The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

of the organisation. 31 He only devoted himself fully to the socialist movement between 1906 and 1914 in
Germany, when he really was a ‘professional revolutionary’. He was absent from Holland at the most crucial
moment of the split between revisionists and Marxists.
In this period of the slow development of the workers’ movement, the weight of personalities was still
enormous. It was all the more negative in that the party leaders were avowed revisionists who used their
organisational power to crush the party’s political life. Such was Troelstra, once a member of the Friesian
Popular Party, then of the SDB. He was a Friesian poet in his spare time, with an interest in occultism and
spiritualism. A lawyer, he was typical of the parliamentary politician, adept at backstairs manoeuvres. Regularly
re-elected to parliament since 1897, at first by the backward peasants of Friesland, he had a tendency to identify
himself with the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie. He was close to Bernstein, and in the final analysis
considered himself a bourgeois liberal, to the point where in 1912 he could declare that “social democracy today
plays the same part as the Liberal party around 1848”. 32 But he was sufficiently skilful to appear close to
Kautsky’s Centre during the Congresses of the 2 nd International, in order to keep his hands free at home. He was
deeply concerned to keep both his seat in Parliament and his control over the SDAP, and was ready for any
manoeuvre to eliminate any criticism from the left, and even to exclude his Marxist opponents. Others were even
more revisionist than Troelstra: the ex-typesetter Willem H. Vliegen (1862-1947), the ex-house painter Johan
H.A. Schaper (1868-1934), and Henri H. van Kol (1852-1925) openly declared themselves against the
revolutionary road, and for the ‘parliamentary road’ to socialism. All were members of Parliament. This
reformist and revisionist right had its mass base in the few trades unions attached to the SDAP: the transport
union (NVST) led by the reformist Jan Oudegeest (1870-1950), and above all the General Union of Diamond
Workers (ANDB), founded in 1894 and led by Henri Polak (1868-1943). This latter, though he eventually joined
the revisionists, was actively sympathetic towards the Tribunists.
This weight of revisionist leaders in a newly created party, and one moreover that was formed as the result of an
ambiguous split, was a serious barrier to the regroupment of the Marxist left.
The left gathered around the periodical De Nieuwe Tijd. Behind Van der Goes were the new recruits to the
SDAP: Gorter, Pannekoek, Roland Holst, Van Ravesteyn, Pieter Wiedijk and Wibaut, but also Wijnkoop and
Henk J.F.M. Sneevliet. However, this left was not homogeneous, and at the crucial moment of the 1909 split,
some of them abandoned it. At this point, Wibaut and van der Goes gave up. The generations of young Marxists
who had joined the SDAP full of enthusiasm were not slow to see the turn towards revisionism in their party’s
practice. As early as 1901, they began a bitter struggle to defend the revolutionary principles that were being
trampled underfoot. Their struggle was all the more intransigent in that militants like Gorter and Pannekoek had
political ties, and even ties of friendship, with their ‘spiritual master’ Karl Kautsky. They hoped that the latter
would support them in the struggle against revisionism not just in the German, but also in the Dutch party. They
were sorely mistaken in the solidity of this support. 33
31 In 1912 Pannekoek wrote to Kautsky that in general he preferred “only to contribute theoretical clarification”. He added.
“You know that [...] I only allow myself to get dragged into practical struggles when I am forced to do so” (cited by B.A.
Sijes, op. cit., p. 15). During Pannekoek’s period as a militant (1899-1921), this is certainly an exaggeration. But unlike
Lenin and Luxemburg, Pannekoek felt himself to be more a ‘teacher’ than a man of action in the thick of the daily struggle.
This ‘pedagogical’ spirit was to develop fully during the 1920s and 30s.
32 P.J. Troelstra, De SDAP. Wat zij is en wat zij wil, Amsterdam 1912. Quoted by S. de Wolff, Voor het land van belofte. Een
terugblik op mijn leven [‘For/Before the Promised Land. A backward glance at my life’] (Bussum 1954; Nijmegen: SUN,
1978).
Salomon (Sam) de Wolff (1878-1960) was a Tribunist from 1909 to 1913, before returning to the SDAP. He later became a
Zionist, and after World War II a member of the Social-Democratic Labour Party (PvdA). Biography: A. A. de Jonge, in:
Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland, Part 2, The Hague, 1985.
33 See: H. de Liagre Böhl, op. cit., pp. 23-25. As with Rosa Luxemburg, Gorter and Pannekoek’s friendship with Kautsky
did not prevent their political divergences. Revolutionary truth came before personal feelings.
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