Dutch CP splits differentiation becomes more clear when you consider the origin of the currents involved and their political development.
We have seen that under the impact of the decline of some industries, the CPN's weight in the working class has grown is no doubt that the Netherlands Communist Party (CPN) is now experiencing the gravest crisis in its entire history. It is true that it has managed to draw up a program for the first time since the second world war, after a discussion that went on for years. But this program, entitled
"A Dutch
Road to Socialism"
, was adopted by a party that is only a shadow of its former self.
For years, the CPN has been divided by a
"Renewers" and the factional struggle between the the first, the new party program is too conservative, or rather not reformist enough. For the others, the program represents an unacceptable break from the party's Stalinist past.
The party is virtually paralyzed, and its collapsing.
The number of members has declined dramatically.
The CNP's journal, De Waarheid ("Truth") is on the verge of bankrupcy, although it now presents itself as a paper for the entire workers movement and not just the CPN. On the electoral level also, the party is experiencing one setback after another. In the 1970s, the CPN still had seven deputies. It has only one left after the last legislative elections of
September 1982. Finally, the party's activity in the plants has practically disappeared, and its youth and women's organizations are moribund
While the capitalist crisis is growing worse, the CN seems incapable of intervening in the social and political arenas.
From the start of the Cold War up to the 1960s, the CPN was in a position of isolation. And it was not able to benefit from the resurgence of workers struggles
The influence the party had in the working class was the result of the base it achieved among workers coming from an anarchosyndicalist background in the 1930s and its recruitment
Social Democratic activists that it won in the wake of the second world
Not only is the membership of the
CPN now elderly, but they are concentrated in the old industries, such as shipsteel, which have been hard hit by the crisis. The CPN has been able to overcome this structural weakness by building its organization in the advanced industries, such as chemicals, electronics, and communications.
A similar balance sheet can be drawn as regards the CPN's relations the mass movement. Both in the movement for the defense of the environment and the women's movement, the
CPN's influence is marginal. The party's reorientation, which at least neutralized the prejudices against these movements within its ranks, could not eliminate the suspicion that had been aroused. For example, on the of women's oppression, the clear feminist
CPN has adopted quite positions, but this happened only after a lot of feminists had left the party in
The fact that the CN has been unable to extend its influence is not only due to the slow and hesitant way in which it oriented toward the mass
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
"Horizontalists". For coalitions even with the bourgeois parties. is incompatible with defending the interests of the oppressed.
For example, while the CPN was in the government in Amsterdam, squatters were forcibly expelled from their houses. And when the party leaders call for cutting wages in the framework of reducing the work-week, they cannot great support when the CPN continues its defense of "actually existing socialism, that does not enhance the party's prestige. Likewise, when well-known leaders of the CPN claim that Eastern Europe is a paradise because women there have jobs and are not oppressed, it is natural feminists are leaving the party.
The crisis hitting the CPN now is previous conflicts the party has experienced. This is not only because of the number of currents that are contending and the large loss in members but above all because it is inconceivable that the departure of any one of these currents would open the way for the party to pull itself back together.
The combination of the crisis in Eastern Europe with the one in capitalist countries will continue to give rise to tendency conflicts, and it is impossible to say how the struggle in the party is going to end. Probably, the CPN will break down into two or three parts. One part would want to go back to the old-style CPN. One would be favorable to a rapid fusion with two small radical left parties, the PSP and the PPR. (1) And another part might try to rebuild progressively smaller. This trend has been reinforced by the large increase in unemployment over the 1970s in certain reg ions where the CPN was traditionally influential, such as the Groningen region, and by the destruction of old working.
neighborhoods in some cities This process was masked for some time by the fact that the CPN kept its image as a working-class party.
Thanks to this image, and the extreme weakness of ary currents in the Neth had until then lived in se and had barely begun the Stalinization that got underwa
These contradictions became ag after the party's disastrous setback: 1977 elections, when its vote fiel 4.8% to 1.7%. Two factors explain defeat. First of all, while in other the discussion on Eurocommunisn breaking out, the leaders of the CPN to Mosco had been conducting a tig-ta toward the Social Democrati government of Joop den Uyi (1973 1977). In less than four years, the CP criticism of it, and then ended up adopt ing an electoral platform that called foc participating ment alongside the Socialists.
Finally, during this period, the CPN definitively lost its influence over the youth movement when it took responsi bility for the violent clearing of the houses occupied by activists opposing the building of a subway in Amsterdam
The reaction of the CPN leaders to their setback in the elections was two fold. First of all, Paul de Groot, un challenged leader of the CPN for forty years, was dumped. He wanted the party to remain faithful to Moscow and to the petty-bourgeois that is, the members coming from the new social layers, to a purely secondary role. It was the fear of losing these new
'he Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), founde
PPR), founded in 1968, have become the re sentatives of the new social movements th have developed since the 1960s. They have, zes pectively, three and two deputies in the parli
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adherents that obliged the CPN leaders to oust their historic chief. Secondly, the leaders decided to permit a certain liberalization of the party's policy. It is clear that this reflected a desire to present the CPN as a democratic and respectable partner for a future coalition with the Social Democratic party (the PvdA, the majority party in the Dutch working class).
