The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The Dutch Left never considered the relationship between religion and socialism as merely a matter for
philosophical debate. Tribunism’s first concern (see Chap. I) was to distinguish itself from the revisionists in the
Party and the unions whose ‘neutrality’ in this respect in fact concealed and reduced to silence the Marxist
critique of religion; its second was to distinguish itself from bourgeois anti-clericalism, which was often, as in
France for example, supported by fractions of the socialist movement, and whose effect was to lead the
proletariat onto a foreign terrain, in other words into alliances with the bourgeoisie’s ‘radical’ fractions, and
away from the specific terrain of the working class, the class struggle.
The thesis defended by the Dutch Left in Pannekoek’s pamphlet Religion and socialism (1906) was new to
social democracy, and seemed surprising given the fact that important sectors of the working class were still
dominated by religion. According to Pannekoek, “in today’s modern proletariat, irreligion is becoming a mass
phenomenon”. 189 Religion, defined as “the belief in a supernatural being who supposedly rules the world and
controls human history”, was disappearing from the proletariat. Only the ruling classes, having in their ascendant
period been anti-religious and materialist (in the bourgeois sense) were becoming receptive to religion. The latter
was taking refuge in the ruling classes confused and assailed by doubts as to their system’s viability. This new
bourgeois religiosity expressed the bourgeoisie’s ‘false consciousness’, for which capitalist society is an
“incomprehensible domain full of secrets”.
The political conclusion drawn by Pannekoek was that the revolutionary proletariat should not take its stand on
the terrain simply of struggle against religion. The problem was not one of “guiding men towards a new religious
faith”, or an “irreligious unbelief”, but of guiding the proletariat toward the “taking in hand of social and
political power”. In this sense, the proletariat should be, not ‘irreligious’, but ‘non-religious’. The pamphlet’s
analysis, which criticised classical bourgeois 18 th century materialism, entirely orientated towards the critique of
religion, was judged harshly by Plekhanov, who saw it as ‘extremely suspect’. 190 In fact, the opposition between
Pannekoek and Plekhanov – and later Lenin – foreshadowed the debate on bourgeois materialism during the
1930’s, around Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher (see below, Chapter 7).
The Dutch Left’s vision was unquestionably orientated entirely towards the essential question for Marxism: the
development of the class struggle towards the seizure of power. However, it remained within the framework of
the social democracy, considering that for workers and members of the party, religion should remain a ‘private
affair’ (Privatsache): “This is why in our Party, religion is considered as something private. This means that we
do not demand from any of our comrades in the struggle, a profession of faith on particular opinions in this
domain; still less do we require that they should demonstrate their belief in Marx’s theory of value, although we
all recognise without hesitation this theory’s great importance for our movement.”
While emphasising that there should be no sign of ‘weakness’ or ‘toleration for opportunist motives’ towards
religion, Pannekoek made a principle of ‘neutrality’ in this respect. Not without ambiguity – which indeed was
common to the whole social democracy at the time – he declared that socialism does not show “any hostility
towards religion, which – thanks to our historical materialist viewpoint – we can understood and evaluate as
temporarily necessary”.
This conclusion, which counted on the progressive disappearance of religious illusions within the proletariat
could seem like an under-estimation of religion’s weight within the working class, and especially within the
189 A. Pannekoek, Religion und Sozialismus. Eiin Vortrag, op. cit., pp. 7 & 27.
190 G. Plekhanov, ‘À propos de la brochure de Pannekoek’, 1907, in : Œuvres philosophiques, Vol. 3 (Moscow: Éditions du
progrès, 1981), pp. 93-97. Plekhanov’s criticism is riddled with quibbling pedantry. Pannekoek is said to write “very bad
articles for the Neue Zeit, and not to have understood that religion is belief in one or several gods’, not in a supernatural
being”. Pannekoek knows nothing about the historical process of the emergence of religions. In fact, behind this
‘demolition’ of Pannekoek lie two major disagreements. The first is Pannekoek’s assertion that “the class in question is
becoming less and less religious”. The second, and the more important, lay in Plekhanov’s defence of 18 th century bourgeois
materialism: “[...] ‘bourgeois materialism’ was limited compared to today’s dialectical materialism. But there can be no
question of opposition between them. ‘Bourgeois materialism’, or more precisely the classical materialism of the 17 th and
18 th centuries, has not been ‘forgotten’, as Pannekoek would have it, but has been born again in the ‘system’ of Marx”.
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