Michael Williams

Sneevliet and the Birth of Asian Communism

Henk Sneevliet was a founder-activist of three Communist movementsthe

Dutch, Indonesian and Chineseand played a prominent role in the early years
of the Communist International. Arguably no other socialist of the period had
such a creative and active internationalist career. His profound understanding
and sympathy for Asian nationalism and his direct experience in the Communist
movements in China and Indonesia made Sneevliet an unparalleled figure in the
early Comintern. Founder of the first Marxist party in colonial Asia, the Indonesian Social Democratic Association (ISDV), Secretary of the Commission on
National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of the Comintern, and
representative of the International in China in the early twenties, Sneevliet was
the architect of the bloc within strategy for Communist parties in colonial
countries. After the death of Lenin in 1924 and the increasing subjection of the
Comintern to Russian national and state interests, Sneevliet broke decisively with
Moscow, and founded one of the few independent Marxist parties with popular
support outside the Third International in the thirties: the Dutch Revolutionary
81

Socialist Party. It has been remarked that Sneevliets life history, like
that of Ho Chi Minh, must surely be one of the great unwritten
Odysseys of our time.1 But his achievements as a revolutionary remain
largely unrecognized, in part due to the absence of any written legacy
by Sneevliet, but also due to his break with the Comintern. Two books
on his life have appeared in Dutch in recent years, Fritjof Tichelman,
Henk Sneevliet: Een Politieke Biografie and Max Perthus, Henk Sneevliet:
RevolutionairSocialist in Europa en Azie.2 Rather than compare the
respective merits of these two works, this article will try to provide a
brief outline of Sneevliets remarkable career for the English-speaking
reader.
Henk Sneevliet was born in Rotterdam in 1883. From an early age he
became involved in the Dutch socialist movement and in 1902 he joined
the Dutch Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP).3 Through his
close relationship with Henriette Roland-Holst, Sneevliet became
attracted to the left-wing opposition group within the SDAP associated
with the journal, De Nieuwe Tijd. This group, later known as the
Tribunists, took a position similar to that adopted by Rosa Luxemburg
and Karl Liebknecht within the German Social Democratic Party.
However, unlike their German comrades, the Dutch revolutionary
socialist split from the mainstream Social Democrats before the First
World War.4
Sneevliet did not join the new party at first, but continued to work
within the Railway and Tramworkers Union, of which he became
chairman in 1910 at the age of 27. His initial hesitation in joining the
new revolutionary Social Democratic Party (SPD) largely stemmed from
a concern that the organisation did not have sufficient roots in the
Dutch working class. The outbreak of an international seamens strike
in 1911 and the lack of support given to it by the orthodox SDAP, led
Sneevliet to leave the party and join the revolutionary SPD.5 Continuing
unease with the sectarian policies of the SPD, however, prompted him
in 1913 to leave Holland for Indonesia, then the Dutch East Indies.
This was not so unusual a choice as it might at first seem. Unlike
British colonies in Asia, the Dutch East Indies had a sizeable settler
community. Moreover, at least until 1920 the political regime in the
colony was relatively liberal and revolutionary socialists did not find it
1

Peter Worsley, The Third World, London 1967, p. 337.

Fritjof Tichelman, Henk Sneevliet: Een Politieke Biografie, Amsterdam 1974; Max
Perthus, Henk Sneevliet: Revolutionair Socialist in Europa en Azie, Nijmegen 1976.
The latter account is by far the more substantial as it is written by a former comrade
who was active with Sneevliet in the wartime resistance against the Nazis. No
satisfactory account of Sneevliets life exists in English.
3 Social Democratische Arbeiders Parij (SDAP) was founded in 1894.
4 The revolutionary group led by Henriette Roland-Holst, Herman Gorter, and
Anton Pannekoek broke away in 1909 and set up the Sociaal Democratische Partij
(SDP). The Socialist International did attempt to intervene to reunite the two Dutch
socialist parties but to no avail since the SDP would only consider unity if it preserved
freedom of propaganda and its own paper (De Tribune). The SDP remained one of
the few cases in Europe where the revolutionary wing of the socialist party broke
away before the Bolshevik Revolution. See Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, p. 48, 83.
5
The SDAP had refused to back striking seamen and dockers in Amsterdam who
belonged not to the Social Democrat trade union federation, NVV, but to the
anarcho-syndicalist NAS. See Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, p. 71.
2

