The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

However, this ‘radicalism’ of Domela Nieuwenhuis and the SDB, which was more verbal than real, led to the
party’s increasing isolation within the international movement of social democracy. In the 2 nd International,
Domela Nieuwenhuis insisted more and more on the anarchist idea of the general strike. In 1891, he defended
the idea of the general strike of workers in the belligerent countries in the event of war breaking out. His motion
was rejected in favour of one proposed by Wilhelm Liebknecht (the father of Karl), emphasising the capitalist
roots of militarism. His insistence on the general strike, which was made to appear as a universal panacea for the
revolution, pushed into the background an essential idea which was later to be taken up by the Marxist left: the
rejection of the distinction between defensive and offensive war. At the 1893 Zürich congress, Domela
Nieuwenhuis’ proposal of a general strike, with a military strike and even a women’s strike, showed that he had
in fact gone over to anarchism. The resolution adopted by the congress required the rejection of all military
credits, and the struggle for disarmament and the abolition of standing armies. It demonstrated that the Social-
Democrat International was far from being the “petty and middle bourgeois” organisation that Domela
Nieuwenhuis claimed it was. In fact, the Zürich congress showed that the split lay between the Marxists, who
accepted the political organisation and action of the proletariat, and the anarchists who rejected it in practice if
not in theory. The congress made it a condition for membership of the International that member parties, unions,
or associations should “recognise the necessity of workers’ organisation and political action”.
The question of participation in elections, as a means of political action by the social democracy, was to split the
SDB. Since the electoral reform in the Dutch Constitution of 1887, 60% of the men could take part in the
elections, and the possibility to obtain settles to Parliament became more tangible reality. At the 1893 Groningen
congress, Domela Nieuwenhuis proposed a resolution unconditionally rejecting all electoral activity. It was
accepted by a small majority: 47 in favour, 40 against, with 14 abstentions. The Marxist Frank van der Goes
(1859-1939), who had led the opposition to Domela Nieuwenhuis, was expelled from the party. Troelstra then
took the initiative, with the support of the leaders of German social democracy, of organising socialist electoral
societies, parallel to the SDB and ignoring the congress resolution. A split became inevitable.
In 1894, a group of SDB leaders and militants – known ironically by their opponents as the ‘twelve apostles’ –
and including Troelstra, Van der Goes, Schaper, Van Kol and Vliegen – took the initiative of forming a
Workers’ Social-Democratic Party, the SDAP (Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij), on the basis of the
programme of German social democracy. 13 At first, the SDAP looked like a small sect: fewer than 100 members
in 1894; 600 in 1895, of whom barely 250 came from the SDB. For a long time, the party seemed to politicised
workers to be a ‘splitting’ exercise, led by a few middle-class ‘gentlemen’ (“Heeren”). The SDAP was indeed
largely made up of intellectuals from the middle class. Its electoral basis was not the industrial workers, who
remained faithful to the SDB, but the small farmers and farm-workers of Friesland. For most workers within the
SDB, the split appeared confusing and premature.
The split was confusing, both because the minority left the party without trying to convince the majority of their
positions, and because it did so solely in order to take part in the elections following the recent adoption of a law
widening the electoral register. With the exception of Frank van der Goes, who was an orthodox Marxist, the
SDAP leadership went into the elections with reformist and electoralist reservations which boded ill for the
future – and this despite the fact that they had only lately played the game of verbal extremism inside the SDB.
13 The ‘twelve apostles’ (twaalf apostelen) were: Levie Cohen (1864-1930) (Zwolle), shopkeeper; Jan Antoon Fortuijn
(1855-1940) (Amsterdam), clark, future publisher of the theoretical periodical De Nieuwe Tijd; Adrien H. Gerhard (1858-
1948) (Amsterdam), schoolmaster, son of the founder of the IWMA in Holland; Frank van der Goes (1859-1939)
(Amsterdam), writer; Willem Pieter Gerardus Helsdingen (1850-1921) (Rotterdam), weaver; Hendrikus Hubertus van der
Kol (1852-1925) (Aywaille), engineer; Henri Polak (1863-1943) (Amsterdam), diamond-cutter; Johan Hendrik Andries
Schaper (1868-1934) (Groningen), house painter; Hendrik Spiekman (1874-1917) (Sappemeer), type-setter; Pieter Jelles
Troelstra (1860-1930) (Utrecht), lawyer; Helmig Jan van der Vegt (1864-1944) (Zwolle), teacher; Willem Hubert Vliegen
(1862-1947) (Maastricht), type-setter. The leadership was not made up solely of ‘gentlemen’ as the anarchists claimed at the
time. Many were workers. None were to loin the Tribunist movement: all were or became revisionists. The nickname of
‘apostles’ is illustrative of a general mentality moulded by an omni-present christianity. Almost all were editors of local
social-democratic newspapers. The SDB press thus passed under the control of the SDAP.
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