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My name is Jan Appel, and I was born in a village in Mecklenburg
in 1890. I attended elementary school and learned the shipbuilding
trade. Even before my birth my father had been a Socialist. I
myself became a member of the Sozial-demokratische Partei Deutschlands
[SPD] on reaching 18 years of age. I saw military service from
1911 to 1913, and thereafter as a soldier in the War. In October
1917 I was demobilised and sent to work in Hamburg as a shipyard
worker. In 1918 we called a strike of armaments workers. The strike
held out for a whole week at the Vulkan-Werft. Our slogan was:
'For Peace !'. After one week the strike came to an end, and we
had the War Clauses read out,[1] for, according to the law, we
were still under military service. At this time I belonged with
the Left Radicals in Hamburg. When in November 1918 the sailors
rebelled and the Kiel shipyard workers, we heard on the Monday
from workers in Kiel what had occurred.
Thereupon a clandestine meeting was held in the shipyard, which
was under military occupation. All work ceased, but the workers
remained in position in the shipyard. A delegation of 17 volunteers
was sent to the Trade Union headquarters, in order to demand the
calling of a General Strike. We forced them to hold a meeting.
The result however was that well known leaders of the Allgemeine
Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund [ADGB] and the SPD adopted a negative
attitude towards the strike. There were sharp exchanges lasting
many hours. Meanwhile a spontaneous revolt had broken out during
the lunch break at the Blohm und Voss Shipyards, where 17 000
workers were employed. The workers left the factories and the
Vulkan shipyards and appeared in front of the Trades Union Building.
The leaders had vanished.
The revolution had begun.
In those days I had taken up a position in the forefront of the
Left Revolutionary workers movement in Germany.[2] As a speaker
in the factories and at public meetings, as the Chairman of the
Revolutionäre Obleute, [Revolutionary Shop Stewards], then
only newly formed, and as a member of the Linksradikale Gruppe
[Left Radical group], I now turned towards the Spartakusbunde
[Spartacist League] and later began to play a leading role in
the Hamburg District Organisation of the Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands [KPD].
In January 1919 a large meeting of the Revolutionäre Obleute
took place in the Trades Union Headquarters Building. This meeting
was held after Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had been murdered
in Berlin. It was at this meeting that I made the acquaintance
of Ernst Thälmann of the Unabhängige Sozial-demokratische
Partei [USPD] or the Independent Social Democrats, and during
the following night a march was held together with the USPD comrades
to the barracks at Barenfeld. The guard and the sleeping soldiers
were taken by surprise, and the arming of the workers was set
in hand. We had 4000 weapons. After a good week of effort to build
up a well-armed fighting force, those with arms began to disperse
one after the other and disappeared along with their weapons.
It was at this point that we arrived at the conclusion that the
unions were quite useless for the purposes of the revolutionary
struggle, and at a conference of the Revolutionäre Obleute,
the formation of revolutionary factory organisations as the basis
for Workers' Councils was decided upon. Moving outwards from Hamburg,
propaganda advocating the formation of Factory Organisations [Betriebs-organisationen]
was disseminated, and led to the founding of the Allgemeine Arbeiterunion
Deutschlands or AAUD [the General Workers Union of Germany].*
In the course of this development and the accompanying clarification,
in which process my main function was as Chairman of the Revolutionäre
Obleute, I assumed, partially for organisational reasons, the
additional function of Chairman of the Hamburg District of the
KPD.[3] It was in this way that I became a delegate to the Heidelberg
[Second] Congress of the KPD.[4]
. . . .
Now it is 1966, some 47 years after the Heidelberg Congress. There
is little point today in examining more closely the discussions
and conclusions reached at this Congress. Suffice it to say that
at the time it became clear to us that the line and policy of
the KPD was designed to turn the main direction and aim of the
Party towards participation in the bourgeois Parliament. Since
it remained our wish to keep faith with the previously held convictions
concerning the policy we were to pursue in relation to the revolutionary
workers' movement in Germany, it now became impossible to continue
as an organised tendency within the KPD. Shortly after this the
Hamburg District of the KPD also came to this decision.
