The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

party appeared as having definitively passed to the bourgeois camp. But in a strange way and here the influence
of Gorter was felt Lenin appeared to the KAPD as “the representative of the Russian peasants, in other words the
international bourgeoisie”. 606
The same incomprehension of the gradual process of degeneration was found in the analysis of the 3 rd
International. Its definitive death was proclaimed, because of its total submission to the Russian bourgeois state:
“The Third International has been lost for the world proletarian revolution. It finds itself, like the Second
International, in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The whole difference between the two consists only of this: the
Second International, in its particular national parties, depends on the particular bourgeois states. On the
contrary, the Third International in its totality depends on a single bourgeois state.” 607
More serious was the fact that the KAPD considered all the sections of the Komintern as lost. That implied that
it could not give birth to revolutionary fractions within it, as within the national sections. If these ‘particular
sections’ of the Komintern were only “auxiliary groups in the hands of the bourgeois Soviet government” (p.
32), then the whole policy of the KAPD to form opposition groups collapsed. In contradiction with reality, the
Belgian, Mexican and Italian parties were made to appear as ‘auxiliary troops’ in the service of the
reconstruction of Russian capital. In fact, this was nothing but a theoretical justification for the voluntarist
construction of a 4 th International.
b) The extraordinary congress of the KAPD (11 th -14 th September 1921), and the question of forming the KAI
The KAPD congress unanimously, including the ‘Greater Berlin’ delegates, opposed to the party leadership,
rejected the ultimatum of the 3 rd Congress and proclaimed their immediate exit from the Komintern as a
sympathising party. It approved the attitude of the delegates and decided to address a manifesto to the
proletarians of the whole world. Lastly, it approved the principle of conditional solidarity with the Russian
state. 608
But the question of the rapid foundation of a Communist Workers’ International was posed without being
resolved. Since July Gorter had been in Berlin, where he stayed at least until the congress to exercise all the
influence he could. He tried to overcome Berlin’s opposition 609 , and the hesitations of Schröder, who was
pessimistic. 610 On the 16 th August Gorter spoke energetically for the formation of a new communist International
at a session of the enlarged central committee of the KAPD. Berlin pronounced itself resolutely against, while
the other districts remained hesitant, considering this as ‘desirable’. 611 For Berlin it was not a question of
denying the necessity but of waiting for the moment when the KAI would arise ‘from below’; in no case could
such an organism be ‘imposed from above’.
The extraordinary congress did not allow complete clarity to appear within the party. Gorter himself, who had
come in strength with three other Dutch delegates 612 , declared in his long intervention’s simultaneously that “the
situation [was] still just as revolutionary as it was a few years ago”; and on the other hand that the fight for the
606 Idem, p. 29.
607 Op. cit., p. 30.
608 Protokoll, idem, pp. 122-123.
609 Gorter seems to have been under constant surveillance by the German police, as evidenced by a police report dated 23
August. [RK In.51, ‘Lageberichte’ of the minister of the interior (Reichs-Kommissar), reedited by Ernst Ritter, as microfilm
(München, New York, London, Paris: K.G. Saur, 1979).
610 Idem. R(eichs) K(ommissar) In(nern) 50. More cautious than Gorter, Schröder had envisaged first holding a conference
of opposition groups, and only afterwards examining what should be the form of the international regroupment.
611 Clemens Klockner, in the preface to Protokoll, already quoted, pp. 11-42.
612 There were 76 delegates, 180 hosts at the Congress, whose meeting place was changed each day. Apart from Gorter the
Dutch delegation consisted of Jansen and Meer. Jansen was perhaps a member of the KAPN, J.J. Janssen (1890-1961) (See:
collection Canne-Meijer). It would be strange that the painter Johannes Proost (1882-1942), ‘Jansen’, delegate to the 2 nd
Congress of the Komintern (with Ceton, De Visser and Willem van Leuven), still a member of the CPH, and future
apparatchik in the Komintern, would have been invited to the congress. If that was so his presence is hard to explain.
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