The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

working, study and propaganda groups. The local sections (or ‘kernen’) were autonomous, without any other
link than a ‘working group’ specialised in the relations between the local groups, and the internal bulletin Uit
eigen kring (‘From our own circle’). There were as many working groups as there were functions to be fulfilled:
editorial board, correspondence, administration, the Bond’s publishing house ‘De Vlam’, international contacts,
‘economic activity’ linked to the foundation of the International Federation of Factory Nuclei (IFBK).
This return to the federalist principle of the GIC in turn brought with it a more and more councilist evolution at
the political and theoretical level. ‘Councilism’ has two characteristics: the characterisation of the historical
period since 1914 as an era of ‘bourgeois revolutions’ in the underdeveloped countries; and the rejection of any
political organisation of revolutionaries (party organisation). This evolution became particularly rapid in the
1950s. The affirmation of a theoretical continuity with the GIC – marked by the re-publication in 1950 of the
Fundamental principles of communist production and distribution 1257 – marked a break with the Bond’s original
principles of 1945.
In January 1965 was issued Daad en Gedachte (‘Act and Thought’), for which editorial responsibility lay first
and foremost with Cajo Brendel, a member of the organisation since 1952. Together with Theo Maassen he
contributed greatly to the publication of pamphlets: on the East German workers’ insurrection of 1953, on the
Amsterdam municipal workers’ strikes of 1955, on the “New Class” of Djilas (1958), and on the 1961 strikes in
Belgium. Apart from pamphlets the Bond also published theoretical essays that revealed a certain influence of
the theories of Socialisme ou Barbarie. 1258
The influence of this group – with which political contacts had existed since 1953, essentially through Cajo
Brendel and Theo Maassen, and whose texts were published in Daad en Gedachte – was no accident. The Bond
agreed with Castoriadis’ positions on ‘modern capitalism’ and thought that the opposition of ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’
were pertinent. The Bond – after the publication of the Djilas’ book The New Class – defined the Russian
‘bureaucracy’ as a ‘new managerial class’. For the Bond this class was ‘new’ above all because of its origins; it
took the form of a ‘bureaucracy’ that “forms part of the bourgeoisie”. 1259 Nevertheless, by assimilating the latter
with a layer of ‘managers’ who were not collective proprietors of the means of production, the Bond seemed
adopt the Burnham’s theory, which it had previously rejected at the 1947 conference. Once again the Bond in
1945 had been the unconscious precursor of this theory, which it had never fully developed until then.
This dislocation of the Bond had two profound causes: the rejection of all previous proletarian experience; and
the abandonment by the GIC tendency – at the heart of the Bond – of any idea of political organisation.
After trying to understand the causes of the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the Bond ceased to consider
it as a ‘proletarian revolution’ at all, and to see in it nothing but a ‘bourgeois revolution’ – just like the GIC. In a
letter to Castoriadis-Chaulieu of November 8 1953, published by the Bond, Pannekoek considered that this “last
bourgeois revolution” had been “the work of the [Russian] working class”. 1260 In effect, this rejected the
‘proletarian nature of the 1917 revolution’ (workers’ councils). Refusing to see process of counter-revolution in
Russia (subjection of the workers’ councils to the bolshevik state in 1918, Kronstadt 1921) Pannekoek and the
1257 The Principles were written in prison, during the 1920s, by Jan Appel. They were revised and rearranged by Canne-
Meijer. According to the 1972 Spartacusbond preface, in 1946, Jan Appel, with Canne-Meijer and Sijes, wrote De
economistische grondslagen van de radenmaatschappij (The Economic Foundations of Council Society’). Appel became a
member of the Bond during the war, until 1948. He disagreed with the refusal by ex-members of the GIC, and by the Bond,
to direct revolutionary work towards the German army. Other reasons (personal tension with van Albada, and a car accident
which forced him out of clandestinity) led him to abandon his work with the Bond.
1258 The quoted pamphlets and the periodical Daad en Gedachte could be obtained at the time of writing from Cajo Brendel
and can be studied at the IISG.
1259 Pamphlet written by Theo Maassen in 1961: Van Beria tot Zjoekof: Sociaal-economische achtergrond van de
destalinisatie. Translated into French as ‘L’arrière-fond de la déstalinisation’, in: Cahiers du communisme de conseils,
No. 8, Marseilles, May 1971.
1260 See: Une correspondance entre A. Pannekoek et P. Chaulieu, with an introduction by Cajo Brendel, in: Cahiers du
Communisme de conseils, No. 8, Marseilles, May 1971; and Correspondance 1953-54, Pierre Chaulieu-Anton Pannekoek,
with introduction and commentaries by Henri Simon, ‘Echanges et mouvement’, Paris, Sept. 2001.
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