The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The unemployed workers of Amsterdam were undoubtedly the most radical sector of the Dutch proletariat. 1000
Obliged to report to the unemployment offices every day, the unemployed were quickly politicised: the long
queues were tailor-made for political discussions and the distribution of the revolutionary press, especially that
of the council communists, whose propaganda did have an echo. From 1932 on, unemployed ‘committees of
struggle’ were being formed in Amsterdam; very militant, they soon fell into the maws of the CPH, despite the
GIC’s calls to “wage the struggle outside of any union or political party”. 1001
The unemployed movement culminated in July 1934 in a veritable uprising, when the conservative – Anti-
Revolutionair Party – Cabinet led by Hendrijk Colijn (1869-1944) decided to cut unemployment benefit. On July
4, the workers of the Jordaan district of Amsterdam demonstrated spontaneously, without any party or union
directives, against the government’s measures. In this district, as in the ‘Indonesian quarter’, there was lively
resistance against the attacks of the motorised or mounted police. The streets of the Jordaan district were soon
covered in barricades and were in the hands of the workers and the unemployed, who, once they had ‘won’, went
home. But the next day the army occupied the district with tanks and machine guns. The repression against the
workers ended with 7 dead and 200 wounded. Strengthened by this victory, the Dutch government forbade all
demonstrations and meetings. Although it had distanced itself from the struggle of the Jordaan workers – seeing
only “pillage and provocation” 1002 – De Tribune, organ of the CPH, was banned. The small left socialist party,
the OSP had several of its leaders arrested, even though one of its fractions, the one around De Kadt, refused to
express solidarity with the movement, criticising the ‘adventurism’ of the OSP leadership.
The defeat of the Amsterdam unemployed was a heavy one, since it meant a serious defeat for the proletariat in
Holland, which had remained passive. In fact, the struggle of the unemployed was seen as something separate, as
a particular category. The unemployed themselves did not attempt to generalise their movement. This
corporatism and lack of solidarity between different categories of workers was a real weakness:
“...The class forces were still so weak that the workers in struggle did not see the extension of the movement as
their own task. The idea was that it was a struggle of the unemployed alone and had to be waged by them alone.
In Jordaan and its environs, there are various factories: however, the unemployed made no attempt to draw them
into the struggle.” 1003
The causes of this defeat were not only subjective, but also objective. The bourgeoisie “could no longer tolerate
the least resistance from the workers”. 1004 The only way out for the working class was in mass movements, the
extension and generalisation of strikes. But would this be enough to halt the bourgeoisie’s offensive against the
proletariat, particularly the threat of war? Were the great strikes of summer 1936 in France under the banner of
the ‘Popular Front’, the harbingers of a new period of mass strikes?
The GIC and the strikes of May-June 1936
It is symptomatic that the GIC exercised great caution in analysing the wave of strikes in France. Whereas the
Mattick group in the USA talked about a decisive defeat for the French proletariat 1005 , a pseudo-victory opening
the door to a series of defeats and to fascism, the GIC defined June 1936 as a turning point for the international
proletariat. The French strikes would either open up a new period of class struggle, or else they would be “a last
gasp before an even more profound slump” for the proletariat. 1006 This prudence about the future was a break
from the enthusiasm expressed a year earlier during the Belgian miners’ strike when the GIC saw the occupation
1000 For a history of the Amsterdam workers’ insurrection in July 1934, see: W. Kielich, Jordaaners op de barricaden – Het
oproer van 1934 (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1984).
1001 PIC, No. 4, Feb. 1932.
1002 De Tribune (supplement), 6 th July 1934.
1003 Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 8/9, April-May 1935.
1004 Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 4, Sept. 1934.
1005 ‘The Defeat in France’, in: International Council Correspondence, No. 8, July 1936.
1006 ‚Massenstreik in Frankreich’, in: Räte-Korrespondenz, No. 18/19, August 1936.
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