Anton Pannekoek and the Socialism of Workers' Self-Emancipation, 1873-1960

270 Pages·2016·11.58 MB·English

International Institute of Social History Amsterdam
Anton Pannekoek
and the Socialism of Workers'
Self-Emancipation, 1873-1960
John Gerber
Kluwer Academic Publishers
ANTON P ANNEKOEK
AND THE SOCIALISM OF
WORKERS'
SELF-EMAN CIP AT ION
1873-1960
by
JOHN GERBER
1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
Dordrecht I Boston I London
and
International Institute of Social History
Amsterdam
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Xl
Introduction
X111
II lustrations
XVll
Chapter I
The Making of a Socialist: The Milieu of Pannekoek's Marxism
The Historical Context: Society and Social Democracy in the
Netherlands 1
Struggling with Ideas: Pannekoek's Conversion to Marxism 5
Rank-and-File Militant: Pannekoek and the SOAP in Leiden 8
Chapter II
Mind and Reality: Pannekoek's Methodology
Pannekoek and Dietzgen: The Dialectics of Distinction 12
Theory and Social Development: The Class Basis of Science 18
Social Knowledge of a New Kind: Pannekoek's Conception of
Historical Materialism 21
Chapter III
Dutch Left Marxism in Formation: The Nieuwe Tijd Left, 1899-1906
From Romanticism to Marxism: The Origins of the Nieuwe Tijd
Group 28
'First Life, Then Theory': The Trade Union, Agrarian, and School
Debates 32
Vlll CONTENTS
Deepening of the Split: The Dutch Mass Strike Wave of 1903 and
its Aftermath 36
Chapter IV
Bringing Socialist Insight to the Masses, 1906-1909
The Berlin Years: Theoretical and Propaganda Work for the SPD 43
Intransigent Marxism on the Offensive: The Tribunist Left 46
Chapter V
Consciousness and Workers' Self Emancipation: Pannekoek's Political
Thought prior to 1910
Consciousness and Socio-Economic Reality: Pannekoek's Theory of
Ideological Hegemony 55
Organization and Ideological Development: Pannekoek's
Conception of Revolutionary Praxis 63
Moral Consciousness and Social Transformation: Pannekoek's
Conception of Proletarian Ethics 69
Chapter VI
Struggling Marxism in Practice, 1910-1914
Break with the Marxist Center: Pannekoek Against Kautsky 72
Militants Against the Apparatus: The Bremen Left 77
'Sect or Party?' The Dutch SOP 88
Chapter VII
Mass Action and Revolution: Pannekoek's Political Thought, 1910-1914
Revolution and Class Transformation: Pannekoek's Theory of Mass
Action 95
Economics and Social Development: Pannekoek's Theory of
Imperialism 100
Class Struggle and Nation: Pannekoek and the National Question 103
CONTENTS IX
Chapter VIII
War and Revolution, 1914-1919
War Against War: Pannekoek and the Zimmerwald left 108
From Sect to Party: The SDP and the New Internationalism 113
Militants Against the Current: The Bremen Left and the Formation
of German Communism 117
The New Socialism of the Laboring Masses: Pannekoek's Political
Thought, 1914-1919 127
�-�-�- -- .. _
�/thapter IX ···--
( _. ...
The Left Communist Alternative, 1920-1926
·= � - · �_- . -· ·, �
-;�:;��� �:� �: : ffe��
e � 1 :n on the O 1ve: The Amsterdam Burea
Working Class Organization of the New Type: The KAPD and the
AAUD 135
Pannekoek Against Lenin: Left Communism and the Comintern 142
Between Deventer and Moscow: The CPH and the Comintern 150
From Movement to Sect: Left Communism in Decline 157
Chapter X
A New Workers' Movement in Formation: International Council
Commun.i.s m, 1 927-1945
�··"'.--- ••O.-.,,_._ .-·-·-··�-� ,.. .
