The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

time, it had seats in parliament: Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn had become deputies. This had been made
possible by an alliance with the little Socialist Party (SP), which had left the SDAP in 1917. Led by a leader of
the NAS, Harm Kolthek 383 , the SP was openly pro-Entente. With the Social-Christians, the other component of
this electoral ‘united front’, it won a seat in parliament.
The opposition denounced this alliance as a ‘monstrous union’ with pro-Entente trade union elements, and
pointed out that the electoral success was purely demagogic. The votes gleaned from the Unionists of the NAS
had been won by a campaign which seemed to support the policy of the USA. The United States were holding
the Dutch merchant fleet in American ports, to use them in the war against Germany, in exchange for food
supplies for Holland; Wijnkoop declared that these supplies should be acquired from the USA by any means
possible. This policy was denounced vigorously by Gorter and the Bussum section, but only later, in
November. 384 With Gorter, the opposition increasingly looked on Wijnkoop as another Troelstra, whose love for
the Russian Revolution was ‘purely platonic’, and whose politics were purely parliamentarian. 385
The approaching end of the war, accompanied by revolutionary upheavals, pushed the opposition’s struggle
against Wijnkoop’s pro-Entente policy. More and more, it emphasised the danger of a parliamentary policy. 386 It
also forcefully combated the revolutionary syndicalism of the NAS, which had begun to work with the reformist
NVV, the union controlled by Troelstra’s party. We can see here in germ, the anti-parliamentarian and antiunion
politics of the future Dutch Communist Left. This meant a break with the old ‘Tribunism’.
The abortive revolution of November 1918
The revolutionary events of November were a test of fire, that broke over a party expanding numerically, but
threatening to break up.
Events in Germany, where the government fell at the end of October, created a real revolutionary atmosphere in
The Netherlands. Mutinies broke out in army camps on 25 th and 26 th October 1918. They followed a constant
workers’ agitation against food shortages, during the months of September and October, in Amsterdam and
Rotterdam.
It was symptomatic that Troelstra’s official social democracy began to radicalise itself. The other SDAP chiefs
were astonished to hear the party leader give impassioned speeches for the revolution, and for the seizure of
power by the working class. To the stupefaction of the Dutch bourgeoisie, of which government was the newly
one formed by the Catholic Ruijs de Beerenbrouck (1873-1936), Troelstra proclaimed himself their
irreconcilable enemy:
383 Kolthek, who was elected deputy, wrote for a liberal paper De Telegraaf, which was more vigorously pro-Entente. With
the SP and the BvSC, the SDP won 50,000 votes – of which 14,000 for Wijnkoop in Amsterdam – in other words half the
score of the SDAP. The three elected deputies formed a ‘revolutionary parliamentary fraction’.
384 See: De Liagre Böhl, op. cit., p. 213.
385 Gorter wrote an article identifying Wijnkoop with Troelstra, published under the headline ‘Troelstra–Wijnkoop’, in De
Tribune of 18 th September 1918. De Tribune of 26 th October 1918 declared: “The directing committee’s love for the
Russian Revolution is purely platonic. In reality, the greatest powers of its love are directed towards the extension of the
party’s popularity and numbers with the help of allies in parliament”.
386 The opposition did not yet reject parliamentarism as such; it sought a serious discussion within the workers’ movement to
determine future tactics: “...important problems in this phase of the workers’ movement could not be clarified... On the
subject of parliamentarism, the editorial commission takes the view that everyone should be able to give his opinion in De
Internationale. However, this question is not yet exhausted... The same is true for participation or not in elections” (De
Internationale, No. 9, 12 th October 1918, ‘Landelijke conferentie van De Internationale’). In 1915, Pannekoek (in: De
Nieuwe Tijd, ‘De Sociaaldemokratie en de oorlog’, op. cit., pp. 137-151) had already condemned parliamentarism, which
had become ‘non-revolutionary’, but he did not exclude the possibility of “a principled struggle well fought in Parliament”
still having “a revolutionary value”.
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