When, in Berlin in April 1920, the group of those in the KPD who
held to the same view as the comrades in Hamburg, took steps to
form the Communist Workers Party of Germany [KAPD], my participation
in the KPD came to an end. Those were the days of the Kapp-Lüttwitz
putsch, and I took myself off to the Ruhr. Upon my return to Hamburg,
I was informed that, at the Founding Congress of the KAPD, a delegation
comprised of Franz Jung and myself had been elected in our absence
to make the journey to Russia in order to represent the KAPD at
the Executive Committee of the Communist International [ECCI],
then in session there. It was our task to give a report on the
founding of the KAPD, to present its views and policy and to deliver
the appropriate charges concerning the traitorous stance adopted
by the Zentrale [Central Committee] of the KPD towards the struggle
in the Ruhr.[5]
*English readers should note that a Trade Union in German is Gewerkschaft
so 'Union' was a new kind of organisation - [Publishers Note]
It was impossible for us to make our way overland, and passage
through the Baltic Sea was also closed. The sole available route
open to us seemed to me to lie through the North Sea and the Atlantic,
passing Norway and Cape North and so into the Arctic Ocean, to
reach Archangelsk and possibly Murmansk. We were, however uncertain
as to whether or not this area had been retaken by the Russians,
that is if the Bolsheviks had reoccupied it. A short time previous
to this a small news item had appeared in the press to the effect
that the American fleet, together with its complement of troops
which up till then had occupied the area, had now been withdrawn.
In spite of this uncertainty, we decided to risk the journey.
A comrade of my acquaintance, Herman Knörfen, was a sailor
on board the steamship Senator Schröder. This ship made a
regular four-weekly cruise to the fishing grounds around Iceland
and, upon its return, stayed for at least a week in Cuxhafen.
I made a search for Herman Knörfen. Just at that time he
happened to be in Hamburg, and the ship was in dock at Cuxhafen
and due to start its outward voyage in three days time. Knörfen
was willing, and the majority of the crew likewise - indeed, it
was not for nothing that we were living in revolutionary times
!
Franz Jung and I, with a further revolutionary sailor, embarked
as stowaways. As we passed the northern tip of Heligoland, we
arrested the captain and his officers at gunpoint and locked them
up in the for'ard cabin. The journey began on the 20th April and
ended on 1st May at Alexandrovsk, the seaport of Murmansk. We
possessed sea charts only for the area up to Trondheim in Norway,
and beyond that all we had to guide us was a small map in a sailing
handbook, which offered a view of the globe looking down with
the North Pole at its centre. The coasts of Norway, Russia, Siberia
and Alaska were to be seen on the edges of this map. This was
the sole means of navigation by which our new Master, Kapitän
Herman Knörfen had to steer his course! At the northern tip
of TromsÝ [Hammerfest], we suffered two days of unrelenting
storm followed by thick snow, so that any sight of the distant
coast was obliterated. We were all extremely tired, since the
uncertain situation made a continuous and wary watch imperative.
In this way, dog tired, we sailed towards the south, seeking out
the coastline or any speck of land where we might find some rest.
It was nothing but blind good fortune that made us sail into the
fjord of Alexandrovsk, so that we were able to tie up to a buoy
left behind by the American fleet. It required several further
hours before we could be sure of our whereabouts or that the Americans
had taken their leave. Behind the craggy wall of snow appeared
a black column of smoke which, from a considerable distance, gradually
approached us as we and our ship rested on the water.
Then, it seemed from out of the very wall of the cliff, a steam
tug boat appeared, and finally we saw a large red flag. This was
for us a sign that we had arrived in the Land of the Communists.
After a while a motor-boat hove into view, filled with armed men.
We took hold of a tow rope and sailed between the cliff walls
inland in the direction of Murmansk. We were received as Comrades,
and thereafter travelled on the railway, built during the war,
to Petrograd now Leningrad [and of course since renamed Petrograd
- Publishers Note]
In Leningrad, after we had spoken with Zinoviev, the Chairman
of the Communist International, we travelled on to Moscow. There,
a few days after our arrival, we delivered our statement to the
Executive Committee of the Communist International. Our case was
discussed, but as to who spoke and what was said I no longer have
any recollection. However, we did not receive an honest reply,
except that we were told that we were shortly to be received by
Lenin himself. And indeed, this did then occur, after about a
week or a little longer.
Lenin, of course, opposed our and the KAPD's standpoint. During
the course of a second reception, a little while later, he gave
us his answer. This he did by reading to us extracts from his
pamphlet 'Left Wing Communism - An Infantile Disorder' [6], selecting
those passages which he considered relevant to our case. He held
the manuscript of this document which had not yet been printed,
in his hand. The Communist International's reply, delivered initially
by Lenin himself, was that the viewpoint of the ECCI was the same
as that of the KPD, which we had already left.
After a fairly long return journey via Murmansk and Norway, it
became necessary for Jan Appel to disappear from view, and my
activities in Germany were continued by Jan Arndt. Working whenever
necessary to keep body and soul together, in Seefeld near Spandau
and in Ammerndorf near Halle, and speaking in meetings from time
to time - this was the tenor of my life. Much the same kind of
activity took place in the Rhineland and the Ruhr, where I was
also instrumental in organising the regular publication of the
AAUD's journal 'Der Klassenkampf' [Class Struggle]. In 1920 the
KAPD had been accepted as a sympathising party into the Third
International. This had come about as a result of discussion between
the ECCI and certain leading members of the KAPD. The latter consisted
of Herman Gorter from Holland, Karl Schröder from Berlin,
Otto Rühle the former SPD Reichstag deputy, and Fritz Rasch.
