The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Chapter 2 Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International
The Marxism of Tribunist theoreticians like Gorter, Pannekoek, or even Roland Holst, is often portrayed as a
purely Dutch phenomenon. Around these theoreticians is supposed to have been created what has been called the
‘Dutch School of Marxism’. And this Dutch ‘school’, comprising the theoreticians of intransigent revolutionary
Marxism, was often – before 1914 – contrasted with the ‘Austrian School of Marxism’, or ‘Austro-Marxism’
represented by Rudolf Hilferding, Max Adler and Otto Bauer. Austro-Marxism was closely related to the Marx-
Studien in 1904, and to the weekly Der Kampf in 1907. Both these theoretical currents of international socialism
were represented, by Pannekoek and Hilferding respectively, in the German Social-Democratic Party’s School
opened in Berlin on the 15 th November 1906.
This opposition between the two ‘schools’ was no accident. While each of these currents of international
socialism attacked the traditional interpretation of Marxism, laid down as scripture by Bebel and Kautsky, they
did so in diametrically opposite directions. The Austro-Marxists liked to think of themselves as ‘unorthodox’.
They ended up with an eclectic philosophical mixture of ‘neo Kantianism’, the philosophy of Ernst Mach,
psychology and Marxism. Marxism was considered more as a ‘social ethic’ dominated by the Kantian ‘categoric
imperative’ than as a historical materialism based on the science of the evolution of economic and social events.
In politics, Austro-Marxism was the incarnation of ‘centrism’, constantly looking for compromise solutions,
fearful of ‘extreme’ positions, and standing midway between Bernstein’s revisionism and ‘orthodox’ Marxism.
This political method of compromise and lack of intransigence on principles, was well summed up by Austro-
Marxism’s leading light, Otto Bauer “It is preferable to go a little way together, even if we take the wrong road –
since mistakes can always be corrected – than to let ourselves be divided in searching for the right road”. 142
Dutch Marxism’s method was altogether different. In defining itself as ‘orthodox Marxist’, the ‘Dutch School of
Marxism’ rejected all eclecticism in philosophy as much as in politics. It called for a return, not to Kant but to
Marx, whose materialist method had been continued through the work of Dietzgen. Marxism was neither
teleology, nor ‘social ethic’ but ‘science’ insofar as its method was materialist, and thus scientific. Socialism was
conceived as a necessary product of the evolution of class society, but not as inevitable. While objective factors
(decline and crises of the capitalist system) were important, subjective factors (the proletariat’s classconsciousness
and will) would be decisive in bringing socialism about. The latter could in no way be
teleology. 143 Moreover, for Dutch Marxism, although socialism could not be a pure negation of ‘ethics’, the
latter could only be explained by materialist science. Socialism was not based on ‘ethics’: rather, it was
socialism that would engender a new proletarian class morality on the basis of material relations of production.
This morality would not be a ‘categorical imperative’ as the Austro-Marxists claimed, but a material reality
springing from the struggle of the proletariat. This is why the Dutch theoreticians’ Marxism could be neither a
pure ‘orthodoxy’, nor a frozen ‘dogmatism’. While the Marxist method could not be anything but orthodox, its
content was like society, in constant evolution, enriching itself with the living reality of the class struggle, which
would in its turn overthrow old dogmas and renew both proletarian tactics, and even certain theoretical
principles which had been thought untouchable. The experience of the class struggle prior to 1914, characterised
by the development of mass strikes, led the Dutch Marxists to call into question the classic schemas of the
142 Quoted by R. Rosdolsky in: Die revolutionäre Situation in Österreich im Jahre 1918 und die Politik der
Sozialdemokraten (Berlin: VSA, 1973), pp. 119-174. See also: J. Droz, ‘La Social-Démocratie en Autriche-Hongrie (1867-
1914)’, pp. 73-114, in: J. Droz (ed.), Histoire générale du socialisme, Vol. II (Paris: PUF, 1974).
143 See Pannekoek’s criticism of the neo-Kantians teleological conceptions, in: Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 23, 1905, No. 2, pp. 428-
435, and 468-473.
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