From the bottom up: three texts by Anton Pannekoek

Published by Collective Action, POB 22962, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, USA. Price $2.50/£3.

This pamphlet, mentioned in the last issue of Subversion, brings together three articles written in the 1940s by the Dutch 'council communist' Anton Pannekoek, along with a short Introduction which describes the political current to which Pannekoek belonged.

In the first article, 'Party & Class', Pannekoek states his opposition to the so-called "revolutionary party" (a contradiction in terms in his opinion) which seeks to lead and control the working class and to seize power for itself. Pannekoek favours instead fluctuating groups of people who share the same basic ideas, coming together to discuss practicalities, to clarify their views through discussion, and to propagandise their conclusions.

In 'Strikes' Pannekoek traces how, as capitalism developed this century, trade unions became "agents of capital, whose job it is to impose the unsatisfactory capital-dictated working conditions upon the unwilling workers", and what the consequences of this have been for changing forms of class struggle.

The third (and longest) article is titled 'Why Past Revolutionary Movements Have Failed'. It tries to explain the defeat of the revolutionary wave in Western Europe (Germany especially) at the end of the First World War. Pannekoek's answer is basically that it was the Bolsheviks wot done it: "The beginnings of a proletarian revolution in the West had been killed by the powerful middle class revolution of the East". (By "middle class revolution" Pannekoek meant one whose main task was to develop capitalism).

The publishers' Introduction admits that "much of Pannekoek's writings were situation-specific" and that "Without a doubt later capitalist development has long passed them by". However Pannekoek and his comrades' understanding of capitalism and its gravediggers was as advanced as it could be for its time. If nothing else these three articles give an excellent view of a certain stage in the historical growth of some of the political views held today by Subversion and groups like us.

On to Letters to Subversion