The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

the SDP as the basis for its propaganda. It clearly demonstrated the necessity of combating every camp involved
in the war: “There is no question of fighting particularly against German imperialism. Every imperialism is
equally against the proletariat”. 352
It was a disquieting sign of the party’s evolution as a whole that the opposition found itself isolated. It
encountered no support, moreover. Gorter still hesitated to enter the combat with it. Pannekoek and Roland Holst
were more deeply involved in international activity than in the SDP. This was a sign of organisational weakness
that reappeared constantly among these internationally known Marxist leaders, and one whose consequences
were felt in 1917 and 1918.
The situation in 1917, above all the Russian Revolution and its repercussions in Holland, still further deepened
the political divisions within the SDP.
The SDP in 1917: its attitude to the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1917 came as no surprise to revolutionaries like Gorter, who were convinced that
revolution would inevitably be born of the war. In a letter of March 1916 to Wijnkoop, Gorter revealed his
unshakeable confidence in the world proletariat’s revolutionary activity: “I expect very large movements after
the war”. 353
And yet the revolutionary events, so keenly awaited, had broken out in the midst of war. The Russian Revolution
encountered an enormous echo in Holland, which showed clearly enough that the proletarian revolution was also
on the agenda for Western Europe; this was no ‘Russian’ phenomenon, but an international wave of
revolutionary struggle against world capital. From this point of view, 1917 was decisive for the SDP’s evolution,
as it confronted the first signs of the international revolution that it had predicted so enthusiastically since the
beginning of the war.
The first signs of coming revolution in Holland
In 1917, a new period began of struggle against the war, hunger, and unemployment. In February, just as the
revolution would break out in Russia, the workers of Amsterdam demonstrated violently against the shortage of
food in the shops, and against the policy of the City council, some of whose aldermen were social-democrat
leaders. 354
The demonstrations quickly acquired a political colouring; they were directed, not only against the government
but also against the social democracy. The SDAP had several aldermen on Amsterdam city council Florentinus
Marinus Wibaut, a member of the SDAP leadership, was even president of the city’s supplies commission, and
had been since 1916. As such, the workers held him responsible for the food shortage.
But on 10 th February Wibaut, and Vliegen (another SDAP leader elected to the council), called for the army to
‘restore order’, after several bakeries had been ransacked. This was the SDAP’s first concrete step in committing
itself to the bourgeois side and repressing every working-class reaction. The SDAP’s solidarity with the
established order appeared more clearly still in July, during a week which has gone down in history as the ‘Week
of Blood’. Following a women’s demonstration against shortages, and the ransacking of several shops, the
council, with the full support of all its social-democratic aldermen, imposed a complete ban on demonstrations.
352 Article by Van Reesema in De Tribune, 21 st May 1917. William Carl Siewertsz van Reesema (1876-1949) became a
leading stalinist figure of the CPN in the 30s, echoing the ‘voice’ of the Komintern’s apparatus.
353 Letter published in Kontrast, No. 5, p. 5. It can be found, with much other correspondence between Gorter and Wijnkoop,
in the Wijnkoop archives in Moscow.
354 See Burger, op. cit., pp. 76-96, for an account of these events in 1917.
105