondbeginselen van de communistische productie en distributie speaks of “a situation which is
certainly not revolutionary’”; it does not use the concept of counter-revolution to define the period. This preface had a dual
aim: a) to examine the new tendency towards state capitalism and its differences (in Russia, the state runs the economy
whereas in America it is the monopolies which have seized control of the state); b) to assert the need for immediate
economic struggle as the basis for “new experience” which would bear the seed of a “new period”.
1242 The ‘Provisional Statutes’ of the ‘Vereeniging van Radensocialisten’ was published in April 1947 in UEK, No. 5.
1243 The translation of the ‘Draft Programme of the Belgian Fraction’, with comments from the Leiden nucleus, can be found
in the bulletin of 2 nd August 1946.
1244 UEK, bulletin of the Christmas Conference, Dec. 1947.
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