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The Rise of a New
Labor Movement


by Henk Canne Meijer


Table of Contents
Publication Details

This article is a partial translation of "Das Werden einer neuen Arbeiterbewegung" by Henk Canne Meijer. That article was first published in German in Rätekorrespondenz, nos 8-9 (April 1935), the journal of the Dutch council communist organisation the Group of International Communists (GIK) of which Canne Meijer was a founding member. The original german version is now online at the Communist Left site at this link.

This translation first appeared in the United States in International Council Correspondence (No 10 August 1935), the journal of the United Workers Party (later the Groups of Council Communists (GCC)).

The (...) marks are as they appear in International Council Correspondence, presumably marking where sections of the original have been omitted.

A translation of another text by Canne Meijer, together with a summary of the economic theories of the GIK, can be found on line as The Origins of the Movement for Workers Councils in Germany (1938) on the Subversion website.

"Since 1921 we have exposed the counter-revolutionary character of the Third International, of Russian diplomacy, and the trade unions. Everybody left us. We were "doctrinaires," who isolated themselves from the masses ! Which was right, only to the extent that the masses responded for the time to reformism, and so forsook Socialism, while we held aloft the banner of revolution."
(H.Canne Meijer - letter to Guy Aldred quoted in The Commune (Vol. II No. 6 Sept-Oct. 1927)


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