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difficult to find work there whilst at the same time remaining politically
active.
Sneevliets work in just over four years in Indonesia is unique in the
history of the international socialist movement.6 Within weeks of his
arrival in the colony, he threw himself energetically into the work of
organizing the Railway and Tramworkers Union (VSTPVereeniging
voor Spoor en Tramweg Personeel) and editing its journal, De
Volharding. Under Sneevliets influence and direction, the VSTP developed into a modern well-organized trade union. From 1915 on its
membership was composed largely of Indonesians and it was to exercise
a profound influence on the later development of the Indonesian labour
movement. When, in 1920, the Perserikatan Kommunist Indonesia
the Indonesian Communist Partywas formed, the VSTP provided the
proletarian core around which the party was built. In May 1914
Sneevliet had founded the PKIs forerunner and the first Marxist party
in colonial Asia, the Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV
Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereeniging). Sneevliet was determined
from the beginning that the ISDV should not be an adjunct of Dutch
Social Democracy, despite the opposition of other Dutch socialists
who saw little hope of Marxism finding fertile soil in a colonial and
peasant society, and embarked on the task of building an independent
Indonesian socialist movement. Although the original membership of
less than one hundred were nearly all Dutch teachers or railway
workers, Sneevliet was acutely conscious of the urgent need to attract
Indonesians if the party was to become a viable and potent force.
Within a few years it had done this and a number of young Indonesians
became prominent in the ISDV, among them Semaun, Darsono and
Tan Malaka. Of these Tan Malaka was by far the most able and original
leader and in his way a genuine successor to Sneevliet, achieving the
rare reversal of Sneevliets international trajectory by winning a seat
in the Dutch Parliament for the Communist Party of the Netherlands
(CPN).7
6

On Sneevliets activities in Indonesia see Perthus, p. 89201; Tichelman, Henk

Sneevliet, p. 226; A.K. Priggodigdo, Sedjarah Pergerakan Rakjat Indonesia, Djakarta
1949, pp. 12 and 22; R.T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism, London
1965, pp. 736; Jeanne S. Mintz, Marxism in Indonesia, in Frank N. Trager
(ed.), Marxism in Southeast Asia, Stanford 1959, pp. 176180; George McTunran
Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, London 1953, pp. 7374.
7
Tan Malaka became chairman of the Indonesian Communist Party while still in
his twenties. In the Dutch elections of 1922 Malaka outpolled the Dutch Communist
Partys leading theoretician, Van Ravestyn, and would have become a Communist
member of the Dutch parliament except that he was found to be under-age. He
represented the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) at the Fourth Comintern
Congress in 1922, and was thereafter the Comintern representative in Southeast
Asia. Malaka broke with the Comintern in 1927 but remained a revolutionary
socialist. He was briefly active in the Philippine nationalist movement in the late
twenties, and lived in China for many years. He returned to Indonesia in 1942
after a twenty years absence, formed a revolutionary opposition to Sukarno in 1946,
and was arrested and executed in 1949. The only full biography of Malaka is Harry
A. Poeze, Tan Malaka Strijder voor Indonesi s VrijheidLevensloop van 1897 tot 1945,
Gravennage 1976. The English reader is referred to McVey, The Rise of Indonesian
Communism, pp. 114117 and 121124; Benedict R. Anderson, Java in a Time of
Revolution, Occupation and Resistance, 194446, Ithaca and London 1972, pp. 269295;
and R. Mrazek, Tan Malaka: A Political Personalitys Structure of Experience,
Indonesia, October 1972, pp. 148.
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Although Sneevliet was successful in winning a steady number of

Indonesian recruits to the position of revolutionary Marxism adopted
by the ISDV, he also saw the need for the party to make a wider intervention in Indonesian society. The Indonesian working class was
very small at this time and concentrated in the two Dutch colonial
commercial centres of Semarang and Surabaya. Sneevliet realized that
if Marxism was to make an impact on Indonesian, or any Asian, society
it was of vital importance that propaganda work be conducted amongst
the masses as a whole, including the peasantry. He believed that the
objective conditions for this work were ripe, particularly as much of
Javas peasantry in the late nineteenth century had been transformed
from subsistence rice farmers to sugar plantation workers.8 Politically
too the awakening of the Indonesian peasantry had been signalled by
the formation of the first nationalist party with mass backing, the
Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association) in 1911. Like Lenin, Sneevliet was
deeply aware that if the rising nationalist tide in Asia could be linked
to or harnessed by the socialist movement, its political repercussions
would be revolutionary.
The Bloc Within Strategy