However, what had only been the begining of an attempt to modernize the party touched off an uncontrollable process of decomposition. Although the leaders tried to rebuild homogeneity in the party in the debate for the February 1984 congress around a reformist program, this attempt failed, for historical as well as political reasons.
To start with the historical reasons, the CPN had never really undertaken a process of de-Stalinization. The leaders distrusted the revelations in the report made by Khrushchev to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in 1956, which exposed Stalin's crimes. And few forces in the party were ready to take up Moscow's new line. Those that there were were easily ousted from the party in 1958, before they could develop any substantial critique of Stalinism.
The PCN's flirt with Peking, which created tensions with the CPSU in 1962, showed that the leaders felt able to maintain an authoritarian and ultra-bureaucratic attitude toward the members, regardless of the growth of debate in other European Communist parties. This isolation and attachment to Stalinist dogmatism lasted until the beginning of the 1970s. After 1977, a belated de-Stalinization process occurred, and this was in a party that was by no means prepared organizationally or politically for the debates that would result from this.
To take up the political reasons why the attempt to restore homogeneity failed, the three issues that provoked conflicts were feminism, Poland, and the social and political struggles in the Netherlands. Because of its antibureaucratic dynamic, feminism played a big role in opening up debate. For the renewers, the demands of the women's movement became a pretext for breaking with a class position on certain crucial points. Their desire to facilitate access of women to the labor market with a readiness to accept lower wages for women. For this reason, it was the trade-unionists above all who opposed including the demand for a 35hour week in the party's new program.
For a part of the "Horizontalists" (orthodox activists), this question of the workweek and, more generally, the fact that feminism was considered a theory to Marxism and therefore able to serve as a theoretical basis for the CPN was what led them to form a faction going outside the party.
At the CPN's special programmatic. congress in February 1984, the talists" formed a new organization, the 22
League of Netherlands Communists (Verbond van Communisten in Nederland -VCN), open to former adherents of the CPN, as well as to any other activist.
The process that led to this split had begun some time before. In fact, for two years the "Horizontalists" had been presenting themselves as a public faction of the CPN with their own meetings and a monthly publication of their own. It was above all the events in Poland, the condemnation of Jaruzelski's crackdown and the resolute support for Solidarnosc that provoked the formation of this faction. The impact of this issue was increased by the fact that the party's attitude toward the events in Poland, combined with its critique of Eastern Europe in general, led it to adopt a neutralist attitude in the peace movement. So, it not only came out against
Pershing missiles but also against the SS-20s, while the "Horizontalists" approached the struggle for peace in class-struggle terms.
the most important basis on which the "Horizontalists" organized their adherents was their critique of the ideas of the "renewers" about the CPN's policy in the unions and its policy of coalition with the Social Democrats.
They saw the party's passivity toward social and economic struggles, the vanishing of its activity in the factories, and its readiness to accept wage cuts as all aspects of a failure to meet the need for conducting an independent Communist policy, and as concessions to the trade-union leaders and the Social Democrats. This process, they argued, would lead to the liquidation of the CPN. This view was reinforced by the appearance of
"renewers" in 1981 that declared in favor of a fusion with the
These extreme "renewers", who also organized outside the party, hoped that left of the PvdA. Although the party leaders were against such a perspective, their readiness to make concessions was not any the less for that. So, for the June 1984 European elections, the CPN found itself on a common slate with the PPR, the PSP, and the such as "socialism" and "working class" were notably absent from their common program. On the question of NATO, the program talked only about abolishing
On the question of the EEC, the program stressed the perspective of democratizing its institutions.
The moderate renewers, who lead the party and run the paper De Waarheid are trying to take initiatives that can get the party out of its inertia. Quite recently, they decided to initiate a campaign against the policy of the Lubbers cabinet right-wing government in 1982). The regional committees were left free to see with what political parties the CPN could collaborate on this question. In some cities, they have even invited the Socialist Workers Party (SAP, Dutch section of the Fourth Internattional to join with them.
On the other hand, the CPN has adopted a sectarian attitude toward "Horizontalists", a section of whom are organized in the VCN. Although there is no question of massive expulsions from the CPN, these activists find themselves de facto outside the work of the party. Despite the size of a pro-Moscow wing in this current, which includes the majority of the leaders, it is not a united Stalinist various reasons, some groups of activists are attracted by the current represented by the VCN, in particular because they are looking for class positions, because they are unhappy about the CPN's passivity, and also because they think that "Horizontalists" are the heirs of the mi they think the CPN the people attra icted unionists wh do not in today's CPN.
1bo to them, deserve munist the Howalists" gainst ng to ership and policy.
Denver"Horizontalists" who have remained in the CPN. In the meantime, the latter have every chance of regaining some their lost positions, in particular because of the demoralization prevails in the ranks of the renewers. If this happens, we can expect to see the departure of a part of the renewal wing for the PdA.
The result of the present turmoil well be the stabilization of a situation in which there Communist parties, one more or "renewed" and the other more Stalinist, neither of which has any real base in the working class.
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
class scattered in small shops, attempts to organize the workers began by the middle of the nineteenth century. They culminated in the formation of the Socialist Party section of the First International) in 1875.