At the Third Congress of the Communist International in Moscow,
we were afforded every freedom to express our point of view concerning
the kind of policy which should guide our work. But we met with
no agreement from the delegates from the other countries present.
The main content of the decisions which were adopted at this Congress
held that we should continue to cooperate with the KPD in the
old unions and in the democratic assemblies, and that we should
let drop our slogan 'All Power to the Workers' Councils!'
This was the well known policy as set forth in the '21 Points'
which we should follow if we wished to remain an affiliated organisation
of the Communist International. We, of course, spoke up against
this and declared that a decision on this could only be taken
by the relevant organ of the KAPD. This indeed was done upon our
return. Then I went back to the Ruhr and to Rhineland-Westphalia
to begin activity once again, just as before the Congress. This
spell of activity was brought to an end in November 1923 as a
result of my arrest. The immediate cause of this was the occupation
of the Rhineland and the Ruhr by the French, but since the indictment
was one of stealing a ship [ie piracy], this could only be heard
in Hamburg. I narrowly succeeded in avoiding extradition [to the
non occupied part of Germany] by representing myself as a political
prisoner and invoking the assistance of the French occupation
authorities. However, since an extradition agreement between Germany
and the Allied powers was imminent, I agreed voluntarily to a
deportation order to Hamburg. There I was tried and sentenced,
and so spent time in prison. This came to an end at Christmas
1925.
In April 1926 I went to Zaandam in Holland to earn my living as
a shipyard worker. Immediately upon my arrival I wrote to a comrade,
whom I did not know personally but whose address had been given
to me. It was Henk Canne-Meijer. Together with Piet Kurman, he
looked me up in Zaandam. Both held views identical to those of
the KAPD, and they had broken with the Communist Party of Holland.
But they had no contact with the existing KAP group in Holland.
They were both good friends of Herman Gorter. We exchanged our
views and experiences, and held regular meetings with others of
like mind. In this way we gradually crystallised into a group
which we called the Group of International Communists [GIK]. The
publication of our positions and analyses took place through the
PSIC [Press Service of International Communists], which is the
information organ of the International Communists.
During my time in the remand prison in Düsseldorf, a period
of altogether seventeen months, I had found the opportunity to
study Volumes I and II of Marx's Capital. Coming as I did from
years of revolutionary struggle, followed by internal factional
strife within the Communist Movement and the recognition of the
fact that the Russian Revolution had led to the consolidation
of a state economy under the rule of a party apparatus, such that
we were compelled to coin the term 'state communism' or even finally
'state capitalism' [7] in order to describe it, I finally came
to reach an overall unified view. The time for considered, consciously
evaluated thought had arrived; the time at which one allows all
past experience and activity to pass in review before one's inner
eye, so as to find the road which we workers must take in order
to leave behind the oppression of capitalism and to reach the
liberating goal of communism.
As a revolutionary worker, I came through a study of Marx's Capital
to understand the capitalist world as I had never understood it
before. How it is compelled to follow an intrinsic, law governed
development; how its basic order unfolds over a long period, overcoming
all conditions inherited from the pre-capitalist past in order
to consolidate its mode of production, and thus forming the seed
bed for new and yet more intense contradictions in its internal
order; how it brings about ever and again new changes to its internal
social structure, but simultaneously its most basic contradictions
are pushed forward to new and ever more glaring levels of antagonism.
It first expropriates the working people from the soil and their
piece of land; then it appropriates their independent means of
life and so creates the conditions in which it can also appropriate
the products of their labour. The right of disposal over the fruits
of labour, and hence over the producers themselves, falls into
ever fewer hands. Furthermore, the truth that the sole achievements
of the Russian Revolution were that the Russian Communist Party
had been constituted as a totally centralised despotic instrument
of power, equipped with all necessary means for exercising state
oppression over the still dispossessed and propertyless producers
was a fact we were forced to recognise.
But our thoughts went further: the most profound and intense contradiction
in human society resides in the fact that, in the last analysis,
the right of decision over the conditions of production, over
what and how much is produced and in what quantity, is taken away
from the producers themselves and placed in the hands of highly
centralised organs of power. Today, over forty years after I first
came to this awareness as I sat in prison, I see this development
unfolding to an ever greater degree in all parts of the world.
This basic division in human society can only be overcome when
the producers finally assume their right of control over the conditions
of their labour, over what they produce and how they produce it.
