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From Revolutionary History, Vol.1 No.4, Winter 1988-89. Used by permission.
De Rode October criticised the material produced by Wijnand Romijn, a left Socialist, who wrote under the pseudonyms Montagnard and Socius. In them Romijn, without supporting the political aims of the United States and England, advocated tactical support to the Allied powers. Revolutionary developments were, according to Romijn, only possible when Hitler’s Fascism had been militarily defeated.
The CRM did not want to identify themselves with this conception. According to the CRM, Romijn overlooked the fact that the military defeat of Germany as a consequence of an Allied advance would lead to the repression or the prevention of a revolution in Germany. Moreover, the CRM was of the opinion that Romijn’s reasoning could as well be turned upside down, that the military success of Germany could lead to a revolutionary breakthrough in England and the United States. Moreover, the CRM pointed to the independence struggle in the colonies of the Allies; the support of that struggle in India for instance, meant a weakening of English imperialism. In the CRMs opinion, it was therefore impossible to support the colonial independence movement and at the same time, from tactical motives, wish for an Allied victory in the war: ‘By standing up consistently for the one, one had to betray the other’.
The CRM recognised the difference between the form of political rule in the Fascist as opposed to the democratic capitalist countries. After all, the neglect of these points had been one of the most important points of criticism of the policy of Stalin and the German Communists by the Trotskyists in the years 1929-33. But it was emphasised that these were merely different forms of rule within capitalism, and that it was not the contradiction between democracy and Fascism which was the cause of the Second World War. According to the CRM this contradiction lost its sharpness because of the war, as appears from the following words directed towards Romijn:
Without thoroughly examining the character of this war, without accounting for what is left of the famous “democracy” in England or America, one carefully and stiffly closes one’s eyes to the “democratic” and liberating performance of English-American imperialism in India or Africa.
The CRM characterised Romijn’s political opinion as centrist, lying between reformism and revolutionary Marxism, since, according to Romijn, a revolutionary development could be realised by a parliamentary Socialist government. The CRM wrote that they did not expect much from Romijn’s group, although they did not exclude a ‘positive development’ by some of them.
It was deemed to be of more importance that workers, radicalised by the occupation, might turn towards this tendency. For that reason the CRM said that they wanted to follow the development of the group, to exchange material and to begin a discussion, without thereby giving up their own positions beforehand.
As far as I know, such an organised contact did not materialise. In De Rode October hardly any attention was paid to De Baanbreker, an illegal left-Socialist paper, of which Romijn was an editor and which appeared from August 1944. Spartacus, on the contrary, did have contacts with the Romijn group. The CRM repeatedly reproached Spartacus for having a too positive attitude towards Romijn. But in fact Spartacus took, on the main issues, the same stand as the CRM and Spartacus thought the differences to be too great to able to proceed to a merger. Only once did De Rode October extensively discuss the left-Socialists around the paper De Vonk. That scanty attention is remarkable as De Vonk had more or less originated from the MLL-Front. Moreover De Vonk, which advocated a policy that to a considerable extent corresponded to Romijn’s, was an important force on the left of the resistance.
In the article in De Rode October in mid-October the tactical choice of support for the Allied powers by De Vonk was naturally criticised. The main part of the article looked at the Indonesian question; in response to a challenge on that issue in De Rode October, De Vonk clarified their point of view in September 1944. They thought that it was the task of Socialists to fight against Japanese Fascism in Indonesia:
Above this comes the fact that the Queen and the government did make very categorical promises regarding the future autonomy of Indonesia and its position as a territory with equal rights within the Kingdom which, if they are kept, will mean a great step forward for Indonesia and a much better starting point for future action ... De Rode October now suggests in anticipation that those promises will not be kept. We set against that the following: They cannot be kept anyway if Indonesia is not liberated from the Japanese in the first place. Or does De Rode October perhaps think that Indonesia will get a better deal if it is freed by the Americans and made a colony? We think the reverse.
The CRM vehemently rejected this point of view, as already appears from the heading of the articles; ‘De Vonk as a propagandist of the imperialist predatory war of the Dutch bourgeoisie’:
We ask De Vonk: Does the Dutch bourgeoisie want to reconquer Indonesia for any other interests than class interests? Would De Vonk think that their capitalist rulers, who stinted every cent of dole money for the jobless, will spend millions for the liberation of Indonesians on whose blood and sweat they became rich? Doesn’t the slogan “liberation” just serve to hide that fact?...Whether we think that Indonesia gets a better deal if she becomes an American colony? As if that will depend on the Dutch workers ! The gentlemen of De Vonk however, here lay bare their real character. If Indonesia has to be a colony, then let “us” profit.
Whether there were many personal contacts between members of both groups remains to be seen. The contact with Pelgrom in Amsterdam has already been mentioned. Sal Santen once did a lecture for De Vonk.
