The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

only freed after the intercession of the right-wing social-democrat Wibaut, who was notorious for his repression
of the workers in 1917. 439 Was this a hommage to the KPD’s ‘moderate’ leadership?
Described by Clara Zetkin as a “rump conference”, it nonetheless represented left communism on two essential
questions: the rejection of trades unionism, and the refusal of any form of entryism into parties linked to the 2 nd
International, such as the Labour Party in Britain.
Fraina’s theses on unionism, which were approved unanimously, went further than the proposals mentioned
above. They excluded any work in the trades unions, which were “definitively integrated into capitalism”, and
attached politically to “labourism”, whose “governmental expression is state capitalism”. They recommended
revolutionary industrial unionism after the seizure of power; by classing this with factory councils, the theses
implicitly rejected the apolitical attitude of the IWW. In its support for industrial unionism, the position of the
Bureau’s left could seem very close to that of the KAPD. 440 But this was only in appearance, since both the
KAPD and the CPH minority were later to reject all forms of unionism, including the revolutionary and
industrial variety.
But the Bureau remained confused as to the distinction between the political party and the revolutionary union.
Despite the vigorous opposition of Pankhurst and Fraina, the conference accepted the representation on the
Bureau of economic organisations like the shop stewards. This in fact was also the practice of the Komintern
until its 2 nd Congress.
The conference’s most important decision concerned Britain, where there existed both a very strong Labour
Party linked to the 2 nd International, and left socialist parties – the BSP and ILP 441 – similar to the German
USPD. Lenin and the rest of the Komintern wanted the communist groups to join the Labour Party in order to
win over the masses. This contradicted the slogan of splitting revolutionaries from the 2 nd International, which
was considered dead, and whose patties were seen as the left wing of the bourgeoisie not as the right wing of the
workers’ movement, or as a ‘centrist’ current when they were dominated by the ‘left’. At the beginning of 1920,
the Komintern’s policy changed, to urge the formation of mass parties: either by merging the communist groups
with the majority centrist currents, such as the Independents in Germany, or by the little communist groups’
entry into a party of the 2 nd International in the ‘special case’ of Britain. But a policy built on ‘special cases’
always leads to opportunism.
finally in De Tribune’s Amsterdam office. It then left Amsterdam for Rutgers’ house in Amersfoort. The choice of such
meeting places, well known to the authorities and constantly under police surveillance, reveals the organisers’ negligence of
security matters, and above all their lack of experience in underground work. According to Het Handelsblad, the Soviet
government had sent 20 million roubles in diamonds for the Amsterdam Bureau. For the first day, it gave details of the
Dutch participants, particularly: Henk Sneevliet, Louis de Visser (1878-1945), Willem van Leuven (1880-1957), Gerrit
Mannoury (1867-1956), of the CPH; Engelbertus Bouwman (1882-1955) from the NAS; Bart de Ligt (1883-1938), an old
member of the Bond van Christen-Socialisten; the preacher John William Kruyt (1877-1943), from the same Christian-
Socialist organisation [later, CPH member since 1919, and NKVD agent in Germany in the 30s; in the Dutch Resistance, he
was shot by the Gestapo in Berlin in July 1943]; Helena Ankersmit (1869-1944), secretary of the Bond van Sociaal-
Democratische Vrouwenclubs (‘Social-Democratic Women’s clubs’), a friend of Clara Zetkin and translator for the
conference; Richard André Manuel (1889-1945), an active militant of the Hungarian soviet republic in 1919, who had taken
refuge in Holland afterwards and joined the CPH. In his memoirs, Pannekoek notes the absence of any conspiratorial work
amongst the Dutch: “Here, we ticked any talent for conspiracy: at lunchtime we swarmed into a cafe with a garden, and
continued our discussions in several languages at table. We must surely have given the public the impression of an
international conference” (Herinneringen, p. 198).
439 See Clara Zetkin’s – often tendentious – account presented to the KPD’s 3 rd Congress on 26 th February 1920 (in:
P. Broué, op. cit., pp. 412-420). Zetkin demanded that the Bureau should be moved to Germany, which would have meant
the dissolution of the Amsterdam Bureau.
440 See the IWW’s notion of ‘One Big Union’, which would unite all the industrial unions. Fraina had been a member of the
IWW.
441 The British Socialist Party, founded in 1911, was to become the main component of the CPGB established in July 1920.
The Independent Labour Party, was founded during the 1890s on the basis of the Fabian Society; it was not a Marxist party,
and although it denounced the war in 1914; its viewpoint was a pacifist one.
125