The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

From the beginning Wijnkoop tried by a series of manoeuvres to eliminate Pannekoek and especially Gorter
(whom he falsely accused of being a ‘psychopath’) from the leadership of the Bureau. 427 Against the decision of
the Komintern, only Rutgers, Roland Holst and Wijnkoop remained. It is true that during the short life of the
Bureau, Wijnkoop tried to give the impression that he was a radical, on the ‘left’ of the Komintern. He took up a
position against the KPD’s rapprochement with the USPD, and against the entry of the British CP into the
Labour Party. Despite this radicalism, on issues such as the parliamentary question he adopted – being a member
of parliament himself – an intermediary position. In fact he refused to take up a position explicitly in favour of
the communist left: in Germany he characterised the struggle between the German opposition and Levi’s right
wing as “a struggle between big shots in the party on both sides”. 428 But Wijnkoop’s apparent radicalism lasted
just long enough to demand that the Komintern’s Second Congress exclude the Independents, and Cachin and
Frossard. The only exclusion that he obtained in the end was that of the left from the CPH in 1921 (see below).
Pannekoek and Roland Holst helped to draft Theses in preparation for the International Conference to be held in
February 1920. 429 They began with a call for unity among communists, who should come together in a single
Party, in accord with the decisions of the Komintern’s Executive.
But these Theses were already moving away from the Komintern’s line. The Theses on Parliamentarism –
probably written by Rutgers 430 – were a compromise between the positions of the communist left and those of
the International. They upheld one of the lessons of the October Revolution: that “parliamentarism can never be
an organ of the victorious proletariat”. The theory of revolutionary parliamentarism was strongly defended: “[...]
parliamentary action comprising the most energetic forms of protest against imperialist brutality, in combination
with external action, will prove to be an effective means of awakening the masses and encouraging their
resistance.”
True, this declaration was qualified: it held on the one hand, that parliaments are more and more degenerating
into fairground parades where swindlers cheat the masses”, which demonstrated the emptiness of
“revolutionary” parliamentarism, on the other that electoral activity was a purely local question: “[...] when and
how parliamentarism should be used in the class struggle is something for the working class in each country to
decide”. 431
These Theses were only a draft: they were modified and rewritten, probably by Pannekoek. The rejection of
parliamentarism became more explicit, but was still conditional on the appearance of the workers’ councils: “[...]
when parliament becomes the centre and the organ of the counterrevolution, and on the other hand the working
class builds its own instruments of power in the form of the soviets, it may even be necessary to repudiate any
form whatever of participation in parliamentary activity.” 432
On the union question, the Theses were also a compromise. They recommended that revolutionary workers
should form a “revolutionary opposition within the unions”. This was the position of the Komintern, which
dreamt of ‘revolutionising’ the counter-revolutionary trades unions, on the grounds that large masses of workers
were gathered in them. However, the Amsterdam Bureau envisaged the possibility of creating “new
organisations”. These were to be industrial unions, not corporatist unions based on a trade, with a revolutionary
goal, and closely based on the IWW and the British shop stewards. In the end, where the Bureau distinguished
itself clearly from the Komintern was on the unions’ role after the proletariat’s seizure of power: whereas the
427 Wijnkoop said this at the Groningen congress of the CPH in June 1919. Gorter broke off personal relations with him
completely.
428 De Tribune, 7 th May 1920.
429 Wijnkoop remained silent on the other questions of parliamentarism and unionism. When he returned to Holland he took
it upon himself to see that the Komintern’s line was applied within the CPH.
430 It is difficult to know whether Rutgers or Pannekoek, or the two together, drew up the Theses on Parliamentarism.
431 The Theses of the Amsterdam Bureau were published as proposals in the Komintern’s press of January 1920, ‘Vorschläge
aus Holland’, in: Die Kommunistische Internationale, No. 4-5.
432 It is this version that Lenin quotes in Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder.
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