In the autumn of 1944 the Comite voor Concentratie van Socialistische Krachten (Committee for the Concentration of Socialist Forces) wrote theses which could serve as a basis for such a concentration. Regarding this committee no information can be found in the CRM’s literature, and the members of CRM could not clear up this matter. In view of the contents of the theses it is possible that Romijn was involved on the committee. They spoke out for a revolutionary party on an international basis: the transition from capitalism to Socialism would bear a revolutionary character. A war against Japan in Indonesia was rejected as being imperialist. The text contained the following passage regarding their stand vis-à-vis the war:
Struggle against the Fascist counter-revolution is a necessity for Socialists under all circumstances, if the interests of the national bourgeoisie seem to run parallel here with those of the Socialist proletariat, it does not mean that for that reason the working class should avoid the struggle against Fascism. We must understand and put forward that our cause is not the same as that of the capitalist democracies and can never be connected with it...That is why the working class should have the right to make a stand for its aims in that struggle by means of a free press and radio. It should have the right to stand for the formation of soldiers’councils in order to be able to keep, in that way, the military apparatus under control. We are ready to support, with all means, any resistance against the German Nazi regime, with this reservation, that we refuse to do anything that goes against the interests of the working class, and thus against the Socialist solutions advocated by us.
The CRM wrote a reply in which it was stated that by formulations like the above ‘the little devil of national unity’ peeped around the corner time and again. The CRM admitted that to struggle only against the Dutch bourgeoisie came down to the support of German imperialism; the working class, however, should struggle directly against Nazism, without supporting its own bourgeoisie.
The Comite voor Concentratie van Socialistische Krachten was indignant at this reply by the CRM. It reproached the CRM for ‘pedantic sectarianism: so that anybody who did not fully subscribe to the CRM programme was called by it a ‘social patriot’. It was pointedly stated that they, unlike the CRM, saw a tactical difference with the situation of the First World War; the workers not only want peace, but also the destruction of fascism and that struggle could not stop when the Nazis had been driven out of the Netherlands. What happened further to this discussion I do not know; probably it quietly died.
The policy of the CPN (Communist Party of the Netherlands) was condemned by the CRM as being nationalist:
They carry the basest nationalist propaganda and try to pretend that their infamous traitorous policy is “Leninist”. These shameless agents of Allied imperialism carry on a propaganda which openly supports British imperialism. They make propaganda for an English “liberation” and intervention. All that Lenin wrote about American and English imperialism is ignored ... Together with the national bourgeoisie they try to obscure class antagonisms.
To the CRM the CPN was totally dependent on the ‘shock troops of the Stalinist bureaucracy’, which would lead to the partition of Europe into spheres of influence. This criticism of the CPN was repeated time and time again. ‘Monarchist Communists’ were very scornfully spoken about with reference to the publication of He Oranje Bulletin (The Orange Bulletin) together with the nationalist organisations, and when De Waarheid (Truth – the CPN paper) supported the shaving of the heads of the ‘Kraut maidens’ the CRM spoke of ‘banal nationalist instigators’. The heaviest fire was reserved for when the CPN dropped the slogan ‘Free Indonesia from Holland now’.
However, the CRM could not avoid recognising that the CPN was extraordinarily active in the Resistance. Its influence was ascribed to sympathy for the struggle of the Red Army, the confusion in the workers’ movement, and to phenomena like organisation, faith, tradition and fear of disunity. According to the CRM many followers of the CPN had the illusion that the nationalist policy was only a tactical manoeuvre, and that after Hitler’s fall the Red Army would fight for revolution in Western Europe. The CRM, therefore, thought that in future the workers who followed the CPN would come into conflict with its nationalist party policy, and they believed that the CRM would be able to try to win these people to revolutionary Marxism.
Indeed, after the war some CPN members joined the CRM; but only as isolated individuals. The enormous sacrifices, not only by the Soviet Union but also by the CPN during the war, only reinforced the party loyalty and blind faith of the CPN members. It cannot now be ascertained whether and on what scale were the contacts between members of the CRM and CPN during the occupation. When working in relief works Sal Santen came into contact with various CPN members and delivered De Rode October to a member of the provincial CPN leadership. Nevertheless the fact is that the CRM was not something that bothered the CPN.
According to the CRM, Social Democracy had already carried out a left bourgeois policy before the war, and the degenerative process had continued during the occupation. To the CRM this was clear from a pamphlet that Koos Vorrink wrote under the pseudonym ‘Spectator’:
In the Netherlands they showed their true colours when, in an illegal pamphlet, one of their leaders spoke thus – that Socialism could be achieved by bourgeois democracy and some elements of welfare.
In the eyes of the CRM, Social Democracy had practically disappeared as a political factor during the occupation:
A movement that disposed of nearly a quarter of the Dutch voters, that before the war had a trade union movement of about 300 000, and ran a press for hundreds of thousands of readers, was not capable of doing anything at this time. No other group of the population behaved in such a way, and so the leadership of the masses came entire and unscarred into the hands of the nationalists.
The CRM thought that after the war a process of political differentiation in the Social Democratic ranks could be expected.
