The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

unemployment. The general mobilisation made the danger of war seem imminent. Moreover, the government
conducted a constant propaganda for the Sacred Union and the end to workers’ strikes. 282
Threatened by the horror of war, and subjected to a brutal poverty, the proletariat showed itself highly combative
right from the outset. Under its pressure, the SDAP was forced to hold a meeting of protest against the war,
attended by 15,000 people, on 31 st July 1914. Strikes against unemployment broke out, for example that of
10,000 diamond workers in Amsterdam. 283 Street demonstrations against unemployment and the high cost of
living began in 1915, and continued throughout the war. Meetings against the war and its effects found an
audience that was increasingly attentive and combative, and even receptive to revolutionary ideas.
It should be noted that the ideas which were best received among the workers mixed antimilitarism and
internationalism. Nonetheless, pacifist ideas of a return to peace and ‘immediate demobilisation’ seemed to
predominate. Under Domela Nieuwenhuis’ influence, a strong, organised antimilitarism had developed in
Holland since the turn of the century, although it was coloured with pacifism. The International Anti-Militarist
Association (IAMV) had been founded in Amsterdam in 1904. Its Dutch section, which published the periodical
De Wapens neder! (‘Down with weapons!’), was the most active. Under the authority of Domela Nieuwenhuis,
who remained internationalist, it never took a purely pacifist colouring. Although it remained ‘libertarian’, it
maintained its links with the Tribunist SDP, but its strongest ties were with the little group of the anarchist
Gerhard Rijnders: Social-Anarchist Action (SAA), born in 1917. 284 For a small country like The Netherlands, its
periodical had a considerable circulation. 285 The reason was that the vast majority of anarchists and syndicalist
revolutionaries refused to join the Sacred Union. Would this have stood up to the Dutch army’s integration into
one of the two camps? It is by no means certain that it would have done.
Alongside the expansion of the antimilitarist movement, there was a renewal of the revolutionary syndicalist
current. The NAS grew from 10,000 to 30,000 members during the war. It provided the best support, the mass
base we might say, for the SDP. Its conceptions, more pacifist than revolutionary, progressively penetrated the
SDP. However, the latter also had a marked influence, in a Marxist direction, on the NAS’ new recruits. The
relationship between the NAS and the SDP thus remained ambiguous, just like those, later, between the
Communist Party (CPH) and this same union.
For its part, the SDP committed itself resolutely against the war and the Sacred Union. The 1 st August 1914 issue
of De Tribune headlined “War on War!”. A manifesto, signed by the SDP, the NAS, the sailors’, construction
and shipyard workers’ unions, and the IAMV proclaimed: “Workers, protest, organise meetings, do everything
that can preserve peace. War on war”. The SDP was only repeating the slogans of the Basle Congress, but
without yet enlarging on them – as Lenin did as soon as war broke out – into revolutionary perspectives, through
the transformation of the war into proletarian revolution. Another manifesto, published in De Tribune on 31 st
December 1914, declared itself for the demobilisation of the Dutch army. All the SDP’s propaganda was thus
focused on the struggle against the war and for demobilisation.
The SDP’s policy was far from clear. It even tended to distance itself from the positions of radical Marxism.
From August 1914 onwards, the SDP had in fact chosen to form, with the NAS, the IAMV and the SAA, a cartel
of organisations known as the ‘acting workers’ unions’ (SAV – Samenwerkende Arbeiders Vereenigingen). This
cartel, into which the SDP merged itself, appeared less an organisation for revolutionary struggle against the
war, as an antimilitarist cartel with an inevitably pacifist colouring, given its failure to declare for the proletarian
revolution as the means of putting an end to the war. 286 For the SAV, which was an important part of the cartel,
282 J. E. Burger, Linkse frontforming, samenwerking van revolutionnaire socialisten (1914-1915) (Amsterdam: Van Gennep,
1983), p. 20.
283 R. de Jong, ‘Le mouvement libertaire aux Pays-Bas’, in: Le Mouvement social No. 83, Paris, April-June 1973, pp. 167-
180.
284 In the Dutch revolutionary syndicalist current, only Christiaan Cornelissen openly choose to support the Entente. He
signed the “Manifesto of the 16” in Paris with Kropotkin, the ‘prince of trenches’, put out by various anarchists committed
to the French camp. This was vigorously condemned by the Italian Malatesta and many European anarchists.
285 In 1905 De Wapens Neder! had a circulation of 15,000 copies and more.
286 E. Burger, op. cit., p. 18.
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