The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

helped to write the pamphlet addressed to the International and explaining the split. When the German party
refused to undertake its publication and distribution, 133 Pannekoek set himself up as a publisher in Berlin. It was
one of the first skirmishes in the struggle against revisionism, which was to become open war after 1909.
In the end, Pannekoek’s most important activity – which gave the Tribunists a considerable audience in both the
German and the international workers’ movement – was that of revolutionary journalist. From February 1908 to
July 1914, he wrote a weekly political or theoretical article in the form of press correspondence (“Presse-
Korrespondenz”). These weekly articles were bought by the main social-democratic newspapers. They were
published by the Bremer Bürgerzeitung, the spearhead of the German left opposition. In all, he wrote 336
articles, which appeared regularly in more than twenty German papers, as well as De Tribune in The Netherlands
and the Berner Tagwacht in Switzerland. Apart from the private subscribers in Holland (Gorter, Roland Holst,
Van Ravesteyn and Wijnkoop), it is interesting to note another name: Ulyanov Lenin, in Krakow (Austria-
Hungary). 134
As well as his weekly articles, Pannekoek regularly produced theoretical articles, book and press reviews, for the
theoretical review Die Neue Zeit (he was the ‘Neue Zeit’’s reviews editor between 1907 and 1914). As a result of
all this editorial activity, 135 (Pannekoek found himself at the heart of the debates against revisionism and
Kautsky’s ‘centrist’ current.
Pannekoek in opposition: the ‘Bremen Left’ (1909-1914)
Just as Pannekoek was settling in Germany (1906), the revisionism which had been condemned in theory was
developing more and more widely in the SPD’s organisation, strongly supported by the unions who wanted
nothing to do with either revolution or mass strike (see Chapter 2). The left current appeared in the open with the
publication of Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet: Mass strike, the party and the unions.
The ‘Tribunist’ militant was naturally one of the left’s strongest supporters, alongside Rosa Luxemburg, and one
of the most influential ‘radical’ theoreticians. There was not a single question of either principle or tactics (mass
strike, parliamentarism, the trades unions, party organisation, class consciousness, the question of the state, war
and imperialism, the national question), where he was not in disagreement with the party (see Chapter 2). In all
his texts, he analysed the change in historic period and so affirmed the necessity for new tactics and new
principles, not only to win increasingly precarious reforms, but also for the great goal: the proletarian socialist
revolution.
In 1909, Pannekoek published his major work, Die taktischen Differenzen in der Arbeiterbewegung (“Tactical
divergences in the workers’ movement”). 136 This was the first systematic critique, from the standpoint of the
Marxist left, of the ideas of social democracy –but also of anarchism, which he identified with revisionism.
Henceforth, the Marxist left directly confronted Kautsky, whose ‘radicalism’ barely hid his ‘centrist’ positions.
In order to distinguish themselves from this ‘radicalism’, the Marxists described themselves as ‘left radicals’
(‘Linksradikale’). The antagonism between the left and the kautskyist ‘centre’ deepened between 1910 and 1912,
when Luxemburg and Pannekoek made public their disagreements of principle on the mass strike, which echoed
the divide between reform and revolution. The radical camp was irrevocably split in two: on the one hand,
kautskyist ‘centrism’, which was to culminate in the Independent Party (the USPD) in 1917; on the other, the
133 Herinneringen, op. cit., pp. 145-146. The Vorwärts print works refused Pannekoek‘s request. It was out of the question to
help these Dutch ‘splitters’.
134 Cited by H.M. Bock, op. cit., p. 127. Pannekoek’s articles appeared regularly in De Tribune from 1908 to 1914, under the
heading ‘Letters from Berlin’.
135 A. Pannekoek wrote not just for the German social-democratic press, but also for De Nieuwe Tijd (The Netherlands), the
International Socialist Review (Chicago), and The New Review (New York). ‘Tribunist’ theories were thus widely known in
the USA prior to 1914.
136 A. Pannekoek, Die taktischen Differenzen in der Arbeiterbewegung (Hamburg: Erdmann Dubber, 1909).
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