The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The support given to the various religious denominations in the Netherlands was essentially due to the rise of the
class struggle, which provoked an ideological reaction from the liberal bourgeoisie in power. 38 Following the
classic reasoning of the workers’ movement of the time, the Left pointed out that: “with the upsurge of the
proletarian class struggle, the liberals, always and everywhere, look on religion as a necessary rampart for
capitalism, and little by little abandon their resistance to religious schools.” 39
Imagine the surprise of the Marxists, grouped around the periodical De Nieuwe Tijd, to see the revisionists come
out openly in Parliament in favour of a vote for state support for the religious schools. Worse still, the socialist
Groningen Congress (1902) clearly abandoned the whole Marxist combat against the grip of religious ideology.
In a country where, for historical reasons, religion weighed heavily in its triple form of Catholicism, Calvinism
and Judaism, this was a veritable capitulation: “The Congress... notes that the major part of the labouring class in
the Netherlands demands a religious education for its children, and considers it undesirable to oppose this, since
it is not for the social democracy to break – because of theological disagreements – the economic unity of the
working class against both religious and non-religious capitalists.” 40
The argument used here – the unity of religious and non-religious workers –presupposed the acceptance of the
existing ideological and economic order. Thus, “with this resolution, the party [took] the first step on the road to
reformism; it [meant] a break with the revolutionary programme, whose demand for the separation of church and
state certainly does not mean state money for religious schools.” 41
The argumentation, the unit of the believing workers and freethinkers, underlay the acceptance of the existing,
ideological and economic order. Thus, “with this resolution, the Party had made the first step on the way of
reformism; it (meant) breakdown with the revolutionary program, which claimed a radical separation of Church
and State, and had certainly an other signification that state’s money for the religious schools”. 42 It is interesting
to note that the Dutch left had no intention of glorifying the ‘lay’ school, whose pretended ‘neutrality’ it
denounced. It did not base its position on a choice, false from the Marxist viewpoint, between ‘religious’ and
‘lay’ schools. Its aim was to stand resolutely on the terrain of the class struggle; this meant rejecting any
collaboration, under any pretext, with any ‘freethinker’ fraction of the bourgeoisie. The Marxists’ misgivings
about the Party’s revisionist orientation were to prove well-founded in the heat of the workers’ struggle.
The 1903 transport strikes
This strike was the most important movement of the Dutch working class before World War I. It was to leave a
deep mark on the proletariat, which felt betrayed by social democracy, and whose most militant fractions turned
still more towards revolutionary syndicalism. From 1903 onwards, the split between Marxism and revisionism
was underway, with no possibility of turning back. In this sense, the 1903 strike marks the real beginning of the
‘Tribunist’ movement as a revolutionary movement.
The transport strike was first and foremost a protest against conditions of exploitation that are hard to imagine
today. The railwayman’s living conditions were worthy of the period of capitalism’s primitive accumulation
during the 19 th century. 43 In 1900, they worked 361 days a year, with only four days of holiday. Moreover, a
strong feeling of corporatism reduced the possibilities of a unified struggle, due to the divisions between
38 See: Die Gründung…, op. cit., Chapter: ‘Die Schulfrage’ (‘The school question’).
39 Congress Resolution, op. cit., p. 5.
40 Op. cit., p. 6.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid..
43 It was not uncommon to find workers working six 14-hour days a week. On the inhuman conditions of the transport
workers and the development of the Dutch workers’ movement in this period, see: A.J.C. Rüter, De spoorwegstakingen van
1903, een spiegel der arbeidersbeweging in Nederland [‘The railway strikes in 1903 – a mirror of the workers’ movement
in The Netherlands’] (Leiden: Brill, 1935; reprint, Nijmegen: SUN, 1978).
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