The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Chapter 4 THE DUTCH LEFT IN THE KOMINTERN (1919-20)
In January 1919 a letter was sent to the various recently formed communist parties, and to the revolutionary
fractions or oppositions within the old Social Democratic parties inviting them to a congress of the “new
revolutionary International”. The original idea was just to call an “internationalist socialist conference” to lay the
basis for the 3 rd International rather than to convoke a congress. The conference was to have been held before the
first of February either in Berlin or in Holland and it was to have been clandestine. 396 The plan had to be changed
because of the crushing of the January insurrection in Berlin and the conference was finally held in Moscow
from 2 nd to 6 th March 1919. The Dutch Communist Party received the invitation. It had already decided at its
congress in November 1918 to send a delegate once the convocation of the Congress of the 3 rd International was
definite. 397 However the attitude of the CPH leadership was exactly the same as it had been at the three
conferences of the Zimmerwald Movement. Although he had been given all that was necessary to make the
journey to Moscow, Wijnkoop did not ‘manage’ to start out. This was in fact a refusal on his part. To explain his
refusal, always camouflaged behind some sectarian remark or other, he had published articles by the British
journalist Arthur Ransome, who made out that the congress of the Third International was no more that a “purely
Slav undertaking”. 398
In the end the Dutch Communist Party was represented indirectly and only with a consultative vote at the First
Congress of the new International. Its representative, Rutgers, did not come directly from Holland; he had left
the country in 1914 to go to the United States where he became a member of the American League for Socialist
Propaganda. 399 Arriving in Moscow via Japan, he in fact represented only this American group and had no
mandate. It was thanks to him that the Dutch Left was known in the USA. His friend Fraina 400 , one of the leaders
of American left communism, was strongly influenced by Gorter and Pannekoek. The Dutch Communist Party
396 Cf. P. Broué’s relevant introduction on pp. 27-38, in: Premier Congrès de I’Intemationale Communiste, Paris: EDI, 1974.
Complete texts published under the direction of Pierre Broué. See in English: Jane Degras (ed.): The Communist
International: 1919-1943: Documents, Vols. 1 & 2; London 1971. See also: P. Broué: Histoire de l’Internationale
communiste 1919-1943 (Paris: Fayard, 1997); G. M. Adibekov, E. N. Shakhnazarova, K. K. Shiriniya, Organizatsionnaya
struktura Kominterna 1919-1943 (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997).
397 Cf. M. Wiessing, Die Holländische Schule des Marxismus, op. cit., p. 44.
398 A. Ransome, Six weeks in Russia, 1919 (quoted in: De Tribune in September 1919 by Wijnkoop) [reprint London:
Redwords, 1992, with an introductory essay by the British Socialist Paul Foot (1937-2004)]. Arthur Ransome (1884-1967)
was journalist in Russia when the revolution broke out in 1917. He spoke perfect Russian and became close friend with
many of the bolshevik leaders. He is the well-known author of Swallows and Amazons and a score of children’s stories.
399 The American League for Socialist Propaganda was formed in Massachusetts in 1916, inside the Socialist Party and
against the orientation of the party leadership on elections. It published The Internationalist which opposed the majority
orientation towards pacifism in 1917. In 1919 it began calling itself “the left wing of the Socialist Party” and in Boston
published, under the direction of Fraina, the weekly Revolutionary Age. In its theses in 1919 it declared itself in favour of
leaving the 2 nd International and joining the 3 rd International, in order to eliminate the reformist demands contained in the
platform of the SP.
400 Louis Fraina (1894-1953) was born in the south of Italy and immigrated to the USA with his parents at the age of 2. At
the age of 15 he became a member of the deleonist SLP, which he left in 1914. He became a member of the American SP
and, with John Reed, was active in its left wing, which decided to split at a conference in June 1919. This split gave rise to
both Reed’s Communist Labour Party and Fraina’s Communist Party of America – which was the most developed
theoretically – in September 1919. After the Amsterdam conference in February 1920, he took part in the 2 nd Congress of
the Komintern after he had been cleared of the suspicion that he was an agent provocateur. From 1920-21, under the
pseudonym of Luis Corey, he took over the direction of the Pan-American bureau of the Komintern in Mexico, with
Katayama and the American Charles Philipps. In 1922 he ceased militant activity and became well-known as a journalist,
using the same pseudonym. He became a university professor in economics, after which he was known mainly for his works
on economics. [See: P. Buhle, A Dreamer’s Paradise Lost: Louis C. Fraina Lewis Corey and the Decline of Radicalism,
London, July 2001.]
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