The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Continuity and discontinuity between left communism and ‘councilism’
The KAPD current seemed to express a political and theoretical continuity with the left fractions of the 2 nd and
3 rd Internationals. It was situated on the terrain of the acceptance of the Russian revolution as a proletarian
revolution, despite the development of strong ‘anti-Leninist’ tendencies within it.
The Dutch left – whether Tribunist, left communist, or council communist – had a limited political role in The
Netherlands itself. It is on the theoretical level, thanks to militants like Gorter, Pannekoek but also Canne-Meijer,
that its influence became international. But without the German left communist movement, that of the KAPD
and the AAU, a movement produced by the revolution in Germany in 1918-20, this influence would have been
more restricted.
The Dutch communist left developed its basic political positions (rejection of parliamentarism, trade unionism,
the united front, anti-fascism, national liberation struggles, party dictatorship) within the German ‘council
movement’. On certain points (the economic crisis, state capitalism, the Russian question, the function of the
revolutionary organisation), it lagged behind the German communist left. Isolated in the limited context of The
Netherlands, from the 1930s onwards its political and theoretical contribution was, perhaps, less developed than
that of the ‘bordigist’ communist left, in particular in the theoretical discussion on the problems of a ‘period of
transition towards communism’.
Because of its isolation, the Dutch Communist left above all drew the negative lessons of the revolutionary
period of the 1920s and then of the counter-revolution which succeeded it on an international scale. As a result
Dutch council communism opened the door to anarchist individualist conceptions which took it far away from
the German left communism of the 1920s.
The German-Dutch ‘councilist current’, claiming descent from Otto Rühle, has to all intents and purposes
disappeared. Its conceptions have lived on in the discussion groups which arose not in organic continuity with it,
but from the post-68 wave. The rejection of political organisation, anti-substitutionism, distrust towards theory,
are in the end the expression of the trauma caused by the disastrous experience of the bolshevik revolution.
‘Councilist’ ideas, while not expressing themselves in an organised framework, have actually had a considerable
influence among the radicalised workers and militants who came out of May 68 and for whom the trade unions
is something to be rejected. Because of this council communist conceptions today have a great deal in common
with those of anarchism. But it is true that old anarchism, by its syndicalist positions, serves as a foil to
‘councilism’.
Despite the disappearance of the organised council communist current today, it has nonetheless served as an
essential stepping-stone in the revolutionary movement, in its history and in its contradictory evolution. As the
movement of May 68 showed, its positions on the workers’ councils, on ‘wildcat strikes’ and the autonomy of
workers’ struggles from the union apparatus have had certain influence on the consciousness of the workers.
In a historic period of world economic crisis, and global proletarianization of the world (“globalisation”), where
radical (internationalist) tendencies are once again coming to the surface, such positions are very likely to have
an influence on the new workers’ movement. As a praxis, this new movement will inevitably refer to the old
council communist movement.
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