De Rode October regularly reacted to the viewpoint of Het Parool, which might be considered a Social Democratic paper. The Rotterdam CRM member Irene de Wilde also collaborated with a group of Het Parool. The CRM reproached Het Parool for not standing for the complete independence of Indonesia. They reacted indignantly to the Het Parool concept that perhaps ‘modest border corrections’ with Germany were necessary. The most extensive CRM reaction was to the manifesto of Het Parool and Vrij Nederland of April 1944 which in addition was favourably received by left groups like the CPN and De Vonk. That manifesto spoke out for the restoration of parliamentary democracy, but noted that during the transition period, while there were war operations on Dutch territory, this would only be possible as far as a state of siege would allow. In the opinion of the CRM it would be in that precise period that the Dutch ruling class would restore its position; for that reason the proposals would in the first place be aimed at the revolutionary working class. The disapproval by Het Parool of the strike for an improvement of the food supply in liberated Eindhoven strengthened the CRM’s opinion.
The proposals by Het Parool for postwar social reforms were discussed several times; Het Parool asked themselves as to whether their vision of the future sounded like a fairy tale, and CRM’s reply did not leave any doubts on that score:
No, it is a fairy tale, told by night by Mother Goose (the spiritual spouse of Father ’t Hoen!) to keep workers still “sleeping quietly” while it makes an empty noise with the aim of the maintenance of capitalism, ie, the maintenance of private property of the means of production and wage labour. [Pieter ’t Hoen was the editor of Het Parool].
More generally the CRM noticed at the end of the war a great flourishing of variations of anti-Marxist Socialism.
In De Parool post voorlichting en documentatie (Information and Documentation) an article criticised De Rode October in the following terms:
They see through us. And they expose us. And they reveal that, after the war we intend to let loose armed bodies on the Dutch workers and thus supply the methods of the SA, and SS and the Gruene Polizei ...
There we stand now, stripped naked and fully exposed. Of resistance against the German highwayman and his accomplices there is hardly any mention in De Rode October. These negative minds are much too busy with their exposures for that’.
The CRM took up this piece of writing in an internal circular. It is typical of the CRM’s position in the underground and their own conception of it that they deemed a public reaction superfluous. It seems, therefore, almost unnecessary to mention that the CRM was not affiliated to any of the various co-operative links of the underground. There was a meeting between Pier van ’t Hart and Henk van Randwijk of Vrij Nederland, but nothing is known about its date or what occurred. In any case, there was never any article in the publications of the CRM which specifically denied the possibility of participation in co-operative links.
From the first section of this article on the birth of the CRM it may have appeared that, after the execution of the MLL-Front leadership, the continuity of the revolutionary Socialist movement in the Netherlands hung on a thin thread. With very great efforts the CRM succeeded in building a national organisation with regular illegal publications. Throughout the war the CRM stuck to revolutionary defeatism, the antiwar policy which had been developed during the First World War. Since the war it is clear that few of the high-flown revolutionary expectations of the CRM have materialised. This over-optimism with respect to a revolutionary rebirth of the European workers’ movement was indissolubly connected with an underestimation of the economic and political possibilities for capitalism. De Jong concludes with the following about the Netherlands:
A struggle arose against the German occupier and his coercive system, but not against the Dutch social order ... What was dominant was the desire for liberation, as well as, we think, for limited reforms, but not for revolution.
Yet it is not sufficient to leave it at this sober diagnosis. In the first place there is the question of our historical perspective. The fear of a revolutionary development is to be found in countless places in De Jong’s work. The top civil servant Hirschfeld, Secretary-General of the Department of Trade and Industry, remained at his post during the whole occupation in order to prevent social chaos and unrest. The authoritarian-rightist Ordedienst OR (Order Service) was primarily created to prevent social unrest after the liberation. The three big pre-war trade union federations decided to co-operate closely with the employers for fear of the success of the more radical Unitary trade union movement. Drees was against a broad popular party because through this the CPN would have access to Social Democratic workers. Authoritarian ideas regarding the political order, which were present on a considerable scale, were, according to De Jong, partly the result of the fear of revolution. About the (Dutch) London government he writes the following:
It is true that one seldom finds in the London documents cited, a dread of a repetition of “November 18” (the source of this repetition was hardly the Social Democrats who, in the course of the interwar period had been integrated into Dutch society more clearly than ever before, but there was still a fear of the much more aggressive Communists and other leftist extremists). Does this lack of evidence prove that that dread was not present? On the contrary: it was, we think, so self-evident that there was no need for it to be frequently recorded.
So it was not only the ‘leftist extremists’ of the CRM who reckoned on the possibility of a revolution ... In the second place it must be emphasised that, after the Second World War, there was the possibility of a partial revolutionary revival, as appears from the great surge in the struggle for colonial liberation, the revolutions in China and in Yugoslavia, the civil war in Greece and the fierce workers’ struggle in a number of European countries. It is important to mention these developments, because the CRM did not use a national, but an international, analytical framework.
These marginal comments do not alter the fact that capitalist rule in the most important Western countries was not really in danger after the Second World War. An important difference compared with the situation after the First World War was that the rise of the anti-capitalist struggle did not lead to a growth in the political influence of the revolutionary Socialist tendencies. Revolutionary groups did not sufficiently understand what the long-term effects of the series of defeats of the workers’ movement in the ‘thirties would be. With the destruction of a great part of the cadres of the workers’ movement by Fascism, Stalinism and war, the influence of the’ revolutionary Socialist tendencies disappeared also.
