The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

dissolved itself. There only remained the ‘Gorterist’ opposition in Amsterdam, around Barend Luteraan. This
group maintained continuity with the old opposition, by publishing its own organ from the summer of 1919: De
Roode Vaan (‘The Red Flag’).
Gorter was not one of the founders of the Dutch Communist Party. He was absent from the Congress. In
Switzerland, where he was in contact with the bolshevik Berzin, he had become increasingly separated from the
Dutch movement, to devote himself entirely to the international communist movement. Once the government
had expelled the Russian Bolsheviks from Switzerland, Gorter left the country, in November 1918. The
revolution was beginning in Germany. Until 4 th December he remained in Berlin, where he made contact with
the Spartakist leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. 395 Then he returned to Holland, to join the struggle
against the Wijnkoop leadership. But despite Luteraan’s urging, he refused to take the lead of the opposition in
the CPH. To lead the opposition would be “as good as impossible” for him, due to his declining health.
This was not a refusal of any political activity. Although a few months later, he gave up all activity in the CPH,
he devoted himself entirely to work in and for the German communist movement. He became in practice one of
the leaders and main theoreticians of the opposition which was to form the KAPD in April 1920. His activity
was wholly deployed within the Komintern, in opposition.
Unlike Gorter, Pannekoek took a much greater part in political work within the CPH. In De Nieuwe Tijd, bimonthly
since 1919, he tirelessly publicised and defended the positions of the KAPD. He remained in the
opposition in the CPH, but without playing a large part at the organisational level, until December 1921, and
resigned from the party. Pannekoek’s influence was not felt in the CPH, largely because he was never present at
its congresses.
‘Tribunism’s’ theoretical leaders thus detached themselves from the CPH. They formed the Dutch School of
Marxism, whose destiny was henceforth tied theoretically and organisationally to that of the German KAPD,
until the beginning of the 1930s. Closely tied to the Dutch School of Marxism, the KAPD was to become the
centre of international left communism, on the practical terrain of revolution and organisation. As for the CPH,
its history was more and more that of an ‘orthodox’ section of the Komintern.
395 Gorter could not have taken part in the fighting in Berlin during January 1919, as H. M. Bock writes in his study ‘Zur
Geschichte und Theorie der Holländischen Marxistischen Schule’, in: A. Pannekoek, H. Gorter, Organisation und Taktik
der proletarischen Revolution (Frankfurt am Main: Neue Kritik, 1969), pp. 26-27. Gorter remained for a month with his
mother in Berlin, and returned to Holland on 4 th December. See: Herman de Liagre Böhl, op. cit., p. 210. The discussions
with Luxemburg and Liebknecht – and perhaps with Karl Schröder, a future leader of the KAPD – are attested by
Pannekoek in: Herinneringen, p. 191, and by Gorter’s friend Jenne Clinge Doorenbos, in: Wisselend getij. Dichterlijke en
politieke aktivieiten in Herman Gorter leven (‘Changing Tide. Poetry and politics in the Gorter’s life’) (Amsterdam:
Uitgeverij Polak & Van Gennep, 1964), p. 41. Gorter returned to Holland to prepare the publication of his pamphlet De
Wereldrevolutie (Amsterdam: J.J. Bos, 1918) [published in English: The World Revolution, Glasgow, 1920]. Jenne Clinge
Doorenbos (1886-1973) was since 1907 a Gorter’s friend and his poetic muse.
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