The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Russians – like Trotsky 433 – no longer saw in the councils anything but a “crude workers’ parliament”, the Dutch
vigorously rejected the idea that the unions could “build the new proletarian society”. This was the role of the
soviets, the proletariat’s unitary political organisms.
Under the influence of the German revolution, but also of Sylvia Pankhurst and Fraina, the Bureau began to
adopt positions that were much more clear-cut, better grounded theoretically, and closer to those of the German
Opposition. The Bureau could have become the centre for the regroupment of the whole international communist
left, opposed to the Komintern’s orientations on the union and parliamentary question. This was demonstrated by
the International Communist Conference held in Amsterdam between 3 rd and 8 th February 1920.
The conference was very representative of left communism’s strength in the developed countries. The left was
represented by Fraina from the USA, Sylvia Pankhurst from Britain, Van Overstraeten from Belgium, Gorter,
Pannekoek and Roland Holst from Holland, and Carl Stucke 434 from the Bremen left. The other delegates were
either on the centre, like Wijnkoop, Rutgers and Mannoury, or frankly on the right, like Fred Willis (1869-1953),
editor in chief of the socialist newspaper The Call, and J.F. Hodgson from the ‘left’ British Socialist Party. There
were also present an Indonesian, and Maring-Sneevliet as Indonesian delegate. 435 A number of delegates arrived
after the end of the conference, probably because they were notified too late: Zetkin, Frölich, Posner, and
Münzenberg from Levi’s KPD the anti-parliamentarian Swiss Jakob Herzog (1892-1931), and the secretary of
the Latin-American Bureau, F.K. Puerto. 436 The delegates from Finland and Spain also arrived too late.
This conference resembled an International Congress by its duration, the amount of work it accomplished, and
the size of the delegations from different countries on three continents. It was more representative than the Imola
and Frankfurt conferences which preceded it. 437 It should be noted that the Dutch were far from ready for
clandestine work. The entire conference was kept under surveillance both by spies and by the Dutch police, who
noted everything that was said and decided. 438 Clara Zetkin was arrested on her arrival in Amsterdam, and was
433 Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, 1920: “[...] the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the
dictatorship of the party. […] In this “substitution” of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is
nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the
working class: thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision, thanks to its strong revolutionary organisation, the party ensured
the soviets’ ability to transform themselves from crude workers’ parliaments into an apparatus for the domination of
labour”. This text, which advocates the militarisation of labour, has since been republished by the French ‘bordigists’ (Paris:
ed. Prométhée, 1980) as “one of Trotsky’s most magnificent texts”. [English edition, London: New Park, 1975.]
434 Carl Stucke was one of the leaders of the Bremen tendency. Anti-parliamentarian at the Amsterdam Conference, a few
months later he defended participation in the April 1920 elections, but he was from the beginning, April 1919, for an
activity in the local parliaments (see: P. Kuckuk, op. cit., p. 212)
435 Sneevliet uttered not a word throughout the conference. He was accompanied by a correspondent of the CPH, the Chinese
Indonesian Tiun Shu Kua, presented as a “Chinese comrade”.
436 This was undoubtedly the pseudonym of the Russian Borodin, who had been given responsibility for the secretariat of the
Latin-American Bureau, and later for the Komintern in China, where he played a non-negligible role in the defeat of the
Chinese proletariat as a result of the CP’s policy of merging with the Kuomintang.
437 The Imola Conference of 10 th October 1919 was an international meeting between a few Western European delegates,
and the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party, to gather information. With the exception of Pankhurst, the delegates were
far from being left-wing. The December 1919 Frankfurt conference was wholly informal. It produced a secretariat
composed of Karl Radek (1885-1939), Paul Levi (1883-1930), August Thalheimer (1884-1948), Mieczyslav Bronski (1882-
1941), Wilhelm Münzenberg (1889-1940) and Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940), who represented the right wing of the
Komintern.
438 Fraina’s courrier, Jacob Nosovitsky (1890-?), who took part in the conference, was in fact a police agent. Of Russian
origin, he had joined the American federal police out of hatred for the Russian revolution; he “worked” also for the Scotland
Yard, to which he sent his reports. When Nosovitsky was finally unmasked at the Amsterdam conference, suspicion fell on
Fraina. This last was eventually completely cleared by an enquiry commission set up by the Komintern, and sitting in
Moscow. Throughout the conference, the police recorded the proceedings from the next room, and gave the bourgeois press
details of the interventions, resolutions, and names of the participants. Several delegates, among them Clara Zetkin, were
arrested by the police. Het Algemeen Handelsblad, one of Amsterdam’s most famous dailies, linked to the upper ranks of
the Dutch bourgeoisie, gives some very interesting details on the conference in its 14 th , 15 th and 18 th February, 1920 issues.
It tells us that from 3 rd February onward, the conference took place first in Mannoury’s house, then in Wijnkoop’s, and
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