The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

emained an internationalist. It is no surprise that at his funeral in November 1919 – when 100,000 Amsterdam
workers followed the cortege – the Communist International was officially represented by S.J. Rutgers, one of
the leaders of the Dutch Communist Party and a member of the Executive of the Komintern.
In the 1920s, Gorter summed up very clearly left-wing Marxism’s position with regard to Domela Nieuwenhuis,
whose activity was out of phase with the historical period, which was not yet a period of revolution but still one
of reforms, of capitalism’s evolution and not its decline:
“In a period of evolution, which was just beginning in The Netherlands, he already wanted the revolution.
Throughout his life he remained faithful to revolutionary anarchism, and lived, understood, and admired the
Russian revolution. The difference between him and us Marxist revolutionaries is that we are for revolutionary
methods in a period of revolution, while he wanted them prematurely.” 16
It is nonetheless necessary to understand the limitations of Domela Nieuwenhuis’ contribution, because for the
anarchist and councilist currents he has become the symbol of the impossibility of remaining in the 2 nd
International, which is seen as bourgeois from the outset. It is thus important to evaluate the criticisms that
Domela Nieuwenhuis made of German Social democracy and the 2 nd International. These remain valid to the
extent that they concurred with Engels’ critique of opportunism in the German party. In 1891, Engels wrote in
his Critique of the draft Erfurt programme of the social democracy to emphasise the danger of opportunism:
“This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling
and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the
movement for its present may be 'honestly' meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and 'honest' opportunism is
perhaps the most dangerous of all.....” 17
In his book Socialism in Danger published in French in Paris in 1897 at the time of his departure from the
‘Socialistenbond’, Domela Nieuwenhuis denounced a certain number of faults in the social democracy, which
were to crystallise in the revisionist theories of Vollmar and Bernstein from 1895 onwards. Domela
Nieuwenhuis’ criticisms were the following:
– the party’s penetration by petty-bourgeois elements endangered its proletarian character, and manifested itself
in ideological concessions to the bourgeoisie, particularly during elections;
– the theory of ‘state socialism’ deformed the revolutionary goal, by defining the revolution as no more than the
reformist take-over of the state by the workers’ movement: “...the social-democrats are just reformers who want
to transform today’s society along the lines of state socialism”. 18
Unlike the Marxists, Domela Nieuwenhuis came to the conclusion that the workers should abandon the struggle
for reforms: “All reforms only serve to reinforce the existing state of affairs”. He also thought that the evolution
of the social democracy would lead inevitably to integration into the bourgeoisie: “the triumph of social
democracy will be the defeat of socialism”. 19
It was no accident that Domela Nieuwenhuis’ denunciation of social democracy as ‘bourgeois’ should be taken
up not only by the anarchists, but also by the ‘councilists’. The latter considered that “social democracy should
16 H. Gorter, ‘Die marxistische revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Holland’, Proletarier (Berlin), Feb. 1922, pp. 16-20.
17 F. Engels, Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW), June 18 and 29 1891, Vol. 27, p. 217.
18 F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Le socialisme en danger (Paris: Payot, 1975), p. 176. Reprint with a foreword by J.-Y. Bériou.
Bériou’s post-face gives a ‘modernist’ interpretation of the historical period of the 2 nd International. According to him, the
proletariat was and remains a ‘class for capital’. All workers’ movements integrate the class into capitalism: “The ‘workers
movement’ is the adequate expression of the movement of value [...] the workers’ movement is the expression of the
movement of variable capital, of the proletariat as an economic class”. Bériou rejects all political activity and all parties,
declaring that: “The 2 nd International corresponded to counter-revolutionary conditions, to the development of capitalism”.
He draws the conclusion that the Communist Left should not have remained within the 2 nd International: “One of the great
weaknesses of the re-emerging communist movement of around 1905 (Trotsky, Pannekoek, Luxemburg, etc.) was its
incomprehension of the nature of social democracy”.
19 H. Gorter, ‘Die marxistische revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung in Holland’, idem.
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