The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Van Kol made the same defence of Dutch imperialist interests, and of the need for expanding European industry
to find new outlets in the colonies. There thus appeared within the International strong tendencies to ‘socialimperialism’,
which were to culminate in the integration of some of these parties into their national state in 1914.
With some exceptions, their main representatives were in the German SPD and the Dutch SDAP.
It took an energetic fight within the Colonial Commission by G. Ledebour (leader of the German USPD in
1917), with the support of the Pole Karski and the Polish and Russian Social-Democrats in particular, to draw up
a modified resolution which rejected Van Kol’s premises and conclusions. It was symptomatic of the
International’s degeneration – despite the adoption of the anti-war resolution – that the congress only rejected
Van Kol’s resolution by a tiny minority: 108 mandates for and 128 against with 10 abstentions (from
Switzerland). The Ledebour amendment drawn up by the minority of the Colonial Commission won a weak
majority: 127 votes in favour, 108 against. Its interest lies not just in its reassertion of the workers’ movement’s
hostility to capitalist colonial policy, its condemnation of all forced labour, and any exploitation of the ‘natives’,
but also in the clear declaration that only socialism can develop civilisation, by “offering to all peoples the
possibility to develop their own civilisation fully”. It ended ambiguously – in formulations that expressed a
pacifist and idealist vision – with an appeal for “a peaceful development of civilisation, putting the wealth of the
land at the service of all humanity, all over the world”. This resolution, defended by all the left tendencies in the
International, was careful to separate the national from the colonial question. It was through a critique of
nationalist conceptions that a part of the Dutch left began little by little to call into question the national and
reformist solutions advocated by the International for the colonial question. This was the case with Pannekoek –
with hesitations and ambiguities – who rejected the concepts of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ in favour of ‘class’ (see
Chapter 2), and laid the basis for a theory of the world revolution, unifying in a same anti-national class interest
the proletarians in the developed world and in the colonies and semi-colonies, in a common struggle against
every bourgeoisie, including the native’ ones.
Taken up with their opposition to Troelstra’s revisionist and opportunist current, the Dutch Marxists – despite
disagreeing with it – did not attack Van Kol’s policy of ‘socialist’ colonialism in public. Wholly devoted to the
great political problems that had arisen in the SDAP and in Europe, they long considered the colonial question as
secondary. The Stuttgart congress opened the eyes of the emerging ‘Tribunist’ current. The Tribunist viewpoint
was laid out in an article by Van Ravesteyn, published in Die Neue Zeit, with Kautsky’s support. The article
called for independence for the Dutch colonies and support for independence movements: “The Dutch working
class has every reason to be grateful to the Stuttgart International Congress for once again declaring that colonial
policy is harmful to the proletariat. Its attitude towards Dutch colonial policy can be nothing other than this: no
to the colonies, in other words a declaration of independence for all our colonial empire! And until we have the
ability to carry this out, encouragement and support for every attempt to put the Indonesian population in a
condition to gain its independence.” 120
Thereafter, between the Deventer split of 1909 and 1913, the Tribunist current took little interest in the colonial
question. There are almost no positions on colonialism and the proletariat’s attitude towards it in the pages of De
Tribune for these years. The SDP had just been formed, and was preoccupied above all with the struggle against
reformism and the danger of war. Implicitly, the question of the class struggle in Europe was far more crucial for
the Marxists of the SDP. The solution to the colonial problem was to be found, not in the colonies where the
SDAP proposed a reformist colonial policy – with the exception of Van Kol, who proposed to the International
Socialist Bureau that forced labour and night work should be allowed in the “hot countries”! – but not in the
metropolitan imperialist countries. This seems to have been the preponderant view from 1907 on, when Wiedijk
put forward his position in the radical Marxist De Nieuwe Tijd. 121
It was only in 1914 that the SDP put the colonial question back on the agenda. The intention was to denounce
firmly the policy of the SDAP, which declared itself in favour of the creation of a ‘modern capitalism’ in
Indonesia, and for the “development of the colonial administration towards autonomy for the colonies”. At
120 Die Neue Zeit, No. 3, 1907-1908, pp. 84-94.
121 De Nieuwe Tijd, 1907, pp. 867-884.
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