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Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International

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Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International chapter 2 Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International The Marxism of Tribunist theoreticians like Gorter, Pannekoek, or even Roland Holst, is often portrayed as a purely Dutch phenomenon. A so-called ‘Dutch school of Marxism’ was supposedly created around these theoreticians. And this Dutch ‘school’, comprising the theoreticians of intransigent revolutionary Marxism, was often – before 1914 – contrasted with the ‘Austrian school of Marxism’, or ‘Austromarxism’, as represented by Rudolf Hilferding, Max Adler and Otto Bauer. Austromarxism was closely related to the Marx-Studien in 1904, and to the weekly Der Kampf in 1907. Both of these theoretical currents of international socialism were represented – by Pannekoek and Hilferding, respectively – in the German Social-Democratic Party’s School, opened in Berlin on 15 November 1906. This opposition between the two ‘schools’ was no accident. While each of these currents of international socialism attacked the traditional interpreta- tion of Marxism, laid down as scripture by Bebel and Kautsky, they did so in diametrically opposite directions. The Austromarxists liked to think of them- selves as ‘unorthodox’. They ended up with an eclectic philosophical mixture of ‘neo-Kantianism’, the philosophy of Ernst Mach, psychology and Marxism. Marxism was considered more as a ‘social ethic’,dominated by the Kantian ‘cat- egoric imperative’, than as a historical materialism based on the science of the evolution of economic and social events. In politics, Austromarxism was the incarnation of ‘centrism’, constantly looking for compromise solutions, fear- ful of ‘extreme’ positions, and standing midway between Bernstein’s revision- ism and ‘orthodox’ Marxism. This political method of compromise and lack of intransigence on principles, was well summed up by Austromarxism’s leading light, Otto Bauer: ‘It is preferable to go a little way together, even if we take the wrong road – since mistakes can always be corrected – than to let ourselves be divided in searching for the right road’.1 Dutch Marxism’s method was altogether different. In defining itself as ‘ortho- dox Marxist’, the ‘Dutch school of Marxism’ rejected all eclecticism in philo- sophy as much as in politics. It called for a return not to Kant, but to Marx, 1 Quoted in Rosdolsky 1973, pp. 119–74. See also Droz 1974, pp. 73–114. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004325937_004 pannekoek and ‘dutch’ marxism in the second international 83 whose materialist method had been continued through the work of Dietzgen. Marxism was neither teleology, nor a ‘social ethic’, but a ‘science’, insofar as its method was materialist, and thus scientific. Socialism was conceived as a necessary product of the evolution of class-society, but not as inevitable. While objective factors (decline and crises of the capitalist system) were import- ant, subjective factors (the proletariat’s class-consciousness and will) would be decisive in bringing socialism about. The latter could in no way be tele- ology.2 Moreover, for Dutch Marxism, although socialism could not be a pure negation of ‘ethics’, the latter could only be explained by materialist science. Socialism was not based on ‘ethics’: rather, it was socialism that would engender a new proletarian class-morality on the basis of material relations of produc- tion. This morality would not be a ‘categorical imperative’ as the Austromarxists claimed, but a material reality springing from the struggle of the proletariat. This is why the Dutch theoreticians’ Marxism could be neither a pure ‘ortho- doxy’, nor a frozen ‘dogmatism’. While the Marxist method could not be any- thing but orthodox, its content was, like society itself, in constant evolution, enriching itself with the living reality of the class-struggle, which would in its turn overthrow old dogmas and renew both proletarian tactics and even cer- tain theoretical principles that had previously been thought untouchable. The experience of the class-struggle prior to 1914, characterised by the develop- ment of mass-strikes, led the Dutch Marxists to call into question the classic schemas of struggle organised solely by the trades-unions and the parliament- ary party. They argued against both the eclectic and federalist revisionists and the dogmatic and conservative Kautskyist ‘centre’, in favour not only of greater organisational discipline and centralisation within the party, but also of 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 concep- tions – and in particular those of the Austromarxists – within the workers’ movement, which could only encourage nationalism and undermine the pro- letariat’s internationalist sentiments. For all these reasons, Dutch Marxism is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from both Austromarxism and revi- sionism, 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 evol- ution of working-class struggle in the imperialist epoch. In theory and in prac- tice, the ‘Dutch school of Marxism’ considered itself as a ‘school’ of intransigent, 2 See Pannekoek’s criticism of the neo-Kantians’ teleological conceptions, in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 23, 1905, No. 2, pp. 428–35, 468–73..
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