The Sarekat Islam had been established originally by Indonesian cloth

manufacturers and traders as an association to protect their interests
against the encroachment of Chinese merchants. It was an indication of
the weakness of the Indonesian bourgeoisie, however, that this class
was unable to retain effective hold of the organisation and the Sarekat
Islam rapidly assumed the character of a mass albeit amorphous party
with considerable peasant support. The Dutch East Indies colonial
government tolerated the existence of the organization, some of its
more liberal members welcoming it as a sign of native awakening and
progress. For Sneevliet the Sarekat Islam presented the ideal vehicle
through which to advance a program of revolutionary socialism in
the colony. This strategy, the first concrete example of a Marxist party
attempting to infiltrate another party and form cells within it as a
means of developing its own propaganda and contacts amongst the
masses, was to pay large dividends for the ISDV in the following years.
The pursuit of a bloc within strategy by the ISDV within the Sarekat
Islam was aided by the extremely decentralized character of the
nationalist organization, which Sneevliet saw as the Indonesian
equivalent of the nineteenth century British Chartist movement.9
While the Sarekat Islam was tolerated and sanctioned by the colonial
authorities at a local branch level, no national organization as such
was allowed, only an extremely loose federation. Clearly this made the
ISDVs task of infiltrating the Sarekat Islam easier and it was several
years before a coherent right-wing opposition to the Marxist group
was to emerge in the nationalist organization.
In several areas of Java Sarekat Islam branches fell wholly under the
sway of the Marxist ISDV and became increasingly radical. The effect
of the strategy manifested itself clearly at the Second National Congress
8
This transformation is described in Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution, Berkeley
9
1968.
McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism, p. 19.

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of the Sarekat Islam in October 1917. As a result of mounting pressure

from the growing number of Marxist orientated local branches
of the Sarekat Islam, the organizations weak central leadership, with
no effective means at its disposal to discipline the dissidents, was
forced to compromise its original modernist Islamic tenets in the
direction of revolutionary Marxism. Thus the October 1917 congress
abandoned the Sarekat Islams original demand for self-government in
favour of outright independence, adding, moreover, that if non-violent
means to obtain this goal were not fruitful, another approach might be
necessary. The congress also came out with a forthright denunciation
of what it termed sinful capitalism, explicitly condemning the hold
that the great Dutch corporations and the Chinese middle class exercised over the Indonesian economy. In the face of this growing
radicalization of the Sarekat Islam, the weakness of the Indonesian
bourgeoisie was striking.
The outbreak of the February 1917 revolution in Russia was heralded
by the ISDV with great acclaim. Sneevliet saw in the overthrow of
autocracy in Europes most backward state an act of great importance
for colonial Asia.10 He called on the Indonesian people to be ready
to follow the example of the Russian masses, and the following year,
when revolutionary contagion spread to Germany and even the Netherlands, Sneevliet began organizing soldiers and sailors councils.11
For the colonial authorities this alarming turn of events called for
immediate action and in December 1918 the Dutch Governor General
expelled Sneevliet from Indonesia.
It is a measure of Sneevliets success in Indonesia, however, that
revolutionary Marxism continued to flourish in his absence. The
process of infiltration of Indonesian members of the ISDV into positions
of leadership within local branches of the Sarekat Islam continued.
In May 1920 the ISDV dissolved itself and formally established the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and adhered to the Comintern.
By 1922 the PKI and its affiliated organizations had 50,000 members,
and most of the Indonesian trade union movement was under its
control. This was at a time when the Chinese Communist Party counted
its membership in hundreds, and the Vietnamese and Indian communist
movements were non-existent.
Returning to Holland Sneevliet involved himself once more in the
Dutch socialist movement, while at the same time representing the
Indonesian Communist Party in the colonial metropolis. In his latter
capacity Sneevliet was PKI delegate at the famous Second Congress of
the Comintern in 1920. In contrast to the First Congress of the Communist International, the Second was to devote considerable attention
to the infant revolutionary movement in Asia, the Indian communist
M. N. Roy remarking that he had been able to take part seriously in a
discussion of the colonial question at a congress of the revolutionary
proletariat for the first time.12 Sneevliet was appointed Secretary of
10

11
Ibid., p. 29ff.
Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, pp. 182187.
E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 19171923, Volume Three, London 1953, p.
252. For a discussion of the Congress see Carr, pp. 251256; V.I. Lenin, Report

12

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the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions at the

