The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Lenin was quite right to emphasise the incoherence of Gorter’s position, which looked less like a divergence of
principle and more a question of tactics, to be examined according to geo-historical zones. 379
At all events, this pamphlet had a considerable echo in Holland, as well as in the many other countries where it
was immediately translated.
1918: between revolution and opportunism. The birth of the Dutch Communist Party
The year 1918 was a decisive one for the Dutch revolutionary movement. The SDP minority, made up of
different fractions, became a structured opposition to the opportunism of the Van Ravesteyn-Wijnkoop
leadership. This opposition grew in numbers along with the SDP, which in November declared itself a
Communist Party, just as the revolution was knocking at Holland’s door.
The minority’s offensive inside the SDP: fraction and opposition
In the spring of 1918, the SDP underwent an unprecedented internal crisis. Wijnkoop’s authoritarian leadership
threatened directly to crush the minority. He had the Hague section – one of the most active of the opposition –
suspended: an unprecedented event in the SDP’s history. This suspension came after several exclusions of
individual militants of the opposition. 380 These measures, in contradiction with workers’ democracy, showed up
the leadership as worthy imitators of Troelstra.
The opposition wasted no time regrouping, during a common meeting held on 26 th May 1918. It brought together
groups whose reactions to opportunism within the SDP had until then remained dispersed:
– the Zimmerwald Left Propaganda Union, from Amsterdam, led by Van Reesema, who was
working for the party to be attached to the bolshevik Left;
– Luteraan’s group in Amsterdam, in close contact with Gorter;
– the Rotterdam group;
– the Hague section.
The opposition represented about a third of the party’s militants. From June onwards, it had its own fortnightly
paper, De Internationale. An editorial commission was formed. The press commission, which met every three
months and included representatives from each of the four groups in practice became an executive organ. 381 This
opposition was virtually a fraction within the SDP, with its own paper and commission. However, it lacked its
own clearly established platform, for lack of homogeneity. It also suffered cruelly from the absence of Gorter,
who only contributed to the debate, from Switzerland, through his articles, whose publication was moreover
subject to the bad faith of De Tribune’s editorial staff, controlled by Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn. 382
The reason behind this regroupment of the oppositions was their growing hostility towards party policy,
increasingly oriented towards the elections. Those of 3 rd July had been a real success for the SDP. For the first
379 “Gorter is against the self-determination of his own country but in favour of self-determination for the Dutch East Indies,
oppressed as they are by ‘his’ nation!” [Lenin, ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination summed up’, Sbornik Sotsial-
Demokrata, No. 1, Oct. 1916].
380 See: De Internationale, No. 9, 12 th October 1918: Verweer van afdeeling den Haag der SDP (‘Defence of the SDP’s
Hague section’).
381 De Internationale, No. l, 15 th June 1918,’ Ons Orgaan’, p. 1. The regroupment’s main lines were: political attachment to
the Zimmerwald Left; struggle against the imperialist Dutch state; the sharpest struggle against all reformist and imperialist
tendencies amongst union members organised in the NAS and the NVV (the SDAP union).
382 Since August 1917, Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn had in fact been the daily’s only editors.
110