From Left Communism to Council Communism: The Origins of
the GIC and GCC 163
The Permanent Crisis: The Theoretical Development of Council
Communism in the Inter-War Period 169
-
----;..,
c_�p.ter---XI' l.,......---' .--"
-rhe World of the Workers' Councils: Pannekoek and the Theory of
Council Commun.ism
The Workers' Way to Freedom: Rebellion and Council
Organization 178
x CONTENTS
Organization and Production: The Council State 183
Ideology and Social Reality: Pannekoek's Philosophical Critique of
Leninism 187
Chapter XII
Revolution and Reality: The Council Ideal in the Post-War Period
'Hope is Far Distan(:/Pannekoek and the Dilemma of the
Independent Left V 191
Re-thinking Marx: Pannekoek and the Rciconstruction of
Revolutionary Theory and Practice 197
Unfulfilled Promise: Pannekoek in Historical Perspective 199
Notes 203
Bibliography 234
Index 249
Xl
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The obligations I have incurred in preparing this book are numerous and can
never be adequately repaid. Harvey Goldberg supervised the original disser­
tation version and, in addition to putting up with my many idiosyncrasies
for all these years, managed to give me a taste for asking the larger questions
that historians are supposed to ask. If this work occasionally rises above
mere narrative, it is largely his doing. Hyman Berman and Mulford Sibley
introduced me to many of the issues involved in this work while I was an
undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. In the early stages of this
study, I benefited greatly from the advice given by the late Georges Haupt,
whose own scholarship in this area has set standards no one else has
matched. J olyon Howorth also aided me greatly in the initial formulation of
my ideas. Mrs. J.M. Welcker and Herman de Liagre Bohl helped orient me
to,Dutch sources during my stay in Amsterdam. D1rk Struik, the late Paul
Mattick, Cajo Brendel, and the late B.A. Sijes graciously shared with me
their memories. Professor Dr. A.J. Pannekoek provided both invaluable
information and indispensable criticism. I am also especially grateful to the
close cooperation from fellow Pannekoek scholar Mark Boekelman. When
Mark and I discovered we were working on the same subject, we tended to
react as if we were rivals. Fortunately, our good sense prevailed, and we
have cooperated, as scholars should, ever since. I have also benefited greatly
from correspondence and criticism from: Peter Rachleff, Bob Jones, Alain
Pougeral, Corrado Malandrino, Neal Basen, and Dick Wortel. I should also
like to express my gratitude to the following libraries and archives, and their
staff, for the use of their facilities and for the assistance which they so kindly
provided me: The International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), the
Staatsarchiv Bremen, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Bonn), and the Univer­
sity of Wisconsin library. Finally, I thank my wife Anne whose intellectual,
logistical, and personal support was absolutely indispensable and far greater
than she will ever realize.
Xlll
INTRODUCTION
Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) has remained until recent years a largely ne­
glected and unknown figure in the history of socialist thought. 1 The partial
eclipse of Pannekoek that began in the 1920's and the almost total eclipse
later do not mean that he can be regarded as a purely ephemeral and negligi­
ble tendency in Marxist thought. On the contrary, his work can be viewed
as one of the most thorough, consistent, and intelligent attempts yet made to
develop Marxism as a theory of revolutionary practice, and the neglect he
has suffered might be considered less the result of a reasoned intellectual
judgment than the consequence of a concurrence of unfavorable historical
events.
Pannekoek's long life and political career spanned several epochs of so­
cialist history. His political maturity coincided with the rise ofs ocial democ­
racy; his last years of political life witnessed the first stirrings of the New
Left. His writings left their imprint on both movements. During the inter­
vening years he was an international figure active in both the Dutch and
German socialist movements. Prior to 1914 he collaborated with Karl Kau­
tsky on the Neue Zeit, taught in the SPD party schools, and along with Rosa
Luxemburg emerged as one of the leaders of the left wing of German social
democracy. Pannekoek was one of the first in Europe to understand the
fundamental weakness of the social democratic movement and to anticipate
its eventual collapse. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he was
the first to call for the formation of a new International and later became a
prominent figure in the Zimmerwald anti-war movement. Although he
played a pivotal role in the initial formation of European communism and
was a leader of the Comintern's Western European Bureau, Pannekoek was
among the first to break with authoritarian communism. As the preeminent
theoretician of the German 'left' communist KAPD in 1920, Pannekoek ar­
ticulated an alternative West European conception of communism and a
powerful critique of Leninist orthodoxy, .which earned him Lenin's denun­
ciation in Left-Wing Comnnmism, an Irifantile Disorder. From 1927 until his
death in 1960, he remained active as the intellectual mentor of the qu;isi­
syndicalist .'counciLcommunist' movement.
XIV INTRODUCTION
On a theoretical level, Pannekoek can be situated within a definite period
of European Marxist development spanning roughly the years 1900-1930.
