The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

the main goal was the return to peace through demobilisation. Many of them recommended individualist
solutions, such as the refusal to perform military service. This action encountered a clear success in syndicalist
circles.
Within the SDP itself, a part of the leadership peddled conceptions which were far from Tribunism’s initial
intransigence. Thus Van Ravesteyn, amongst others, declared for ‘arming the people’ in case The Netherlands
should be invaded. 287 This meant the workers adhering to the war, which would thus become ‘just’ by being
‘defensive’. This was already an old position in the 2 nd International. It tried to reconcile the irreconcilable:
patriotism, which ‘armament of the people’ would transform into ‘workers’ patriotism’, and internationalism.
This position was not dissimilar to that of Jaurès in his book L’Armée nouvelle. Even revolutionaries as
intransigent as Rosa Luxemburg still defended this old idea, inherited from the outdated epoch of bourgeois
revolutions; in 1914, this conception led directly to the socialist parties’ adherence to ‘national socialism’, and
support for their national bourgeoisies. But with Rosa Luxemburg, a passing ambiguity 288 was quickly overcome
by a formal rejection of any national war in the epoch of imperialism. 289 Ravesteyn and his partisans returned to
the idea of the national defence of ‘little countries’ threatened by the ‘great powers’. And yet it was exactly this
conception of the ‘just war’ which the Serbian socialists had so strongly rejected in August 1914, by refusing to
vote war credits and calling for the international revolution. 290 To defend this position, the SDP minority could
stand on the party programme, which demanded “the introduction of a generalised arming of the people to
replace the permanent army”.
The SDP Congress of June 1915, held in Utrecht, was the opportunity for the Marxist Left to denounce any idea
of ‘national defence’, even for little countries. In the name of the Bussum section, Gorter proposed a resolution
rejecting “the militarism of the capitalist classes in any form, even that of a so-called popular army to defend
independence or neutrality”. 291 This Bussum resolution rejected any possibility of small nations fighting a
‘defensive war’. Their proletariat had the same internationalist duties as that of the large countries: “the solid
socialist interest of the proletariat in these countries demands that it follow a tactic in accord with that of the
proletariat in larger countries, and with even more energy in those which – like Belgium and Holland –
themselves have great imperialist interests.” The resolution was adopted by a crushing majority.
In the same resolution, Gorter included a passage rejecting pacifism, which had infiltrated the SDP under the
cover of radical phrases. It was aimed at the Groningen section, which like the anarchists declared on principle
that it “fought and rejected any military organisation and all military spending”. 292
The Groningen militants’ abstract purism in fact simply avoided the question of the proletarian revolution.
According to them, the revolution could only be peaceful, without posing the concrete problem of arming the
287 By 1916, voices were being raised in the SDP against the danger to the SDP of the anarchist and syndicalist movements.
The SDP’s left opposition, later accused of “anarchism” and “syndicalism”, was formed against the syndicalist current.
288 H. de Liagre Böhl, Herman Gorter. Zijn politieke aktivitieten van 1909 tot 1920 in de opkomende kommunistische
beweging in Nederland, op. cit., p. 146. Van Ravesteyn’s ‘arming the people’ was already directed against Germany. In De
Tribune of 18 th November 1914, he expressed his joy at the defeat of the German army in the battle of the Marne.
289 In the Junius Pamphlet (The crisis in the social democracy), April 1915, Luxemburg attacked the parliamentary socialdemocratic
group for having “left the fatherland without defence in its hour of greatest danger. For its first duty to the
fatherland at this moment was to show it the real underside of this imperialist war”, to “oak the tissue of diplomatic and
patriotic lies which camouflaged this outrage against the fatherland”. Lenin could reproach Junius for “falling into this
extremely range error, of trying at all costs to accommodate a national programme to this war, which is not national” [‘On
the Junius Pamphlet’, Oct. 1916, in: Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), pp. 305-319].
290 The ‘Theses on the tasks of the social democracy’, attached to the Junius pamphlet as an appendix, defined the world war
as imperialist. Luxemburg emphasized the difference with the ‘national wars’ of the 19 th century. All wars are imperialist:
“In the epoch of this unrestrained militarism, there can be no more national wars. National interests are only a mystification
whose aim is to put the labouring masses at the service of their mortal enemy: imperialism” (ibid., p. 220).
291 The Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian socialists declared against the war, despite belonging to small nations. See:
J. Humbert-Droz, L’Origine de I’Internationale communiste (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1968), pp. 64-67.
292 Gorter’s resolution was adopted by a crushing majority of 432 votes to 26. See: H. de Liagre Böhl, op. cit., 142.
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