ABSTRACT
Council communism derives from an undercurrent of international communism that became more widely known mainly thanks to being labelled by Lenin as a “growing pain.” Council communism – a term that appears to have been in use since 1921 1 – arose from the defeat of the German revolution of 1919-1920 and has existed in several versions. The most radical one was primarily a Dutch creation: the Group of International Communists (gic), formed in 1926, took Marx’s statement that the working class should liberate itself to mean precisely that and therefore rejected altogether any direct interference from intellectuals and other non-proletarians in the class struggle. By far the most renowned proponent of this view was the astronomer Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960). 2 The gic-ers were the “monks of Marxism”, to quote Henk Sneevliet. 3 They published journals and organized discussion meetings, but they never tried to take charge in incidents concerning the workers’ struggle. The gic resolved the “organizational question”, which socialists had debated ad infinitum, by denying it. The workers would come up with their own solution, once the time was right. 4