On this subject I wrote many pages while I was in prison. It was
with these thoughts in mind and with the writings relevant to
them, that I arrived in Holland to see the Group of International
Communists.
. . . .
Today, in the year 1966, forty years have passed since we first
met together in Amsterdam as the Group of International Communists
[GIK], in order to express our new thoughts and to discuss them.
The knowledge that the Russian Revolution was leading to the establishment
of state communism, or more accurately state capitalism, represented
a new school of thought at the time. It also necessitated disillusioning
oneself of the view that a Communist form of society, which also
implies the liberation of labour from the shackles of wage-slavery,
would be the necessary and direct outcome of the Russian Revolution.
It was likewise a wholly new conception to concentrate one's attention
upon the essence of the process of liberation from wage-slavery,
that is to say, upon the exercise of power by the factory organisations,
the Workers' Councils, in their assumption of control over the
factories and places of work; in order that flowing from this,
the unit of the average social hour of labour, as the measure
of the production times of all goods and services in both production
and distribution, might be introduced.
In this way money and all other forms of value would be abolished
and so deprived of their power to manifest themselves as Capital,
as the social force which enslaves human beings and exploits them.
This knowledge and its fruit, gained over long periods of work
in the Group of International Communists in Amsterdam, have been
brought together in ordered form in the book 'Fundamental Principles
of communist Production and Distribution' [Grundprinzipien kommunistischer
Produktion und Verteilung], published by ourselves. It consists
of 169 pages [8] of typewritten script. In order to gain a brief
insight into what is written there, the following excerpt from
the Foreword [9] may be quoted:
'The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution
had their origin during a 4 year period of group discussions and
controversy within the Group of International Communists of Holland.
The first edition appeared in the year 1930 in Germany, published
in Berlin by the Neue Arbeiterverlag [New Workers Publishing House],
the publishing organ of the AAUD, the revolutionary factory organisation.
On account of financial difficulties, a Dutch edition in the desired
format and published at the required time proved to be beyond
our capabilities. Instead, it was published in serial form as
a supplement to the Press Information Service of the Group of
International Communists, [PSIC] On account of the translation,
this edition is not quite identical with the German one, although
nothing essential in the content has been altered. The only amendments
were in the order in which the material was presented and in the
various formulations, in order to attain a clearer presentation.
It is hoped that the 'Fundamental Principles of Communist Production
and Distribution' will lead to a thorough discussion and so contribute
both to greater clarity and to unity of aim within the revolutionary
proletariat, and so result in the various tendencies adopting
a common course.'
In a new edition it was written:
'This book can only express in economic terms what must first
be achieved in the sphere of political action. For this it was
necessary to begin, not merely with the abolition of private property
in the means of production, but with the elimination of wage labour
as such. It is from this basis that all our thoughts proceed.
Our analysis therefore led to the inescapable conclusion that,
once the workers have won power through their mass organisations,
they will be able to hold on to that power only provided that
they eliminate wage-labour from all economic life and instead
adopt as the nodal point of all economic activity the duration
of labour time expended in the production of all use values, as
the equivalent measure replacing money values, and around which
the whole of economic life would revolve.'
The German edition of the year 1930 was later seized and destroyed.
A short précis was subsequently published in New York,[10]
and also a German version in the journal 'Kampfsignal' [A call
to struggle]; whilst in 1955 in Chicago, an English language version
appeared in 'Council Correspondence'.[11]
I participated personally in the political activity of the GIK
in Holland. In April of 1933 it was made known to me that 'a friendly
Germany' wished to see me once again. I was to be expelled as
an 'undesirable alien' ! However, the helpful Police Commissioner
in Amsterdam afforded me the time in which to bring my personal
affairs into order. The moment had come once again to go 'underground'.
Jan Appel once more disappeared from the scene. When, later, the
Second World War finally broke out, I began to play a part in
the resistance movement directed against the régime of
the Hitler fascists, who had occupied the country in 1940.
After Sneevliet, the well known leader of the Left in Holland,
together with between 13 to 18 other comrades, had been executed
by firing squad, we continued to pursue the resistance struggle
with the remainder of the comrades. After 1945 we published the
weekly journal 'Spartacus'.[12] This continued until 1948. As
a result of a serious street accident which I suffered at this
time, I had to be placed in hospital, and so once again reappeared
on the surface of social life. A testament from over 20 bourgeois
citizens, good and true, was required in order to protect me from
being simply pushed over the border ! That I had been active in
the resistance movement decided the issue in my favour. Jan Appel
made his appearance once again, but it was necessary for him to
refrain for a time from all political activity.
This is also the end of this volume of my life history.
Jan Appel
1966
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