Congress, the other members of the Commission included Lenin and
Roy. Sneevliets position was unique. Not only was he the sole
European Communist present at the discussion with wide experience
of the revolutionary movements in Asia, but also the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI) was at the time the only Asian Marxist party of
any significance.13
The starting point of both Lenins and Sneevliets views on Asia was
that the fragility and infancy of the Communist movement demanded
that a firm base be established in the peasantry, which could only be
done by forging an alliance with bourgeois nationalist parties. Lenin
formulated his position thus: It would be utopian to believe that
proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can
emerge in them, can pursue communist tactics and a communist policy,
without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and
without giving it effective support . . . we, as Communists, should
and will support bourgeois liberation movements in the colonies only
when they are genuinely revolutionary, and when their exponents do
not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary
spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited.14
Lenin and Sneevliet saw clearly that the way forward for the Communist movement in Asia lay in temporary alliance with the bourgeois
democratic parties, whilst at the same time preserving their full
independence. Roy, for his part, was firmly of the opinion that it was
no business of Communists to ally themselves with bourgeois nationalists even on a short-term basis. Sneevliet, as Secretary of the Commission, resolved the problem of the difference of positions by getting
the Congress to adopt both the preliminary thesis (Lenin and Sneevliet)
and the supplementary Roy thesis. In practice, however, it was the
Lenin-Sneevliet view which was to dominate the policy of the Comintern in Asia over the following years.
The Chinese Revolution

Soon after the Congress Sneevliet was appointed Comintern representative for the Far East and Southeast Asia.15 When he arrived in Shanghai
in June 1921, his responsibilities included China, Korea, Japan, the
Philippines, Indo-China and Indonesia.16 Prior to his arrival in China,
on the Commission on National and Colonial Questions, Collected Works, Volume
31, pp. 240245; Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, pp. 220225; and Tichelman, Henk Sneevliet,
pp. 3137.
13
The Chinese Communist Party was founded in July 1921. The Indo-Chinese
Communist Party was not established by Ho Chi Minh until 1930.
14
Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 31, pp. 241242.
15
Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, pp. 516518; Sneevliet who used the pseudonym
Maring for the first time at the Congress was also appointed to the Executive
Committee of the Comintern. Proposals by Sneevliet that the Comintern establish
Middle East and Far East bureaus were accepted at the Second Congress, as well as a
proposal that Asian communists should be brought to Soviet Russia for training.
16
The best sources in English for Sneevliets period in China are Harold Isaacs,
The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, Stanford 1959, pp. 5862, and Documents on the
Comintern and the Chinese Revolution, China Quarterly, No. 45, JanuaryMarch
86

the Comintern had established a Far Eastern Secretariat in the Siberian

city of Irkutsk. This bureau was composed entirely of Russians and its
only contacts in China were with the northern warlord Wu Pei-Fu.
There were almost no contacts with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the
Kuomintang, and it was Sneevliet who quickly saw that it was the KMT
which represented the mainstream of Chinese nationalism. His belief
in the revolutionary potential of the Kuomintang was reinforced in
January 1922 when a major seamens strike took place in Canton and
Hong Kong. Sneevliet found that the KMT already had substantial links
with the young Chinese labour movement. As Sneevliet himself wrote,
If we Communists, who are actively trying to establish links with
the workers of north China are to work successfully, we must take care
to maintain friendly relations with the Nationalists. The thesis of the
Second Congress (of the Comintern) can only be applied in China by
offering active support to the nationalist elements of the south (i.e. the
KMT). We have as our task to keep the revolutionary nationalist elements
with us and to drive the whole movement to the left.17
In May 1921 Sun Yat-Sen had proclaimed a Chinese Republic in
Canton. Sneevliet entered into conversation with the nationalist leader
and tried to persuade Sun that in order to advance its cause the Kuomintang should cooperate with the Comintern and the newly founded
Chinese Communist Party.18 Sneevliet argued forcefully for the democratization of the nationalist organization and for the necessity for
propaganda amongst the peasants and the workers, pointing to the
example of the Sarekat Islam in Indonesia. Sun Yat-Sen, however,
still felt he could rely on military means and was unwilling to accept
the entry of the Communist Party en masse into the Kuomintang.
Unperturbed by the initial lack of a favourable response from the
nationalist leader, Sneevliet set to work to convince an initially reluctant Chinese Communist Party that it should work within the Kuomintang. Opposition to this strategy stemmed largely from the view
that the KMT was not a significant political force and would not develop
into a mass movement. The matter was finally brought to a head at a
special meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
called by Sneevliet in Hangchow in August 1922. By the time of the
meeting events had turned decisively in a direction that reinforced
Sneevliets view that the Communist Party should work within the
1971, pp. 236. These two accounts are partly based on conversations Isaacs had
with Sneevliet in Amsterdam in August 1935. See also Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution,
pp. 516518, 533591; Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, Harmondsworth 1972,
p. 115 and pp. 182189; Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, pp. 220299; Tichelman, Henk
Sneevliet, pp. 3754. Perthus and Tichelman have used previously closed Dutch
archives. Within the Chinese Communist Party Sneevliet was known by the name
Ti-san Kuo-chi.
17
Maring (Sneevliet), Die Revolutionr Nationalistische Bewegung in Sd-China,
Kommunistische Internationale, 13 September 1922, cited by Perthus, Henk Sneevliet,
pp. 271272.
18
The Chinese Communist Party was established in July 1921. It has never been
clear whether Sneevliet was present at the founding congress held in a girls school
in the French concession in the city. One of the early leaders of the CCP, Chang
Kuo-Tao, has said he was. Cf. Chang Kuo-Tao, The Rise of the Chinese Communist
Party, 192127, Lawrence 1971, pp. 136152 ff.
87

