The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Luxemburg in urging a clear rejection of national independence in Europe, and especially in Poland and Austria-
Hungary. National confrontations, like religious antagonisms, are a means of diverting the class struggle, “an
excellent means of dividing the proletariat, of turning its attention from the class struggle by means of
ideological slogans, and of preventing its class unity”. 262
Left Marxism’s policy on the national question was thus not a utopia. It was not a call for an internationalist
‘ethics’, but a practical policy aimed against a real force: bourgeois nationalist ideology, whose final goal was
the disintegration of the international workers’ army, and in the end the preparation for war. Pannekoek summed
up the Dutch policy of active internationalism in the following terms, burning with ‘class feeling’:
“We will answer: all the nationalist slogans and arguments: exploitation, surplus value, bourgeoisie, class
domination, class struggle. If they talk about demands for national education, we will draw attention to the
poverty of the teaching allowed the workers’ children, who are taught no more than the necessary to slave later
in the service of capital. If they talk about road signs or administrative costs, we will talk about the poverty that
forces proletarians to emigrate. If they talk about national unity, we well talk about exploitation and class
oppression. If they talk about the greatness of the nation, we will talk about the solidarity of the proletariat
throughout the world”. 263
Pannekoek’s pamphlet, written in a style both passionate and didactic, was one of the most ringing calls ever
written in the Second International for the defence of internationalist class feeling against the disintegration of
this feeling by nationalist ideology, even within the ranks of the workers’ movement.
It agreed entirely with Strasser, despite occasionally taking a somewhat different line to the extent that it made
concessions to Bauer. Pannekoek undoubtedly put forward a classical view of the socialist future, declaring that
the future economic unit would be the world, not the state or the nation. “This material basis of the collectivity,
organised world production, will transform the humanity of the future into a single community of destiny”. 264
Unlike Strasser, however, he envisaged the existence in this unified world of ‘communities of language’; these
‘groups of the same language’ would be what was left of the ‘nations’, whose mutual relationships would create
a common language. This undoubtedly reintroduced the concept of the ‘nation’, to maintain a ‘diversity’ within
the classless society, even though Pannekoek’s argument had been to show that only the petty bourgeoisie had
any interest in the preservation of a ‘national language’. Strasser was more logical, in looking forward
enthusiastically to the appearance of a single world language to cement together the new world community:
“Let us put an end to the multiplicity of languages, let us make one language the language of universal
communication, which will be taught in every school in the world; it will soon be the only language and
consequently will fulfil the function of language as a means of communication and understanding.” 265
Pannekoek’s second ambiguity lay in his ‘tactical’ proposal, in Austria-Hungary, to recommend the unity of
party and unions, whatever their nationality, at the international level; but locally, “for propaganda and education
purposes”, national sub-organisation. 266 Designed to take account of ‘linguistic particularities’, this again boiled
down to reintroducing the ‘national’ factor within the proletarian organisation. But ambiguities like this were
scarcely visible within this extremely important work.
In fact, Pannekoek’s ‘Class struggle and nation’ was a fighting text entirely directed against nationalist
ideology, which was the ideological foundation for the preparation of world war. As Pannekoek noted in 1913,
the choice was more and more between mass action, internationalism, and revolution, or nationalism and war. 267
262 Idem, p. 186.
263 Idem, p. 177.
264 Idem, p. 163.
265 Strasser, op. cit., p. 70.
266 Pannekoek, op. cit., p. 183.
267 Pannekoek, ‘Nationalismus und Sozialismus’, Bremer Bürgerzeitung, 27 th September 1913.
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