The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The parliamentary fraction, which was the real leadership of the party, went further and further in collaborating
with the bourgeoisie. In 1905, during the elections for the provincial states, the revisionists raised the question of
supporting the liberals against the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (‘Anti-Revolutionary Party’ – ARP) government of
Abraham Kuyper, which had broken the transport strike. The left, like the left in other parties, did not refuse,
during the course of the elections, to support liberal candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage
against property-based electoral rights. It had adopted a resolution in this sense during the 1905 Hague Congress:
“[the Party] declares that during the elections it will only support candidates who stand for the urgent
introduction of universal suffrage”. 64
But for the Marxists, there could be no question of turning this tactical and temporary support into a principle.
Contrary to what Troelstra wished, it was not at all a matter of calling workers to vote for “liberals of any
stripe”, even if they were anti-clerical. From a class standpoint, the fight was not against a particular capitalist
party but against capitalism as a totality. In order to avoid being mixed up with the petty bourgeois and small
peasant elements, the workers had to be clear about their real identity. As Pannekoek, Gorter and Van Ravesteyn
wrote it, in a booklet – ‘The Founding of the SDP’ – distributed to the German social democrat press to explain
the scission of 1909: “On every occasion the party must show the workers that their enemies sit on the left side
of parliament just as much as on the right...”. 65
But instead of respecting the resolutions of the Congress, the party leadership, the parliamentary fraction and the
socialist daily Het Volk left socialist electors free to vote for any liberal candidate they liked. Although firm on
positions which had been classical ones within the workers’ movement, the Marxists found themselves isolated
from the working masses. Troelstra played on this as much as he could.
There were, however, reactions within the party. Despite the events of 1903, the party was far from having
succumbed to revisionism; it was still capable of proletarian reactions against Troelstra’s parliamentary fraction.
The Hague Congress of 1905, no doubt under the pressure of the revolutionary events taking place in Russia,
nominated a new directing committee of the party, this time composed of a majority of Marxists, including
Gorter. 66 Opposition then grew between the new committee and Troelstra’s parliamentary fraction. The latter
wanted to support the new liberal government “in order to push it along the road of reform”. For the directing
committee, based around De Nieuwe Tijd group, this was out of the question. The real issue was to develop an
agitation against the limitation of the right to strike, no matter what the government, liberal or clerical. Once
again, Troelstra violated party discipline, by taking up a position which condemned workers’ agitation. On 9 th
March 1906, in front of the bourgeois parliamentarians, he openly disclaimed the actions taken by the workers
and supported by the party, despite the fact that he was a member of the directing committee. 67
This conflict posed a vital question in the workers’ movement: was it the parliamentary fraction or the directing
committee, elected by the party, which determined the policy of the organisation? It was a question of whether
the party was in the service of an uncontrolled group of parliamentarians conducting a policy of collaboration
with the bourgeoisie, or whether the activities of this group were to be tightly controlled by the decisions taken at
the Congress. This conflict over influence and decision-making was not unique to Holland. In Germany, for
example, Rosa Luxemburg had to fight against the parliamentary leadership. 68 The problem of the real
leadership of the party was the problem of preserving its revolutionary character. In Russia, after 1905, when the
64 See: Die Gründung …, p. 8.
65 Ibid., p. 8.
66 Ibid, p. 9. With Gorter were Wijnkoop, Mendels, and Wibaut.
67 Ibid., p. 11. The committee contented itself with expressing its “astonishment” at Troelstra’s positions.
68 Rosa Luxemburg was able to pose the real underlying question: reform or revolution. Thus she could write: “... what
counts above all is the general organisation of our agitation and our press in order to lead the toiling masses to rely more and
more on their own forces and autonomous action and no longer to consider the parliamentary struggle as the central axis of
political life”. From the revolutionary point of view, it was vital to “warn the conscious working class against the pernicious
illusion that it is possible to artificially reanimate democracy and the bourgeois opposition in parliament by moderating and
watering down the social democratic class struggle” (Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung, 5-6 Dec. 1904).
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