The lack of realisation of a whole series of the CRM’s expectations does not mean that for that reason their policy was absolutely unrealistic. Four central aspects of that policy result from its judgement of the Second World War, and they were relatively independent of over-optimism. In the first place, the CRM pointed out that after the Allies’ victory they would try to prevent the development of an independent workers’ struggle. That, too, is why the CRM devoted so much attention to Italy, where the Allies and the Communist Party tried to eliminate the radical resistance of the workers. In the second place, the CRM posed with great clarity that the postwar reconstruction under capitalist relationships could only occur at the expense of the working class. In the third place, the CRM refused to capitulate to anti-German nationalism and to the theory of the collective responsibility of the German people for Fascism. With an indestructible internationalism they considered the German workers as allies and as the first victims of Nazism. In the fourth place the CRM saw through the governments’ promises for the independence of Indonesia as the ideological preparation of a colonial war; according to the CRM this was indissolubly connected with the Allied military liberation of the Netherlands. The CRM was the only organisation which stuck to the slogan ‘Free Indonesia from Holland, Now!’ These are basic points. Other illegal leftist groups that started to divorce the struggle for Socialism from the struggle against Nazism and the occupation, like the CPN and De Vonk, paid a high price for their errors on one or more of these political points. [27]
The CRM did not adequately think out the differences with the situation in the First World War. The deepening of a revolutionary strategy, which Trotsky advocated in his last notes, was clearly not achieved. As a result of the German occupation of a great part of Europe there existed a combination of both national and social oppression. Precisely that combination proved to be very explosive in Yugoslavia and Greece, and to a lesser extent in France and Belgium. The CRM recognised the existence of national oppression, but they drew few political consequences from that fact.
In the discussion with Romijn, just after the April-May strike, the CRM wrote:
The Dutch workers and peasants are forced by German imperialism to struggle for their lives and livelihoods. This last strike, just as the strike of February 1941, has proved that the will to struggle and the power of the Dutch workers and peasants have grown. With great masses, that is often joined with nationalist feelings, but that does not alter the fact that, by the defeat of our own bourgeoisie, the Netherlands undergoes a commotion that has been unknown so far.
The CRM thought that because of that ‘commotion’ the Dutch workers would be ‘more susceptible than ever’ to revolutionary propaganda.
The CRM either underestimated the effects of the occupation on the consciousness of the workers, or they overestimated their ‘susceptibility’ to revolutionary propaganda. I mentioned above the rift between workers’ resistance and Socialist consciousness. The growth of that rift can be illustrated from a comparison of the three great strike movements in the occupied Netherlands. The February Strike was a solidarity strike against anti-Semitism, borne to an important extent by the cadres of the pre-war leftist parties, in the first place the CPN. The April-May strike was a spontaneous strike that assumed a general character. Political groups played no role of any importance in it, and the strike was directed against a concrete oppressive measure that personally struck a great number of those involved. The railway strike was called by the government and supported by the management, and it was meant to support the military offensive of the Allies. An avowed aim of the management was, in that way, to check leftist tendencies among the personnel. The three strikes were pre-eminently political strikes all within the space of five years. In the history of the Dutch workers’ movement that may be called totally unique. But the consciously Socialist element in the strikes did not grow, rather it diminished. Repeatedly the CRM pointed out that, because of the occupation, young workers were radicalised. Thus they wrote in February 1943:
There is no lack of courage and power. The prisons are full of these comrades. Often, alas!, they are in nationalist organisations. Nationalism often proves to be a huge force, for national repression puts complete peoples into movement. We have to teach the younger workers to understand how the German people could be used, and to convert their anti-German and anti-National Socialist hatred into an anti-capitalist hatred.
But how did the CRM try to do this? The CRM incessantly carried out revolutionary propaganda. One is, however, forced to query as to whether the vehement tone in which the CRM formulated their policy towards other leftist resistance groups could have attracted these ‘younger workers’ to revolutionary Socialism. The CRM seemed to start from the idea that their arguments were self-evident.
From this we move to the fact that the CRM made hardly any proposals that could promote resistance against the occupation. Examples which been mentioned were the negative attitude taken towards the formation of committees or nuclei in workplaces, the failure to develop the idea of worker’s resistance in the shape of ‘going slow’, and the attitude to the deportation of workers to Germany. In view of its small size, the CRM itself probably had few possibilities of playing an important role in such forms of resistance, but that does not mean that they should not have made such proposals in their publications. [28] Nor was an obvious slogan like ‘Immediate withdrawal of the German troops’ used by the CRM. In short, the CRM hardly answered the question as to what means of action and what forms of organisation the workers could have used during the occupation.
Yet it should be emphasised that this was not the logical consequence of the broad political starting point of the CRM. Parts of the Fourth International in occupied Europe tried to avoid these mistakes and advocated the forms of resistance mentioned. [29]
It would be fair to recognise these negative aspects of the CRM. In my opinion the CRM’s isolation played an important role in these. In view of the political relationships in the occupied Netherlands, the CRM’s principled revolutionary Socialist starting points rendered a certain political isolation unavoidable. In the discussion on the railway strike Piet van ’t Hart correctly pointed out that such an isolation always carries the danger of sectarianism. In the case of revolutionary groups during the Second World War that danger was extraordinarily great, precisely because they stuck to the traditions of the First World War. To the CRM the activities and conceptions of the Russian Bolsheviks and of Luxemburg and Liebknecht had an absolute, and almost suprahistorical value. And those great revolutionaries, too, had been at the beginning of the First World War a negligible minority and among each other they had polemicised vehemently overjots and tittles; and yet, at the end of the First World War, their time had come.
