Letter: Anton Pannekoek and the SPGB (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anton Pannekoek and the SPGB

Dear Editors,

I have been reading the Socialist Standard for several years and was surprised to find the following statement in the October 2003 issue of your journal: 

“He [Anton Pannekoek] was optimistic that progress would lead to a great working class movement and political action to create a classless society in which all means of production and resources will be held in common by all people and used solely for needs.”

Despite the fact that Pannekoek was a council communist, there is no mention of any criticisms of his ideas. You will be aware of his statement that: “The so-called political democracy under capitalism was a mock democracy . . . Council organisation is a real democracy, the democracy of labor, making the working people master of their work” (Workers Councils, Part I, Chapter 7).

Anton Pannekoek rejected the use of political parties, and argued that the working class should organise into workers councils for the purpose of capturing power. This is in direct contradiction to the position of Karl Marx and the Socialist Party of Great Britain that the dispossession of the capitalist class can “arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party” (Marx, Programme of the French Workers Party, 1879).

Dr Pannekoek argued that the parliamentary action favoured by the SPGB was erroneous, and that through the formation of workers councils and a general political strike, Socialism could be obtained. Through the absence of any criticism of this viewpoint, I can gather that the Socialist Party does not oppose such a viewpoint.

That the SPGB is opposed to council-communism is shown in the following. In Questions of the Day, the SPGB showed 

“how secure is the grip Parliament has upon the armed forces” and how it is “necessary . . . for the workers to obtain control of Parliament before attempting to uproot the existing foundations of society . . . the only way to obtain control is through the legal one of sending delegates to Parliament”. This pamphlet argued against the views held by left-communists and council-communists that “the workers can set up their own machinery of government in opposition to the capitalist state . . . because in practices the capitalist class, controlling the armed forces through the parliamentary majority, will see to it that no hostile armed force comes into being to challenge their supremacy” (Questions Of The Day, SPGB, 1942 edition, pp76-8). 

The view of the SPGB is that if the working class were to set up councils and were to challenge the rule of the employers through these councils, our masters would have no hesitation in sending their armed forces to destroy such a movement.

It is not enough to agree upon the Object, but it is necessary to agree with the method of obtaining this Object. Thus we cannot hold a sympathetic view towards those whom adhere to the Socialist objective, but argue that this object cannot be obtained through political action in Parliament. If this is untrue, then the question is posed as to why Socialists do not unite with left-communists and council-communists.

Whilst I am quite sure you will agree to some extent as to what I have written, I still find it indispensable that we do not view certain opponents of the SPGB favourably, because of their opposition to Leninism in the case of Pannekoek.

R. Cumming, 

Glasgow

Reply: 

Your letter suffers from two glaring logical fallacies. First, because someone endorses something someone else says does not mean that they therefore endorse everything they say. Second, because someone doesn’t mention any disagreement they have with someone’s views does not mean that therefore agree with those views. Nor does it follow that to recognise that there are people outside the SPGB who agree with socialism mean that we should therefore unite with them.

So, no, you can’t gather from the fact that we did not mention (in an introduction to a pamphlet on Darwinism) that we disagree with the author’s advocacy of workers councils as the way to socialism that we therefore advocate this ourselves.

It so happens that an article by Pannekoek published in the same year as the SPGB pamphlet you quote gave us a chance to underline that, although we advocate sending delegates to parliaments as the way for the working class to gain control of political power, we are not a “parliamentary” party in the conventional sense.

As an article that appeared in the May 1942 Socialist Standard summarised Pannekoek’s position at that time (when he wrote the pamphlet on Darwin he held a different view, being a member of the German Social Democratic Party; later he was a member of the Dutch Communist Party until he realised that what was being established in Russia was state capitalism not socialism):

“Anton Pannekoek, the Dutch writer on Marxism, states his position in the bluntest of terms. Writing in an American magazine, Modern Socialism, he says: ‘The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working-class . . . Because a party is an organisation that aims to lead and control the workers’. Further on, however, he qualifies this statement: ‘If . . . persons with the same fundamental conceptions (regarding Socialism) unite for the discussion of practical steps and seek clarification through discussion and propagandise their conclusions, such groups might be called parties, but they would be parties in an entirely different sense from those of to-day’. Here Pannekoek himself is not the model of clarity, but he points to a distinction which does exist.”

The article went on to say that it was not parties as such that had failed, but the form all parties (save the SPGB) had taken “as groups of persons seeking power above the worker” and continued:

“Only Socialism can guarantee the conditions of a life worth living for all. Because its establishment depends upon an understanding of the necessary social changes by a majority of the population, these changes cannot be left to parties acting apart from or above the workers. The workers cannot vote for Socialism as they do for reformist parties and then go home or go to work and carry on as usual. To put the matter in this way is to show its absurdity . . . The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its fellow parties therefore reject all comparison with other political parties. We do not ask for power; we help to educate the working-class itself into taking it”.

An article on “left communists”, including Pannekoek, is being prepared for the January 2004 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the death of Lenin.—Editors.