The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

struggle organised solely by the trade unions and the parliamentary party. They argued against both the eclectic
and federalist revisionists and the dogmatic and conservative kautskyist ‘centre’, in favour of a greater
organisational discipline and centralisation within the Party, but of a greater spontaneity in the class struggle,
which could not be ‘commanded from above’. Under the pressure of the class struggle, but also confronted with
the rising danger of war and nationalist ideologies, they rejected all national conceptions – and in particular the
Austro-Marxists’ – within the workers’ movement, which could only encourage nationalism and dissolve the
proletariat’s internationalist sentiments. For all these reasons, Dutch Marxism is at the opposite end of the
political spectrum from both Austro-Marxism and revisionism, and Kautsky’s ‘centrism’. The rigour of its
method, and the absence of any dogmatism or conservatism, appeared above all as the product of the evolution
of the workers’ struggle in the imperialist epoch. In theory and practice, the ‘Dutch School of Marxism’
considered itself as a ‘school’ of intransigent internationalist Marxism. Capitalism’s ultimate evolution, seeking
an extreme ‘solution’ to its crisis through world war, meant that compromise solutions had to be abandoned. The
‘middle road’ of the struggle for reforms had to be replaced by the ‘extreme’ revolutionary struggle against the
state, without any possibility of a peaceful road to socialism. In this, Dutch Marxism agreed with the
intransigence of the 2 nd International’s Marxist Left, whose most coherent expressions were Bolshevism and
Rosa Luxemburg’s current.
This last point explains why we think it incorrect to describe the Tribunists’ Marxism, the Marxism of
Pannekoek and Gorter, as a ‘Dutch school of Marxism’. The Tribunist current, especially with Pannekoek’s
work from 1906 to 1914 as a militant in Germany, was in close contact with the Marxist left there. As early as
1909 when the SDP was created, contacts were developed with the Bolsheviks, which were to be maintained and
developed in Germany, especially in Bremen through Karl Radek. Tribunism was a left Marxist component of a
radical international current, fighting against both revisionism and kautskyist ‘centrism’. In this sense, we cannot
speak of a ‘national’ Dutch expression of Marxism. Rather, there was a radical Dutch-German current which,
like the Bolsheviks (and often with greater theoretical boldness), contained within itself the programmatic seeds
of the 1919 Communist International.
Secondly, the expression ‘School’ is confusing. Pannekoek and Gorter’s Marxism can hardly be defined as a
particular philosophical ‘school’. 144 It was neither a new philosophical current, since like Marx it rejected both
classical philosophy and its modern avatars, nor was it a scholastic teaching of materialist theory. For these
theoreticians, Marxism was above all a militant practice evolving within socialism, determined by the evolution
of proletarian praxis. Their task, in the minds of Pannekoek and Gorter, was therefore not to teach, but to forge a
higher level of class-consciousness within the workers’ movement. Pannekoek’s teaching, like Rosa
Luxemburg’s, at the Social Democratic Party’s School during 1906-07, was neither scholarly nor scholastic. Its
aim was to provide a profound theoretical training to the future leaders of the socialist revolution. Revolutionary
praxis was its ultimate goal. 145
Finally, we must take account of the fact that Dutch radical Marxism developed in the Tribunist movement
around Gorter, and above all Pannekoek. These two were Tribunism’s theoretical vanguard, far out-distancing
the contributions of the organisational leaders like Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn. Pannekoek’s contributions in
the theoretical field are themselves much more marked than those of Gorter or Roland Holst. On occasions and
at a time when in the 2 nd International personalities had a great weight within the workers’ movement,
Pannekoek alone crystallised the most radical Marxism in Holland, and even in Germany. However, it is
impossible to understand Pannekoek’s theoretical contribution without taking account of the political debate
within the 2 nd International.
144 Proletarier, No. 4, Feb.-March 1921, the organ of the German KAPD, presented texts by Gorter, Pannekoek, and
Henriëtte Roland Holst-van der Schalk, as the expression of a Dutch school of Marxism.
145 For more about the SDP School, see the preface and annexes to the book of Rosa Luxemburg: Einführung in die
Nationalökonomie (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1972).
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