The CRM thought that this scenario would repeat itself at the end of the occupation, and that conception could have reinforced its isolation, for its isolation was part of its perspective and thus it did not need to be seen as a problem.
It is, of course, easy to make these remarks in hindsight. The execution of the MLL-Front leaders was an enormous blow to the Dutch revolutionary Socialists. The young people who constituted the CRM had to start at the beginning, and they built, in danger of their own lives. a small but well-knit organisation that tried to combine anti-Fascism and the struggle for Socialism. During the occupation, as well as after the liberation, the CRM was the organisation to the left of the CPN with the most coherent criticism of the moderate policy of that Party. But no more than their sister organisations abroad could the CRM effect a breakthrough after the war. The war was over, but the Trotskyists remained generals without troops.
Wim Bot
The Political Declaration of the CRM of August 1943 consists of two parts. The first part deals with the development of the various tendencies in the workers’ movement as from the First World War. These theses below constitute the second part of the declaration, which were published in the fourteenth issue of De Rode October. In these theses about the Second World War the political conceptions of the CRM are tersely summarised.
1. The new World War, the character of which one tries to hide in mendacious war propaganda, on the Allies’ side as if it was a struggle for ‘democracy’, for ‘civilisation’ and the ‘national liberation of the oppressed nations’, on the German side for ‘national liberation’, the protection of ‘European culture’ and for a ‘Socialist new order’, and on the Japanese side for ‘peace in Asia’, ‘Asia for the Asians’, ‘liberation of British India’, etc, is in reality a military struggle between the capitalist classes of the various countries for world power, for the right to squeeze and oppress the people in the colonial and semi-colonial territories, small nations and economically backward countries and to the world market. The war is the continuation of the economic and political struggle between the various imperialist countries which, on one hand, were old capitalist states which already dominated a great part of the world (England, France), or who had by victory in the previous world war procured a great position of power (America) and, on the other hand, those which in the previous war lost all colonial territories (Germany) or which were allies of the Allied powers and had won nothing (Italy, Japan).
The whole world has been partitioned. New colonial areas and sources of raw materials and spheres of influence cannot be obtained save at the expense of other imperialist states. The previous world war was carried on for a repartition of the world. The new one followed the old one in little more than twenty years. In the imperialist period new wars will succeed each other with ever increasing speed. The economic development and the struggle of capitalist interests have as a consequence, that evermore territories are industrialised and their need for outlets and raw materials becomes even greater. The losing states in an imperialist war, because they go to the brink of an economic catastrophe, and because of the class conflict caused thereby. find the bourgeoisie unable to prevent its downfall save by the violent way out of an expansionary war, and so immediately preparations start for a new imperialist war.
The imperialist peace of 1918 laid the foundations for this new war. It is understandable that, whereas the victors of the previous war are in favour of maintaining the status quo, the losers or ‘underprivileged’ take up the weapon of aggression in order to change that status quo. For that reason the Allies can in this war play the role of ‘peace lovers’ and of ‘protectors of democracy and the small nations’ and it is the powers on Germany’s and Japan’s side which struggle for a ‘lust’ partition of the world and ‘against the plutocracy’. The imperialist war contains new imperialist wars. The imperialist peace ratifies the imperialist victory or signifies, by ending with a compromise, a temporary armistice, but at all times it means the continuation of the exploitation and oppression of the world proletariat and the peoples in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and it lays the foundation for a new imperialist war, unless the proletariat, by conquering power, and imposing the dictatorship of the proletariat, ends capitalism and imperialist war for good.
2. The Soviet Union. which takes part in the war on the side of British and American imperialism, has in its process of degeneration fallen victim to the reactionary and nationalist policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy which dominates it.
This bureaucracy, which came long ago into sharp contradiction with the world proletariat, is forced to protect the Soviet Union against war and intervention, and to seek support in an anti-proletarian exploitation of the contradictions within the camp of world imperialism. It has, in order to protect itself against the German imperialist robber war, openly chosen the imperialist camp of the Allied robbers, instead of taking as an ally the revolutionary struggle of the world proletariat. With the dissolution of the Third International it has ratified its counter-revolutionary alliance with Allied imperialism, which is directed against the German and world revolution and the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples. However, it does not alter the fact that the law of unequal development and the revolutionary struggle for the victory of the world proletariat make us understand that the degenerated workers’ state is also an anti-imperialist factor, and the foundations of the Soviet Union, introduced by the October revolution and the Russian proletariat, are a transitory form to Socialist society.
The world proletariat must therefore still defend the Soviet Union, notwithstanding its domination by the Stalinist bureaucracy, as long as the private ownership of the means of production has not been reinstated. ie, the counter-revolution has not yet taken place, in collaboration with the defensive struggle carried out by the Russian revolutionaries against the German counter-revolutionary intervention and against the Stalinist bureaucracy and its treacherous policy.
