The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

First of all, the SDP continued its policies of making a front with anarchist and syndicalist organisations. The old
cartel of organisations, the SAV (see above), was scuttled on 25 th February. 340 It was replaced in April 1916 by a
‘Socialist Revolutionary Committee’ against the war and its consequences (initials: RSC). The SDP’s Wijnkoop
and Louis de Visser (both to be leaders of the stalinist communist party) were in fact at the head of the new
cartel of organisations. The latter, although very active in the struggle against the war and poverty, appeared
more as a general staff substituting itself for the spontaneity of the struggle. In the absence of a revolution, it was
not a workers’ council; nor was it a strike committee, which by its nature is temporary and closely linked to the
extension of the struggle. It was more like a hybrid political organisation, and far from contributing any clarity
on the objectives of the class struggle, it appeared very confused in its own aims, as a compromise between
different political currents within the workers’ movement.
The RSC included anarchist groupings which had already worked with the SDP. The most active of them was
undoubtedly the group of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis.
This group, Social-Anarchist Action (SAC) 341 , was without doubt revolutionary, though confusedly so, thanks
above all to the intransigent personality of Domela Nieuwenhuis. The same could certainly not be said of the
other groupings. These included: the Bond van Christen Socialisten (BvCS, ‘Federation of Christian
Socialists’), whose politics were pacifist and parliamentarian 342 ; the Vrije Menschen Verbond (VMV, the
‘League of Free Men’), inspired by Tolstoy. When Domela Nieuwenhuis’ group and the IAMV (see above) left
the cartel at the end of 1916, only these little groups were left, soon to be joined in February 1918 by the little
Socialist Party, 200 militants coming from the SDAP and the NAS. The SP was basically trade unionist,
republican and parliamentarian, and led by Harm Kolthek. 343
This conglomeration of pacifist organisations, most of them completely foreign to revolutionary Marxism, had
the immediate effect of dragging the SDP more and more onto the terrain of practical opportunism. By allying
itself with the Christian Socialists and the SP, the SDP rapidly fell into the same parliamentary adventurism and
unprincipled politics that it had once denounced in Troelstra. In 1917, and as a direct result of the increasingly
tense social situation, the Dutch bourgeoisie had introduced a certain form of ‘universal’ suffrage – which
became reality only in 1919, with the right to vote for women. The SDP formed an electoral pact with the former
two organisations. The result was a clear success over pre-war elections: 17,000 votes in Amsterdam, against
1,340 in 1913. This result certainly expressed the workers’ growing disaffection from the SDAP. However, it
was also the beginning of a policy which in the space of a year rapidly became parliamentarian. This electoralist
orientation provoked a clear anti-parliamentary reaction within the SDP, which was at the origins of the antielectoralist
current in the Dutch Communist Left.
But opposition within the party did not at first crystallise around antiparliamentarism. It appeared in 1916, to
culminate in 1917, against the pro-Allied foreign policy of the Wijnkoop and Ravesteyn leadership (Van
Ravesteyn admitted in his memoirs that he had had contacts with the French secret service during the war). A
340 In fact, the syndicalist currents, represented by the office workers’ and sailors’ federations, were afraid of the SDP’s
growing influence within the SAV.
341 It published De Vrije Socialist. Alongside, there existed another anarchist group, made up of members of the NAS: the
Federation of Revolutionary Socialists (FRS), created in December 1915, which wanted to bring the NAS completely within
the libertarian sphere.
342 The BvCS had been formed in July 1907. After 1910 it was led by Bartholomeus (Bart) de Ligt (1883-1938). This
theologian was a preacher between 1910 and 1915. In 1915, he was imprisoned for pacifist propaganda. He broke with the
Church in 1916, and left the BvCS in 1919. The BvSC survived with difficulty till April 1921. De Ligt remained an antimilitarist.
Till 1926, he was the editor – with Albert de Jong – of the antimilitarist periodical: De Wapens neder!.
[Biography: N.P. van Egmond, in: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 2 (The Hague 1985).] He was a partisan of
Gandhi [See: The Breath of my Life. The Correspondence of Mahatma Gandhi (India) and Bart de Ligt (Holland) on War
and Peace (Berlin: Christian Bartolf, 2000).]
343 The SP was built by Harm Kolthek (1872-1946) – pseudonyms: HaKa, Mefisto –, an engineering worker, journalist,
editor of the De Wapens neder!, and secretary of the NAS from 1907 to 1913. He became MP from 1918 to 22. He funded
the party ‘Recht en Vrijheid’ in 1931, which was active among the unemployed in Groningen.
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