### Dutch CP splits
There 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 factional struggle between the "Renewers" and the "Horizontalists". For 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 apparatus is 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 CPN seems incapable of intervening in the social and political arenas.
an independent, "renewed" Communist Party influenced by reformist and Eurocommunist ideas.
In any case, we are now seeing a continous process of differentiation among the various currents. The reasons for this 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 progressively smaller. This trend has been reinforced by the large increase in unemployment over the 1970s in certain regions where the CPN was traditionally influential, such as the Groningen region, and by the destruction of old working-class 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 abone all the extreme weakness of the revolutionary currents in the Netherlands, the CR managed to recruit among new madimi ized nonproletarian strata, in perman among the students. This denelogmen created contradictions because young radicals came into a party til had until then lived in sectariam isolartin and had barely begun the process of de Stalinization that got underway in after CPs in 1956.
These contradictions became app after the party's disastrous setback im 1977 elections, when its vote fell 4.8% to 1.7%. Two factors explain defeat. First of all, while in otber the discussion on Eurocommunism breaking out, the leaders of the CPN were tightening their ties to Moscom the CPN had been conducting a zig-nag policy toward the Social Democratic government of Joop den Uyl (19731977). In less than four years, the CPN went from "constructive opposition to the Social Democracy to sectarian criticism of it, and then ended up adopting an electoral platform that called for the CPN participating in the govern ment alongside the Socialists.
Finally, during this period, the CPN definitively lost its influence over the youth movement when it took responsibility 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 twofold. First of all, Paul de Groot, unchallenged leader of the CPN for forty years, was dumped. He wanted the party to remain faithful to Moscow and to restrict the petty-bourgeois elements, that is, the members coming from the new social layers, to a purely secondary role. It was the fear of losing these new 1. The Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), founded in 1957; and the Political Party of Radicals (PPR), founded in 1968, have become the representatives of the new social movements that have developed since the 1960s. They have, res pectively, three and two deputies in the parlia ment.
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Jan Willem STUTJE
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 in the 1970s. 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 of the Social Democratic activists that it won in the wake of the second world war.
Not only is the membership of the CPN now elderly, but they are concentrated in the old industries, such as shipbuilding and steel, 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 with 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 painful reorientation, which at least partially neutralized the prejudices against these movements within its ranks, could not eliminate the suspicion that had been aroused. For example, on the question of women's oppression, the CPN has adopted quite clear feminist positions, but this happened only after a lot of feminists had left the party in disillusion.
The fact that the CPN 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 struggles. More decisive is tallus struggles. More decisive is that its reformist policy, seeking to form coalitions even with the bourgeois parties, is incompatible with defending the interests of the oppressed.
For example, while the CPN was in the city government in Amsterdam, the 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 expect great support from trade-unionists.
Finally, 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 that feminists are leaving the party.
The crisis hitting the CPN now is incomparably more serious than the 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 the 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
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 CN 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 the access of women to the labor market linked up 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 comparable 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 "Horizóntalists" 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 CPN's 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 the Pershing missiles but also against the SS-20s, while the "Horizontalists" approached the struggle for peace in class-struggle terms.
However, 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 a group among the "renewers" in 1981 that declared in favor of a fusion with the PSP and the PPR.
These extreme "renewers" , who also organized outside the party, hoped that afterwards they could reintorce the 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 Greens. Words such as "socialism" and "working class" were notably absent from their common program. On the question of NATO, the program talked only about abolishing "both blocs"
On the question of the BEC, 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 (the right-wing government in power since 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 the "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 faction.
For 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 CN's passivity, and also because they think that the "Horizontalists" are the heirs of the militant party that they think the CPN once was. Often the people attracted are active trade-unionists who do not know what to do in today's CPN.
A few weeks ago, the leaders of the VCN decided to launch a new Communist Party a year from now. According to them, the present CN does not deserve the name of a Communist Party, and they are convinced that the party can no longer be salvaged. However, a section of the "Horizontalists" still in the CN have declared against this perspective and are continuing to fight to change the party's leadership and policy.
With the formation of the VCN, we have seen the first split in the history of the Dutch Communist Party. While the new organization exists in most of the country's major cities, its major base is in Amsterdam, and to a lesser extent in Rotterdam. It has about a thousand members, who include veterans who reject any break with the USSR, as well as trade-unionists, and some youth attracted by the militant language of the leaders of this current.
It is hard to predict how the VCN will develop. It can be observed that the few initiatives that it has taken have been strongly marked by bureaucratic methods and organizational sectarianism, and that, for the moment, its support for the Soviet model is total.
In the future, there may be a convergence between the VCN and the "Horizontalists" who have remained in the CPN. In the meantime, the latter have every chance of regaining some of their lost positions, in particular because of the demoralization that 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 may well be the stabilization of a situation in which there will be two Communist parties, one more or less "renewed" and the other more or less Stalinist, neither of which has any real base in the working class.
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
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