This revolutionary defence is in outright contradiction to the Stalinist policy of alliance with the Allied imperialists. The proletarian revolution, in whichever part of the world, is the best defence and the best support of the Russian proletariat and runs parallel to the struggle of the Russian revolutionary Marxists. Certain actions will, in this direction, reinforce the revolutionary defence of the Soviet Union. While 90 per cent of the German army has been thrown into the struggle against the Soviet army, the workers (German and foreign) have the duty to weaken consciously the German war production by ‘economic sabotage’ in the arms and munitions factories and in their transport to the Russian front. Revolutionaries, however, see their most important task and without that deem every defence of the Soviet Union senseless – the expansion of the revolutionary struggle of the world proletariat against the imperialist war.
3. Whereas both camps have appropriated the slogans of the liberation of the oppressed peoples, reality shows that the oppressed and small peoples, which join their fates to the victory of one or other of either parties, become assistants in imperialist exploitation and oppression of other peoples, small states and colonial peoples. Germany is making it appear as if it supports Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland and Slovakia in their national struggles, but oppresses with their assistance Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Poland.
England says that it is struggling for the liberation of the countries occupied by Germany, but it is oppressing an enormous number of colonial peoples, carries out real terrorism against the Indians struggling for their national liberation, while it also opposes the independence of Ireland. Before the war Austria and Czechoslovakia were handed over to Hitler-Germany, by the ‘democratic’ powers, as the price of compromise. The small nations are playthings of the big imperialist powers. Small oppressed countries and colonial oppressed peoples can only go forward to their real liberation if they carry on an anti-imperialist struggle and join their fates to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in the country oppressing them.
The task of the proletariat in the oppressing country is to struggle for the liberation of all that is oppressed by its possessing class, i.e., which is not in contradiction to the liberation of the proletariat itself. It must therefore join its revolutionary struggle to the liberation of these oppressed peoples and national minorities. Each people has the right freely to choose its fate. The ‘Socialist’ in the oppressing country, who does not recognise this thesis, ceases to be a revolutionary and supports, directly or indirectly, imperialism. The task of the proletariat in the oppressing country is to struggle against any social and national oppression, and for the right of national self-determination in co-operation with the proletariat of the oppressing country. This is the only way an anti-imperialist liberation struggle of the oppressed nations and peoples is possible. The bourgeoisie in the oppressed countries has shown its ‘national’ character many times already during the last decades, when in cases of vehement class struggle it has joined forces with the bourgeoisie of the oppressing country. The really liberating force in the struggle against national oppression and for the right of self-determination of nations can only be the revolutionary proletariat.
4. If in this war the Dutch bourgeoisie rests upon the victory of British and American imperialism, it does so hoping to obtain by this the ‘freedom’ for a new exploitation of the Dutch proletariat and for a new squeezing, extortion and national oppression of the peoples of the East and West Indies. The Queen has already announced a new predatory expedition when she said that after the liberation of the Netherlands an army would be constituted for the ‘liberation’ of Indonesia. And in order to make this ‘liberation’ somewhat more attractive she promised Indonesia a justified place in the Dutch Commonwealth, i.e., the status of a Dominion. Beautiful promises! The bourgeoisie does not demand the liberation, hut the limitless exploitation, of the Indonesian people, and its national oppression. The Dutch proletariat has nothing in common with this mendacious ‘liberation’ struggle of its bourgeoisie. Its national liberation struggle is directed not only against German imperialism, but also against Dutch, British and American imperialism. There is only one way for its liberation from national and social oppression. That is collaboration with the revolutionary proletariat of Germany, of all countries in Europe and of the whole world. Not in the London of Churchill, Gerbrandy and Albalda are its allies, but in the concentration camps and prisons of Germany. They must obstinately combat hypocritical and chauvinist propaganda, as if the German nation consists only of barbarians. The barbarians are the possessing classes of all countries, of Germany as well as of England, America or the Netherlands. The plunder of colonial peoples is barbaric, and for this every sort of violence is allowed. The exploitation and social oppression of the working classes, peasants and small traders is barbaric so that the capitalists can enrich themselves on their poverty. The horrible war is barbaric, in which millions are slaughtered and fall into misery. But the German proletariat is not barbaric, against which the German possessing class has directed its whole Nazi terror and murder organisation!
5. The legend of the barbarism of the German people is especially fostered by Social Democratic lackeys in the Allied countries, also reinforced by the neo-social chauvinist Stalinists. Their impertinence in still calling themselves ‘Socialist’, even ‘Marxist: is boundless. Their whole war propaganda is bent on harnessing the proletariat to the carriage of the national bourgeoisie. These scoundrels do violence to the oppressed German proletariat. Once they lamented the concentration camps and prisons, where hundreds of thousands of German workers were treated in the most horrible way. Germany was one big prison! Now they talk about the barbarism of the German people, and one of the so-called ‘leftist’ ministers of the Labour Party proposes the liquidation of the German Reich, its partition among other states and its division into separate small states. In the pro-Allied camp the Dutch and English social-chauvinists congratulate each other. The Dutch Social Democrats are totally for the victory of the Allies. That goes without saying, because for long they have been accomplices of the Dutch bourgeoisie. In the Netherlands they had already shown their true colours, in the person of one of their leaders, when in an illegal leaflet, he expressed himself in such a way as to be understood that Socialism could be achieved by bourgeois democracy and a few welfare measures.
