The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

concealed the Wijnkoop leadership’s narrowly national policy. Its internationalism was purely verbal, and was
more often determined by the surrounding ambience.
It is no surprise that during the debates over Brest-Litovsk, on the question of peace or revolutionary war, the
leadership took it on itself to champion revolutionary war at all costs. In Russia, Bukharin and Uritsky supported
the war, thinking that this would accelerate the extension of the proletarian revolution in Europe. For them, there
was no ambiguity: the ‘revolutionary war’ was not a war against Germany, which could fit the plans of the
Entente; what mattered was to break the encirclement of revolutionary Russia, to spread the revolution not just to
Germany, but to the whole of Europe, including the countries of the Entente.
Against all expectations, Gorter joined the SDP leadership in supporting the position of Radek and Bukharin, for
the same reasons as the Russian Left Communists. He mounted a strong attack on Pannekoek, who completely
supported Lenin’s position for a rapid peace with Germany.
Pannekoek’s starting point was the obvious fact that “Russia can no longer fight”. Revolution could never be
exported by military force; its strength lay in the outbreak of class struggle in other countries: “force of arms is
the proletariat’s weak point”. 368
Gorter was aiming at the wrong target. For several months, he avoided any criticism of the SDP leadership. He
saw Pannekoek’s position as a version of the same pacifism he had fought in 1915, a negation of the arming of
the proletariat. He considered that a revolutionary war should be waged against the German Empire, since
“henceforth force of arms is the proletariat’s strong point”. 369
However, Gorter began to change his position. Since the summer of 1917 he had been in Switzerland, officially
for health reasons, in fact because he wanted to distance himself from the Dutch party, and to work with the
Russian and Swiss revolutionaries. Through Platten and Berzin (both ‘Zimmerwaldians’ who worked with
Lenin), he made contact with the Russian revolutionaries. He began a close correspondence with Lenin, and
became convinced that Lenin’s position on peace with Germany was correct. He also undertook to translate
Lenin’s theses ‘On the unfortunate peace’ into Dutch. 370
Gorter thus freed himself to combat the SDP leadership, alongside Pannekoek, and to support unreservedly the
Russian Revolution and bolshevism.
The Russian and the World Revolution
For two years the left in the SDP defended the ‘proletarian nature of the Russian revolution’. It was the first
stage of the world revolution. Gorter and the parry minority bitterly denounced the Menshevik idea – supported
by Ravesteyn – of a ‘bourgeois revolution’ in Russia. Such a position could only strengthen the position
favourable to the Entente and the perpetuation of the imperialist war in the name of ‘revolutionary’ war. As the
Russian revolution began to degenerate, and the 3 rd International was subjected to interests of the Russian state,
the left began to defend the idea of a ‘double’ revolution in Russia, ‘pan-bourgeois’ and ‘pan-proletarian’ (see
below), but this was from a different viewpoint to that of Menshevism. For the left, a bourgeois revolution could
mean nothing but state capitalism and counter-revolution. It appeared not at the end, but at the beginning of the
revolution.
In 1917 and 1918, Gorter and the minority were Bolshevism’s strongest supporters. They introduced and spread
Lenin’s ideas. During 1918, it was Gorter who undertook, off his own bat, to translate Lenin’s State and
Revolution. Naively, he spread a veritable Lenin personality cult. In his pamphlet”, on The World Revolution, the
368 De Tribune, 15 th December 1917, p. 1, col. 4.
369 De Tribune, 12 th January 1918, ‘De Maximalisten en de vrede’ (‘The maximalists and peace’). Curiously Gorter here
calls the bolsheviks ‘maximalists’.
370 De Nieuwe Tijd, July 1918, pp. 326-334, with an introduction by Gorter.
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