The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68) Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Sébastien Budgen (Paris) David Broder (Rome) Steve Edwards (London) Juan Grigera (London) Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam) Peter Thomas (London) volume 125 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hm The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68) ‘Neither Lenin nor Trotsky nor Stalin!’ ‘All Workers Must Think for Themselves!’ By Philippe Bourrinet leiden | boston This work is a revised and English translation from the Italian edition, entitled Alle origini del comunismo dei consigli. Storia della sinistra marxista olandese, published by Graphos publishers in Genoa in 1995. The Italian edition is again a revised version of the author’s doctorates thesis presented to the Université de Paris i in 1988. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-1522 isbn 978-90-04-26977-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32593-7 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copy- rights holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. In memoriam Constant (Stan) Poppe (1899–1991) Maximilien Rubel (1905–1996) Serge Bricianer (1923–1997) Ngo Van (1913–2005) Maurice Brinton (1923–2005) Paul Avrich (1931–2006) and Cajo Brendel (1915–2007) ∵ Contents Acknowledgements ix Illustrations xi Introduction 1 part 1 From Tribunism to Communism (1900–18) 1 Origins and Formation of the ‘Tribunist’ Current (1900–14) 11 2 Pannekoek and ‘Dutch’ Marxism in the Second International 82 3 The Dutch Tribunist Current and the First World-War (1914–18) 132 part 2 The Dutch Communist Left and the World-Revolution (1919–27) 4 The Dutch Left in the Comintern (1919–20) 177 5 Gorter, the kapd and the Foundation of the Communist Workers’ International (1921–7) 226 part 3 The gic from 1927 to 1940 Introduction to Part 3: The Group of International Communists: From Left-Communism to Council-Communism 277 6 The Birth of the gic (1927–33) 292 7 Towards a New Workers’ Movement? The Record of Council-Communism (1933–5) 327 viii contents 8 Towards State-Capitalism: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, Democracy, Stalinism, Popular Fronts and the ‘Inevitable War’ (1933–9) 380 9 The Dutch Internationalist Communists and the Events in Spain (1936–7) 407 part 4 Council-Communism during and after the War (1939–68) 10 From the ‘Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front’ to the Communistenbond Spartacus (1940–42) 431 11 The Communistenbond Spartacus and the Council-Communist Current (1942–68) 456 Conclusion 517 Works Cited 533 Further Reading 550 Addresses of Archival Centres 614 Acronyms 615 Index 622 Acknowledgements I would particularly like to thank the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (iisg), the Arbejder-bevaegelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv, Copenhagen (aba), the Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, Zürich, the Bibliothèque de Docu- mentation Internationale Contemporaine, Nanterre (bdic), the Centre Inter- national de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme, Lausanne (cira), and the Histor- ische Kommission, Berlin, without which this work (originally a university- doctorate at Paris–i–Sorbonne) would not have been possible.1 Thanks to the late and greatly missed Professor Jacques Droz (1909–98) and also to Professor Georges Castellan (1920–2014) for his support in obtaining a doctoral stipend in the former East Germany, only a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I would like to thank the personnel of the Staatsbibliothek, East Berlin and the archives in Potsdam and Merseburg for their assistance. This help was not without its difficulties, given the impossibility of accessing sensitive archives, in particular those of the ex-iml (Institute of ‘Marxism- Leninism’), which are today freely accessible in reunified Berlin. I am particularly indebted to Cajo Brendel, an old militant of the gic, and to Gerd Callesen of the Copenhagen aba, for the texts which they agreed to supply me with. In spite of ‘disagreements’ over our differing interpretations of council-communism, Cajo Brendel did not fail to provide me with invaluable biographical notes and historical data. What is more, he had the patience to read all my work and transmitted his fraternal and apt criticisms to me. There are many others to whom I am indebted for their assistance: Fred Ortmans and Kees IJpelaan (Netherlands); Hans Schafranek and Georg Scheuer (Austria), the latter a militant of the Revolutionary Communists of Germany (rkd) who died in 1996; the historians Arturo Peregalli, who sadly died in 2001, and Bruno Bongiovanni (Italy); Gottfried Mergner, who died in 1999, and Hans Manfred Bock (Germany); Mark Shipway and Adam Buick (Great Britain); Nils (Norway); Henri Simon; and Jenny Levy-Prudhommeaux (France – daughter of André Prudhommeaux) whom I thank for lending me her father’s collection of the kapd’s Kommunistische Arbeiter Zeitung. 