6. It may be of course that so-called left Social Democrats wish for the victory of the Allies, because they think that this will create the possibility of a proletarian revolution in Germany. If so, these people show that they have understood absolutely nothing of Marxism. If one wishes the victory of the Allied camp, one accepts the victory of Allied – British and American – imperialism, its oppression and exploitation. Of course the Allied imperialists do not care about the left Social Democrats. They accept the well-meaning collaboration of left as well as of right Social Democrats, and achieve their victory in the way they want. On the outbreak of the German revolution Allied troops will serve as counterrevolutionary troops. It shows the character of the ‘left’ Social Democrats when they think that a proletarian revolution can be caused in Germany using the counter-revolutionary Allied armies. In that case, the German workers could have the standpoint that, by defeating the British and American bourgeoisies with the German armies, could they not create a proletarian revolution there? In reality these ‘left Social Democrats’ hide their pro-English stand behind ‘leftist’ phrases, just as the Social Democrats in the previous war justified their ‘defence of the fatherland’ by mendacious ‘leftist’ phrases.
7. The Revolutionary Marxists take the view of irreconcilable class struggle, during war as well as in so-called ‘times of peace: The class struggle in the warring countries must inevitably lead to a weakening of their war potential. They do not depart from the Leninist thesis that ‘the defeat of their own government is the lesser evil’. The consequence of the class struggle is to accept the defeat of one’s own bourgeoisie, in the ‘Allied’ as well as in the ‘German’ camp. The weakening of their own bourgeoisie also creates the greatest possibilities for the outbreak and the victory of the proletarian revolution. This goes not only for the ‘German’ camp. A military collapse in England or America would also create a revolutionary situation there.
This Leninist thesis is in total contradiction to the thought of the ‘left Social Democrats’. This thesis starts from the irreconcilable class struggle of the world proletariat, both in Germany and England. Only the party that in the imperialist war starts from this thesis, and couples it with the slogan ‘convert the imperialist war into a civil war’, will be able to lead the proletariat to victory in the coming revolution.
8. The reality of the war situation has already eliminated the possibility of Germany and its allies being victors in this war. After a successive series of victories, by which it got nearly all Europe in its power, German imperialism clashed with the Soviet army. One defeat followed another. The latest great Russian winter offensive caused the German army an enormous military and moral defeat. After that followed the Allied advance in Libya and the occupation of Morocco and Algeria, with, as a culminating point, the great defeat of the German-Italian army in Tunisia. The Allied armies then occupied Sicily, and in the summer offensive the Soviet troops delivered heavy blows to the German armies. The aimlessness of the war strengthened the defeatist feeling among the German people and especially among its ‘allied’ peoples. In the Balkan, countries of Romania and Bulgaria this is repeatedly expressed. But the strongest yet is in Italy. The struggle in Sicily has sharpened the contradictions and caused an acute revolutionary situation in Italy. Fascism has fallen. The Badoglio government now tries to save the position of the Italian possessing class. The Italian masses, however, proceed to active resistance and look for a revolutionary leadership.
In the occupied territories there are repeated resistance activities. Just recently in the Netherlands there were the biggest ever protest strikes. In the Balkans troops are still fighting in the mountains. In Greece new resistance is coming forward. German imperialism is ever weakening and tries to give its people new hope by all sorts of stories about new weapons and new offensives.
The revolutionary resistance in Germany will come nearer as the defeatist feelings grow. The 12 million foreign workers and prisoners in Germany constitute an enormous support for the German proletariat. In fact they dominate the strike weapon with their number. An act of open resistance in the German army and the spark will fall into the powder keg. For the German proletariat there exists no alternative but ruin and enslavement under the enemy war machine, or the proletarian revolution which will reunite them with the proletariat of the enemy countries. The victory of the proletariat in Germany constitutes the starting point of the world revolution.
9. A gratifying phenomenon is that the workers In the Allied countries keep wielding the strike weapon, in spite of all the war propaganda and the decisions of their trade union leadership. In America the miners and workers in other enterprises have gone on strike, in spite of the adoption of an anti-strike law in Congress and Senate (by means of which workers are practically forbidden to go on strike and, in the case of breaking this law, the strikers may be called up to do their military service). The strikes are directed wholly against the capitalist state. In that way they show their revolutionary character. Roosevelt had to warn against the adoption of the anti-strike law as it would further sharpen social contradictions. This class action in America is strengthening the coming European revolution, and already shows the American and English bourgeoisies a dangerous future, when one of these days they will have to act against the revolution in Europe.
10. The proletarian revolution in Europe and its intervention in the imperialist war is beginning to assume an ever clearer shape. The Italian workers and peasants caused the downfall of Fascism and marched, in spite of the Badoglio government, on the road of revolution, they liberate their political prisoners and exercise an irresistible pressure by revolutionary means with strikes, demonstrations and armed struggle.
The Portuguese proletariat is moving towards big strikes. The Portuguese government has promulgated the harshest military coercive laws in order to stop this wave of resistance.