Kuomintang, whilst at the same time preserving its independance of

organization and propaganda within the movement. In June 1922 Sun
Yat-Sen had been evicted from Canton by the warlord General Chen
Chiung-Ming and was now far more receptive to offers of political
support from whatever quarter. Externally attempts by the Kuomintang to solicit aid from the imperialist nations had met with rebuffs, so
increasingly Sun saw the Soviet Union as a potential ally. Within the
Comintern itself the so-called Irkutsk line of trying to establish links
with Northern warlords was dramatically reversed as a result of a
report submitted by Sneevliet to the Executive Committee of the
International in July 1922, and Sneevliets bloc-within strategy was
endorsed as being more congruent with the decisions of the Second
Congress and the concrete political realities of China.19 At the Hangchow meeting Sneevliet argued that the past orientation of the Comintern in China had been wrong and that the Kuomintangs loose
organizational form made it comparatively easy for the Communist
Party to work within it. Although some members of the Central
Committee, especially Chang Kuo-Tao, were still opposed, Sneevliets
line was accepted and the Party embarked on a policy of entrism into
the Kuomintang.20
In a conversation in 1935 with Harold Isaacs, Sneevliet stated that he
had advocated the bloc within strategy for the Chinese Communist
Party for three reasons. First, his experience in Indonesia and the
success of the Communists there in working within the Sarekat Islam
indicated that this could be repeated; secondly, the Theses on the
National question adopted at the 1920 Comintern Congress seemed to
be particularly applicable to China; and thirdly, the isolation of the
Communist Party from the working class when the Kuomintang had
substantial links with proletarian organizations in South China underlined the necessity of working within the nationalist movement.
The success of Sneevliets strategy in China led to a great expansion
of the influence of the Communist Party in the labour movement. When
in 1925 the great Movement of 30 May spread over Southern China,
the Communists were in its vanguard, inspiring the boycott of Western
concessions and leading the Canton General Strike. The bloc within
strategy advocated so forcefully by Sneevliet was in the circumstances
of the early 1920s manifestly the correct one for the Chinese Communist Party to follow. However, Sneevliet underestimated the differences between China and Indonesia. In China the national bourgeoisie
was a far stronger class than in Indonesia, and moreover, the Kuomintang, unlike the Sarekat Islam, was already a semi-government with its
own armed forces. Even more important in determining for the failure
of Sneevliets line as a long-term strategy was the complete subordination of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Comintern to the
national interests of Soviet Russia. The Communist Party worked
energetically within the Kuomintang, but without ever presenting a
program of its own, and consequently became a mere appendage of the
19

Sneevliets views on China were expressed in an article he wrote at the time, see
Maring, Die Revolutionr Nationalistische.
20
According to Snow, Red Star Over China, p. 482, Mao Tse-Tung although initially
supporting Chang Kuo-Tao, later backed the Sneevliet line.
88

