The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Bolsheviks had deputies in the Duma, their parliamentary fraction was tightly controlled by the central
committee; and it was no accident that it was one of the few that in August 1914 voted against war credits.
This opposition between Troelstra and the directing committee was to pose the real underlying question: reform
or revolution. In a pamphlet which he brought out before the Utrecht Congress (15 th -17 th April 1906), Troelstra
attacked the new party leadership, pretending as usual that he was being attacked personally, that the new
Marxist Centrale was ‘doctrinaire’ and ‘dogmatic’. 69 Presenting himself as the ‘innocent’ victim of persecution
by the Gorter group, he could not however hide what really lay at the root of his thinking: that the SDAP should
be a national party and not an internationalist one. The party had to make compromises with the small and big
bourgeoisie: not only did it have to take account of the petty-bourgeois prejudices existing within the proletariat
– “the religious and partly petty-bourgeois character of the proletariat” 70 – but it also had to “use the oppositions
of bourgeois groups amongst themselves”. To make this reformist orientation more acceptable, Troelstra did not
hesitate to resort to anti-intellectual demagogy: the Marxists were ‘ultra-infantile’ and wanted to transform the
party into a ‘propaganda club’. 71 The Marxist dream had to be countered with the ‘solid’ reality of parliament:
“Will the party float above the heads of the real workers, basing itself on a dream proletariat, or, as it has done
since the beginning of its existence and its activity, in parliament and in the municipal councils, will it penetrate
ever more deeply into the real life of our people?” 72
Thus for Troelstra, the only possible life for the proletariat – which, moreover, he deliberately amalgamated with
other ‘popular strata’ – took place not in the class struggle but in parliament.
To achieve his goals – making the party a purely parliamentary Dutch national party – Troelstra proposed
nothing less than the elimination of the Marxist leadership, the reorganisation of the party giving full powers to
the parliamentary fraction, which up to then had according to the statutes only two representatives on the
directing committee. The executive of the party committee, elected by the militants, was to be replaced by the
‘executive’ of the parliamentary fraction; the latter – according to him – “represents the party – not officially, but
in fact, in parliament and in practical politics”. 73 The aim was in fact to establish a veritable dictatorship of the
revisionist fraction; it wanted nothing less than to direct all the organs of the party in order to deprive the left of
any freedom of criticism.
A skilful campaign waged by Troelstra, Vliegen and Schaper among the militants allowed them to pose as
victims of a witch-hunt not against revisionism but against themselves personally. They did it so well that a
resolution adopted at the Utrecht Congress proposed to limit freedom of discussion and criticism in the party:
“[Considering] that the unity of the party is necessarily under threat, the Congress deplores this abuse of the
freedom to criticise which in our party is something beyond doubt, and imposes on all comrades the need to keep
criticism within such limits that comrades respect the dignity, and unity of the party.” 74
b) The new revisionist course (1906-1907)
There could be no doubt that this resolution was a veritable sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the
Marxists, with the aim of terrorising them and, if possible, making them capitulate to revisionism. After the
Congress, Troelstra was able to threaten Gorter openly: “If Gorter talks once more about a ‘rapprochement with
bourgeois democracy’, the sting in this assertion will be removed by the Resolution.” 75
69 P.J. Troelstra, Inzake partijleiding. Toelichtingen en gegevens [‘On Party leadership’] (Rotterdam: Wakker & Co, 1906).
70 Op.cit., p. 96.
71 This demagogy used by Troelstra, who draped himself in ‘workerist’ colours, was often used against the Marxist left. It
returned to favour during the ‘Bolshevisation’ of the communist parties in the 1920s, to crush the communist left.
72 Troelstra, op.cit., p. 96; quoted in: Die Gründung der SDP, op. cit., p. 14.
73 Troelstra, op.cit., p. 101.
74 Die Gründung …, p. 15.
75 Op.cit., p. 16.
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