In Spain the proletariat is recovering from a bloody defeat and is striking in various areas. The revival of the class struggle in Portugal and Spain and the revolutionary developments in Italy are exercising a big influence on the German workers and soldiers and will give them a new perspective: ‘The proletarian revolution against the imperialist war’.
11. A great problem for the European proletariat will be that of its political leadership, the Revolutionary Party, which will have to confront great difficulties. The terror of National Socialism has brought about much ruin in the revolutionary organisations. On the other hand the Stalinist terror has contributed its own share. Many leading personalities in the revolutionary movement have fallen, and many have been broken in concentration camps and prisons. The Second and Third Internationals have, by their complete switch-over to the imperialist camp. contributed to the weakening of the revolutionary camp. An important task of the illegal revolutionary movement will be to speak up clearly and plainly, and thus to educate new cadres by good political analysis and theoretical work in order to compensate for this weakness of cadre. The closer the revolution is, the more forces will strengthen the Revolutionary Marxist movement. The correct slogans for the strengthening of the resistance against German imperialism will contribute to that. In the Dutch proletariat a sound spirit of resistance is alive. In the coming events it will depend whether the German revolution or the Allied counter-revolution will make use of this spirit (though if there is an Allied occupation of the Netherlands before the German revolution. nationalism will be reinforced).
12. The organisation and co-operation of the Revolutionary Marxists in Europe, now confused by illegality and terror, will again come into being through the revolutionary action of the German proletariat. The common activity of all revolutionary parties and groups will, just as after Zimmerwald, work at stimulating the struggling proletariat. And just as the left wing of Zimmerwald, the founder of the Third International, came to the fore as the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat and the Russian Revolution in the previous world war and triumphed under the banner of the Zimmerwald left wing, so will the revolutionary proletariat march forward under the banner of the Fourth International in the coming revolution in Europe.
LONG LIVE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AND THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
CRM
Hilversum. 4 August 1943
Comrades, be careful with illegal material. We understand that many will want to keep this political declaration for themselves. However, do not let it lie around and keep it in a safe place. If you want to give it to another to read, do so with trusted people only and do not let it be passed on to others, without your permission. But the very best, the very safest thing is to put it into other people’s letterboxes!
We call on all people to support the CRM with all possible means, and certainly with moral means in the first place. Carry on our revolutionary propaganda!
Comite van Revolutionaire Marxisten
27. See Galesloot and Legene, Partij in het verzet. The writers are full of admiration for the new moderate CP line but cannot, however reluctantly, conceal the fact that after the war the CPN was not really able to stop talking about the common interests of the community rather than class struggle.
28. A small group like the CRM could have played a modest role in such forms of resistance if it had had a number of members who were recognised workers’ leaders in important enterprises. I do not know of any cases of this.
29. See Les Congres de la IVe Internationale, 1940-1946, and the documents and articles in the Cahiers Leon Trotsky 23 (1985) and Pluet-Despatin, Les Troskistes et la guerre 1940-45. The clearest exposition of the revolutionary anti-war policy is in Theses sur la question nationale by the European Secretariat and Jean van Heijenoort’s, La question nationale en Europe.
The original text has a long Dutch bibliography. The following Dutch works seem to be those of greatest interest to our readers:
1. For the standard general history of the period see L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog delen VI-Xb (The Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Second World War, Volumes VI-Xb), (1975-81) Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij.
2. For the movement just prior to the period dealt with here see W. Bot, Tegen fascisme, kapitalisme en oorlog Het Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front, Juli 1940-April 1942 (Against Fascism, Capitalism and War – The Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front, July 1940-April 1942), (1983) Amsterdam: Syndikaat.
3. For the movement immediately after the period dealt with here see R. Lubbersen, Revolutionair socialisme in Nederland russen oorlog en intrede. De Revolutionair Communistische Partij (RCP) Nederlandse afdeling van de Vierde Internationale, van 1945 tot 1952 (Revolutionary Socialism in the Nerherlands between War and Entry. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), Dutch section of the Fourth International from 1945 to 1952), (1983) Amsterdam: unpublished manuscript.
4. In addition there is another work on the same theme. See P.J. Mol, De Trotzkistese beweging in Nederland 1938-1946 (The Trotskyist movement in the Netherlands 1938-1946), (undated) Nijmegen: unpublished manuscript.
All notes that simply give source references to Dutch material have been deleted on the grounds that readers for whom they would be accessible, would also be able to deal with the original Dutch text in the possession of the author. He can be contacted by writing to the editors of Revolutionary History. In addition I have deleted those notes that simply deal with oral evidence as to who was at particular meetings. I have included references when these quoted actual texts or amplified certain points. Unless otherwise stated the notes are those of Wim Bot but I have put in a note in a couple of cases to explain matters to non-Dutch readers. I have left the words ‘English’ – ‘English imperialism’ where we would use British. The Dutch came up against English imperialism in the First, Second and Third Dutch wars – long before the Act of Union!
Finally, I apologise in advance, both to the author and to our readers, for any shortcomings that have occurred in this edited text. They are entirely my responsibility.
Ted Crawford for Revolutionary History.
Revolutionary History, Vol.1 No.4, Winter 1988-89
Editor: Al Richardson
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Copyright © 1989 Socialist Platform, BCM 7646, London WC1N 3XX
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