The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Wrongly presented by its opponents as ‘idealist’ 156 , the Dutch Left was a Marxist current which insisted, like
Rosa Luxemburg, on the importance of consciousness as a factor in the class struggle, and defined this – using
the rather confused terminology of the time – as a ‘spiritual factor’. The thinker, who inspired the Dutch
Marxists throughout their struggle against the revisionism and mechanicism of the Marxist vulgarisers, was
undoubtedly Joseph Dietzgen.
With the publication of his book The Nature of Human Brain Work in 1869, 157 the social-democratic philosopher
Dietzgen (1828-1888) was hailed as one of the founders of the materialist dialectic, alongside Marx. In his
famous pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy (1888), Engels saluted the
identity of method between himself, Marx, and Dietzgen: “... it is remarkable that this materialist dialectic,
which for years has proved our best tool and sharpest weapon, was discovered not only by us, but independently
both of us and even of Hegel, by a German worker, Joseph Dietzgen.” 158
Despite this compliment from the author of Anti-Dühring, Dietzgen’s philosophical work aroused little interest
among the main theoreticians of the 2 nd International. At best, they saw no more in it than a pale imitation of
Marx, at worst a conception tainted with idealism. Franz Mehring described it as “a dialectic lacking in
knowledge”, and of “a certain confusion”. 159 Like Mehring, Plekhanov found it confused, and with no new
contribution to make to materialist theory. He saw it as an attempt “to reconcile the opposition between idealism
and materialism”. 160 This distrust can be largely explained by the enthusiasm for Dietzgen amongst certain
idealist militants, who tried to establish – with the agreement of Dietzgen’s sons – a ‘Dietzgenist’ theory. 161 In
the midst of their theoretical struggle against the avatars of ‘Dietzgenism’ and ‘Machism’ 162 , the Russian and
German theoreticians saw it as no better than a neo-idealism in disguise. This opinion was far from being shared
by Lenin and the majority of the bolshevik militants 163 who, like the Dutch Left, saw Dietzgen’s work as a
bulwark against a fatalist and mechanical vision of historical materialism that under-estimated the factor of
consciousness in the class struggle.
Left-wing Marxists’ interest in Dietzgen lay not only in his materialist critique of speculative philosophy (Kant
and Hegel), but in his rejection of the vulgar materialist conception of the brain as a reflection of matter.
Dietzgen rejected the distinction made by the vulgar materialists and idealists of the 18 th century between ‘spirit’
and matter. The brain was not merely a physical recipient for the experience of the senses, but above all the seat
156
See the article in: Programme communiste (Marseilles), the periodical of the bordigist International Communist Party
(ICP), ‘On Anton Pannekoek: Marxism against idealism, or the party against the sects’, No. 56, July-September 1972,
pp. 18-52. This article declared that “By making the revolution a problem of consciousness, Pannekoek and the whole
German ‘left’ stood resolutely on the terrain of idealism. The fact that this consciousness of the masses is the result of the
class struggle changes nothing”. The bordigists then go on, apparently unaware of any contradiction, to say that
“Pannekoek’s thinking represents the most complete expression of bourgeois materialism”.
157 J. Dietzgen, ‘The Nature of Human Brain Work’, in: The Positive Outcome of Philosophy (Chicago: Charles Kerr and Co,
1928). [With a preface by Pannekoek (1902).]
158 F. Engels, op. cit. (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1966), pp. 60-61. Dietzen was not a worker, but a master tanner.
159 F. Mehring, Die Neue Zeit, 29 th October 1909, in: Gesammelte Werke (East-Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961), pp. 212-213.
160 G. Plekhanov (1907), ‘Joseph Dietzgen’, in: Œuvres philosophiques, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1981, pp. 100-116.
161 Pannekoek himself rejected the attempts by Dietzgen’s sons, and others, to form a ‘Dietzgenist’ theory, less ‘rigid’ and
more ‘idealist than ‘narrow Marxism’. In an article of 12 th November 1910‚ Dietzgenismus und Marxismus, published in the
Bremer Bürgerzeitung (reprinted in : H.M. Bock, ‘Pannekoek in der Vorkriegs-Sozialdemokratie’, in: Jahrbuch: 3,
Frankfurt/Main, 1975), Pannekoek rejected the idea of an opposition between Marx and Dietzgen: “The proletarian
viewpoint is neither ‘dietzgenism’ nor ‘narrow marxism’ [...] There is only one marxism, the science of human society
founded by Marx, and of which Dietzgen’s contributions form an important and necessary part”.
162 See Chapter 7 of Lenin as Philosopher, which Pannekoek revised and corrected in 1938.
163 Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), wrote as follows: “in that worker-philosopher, who discovered
dialectical materialism in his own way, there is much that is great!”. [Collected Works, Vol. 17 (Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1972).] In this direction, Pannekoek opposed in 1910 the bolsheviks to Plekhanov; this last being the expression
of a mechanical and fatalistic Marxism: “...Vis-à-vis Bolsheviks, who opposed the Dietzgen theory, as theory of the activity
of the human spirit, to fatalistic Marxism, Plekhanov exerted a sour but non-founded criticism.”
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