The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Council communist theory had a revolutionary impact in the Netherlands, by developing within the organised
framework of the Spartacus Communist Union. The positions of the GIC and of Pannekoek found an echo
through this organisation, that followed its paradoxical evolution.
From the RSAP to the ‘MarxLenin–Luxembourg Front’. – The ‘third front’ against the war
The current which gave rise to the council communist organisation ‘Spartacus’ emerged from Sneevliet’s RSAP.
This political transformation during the war is one of the most astonishing ever.
The RSAP (Workers’ Socialist Revolutionary Party) 1132 represents the sole case of an electoralist party to the
right of the trotskyist movement, evolving during a world war towards revolutionary positions. Coming out of
the Dutch Communist Party in 1927, the Sneevliet fraction was at the head of a small union, the NAS (Nationaal
Arbeids Secretariaat) which refused to dissolve itself into the social democratic NVV union. Constituted in part
in 1929 (RSP, Revolutionary Socialist Party), this tendency was closer to the Brandlerian right-wing tendencies
in the Komintern than the lefts (Korsch, Schwartz, Bordiga), which quit in 1926. The policy of Maring-Sneevliet
on China in the 1920s had been vigorously criticised by Trotsky for having contributed to the defect of the
revolution in 1926-27. The fusion in 1935 with a left socialist organisation, the OSP (Independent Socialist
Party) – led by Jacques de Kadt, P.J. Schmidt, Edo Fimmen 1133 , Sal Tas and the old Franc van der Goes –, itself
coming out of Dutch social democracy in 1932, gave birth to the RSAP, the constant target of the council
communists. 1134
This small party of 3,600 members at the beginning, which still had 2,500 adherents in 1939 was based on the
NAS union led by Sneevliet. 1135 The NAS was the union base of the RSAP, with 22,500 members in 1933; by
1939, after state employees had been forbidden to join the NAS, the figure had fallen to 10,500. Born in 1893,
the NAS maintained a revolutionary-syndicalist orientation; it joined the Red Union International in 1925, had
left in 1927 when the Komintern gave the order to dissolve itself into the official social democratic union, NVV,
in 1927. All those members of the Dutch CP who had joined the NAS followed Sneevliet in the split.
Politically, the RSAP oscillated between left socialism and trotskyism. Before 1935, the two organisations RSP
and OSP pronounced themselves – with Willy Brandt’s SAP and the International Left Opposition (Bolshevik-
Leninist) – for the formation of new parties and the creation of a new International 1136 . In 1935 the RSAP,
together with other organisations, declared itself for the rapid construction of the fourth International. 1137 This
1132 For the history of the RSAP, besides the book by Perthus, already quoted, see: G. H. Pieterson, Het revolutionaire
socialisme in de jaren dertig (‘Revolutionary Socialism in the 1930s’, doctoral thesis presented to the Economischhistorisch
Seminarium, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1977).
1133 Edo Fimmen was secretary of the Transport Workers’ International (TWI) until his death in 1942. See: Willy Buschak,
Edo Fimmen. Der schöne Traum von Europa und die Globalisierung, Eine Biografie (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2002).
1134 See the pamphlet by the GIC: Klassenstrijd in oorlogstijd (‘Class struggle in time of war’), Amsterdam, 1935. The
Unification Congress took place in Rotterdam, and not Amsterdam, as F. Tichelman says incorrectly in Henk Sneevliet, een
politieke biografie (Amsterdam, 1974). This is shown by Stan Poppe‘s interesting testimony in Spartacus No. 2, 1975.
1135 Cf. Perthus, op. cit., p. 370-71. Perthus gives the figure of 3,000 militants for the left socialists of the OSP in 1935, and
1,000 for Sneevliet‘s RSP. The RSP was thus a minority in the RSAP; it is true that a pro-SAP split in November 35 led to
the departure of 1,000 militants, mostly ex-OSP. Sneevliet was secretary of the RSAP and P. J. Schmidt (1896-1952) – exleader
of the OSP – president. The latter abandoned his position and left the party in August 1936, during the Moscow
Trials. A year later, he returned to the SDAP. Henceforth, the weight of the OSP was left less.
1136 ‘Declaration of the Four’, 26 th August 1933. (The Militant, 23 Sept. 1933.)
1137 Cf. (P. Broué, ed.) Léon Trotsky, Œuvres, Vol. 5 (Paris: EDI, 1979). The ‘Open letter to organisations and groups of the
revolutionary proletariat’ (June 1935) appealed to “all the parties, organisations, fractions in the old parties and the unions,
all the associations and revolutionary workers’ groups in agreement with the principle of preparation and of the construction
of a 4 th International to put their signature to this letter”. Apart from the RSAP, it was signed by the Workers’ Party of the
USA, the International Secretariat of Trotsky’s LCI, the Bolshevik-Leninist group of the SFIO and the Workers’ Party of
Canada.
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