He belongs to a remarkably able generation of Marxist intellectuals whose
concerns were defined by the disintegration of a politically and intellectually
debilitating Marxist orthodoxy and the search for new revolutionary alter­
natives. In his bold and sweeping critique oft he Marxism ofboth the Second
and Third Internationals, Pannekoek grasped - perhaps more lucidly than
any Marxist of his generation - the authoritarian tendencies in the political
movements inspired by Marxism and sought to develop new .anti-bu-:.
reaucratic models of revolutionary transformation. His extensive theoretical
reflections, which posed questions that were virtually unique within Marx­
ism at the time, strikingly anticipated many of the most essential contribu­
tions made by other thinkers oft he Western Marxist tradition. 2 Like Lukacs,
he articulated the centrality of ideas and consciousness to historical develop_­
ment and emphasized the organic link between class consciousness and class
organization. Like Gramsci, he sought to develop Marxism as a philosophy
of praxis and stressed the importance of combatting bourgeois ideological
domination by developing an independent proletarian hegemony. Like
Korsch, he attempted to strip Marxism of its concern with metaphysics,
highlight its importance as a critical method, and when necessary use the
Marxist conception of history to analyze the history of the Marxist move­
ment itself.
Pannekoek's scientific accomplishments are no less prodigious. A pi­
oneer in the development of modern astrophysics, Pannekoek began his
studies at the age off ifteen as an amateur astronomer fascinated by the Milky
Way. In 1891 he entered the University of Leiden. After completing his
study of astronomy in 1895, he became a geodesist at the Geodetic Survey
and in 1898 was appointed observer at the Leiden Observatory. He received
his doctorate in 1902 and shortly afterwards began a detailed investigation,
which extended over fifty years, of stellar distribution and the structure of
the galactic system. Among his many discoveries were the groups of early
stars that were later called associations. Upon leaving his observatory post
for Germany in 1906, he began a lengthy study of Babylonian astronomy
and published several articles on the subject. Returning to Holland after the
outbreak of the First World War, he found no vacancies in astronomy and
was compelled to teach at the high school level. ln 1919 he finally secured an
appointment at the University of Amsterdam where in 1921 he founded an
astronomical institute that now bears his name. It was here that Pannekoek
undertook his ground-breaking work in astrophysics. During this period,
he was one of the first to study ionization and line intensities in stellar at­
mosphere. He also developed a method of determining distances to dark
INTRODUCTION xv
nebulae and applied modern photometric methods to study the sun's at­
mosphere during solar eclipses. In addition to his other research concerns,
Pannekoek also maintained a lifelong interest in the history of astronomy,
which culminated in his influential work, A History of Astronomy, an excel­
lent and original study emphasizing the interrelation between the evolution
of astronomy and society. Among his many awards was the gold medal of
the Royal Astronomical Society, the highest honor in his profession. When
Harvard University selected 72 of the world's most distinguished scientists
and scholars to honor with honorary doctorates at its tercentenary celebra­
tion in 1936, Pannekoek was one of the four recipients in astronomy. 3
Despite the broad contours of his thought, Pannekoek's social theorizing
in the later decades of his life often seemed out of tune with the times, a
romantic and utopian holdover from an earlier phase of the socialist move­
ment. Following Lenin's judgment in Left-Wing Comnnm.ism, communists
and social democrats alike vilified him for what they consider.�d his extreme
radicalism and rigid stands. Until recently, much scholarly treatment fol­
lowed a similar pattern, which was often reinforced by the inaccessibility of
key documents. When evaluated positively, Pannekoek often merited no
more than a footnote. The resurgence of conflict among students and work­
ers in the 1960's, however, led to a renewed interest in issues of democratic
participation and workers' self-management and a search for an anti-author­
itarian Marxism, which occasioned a rediscovery of Pannekoek and his main
concerns. What resulted was a flood of anthologies, reprints, and transla­
tions of his writings in at least eight languages and several accounts of his
work. 4 While a necessary corrective to the earlier view of Pannekoek, much
of this work was marred by its uncritical and partisan character. Still others
delved into particular phases of his career, in isolation from the other phas­
es. 5 In spite of this renewed interest, no published treatment of Pannekoek
has appeared which is at once comprehensive and free of partisanship. 6
In a sense, one of the aims of the present study is to fill this gap by provid­
ing a comprehensive and critical exposition of Pannekoek's contribution to
socialist and democratic thought. But at the same time, this work aspires to
be much more. What I have also sought to do is reconstruct the historical
circumstances in which Pannekoek's theoretical development took place.
To fully understand Pannekoek's Marxism, it is necessary to critically exam­
ine the social movements in which he was involved, the intellectual and
political traditions which shaped his concerns, the experiences and learning
process by which he came to his ideas, and the means by which he sought to
test and implement these ideas. Examined in such a manner, Pannekoek's
political career provides a privileged perspective from which to explore the
possibilities and limitations of revolutionary Marxism in Western Europe