nationalist organization. After Sneevliets departure from China,

Moscow increasingly urged the Chinese Communist Party to see its
first duty as making the Kuomintang a reliable ally of Soviet Russia.
Sneevliet, on the other hand, strove to assist the Chinese masses not to
protect Russian national interest at the expense of international
revolution. He was bitterly opposed to Stalins fatal error of organizational self-effacement before Chiang Kai-Shek which led to the destruction of Chinas urban communist movement in 192627.21 Although
he overestimated the socialist inclinations of Sun Yat-Sen, he was
far sighted in realising the anti-imperialist potential of the social
forces that the KMT drew upon. Sneevliet left China in 1923, working
briefly in the new Far Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern in Vladivostok, before returning to Moscow where he worked on Chinese and
Indonesian affairs. He was offered the post of Soviet Consul in Canton,
but Sneevliet had no wish to enter into the service of the Russian state
as opposed to the Comintern. Quite beyond Sneevliets expectations,
Comintern policies in China became wholly subject to Russian interests
which above all demanded a firm alliance with Chiang Kai-Shek, who
took over the leadership of the Kuomintang with the death of Sun
Yat-Sen in 1925, and the interests of the Communist Party were
forgotten. This was to remain the case even after Chiangs first anticommunist coup of 20 March 1926, when the Comintern continued to
call on the Communist Party to work with the Kuomintang.
The Break With Stalinism

In April 1924 Sneevliet left Moscow for the Netherlands and became
active once again in the Dutch Communist Party (CPN) and at the same
time became chairman of the National Arbeids Secretariaat (NAS), a small
Dutch trade union federation that was affiliated to the Profintern,
the trade union affiliate of the Comintern. He continued to take a
close interest in Asian affairs and in 1925 established an office of
the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in Amsterdam. But Sneevliets
growing identification with the position of the Left Opposition in the
Soviet Union and his leadership of the opposition in the Dutch
Commnist Party isolated him from the Comintern and forced him to
devote his political energies to the Dutch socialist movement. He
maintained close contact with Opposition communists such as
Souvarine and Rosmer in France, with Fischer and Maslow in Germany,
with Andres Nin, and with his former Comintern comrade Roy.
In 1927, Sneevliet broke completely with the Dutch Communist
Party and the Comintern, and two years later formed the Revolutionary
Socialist Party, one of the few independent Marxist parties with popular support in Europe in the 1930s. Although Sneevliet had identified
with the Left Opposition in Russia, his position differed from that of
21 Michael Borodin who became chief political adviser to the Kuomintang represented not the Comintern but the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party. The
bloc-within strategy should not be confused with the later Comintern conception
of the KMT as a four class block: peasants, workers, middle class and progressive
national bourgeoisie. Sneevliet was not the originator of this view and did not
support it.

89

Trotskys on several issues. Trotsky was opposed to the formation of

new Marxist parties in 1929 and also criticised Sneevliets leadership of
the NAS as sectarian. On the international terrain, however, Sneevliet
identified closely with the positions adopted by Trotsky, differing
sharply only in their analysis of China. Trotsky had been violently
opposed to the bloc within strategy. Sneevliet, despite the great
defeats suffered by the Chinese Communist Party in 19261927,
continued to defend the strategy provided that the Communists were
able to preserve their freedom of organization and propaganda and
not be subject to Russian interests.22
In 1933 Sneevliet was imprisoned for six months for his support of the
sailors who had mutinied on the Dutch cruiser Zeven Provincien in
Indonesian waters. Whilst serving his sentence he was elected a member of the Dutch Parliament representing the Revolutionary Socialist
Party. Two years later the RSP fused with the Independent Socialists,
a left splinter group from the Social Democrats, to form the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (RSAP). In the late 1930s Sneevliets
relations with Trotsky, now in exile in Mexico, deteriorated further.
Sneevliet and the RSAP were enthusiastic supporters of Andres Nins
POUM during the Spanish Civil War and were disturbed by Trotskys
critical stance towards the POUM.
An even more fundamental difference of opinion occurred over
Trotskys establishment of the Fourth International in 1938. Sneevliet
was firmly opposed to a new International, particularly at a time when
the international workers movement was clearly in disarray and retreat.
This was a body blow to Trotsky as the RSAP was a far more significant political force than any of the tiny groups which adhered to the
Fourth International.
With the Nazi invasion and occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940,
Sneevliet transformed the RSAP into the Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg
Front (MLL) and established the first resistance movement. In February
1941 the MLL organized strikes in Amsterdam in protest against the
persecution of the citys Jewish population. The following year,
however, Sneevliet was arrested by the Gestapo and on 12 April 1942
was executed with seven other comrades. A true internationalist to the
end, he spent his last months organizing propaganda amongst German
Army units in Holland.
22

Sneevliet knew Trotsky well from his Comintern days and met him again in
Copenhagen in 1932 and Paris in 1933. See Perthus, Henk Sneevliet, p. 364; Isaac
Deutscher, Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 192940, Oxford 1963, p. 186.

90