The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

evolution. 125 Right up until the war, Henriëtte Roland Holst was closely associated with Rosa Luxemburg,
whose conceptions she shared on the issue of the mass strike. Thanks to their political ties and their political
contributions, Dutch Marxist theoreticians had a real audience in the German and international workers’
movement.
But no other Dutch militant before 1914 exercised so profound an influence – both theoretical and practical –
over the German radical current, as Pannekoek. Gorter’s influence only appeared in 1920-21, within
international left communism. That of Roland Holst was more limited, due to her centrist position between
official communism and Linkskradikalismus.
Pannekoek met Kautsky for the first time in April 1902, when the latter visited Holland to hold conferences on
Marxism. He invited Pannekoek to contribute to the theoretical review Die Neue Zeit. This collaboration began
in 1903, and was to end in 1912 leaving Pannekoek disillusioned as to Kautsky’s radicalism. Pannekoek’s
reputation in the theoretical domain was such that in 1905 the Committee for the Formation of the Bremen
Union Cartel (“Bildungsausschuß des Gewerkschaftskartells Bremen”), which had just been established by the
local unions and social-democrats, invited him to hold conferences for hundreds of workers. On 14 th September
1905, Pannekoek held a conference in Bremen on the theme of ‘Religion and Socialism’. 126 At the same time, he
began to contribute to the Leipziger Volkszeitung edited by Franz Mehring. Mehring wanted Pannekoek to train
Social-Democrat journalists and propagandists in Leipzig. Instead, in May 1906 he accepted Kautsky’s
invitation to give courses on historical materialism to the Party School in Berlin, which was planned to open in
November. With Hilferding, he had been chosen as one of the ‘foreign’ teachers, whose wages were paid by the
Social democracy. He thus took the conscious decision to give up his career as an astronomer, and in November
resigned from his position at the Leiden observatory. He was determined to commit himself completely to the
German workers’ movement as a ‘professional revolutionist’, and so moved to Berlin.
Pannekoek, as ‘professional revolutionist’
There is a tendency to reduce Pannekoek to a ‘pure theoretician’, an intellectual who advised the revolutionary
movement without getting really involved in it. 127 But for eight years, from 1906 until war broke out, he was a
party militant. He poured out his energy for the German workers’ movement, both theoretically and practically.
Through his contacts with German reformism and radical Marxism, this period of his life was decisive in the
development of left communist theory. It was certainly one of the most fertile for his political activity, with an
abundant output of articles and pamphlets devoted to Marxist theory and the tactics of the workers’ movement.
Without this militant activity, Pannekoek would never have become an internationally known Marxist, especially
at the very beginning of the Communist International. After this date, and leaving aside his purely ‘councilist’
contributions, his theoretical and political work was essentially one of elaboration rather than theoretical
125 H. Roland Holst, with a foreword by K. Kautsky, Generalstreik und Sozialdemokratie, 2 nd edition, Dresden, 1906; Dutch
translation: Algemeene werkstaking en sociaal-democratie, Rotterdam, 1906. There exists a Russian translation [1906]:
Vseobšcaja stacka i socialdemokratija (S predisloviem Karla Kautskogo).
But the synthesis of all experiments of mass strike and revolutionary strike was above all in her work written in 1918: De
revolutionaire massa-aktie, een studie, Rotterdam, 1918. This last book was dedicated “to her friend Pannekoek”.
126 A. Pannekoek, Religion und Sozialismus. Ein Vortrag (Bremen: Bildungsausschuss des Gewerkschaftskartells, 1906).
For Pannekoek’s activity in Germany, see his memoirs (Herinneringen, op. cit., pp. 112-178); H. M. Bock, ‚Anton
Pannekoek in der Vorkriegs-Sozialdemokratie. Bericht und Dokumentation’, Jahrbuch Arbeiterbewegung: 3, pp. 103-167;
C. Malandrino, ‚Anton Pannekoek e il movimento socialdemocratico tedesco (1906-1914)’, in: Annali della Fondazione
Luigi Einaudi, Torino, 1982, pp. 497-543; K.E. Moring, Die Sozialdemokratische Partei in Bremen, 1890-1914 (Hannover:
Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1968).
127 C. Brendel’s book, Anton Pannekoek, theoretikus van het socialisme (Nijmegen: SUN, 1970), depicts Pannekoek as a
‘pure theoretician’ by making practically no reference to his activity as a militant either in Leiden or in Germany. [German
translation: Anton Pannekoek, Denker der Revolution (Freiburg im Breisgau: Ça Ira Verlag, 2001)].
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