Anton Pannekoek

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) was a Dutch astronomer, Marxist revolutionary, and key theoretician of council communism--a Marxist alternative to both Leninism and Social Democracy that instead emphasized working-class self-emancipation through workers' councils. He developed his theories through witnessing the rise and fall of Social Democracy as well as the rise and fall of the Russian and German Revolutions. He is most well-known by revolutionaries for his magnum opus Workers' Councils (AK...See more

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) was a Dutch astronomer, Marxist revolutionary, and key theoretician of council communism--a Marxist alternative to both Leninism and Social Democracy that instead emphasized working-class self-emancipation through workers' councils. He developed his theories through witnessing the rise and fall of Social Democracy as well as the rise and fall of the Russian and German Revolutions. He is most well-known by revolutionaries for his magnum opus Workers' Councils (AK Press, 2002) and his critical Lenin as Philosopher (Merlin Press, 1975), and by astronomers for his research of the Milky Way and astrophysics--for which he received an honorary degree from Harvard University in 1936; the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1951; and had a crater on the Moon, an asteroid, and the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam named after him. See less