The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

powerful opposition to this policy formed in the sections of Amsterdam and The Hague, under the influence of
Barend Luteraan, a member of the party leadership, and Wieuwertsz van Reesema. 344
In fact, Wijnkoop – following Van Ravesteyn – but also, which was much more serious, the majority of the SDP,
were adopting an orientation favourable to the Entente. This had already appeared indirectly in an article by Van
Ravesteyn, published in De Tribune in September 1914. In it, he declared that a defeat for Germany would be
the most favourable condition for a revolutionary outbreak there. This was not yet a pro-Allied position, which
he never expressed openly. Moreover, it was hardly a novelty in the Marxist camp – and it happened again
during World War II 345 – to try to determine which would be the epicentres of the coming revolutionary
earthquake. Pannekoek replied in De Tribune 346 , to put an end to this purely theoretical question: even if
Germany was more developed than Britain, it was a matter of indifference to Marxists which of the two
imperialist camps emerged victorious: the violent oppression in one camp, and the democratic deceit in the other,
are both equally disfavourable to the workers’ movement. This was exactly the same answer that the Italian and
Dutch Communist Lefts gave in World War II to currents like the trotskyists and the anarchists.
The discussion went no further. Ravesteyn was clearly developing pro-Entente positions. Nonetheless he
remained isolated in the party; Wijnkoop, the SDP’s president, still had the same position as Gorter and
Pannekoek. 347 Everything began to change during 1916. Wijnkoop abruptly joined Ravesteyn’s position, by
giving priority to the struggle against German militarism, on the – untrue – grounds that the whole Dutch
bourgeoisie had rallied behind Germany. 348 But by 1917, he used the same arguments as those of the ‘socialchauvinists’
in the Entente countries. In an article approved by the editorial committee of De Tribune (which
shows that there was a real danger of opportunist gangrene in the SDP) Wijnkoop depicted Germany as the
rampart of ‘feudal’ reaction in Europe, forced to plunder and assassinate the conquered peoples. France, the heir
to the great Revolution, and the developed Britain, would be incapable of such acts. 349 Such a position implied
that, were Germany to violate Dutch neutrality, then the SDP leadership would call, not for a struggle against
both camps, but for support for the Entente.
This position was a turning point in the party’s history, and provoked a storm of protest within it. Led by Barend
Luteraan and Van Reesema, an opposition took up the struggle against the editorial committee which had
allowed the expression in De Tribune of conceptions completely foreign to the party’s revolutionary nature. It
had been all the easier for the editors to do so, since in 1916 Gorter had withdrawn, ill and depressed, from the
committee, and was temporarily incapable of taking part in party work. 350
To defuse the opposition, the Wijnkoop leadership used a weapon that it was to employ with increasing
frequency to discredit its adversaries on the left: slander. It claimed that its opponents, including Gorter and
Pannekoek, were in fact pro-German. Ravesteyn was not the last to spread this rumour. 351 In reality, the
opposition was using Gorter’s analysis, set out in his 1914 pamphlet on imperialism and officially accepted by
344 Barend Luteraan (1878-1970) was an office worker, a friend of Gorter, and one of the founders of the KAPN in 1921. He
was intensely disliked by Van Ravesteyn. Pannekoek had little respect for him, considering him ‘dissolute’ (see:
Herinneringen, 190, Amsterdam 1982). For the biography of Luteraan, see: Dennis Bos, Vele woningen, maar nergens een
thuis [‘Many houses, but nowhere a home’]. Barend Luteraan (1878-1970) (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1996).
345 The Italian Communist Left was convinced, as many internationalist groups, that revolution would break out in Germany
in 1945.
346 De Tribune, 25 th November 1914. See: De Liagre Böhl, op. cit., pp. 146-147.
347 Van Ravesteyn admits in his (still unpublished) autobiography, De Roman van mijn leven (‘The story of my life’) that he
adopted a consistently anti-German attitude from the outset. By contrast, he denies this in his book on the development of
communism in the Netherlands.
348 De Tribune, 29 th May 1916.
349 De Tribune, 21 st May 1917; cited by De Liagre Böhl, op. cit., p. 150.
350 Gorter had become depressive with the death of his wife Louise Cnoop Koopmans in November 1916. Moreover, his
illness weakened him; he was incapable of speaking in workers’ meetings. It is also certain that he was entirely taken up
with his return to poetry (his great poem Pan was published in 1917).
351 In his book, already quoted, published in 1948, Van Ravesteyn does not hesitate to describe the Luteraan–Gorter
opposition as pro-German. See: op. cit., p. 161.
104