World Revolution and Communist Tactics

by Anton Pannekoek

Genres: Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Dutch astronomer and marxist theorist.

He was one of the main theorists of council communism. As a recognized Marxist theorist, Pannekoek was one of the founders of the council communist tendency and a main figure in the radical left in the Netherlands and Germany.

In his scientific work, Pannekoek started studying the distribution of stars through the Milky Way, as well as the structure of our galaxy. Later he became interested in the nature and evolution of stars. Because of these studies, he is considered to be the founder of astrophysics as a separate discipline in the Netherlands.

The Astronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek at the University of Amsterdam, of which he had been a director, still carries his name.

Reviews

[Liam シ︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anton Pannekoek’s “World Revolution and Communist Tactics” stands as a fundamental critique, correctly identifying bourgeois parliamentarism and conservative trade unions as instruments for derailing revolutionary consciousness and upholding the workers’ council as the authentic organ of proletarian power. While fully aligned with his council communist perspective, I maintain a critical stance toward his uncompromising anti-parliamentarism and outright rejection of union and parliamentary work. Revolutionary communists cannot, for the sake of ideological purity, divorce themselves from the existing mass organisations and struggles of the working class, even when those arenas are politically contaminated by bourgeois ideology. To remain a force within the class rather than a sect outside it, we must engage tactically in parliamentary and trade union struggles—not to promote reformist illusions, but to expose the limits of these institutions from within, sharpen contradictions, and rally the advanced workers toward the revolutionary objective: the construction of independent, militant council power. Pannekoek’s analysis is thus a vital corrective against opportunism, but his tactics risk abandoning the masses to the very reformist leaders he rightly condemns.

While remaining engaged with mass institutions, this tactical presence must be anchored and directed by a revolutionary organization operating entirely outside and against the parliamentary sphere. This independent nucleus, uncontaminated by the daily compromises and careerist logic of bourgeois politics, is essential. Its role is not to compete in elections, but to provide a clear, unwavering analysis, to cultivate revolutionary theory, and to train cadre. These cadre must then work within the existing mass formations – trade unions, tenant associations, and even left-reformist parties – as a disciplined fraction. Their task is not to administer capitalism better, but to relentlessly critique its failures from within, champion direct action and workers' control, and win the advanced layers of the working class to the perspective of extra-parliamentary, council-based power. Thus, the organization acts as the strategic memory and revolutionary compass of the class, ensuring that necessary engagements in partial struggles do not become ends in themselves, but are continually subordinated to the ultimate goal: the destruction of the bourgeois state and the institution of proletarian democracy through workers' councils.