The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

1862-1866, 1871-1872); these conservatives nevertheless were more ‘open’ to other religious bourgeois currents
than Calvinism, the official religion of the monarchy. The bourgeois parties were not strong enough organised to
dominate the monarchy. Only in 1878 was born a first strongly organised bourgeois party, a Calvinist party, the
Anti-Revolutionary Party of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). The Roman Catholic party (Roomsch-Katholieke
Staatspartij – RKSP), less ‘conservative’, led first by the priest Herman J.A.M. Schaepman (1844-1903), was
growing too, and could play a role in 1901-1905, in a Christian coalition Cabinet, led by Kuyper, to defend
religious schools and in 1903 the law and order against the transport strikers (see below). The party of the
industrial bourgeoisie, the Liberal Union (Liberale Unie), which rose in March 1885, remained weak, and in
1892 this birth was followed by that of the Radical Association (Radicale Bond), left-wing of Liberalism.
The beginnings of the workers’ movement
The political weight of The Netherlands in the international workers’ movement around World War I should
seem out of proportion to the relatively weak country’s industrial development and the crushing domination of
agriculture in the economy.
The workers’ movement was at the beginning a movement of artisans and of workers from small, artisan-type
enterprises, with an important role being played by cigar workers and diamond workers (who formed a Jewish
proletariat in Amsterdam). The ‘Dutch’ working class properly speaking – i.e. those coming from rural origins –
was still extremely small in the mid-19 th century. The proletariat was to a large extent either of Jewish or
German origin. This (but partially) explains its great openness to Marxism. But for several decades the late
industrial development of The Netherlands, which kept alive the archaic traits of artisan labour, made it a terrain
of choice for anarchism.
Up until 1843, the social movements remained very limited, taking the form of explosions of revolt which could
not in themselves adopt a conscious goal. The demonstrations of the unemployed in Amsterdam and the hunger
march in The Hague, in 1847, were not yet clear expressions of a working class consciousness, given the
absence of a developed and concentrated proletariat. During the 1848 revolution, the demonstrations and looting
which took place in Amsterdam were the expression of a true Lumpenproletariat, whose desperate actions were
foreign to a proletariat which has become conscious and thus organised.
The first forms of proletarian organisation in The Netherlands immediately expressed the international nature of
the emerging workers’ movement. In 1847, German workers created a Communist Club which was active in the
Dutch-speaking proletariat. 5 One year later, the Communist League, which had several sections in The
Netherlands, illegally introduced copies of the first edition of the Communist Manifesto, fresh from the printers.
But for 20 years, these first steps of the Marxist movement were not followed up, since there was no real
industrial development until the 1870s. The section of the International Workingmen’s Association remained
under the influence of anarchist and syndicalist ideas (the Workers’ League of Holland was formed in 1871). In
1872, at the Hague Congress, the Dutch delegates rallied to the positions of Bakunin. Nonetheless, one of them –
the tailor Hendrik Gerhard (1829-1886) – was to be one of the precursors and founders of the social-democratic
movement.
It was the growing industrialisation, encouraged by an influx of German capital after Prussia’s victory over
France, which finally allowed the Dutch socialist movement to develop. The preferential treatment accorded to
Dutch manufacturers in imports from the Indonesian colony down to 1874 has been crucial to the development
5 ‘Vereeniging tot zedelijke beschaving van de arbeidende klasse’. This Association was in touch with the German workers
Communist League of London. The first complete translation in Dutch of the Communist Manifesto was published in The
Hague in 1892. This (inaccurate) translation was made by Christiaan Cornelissen. Herman Gorter made a new (and better)
translation, published in Amsterdam in 1904.
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