Jan Appel - Active in The Netherlands

Active in The Netherlands

Appel was arrested in November 1923 on the charge of inciting mutiny on the ship with which the delegation had arrived in Moscow in 1920. In prison he prepared a study of the workers’ movement and in particular of the period of transition towards communism, in the light of the lessons of events in Russia.

He was set free at the end of 1925, but Germany had become dangerous for him, and he obtained work at a shipyard in Holland. He immediately took contact with Canne-Meyer, whom he had not known personally, in order to be able to integrate himself into the situation in Holland. Departing from this contact, ex—members of the KPN and/or the KAPN regrouped slowly, and in 1927 formed the GIC which published a review, Press Material of the International Communists (PIC), as well as an edition in German. It closely followed the evolution of the KAPD in Germany and oriented itself more towards the Theses of the Berlin KAPD, in opposition to the group around Gorter. Over four years, the GIC studied and discussed the study which Appel had made in prison, and the book Foundations of Communist Production and Distribution was published in 1930 by the Berlin AAU, a book which has been discussed and criticised by revolutionaries throughout the world to this very day.

Appel made many other important contributions during the difficult years of the counter-revolution, up until World War II, against the positions of the degenerating Communist Parties, rapidly becoming bourgeois. The GIC worked in contact with other small revolutionary organisations in different countries (like the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, the group around Bilan, Union Communiste in France, the group around Paul Mattick in the USA etc.), and was one of the most important currents of this period in keeping internationalism alive. From 1933 on Appel kept in the background, since the Dutch state, on good terms with Hitlerite Germany, would have expelled him. Until 1948, Appel remained in clandestinity under the name of Jan Vos.

During and after the second world war however, Appel and other members of the GIC regrouped with the Spartacusbond coming out of the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front, the only internationalist organisation in Holland until 1942. The members of the GIC, who were expecting, like all the other revolutionary organisations at that time, important class movements after the war, considered it important to regroup, even if there still existed divergences between them, in order to prepare a more important, stronger revolutionary organisation, with the aim of playing a more preponderant role in the movements. But these movements did not develop, and numerous discussions cropped up in the group on the role and the tasks of the political organisation. Appel remained within the Communistenbond Spartacus. Almost all the GIC members left the group in 1947. Witness a letter by Antonie Pannekoek, himself having become a councilist, in September 1947:

“And now that the strong mass movement hasn’t turned up, nor the influx of young workers (we had counted on this for the period after the war, and it was certainly the fundamental motive of the GIC in regrouping with Communistenbond Spartacus in the last year of the war), it follows logically that the GIC returned to its old role, not preventing the Communistenbond Spartacus from returning to its old role as RSP. According to my information, the question of which form of propaganda to choose is presently being discussed in the GIC ... it’s a pity that Jan Appel has stayed with the people of Communistenbond Spartacus. Already in the past, I have noted how his spirit and his conceptions are determined by his experiences in the great German movement which was the culminating point of his life. It’s there that he formed his understanding of the organisational techniques of the councils. But he was too much a man of action to be content with simple propaganda. But the wish to be a man of action in a period in which the mass movement doesn’t yet exist, easily leads to the formulation of impure and mystified forms of action. Perhaps it’s a good thing after all that Communistenbond Spartacus has held on to one strong element.”

By accident, Appel was re-discovered by the Dutch police in 1948. After encountering many difficulties, he was allowed to stay in Holland, but was forbidden any political activity. Appel thus formally left Communistenbond Spartacus and organised political life.

After 1948, however, Appel remained in contact with his old comrades, both in Holland and elsewhere, among others with Internationalisme, predecessor of the International Communist Current, at the end of the forties and during the fifties. That’s why Jan Appel was once again present at the end of the sixties at the founding of Revolution Internationale, the future section in France of the ICC, and a product of the massive struggles of the proletariat in 1968. Since then with numerous visits from comrades and sympathisers of the ICC, Jan Appel contributed to the formation of a new generation of revolutionaries, participating at the formal constitution of the ICC in 1976, one last time, thereby passing on the torch and the lessons of one generation of revolutionaries to another. Jan Appel, died on 4 May, 1985 at the age of 95.