1 Thesis (22 March 1988): The Foundations of the International Council-communist Current – The Dutch Communist Left (1907–50). From Tribunism to ‘Councilism’. The jury was composed as follows: Antoine Prost, Professor at Paris–i; Madeleine Rebérioux, Professor at Paris–viii; Pierre Broué, Professor at Grenoble University; Hans Manfred Bock, Professor of Political Science at the Kassel Gesamthochschule. x acknowledgements I would like to pay tribute to the memory of militants like Jan Appel (1890– 1985), kapd delegate to the Second and Third Congress of the Comintern, member of the gic in the 1930s; and Ben Sijes (1908–81) a former member of the gic; and also that of Stan Poppe (1899–1991), with whom I had the opportunity to engage in political discussions. These three old militants, by their precious living testimony, stimulated my research. They were, for me, the proof that the spirit of council-communism is still alive today. Certain suggestions and criticisms from Madeleine Rebérioux (1920–2005), Pierre Broué (1926–2005) – whose memory I here salute –, Hans Manfred Bock and Antoine Prost were very valuable in the re-writing and expansion of some of the chapters of my doctoral thesis. Illustrations Part 1: The Dutch Socialist and Communist Left before 1923 (Fig. 1–14) figure 1 Hendrik Gerhard (1829–1886), the “father of the socialism” in the Netherlands photographer d. niekerk. source: internatio- naal instituut voor sociale geschiedenis (iisg) amsterdam, bg a5/331 (photo) xii illustrations figure 2 Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919), Evangelical-Lutheran preacher, frontman of the Sociaal-Democratische Bond (sdb) in 1881, member of Parliament in 1888. Disappointed with parliamentary methods, he became the leading figure of the Dutch and international anarchism. photo: 1886. photographer: a. van kampen. source: iisg amsterdam bg a58/1722 (photo) illustrations xiii figure 3 Josef Dietzgen (1828–1888), author of The Nature of Human Brain Work (1869), which influenced the philosophy of Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch-German council communism. Photo: ca. 1888. source: libcom.org xiv illustrations figure 4 Frank van der Goes (1859–1939), editor in 1885 of the Nieuwe Gids, the literary review of the Tachtigers, in 1894, with Pieter Jelles Troelstra and Hendrik Spiekman, one of the 12 apostles du sdap, in 1896 founder of the Marxist review De Nieuwe Tijd, translator of Marx’s Kapital into Dutch. Photo: ca. 1892. source: prentenkabinet, university library leiden, wits01: pk-f-e165 glass negative illustrations xv figure 5 Speech by Henriëtte Roland Holst-van der Schalk (1869–1952), theoretical figure of the mass strikes in 1906, in contact with radical Marxists such as Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky; in 1919, she sided in the cpn with Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek and the left communist fraction of the party. After having broken with the cpn in 1927, she became a “religious socialist”. Photo: ca. 1903. source: iisg amsterdam, bg a11/862 xvi illustrations figure 6 Antonie Pannekoek, during his teaching in the Social Democratic Party School in Berlin, Nov. 1906-beginning of 1910. source: iisg amsterdam, bg a58/172 (photo) illustrations xvii figure 7 Herman Gorter, Wies Gorter, Richard Roland Holst, Henriëtte Roland Holst and her mother on the Buisse Heide, near Zundert, the Netherlands. Photo: ca. 1908. source: letterkundig museum (literary museum), the hague, ppn: 318709503 xviii illustrations figure 8 sdap Congress in Arnhem, 19–21 April 1908. Just after the congress, the revisionist leaders dismissed the Marxist editors from the local socialist press. It was the true beginning of the Tribunist opposition. source: iisg amsterdam, bg b10/431 (photo) illustrations xix figure 9 The leading Committee of the sdp Rotterdam Congress, 28 May 1911. From left to right: Sam de Wolff, Willem van Ravesteyn, Herman Gorter, David Wijnkoop, Louis de Visser, Gerrit Mannoury and Jan Ceton. source: wikimedia commons. photograph: joh. b. egner (’s gravenhage), 1911. xx illustrations figure 10 Willem Hubertus Vliegen (1862–1947), typograph, editor of Het Volk.