The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

explicit criticism of their leaders’ nationalist declarations. Their critiques, put forward with great clarity, were
directed against the kautskyist “centre” and seemed to spare the ‘proletarian leaders’ like Bebel. And yet in 1907
Bebel used much the same language as Noske, who wanted “Germany to be as well-armed as possible, and that
the entire German people should take an interest in the military organisations which are necessary for the
defence of our fatherland”. 273 At the 1907 Essen Congress, Bebel declared – and for which he was warmly
applauded by Kautsky in 1912, without Pannekoek picking this up – that the defence of the ‘fatherland’ was a
duty of socialism: “If one day we really have to defend the fatherland, then let us defend it, because it is our
fatherland, the land we live on [...] And this is why, if the need arises, we should defend the fatherland if we are
attacked.” 274
As the International tended to disintegrate slowly, at the moment of the Basle Congress (November 1912),
Pannekoek declared that “the International had never been so strong and united, and that more and more the
soldiers of all countries formed a single army.” 275
In fact, the formation of this ‘single army’ of the proletariat was only to appear from 1917 onwards, with the
upsurge of the Russian and world revolution. This consciousness of belonging to the same army of the world
revolution was the product of the split during the war between the revolutionary current and the social
democracy. Overwhelmed by the nationalist wave in 1914, the revolution got back on its feet to stand against the
war.
273 Schorske, op. cit., p. 109.
274 Quoted by Kautsky, in: The new tactics, op. cit., p. 349.
275 Pannekoek, ‚Die Internationale in Basel’, in: Bremer Bürgerzeitung, 23 rd November 1912. Unlike Gorter, at the time
Pannekoek saw the Basle Congress as “the International’s first council of war” and the realisation of the unity of the
International, “which had not been the case until 1910”.
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