ABSTRACT
Anton Pannekoek was not only an astronomer, but also a Marxist theorist. He developed a form of anti-authoritarian socialism in which the workers had to liberate themselves rather than follow their political parties and the trade unions. His anti-authoritarian opinions and his emphasis on spontaneous actions of the masses went too far for many leaders of the labour movement: Pannekoek came into conflict with Troelstra, the leader of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers’ Party, with Kautsky, the leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Second International, and with Lenin, the revolutionary Russian leader. These clashes of Pannekoek with the establishment of the labour movement were not solely the result of his radical theoretical views, but also of his rigourous personality.
