The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

inform its readers about the Conference resolutions. Instead of seeing in Zimmerwald “a step forward in the
practical and ideological break with opportunism and social chauvinism” 327 , the SDP leadership – with the
exception of Pannekoek, Luteraan and Gorter 328 – saw in it nothing but opportunism. Worse still, they
completely missed the historic importance of an event which represented the first organised political reaction to
the war, and the first step towards the regroupment of internationalist revolutionaries; they saw nothing but a
‘historic farce’ in what was to become the living symbol of the struggle against the war; a ‘stupidity’ 329 in the
striking gesture of fraternisation between French and German socialists: “We should obviously thank God (sic)
that he has preserved us from the stupidity of the Zimmerwald Conference or, more precisely, from the need to
conduct the opposition on the spot [...] We knew from the start what would come of it: nothing but opportunism
and no struggle of principles!” 330
Strong criticism appeared from within the SDP against this ‘sectarian attitude’. A party leader like Knuttel from
Leiden – strongly influenced by Pannekoek – urged the strengthening of the Zimmerwald revolutionary minority
led by the Bolsheviks. In response to these criticisms, on 2 nd October 1915, De Tribune published a selfjustificatory
article by Wijnkoop, who refused any support for the Manifesto, on the grounds that it had no
revolutionary perspective: “The Manifesto uses grand words, but forgets to say that it is only through the
massive resistance of each proletariat, in a revolutionary manner, against the war and in its own country, in other
words by ‘local’ resistance in every country against the national bourgeoisies, that the new International will be
born.” This refusal was justified by the Manifesto’s call for the ‘right of peoples to self-determination’, a
formulation which Gorter, Pannekoek, and even Roland Holst all rejected, while still adhering to the
Zimmerwald movement. Wijnkoop’s supreme argument was above all the refusal of any ‘spirit of
compromise’. 331
In fact, Wijnkoop refused, out of sectarianism, to envisage any work at regrouping with elements of the ‘centre’,
such as Trotsky or Roland Holst, who were moving progressively at Zimmerwald towards the positions of the
Left. In a letter to Ravesteyn of 29 th October, Wijnkoop attacked Radek, Pannekoek, Trotsky and Roland Holst,
whom he only saw as ‘centrist elements’, sparing only Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. There was, he wrote, no
proof that ‘Holst-Trotsky’ wanted to break with Kautsky. On the contrary, it still had to be said that both were
fundamentally bourgeois and nationalist. And he added – although the representatives of the Spartakus group
were in the centre at Zimmerwald, not on the left – that he preferred “to march with Rosa and Mehring than with
Roland Holst and Trotsky”. 332
This attitude of Wijnkoop’s, a mixture of sectarianism and irresponsibility, was not without its consequences.
For one thing, it left a free hand to the Roland Holst current in Zimmerwald, who was left, by the SDP’s
defection, as the only representative there of the Dutch revolutionary movement. The RSV was situated in the
‘centrist’ current at Zimmerwald, which could only envisage the possibility of a struggle for peace, and refused
to associate itself with the Zimmerwald Left, which posed the foundation of a 3 rd International as a basis for the
revolutionary struggle. Secondly, a division appeared within the SDP between Zimmerwald’s supporters, such as
Gorter and Pannekoek, and the Wijnkoop leadership, which bore the seeds of later splits (see below). Thirdly, in
the Zimmerwald movement itself, the SDP created a persistent image of sectarianism, which stuck even to some
of the movement’s most determined supporters, such as Pannekoek.
327 De Tribune, 25 Sept. 1915.
328 Lenin and Zinoviev, in: Contre le courant (Against the Current), Vol. 2 (1915-17) (Paris: Bureau d’éditions, de diffusion
et de publicité, 1927) [Reprint Paris: Maspéro, 1970, p. 10].
329 It is significant that all the militants on the left of the SDP declared in favour of the Zimmerwald movement. The refusal
to commit to an international regroupment of revolutionaries came from the right around Willem van Ravesteyn and
Wijnkoop. Sectarianism was the fault of this right.
330 Letter from Wijnkoop to Van Ravesteyn, 21 st September 1915, cited by H. de Liagre Böhl, op. cit., p. 138.
331 Quoted by Wiessing, op. cit., p. 39.
332 Lademacher, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 226-228.
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