Crisis in the Party

The origins of communist parties continue to attract both the interest and attention of the scholarly community. The Dutch communist party is of special interest in this regard since its origins were quite different from the other European communist parties. Unlike those, the Dutch party did not have its origins in a new party founded after the Russian revolution nor was it the product of a group splitting off from an existing, post-1917, social democratic party. Finally, it was not the result of a vote taken by a social democratic section of the Second International as happened in France and Norway. The Dutch communist party had its origins in an existing marxist, social democratic party which was a rival of the Dutch social democratic section of the Second International. In 1909, three members of the Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij (SDAP) were expelled from the party and within a month founded a rival grouping. The new party , the Sociaal Democratische Partij (SDP) voted in 1918 to transform itself into a communist party. In 1919 it emerged as the Communistisch Partij Holland.1 The Sociaal Democratische Partij was the product of the marxistrevisionist debate so characteristic of pre-1914 European social democracy. The tensions within the SDAP were suggestive of the cleavages Kautsky-Bernstein in Germany, Guesde-Jaures in France, and the Bolshevik-Menshevik split within the Russian social democratic workers party. In the case of the SDAP, it was not possible to retain both elements under the social democratic umbrella. The Tribune triumvirate of David Wijnkoop, Willem van Ravesteijn and J.C. Ceton became the symbol of militant marxism within the SDAP. For all three, marxism was defined in terms of the party policy and ideological formulations of Karl Kautsky and the center grouping in the German social democratic party. The Tribune grouping did not begin to incline toward the left

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