Ruben Ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden – History with Ruben: ‘Troelstra’s mistake’

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
i think a good bit of dutch leftist-labour history to talk about is a 6-day period known as ‘Troelstra’s mistake‘, 9 – 14 november 1918

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
Pieter Jelles Troelstra was a high-ranking member of the socialist labour party (SDAP) and proud revolutionary. this is him in 1912.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
@urbanfriendden i love his hat. i trust him

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
historical context: the first world war caused mass food shortages. maginot line and german u-boat made import very hard, people starved.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
though the netherlands were neutral in WWI, well, it’s ‘world war’ for a reason. deep rich/poor divide, 500k jobless, spanish flu. bad stuff
=
ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
ration stamps, an ineffective system that makes amassing capital&resource easy under the guise of equal restrainedshare, let folks go hungry

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
Troelstra demanded, in the wake of the russian revolution, to abolish capitalism&unleash a similar, albeit bloodless coup of the proletariat

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
and there was leftist momentum for this! the gov’t had frozen soldieries for months and the socialist members of the military rose up

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
army base ‘De Harskamp’ ended fairly ruined. Troelstra, an internationalist, wanted to keep the fires stoked & appealed his party to mobilise

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
unfortunately, the SD in SDAP stood for Social Democrats – antirevolutionary parliamentarists who chose the path of cooperation & concession

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
their (not per se) socialist contributions to the constitution of 1917 were: universal male suffrage + more liberal schools. yyup.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
the party wanted to ‘wait and see’, brought up SOCIALIST REVOLUTION with the liberal (right-wing) parties. “USELESS”, screamed Troelstra.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
“we must CREATE a revolutionary situation, not wait for one!” he infamously threw his journal at Willem Vliegen, his intra-party opponent

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
november 5th: Troelstra addresses government and queen.
SDAP: be nice
TROELSTRA: how bout revolution tho
QUEEN: oh my
SDAP: fucking–

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
november 9th: in rotterdam, dock workers – the taxi drivers of the time – were reading Marx and the newspaper, and figured: “shall we?”

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
Troelstra wrote a manifesto, contacted various unions, including the dock workers’, and offered to march with them – november 11th.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
in the manifesto, he demanded: women’s suffrage, demobilisation, socialisation of all companies, 8-hour work day, unemployment care.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
fun fact: he called capitalism a form of terrorism, in 1918. what a good guy.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
so they marched! unfortunately, World War I happened to end that very same morning. people celebrated but not for communist reasons. YIKES.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
but! they weren’t demoralised and rallied even more folks. let’s try again tomorrow, in amsterdam and the hague too!

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
oh, but remember how the SDAP discussed REVOLUTION with right-wing parties? they snitched… called the cops. fuckin narcs…

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
soldiers were sent to revolutionary hotspots; can’t do bloodless coup against an army. innocent workers, who didn’t resist, were killed.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
Troelstra gathered an emergency council with all of parliament and really made a point to mention how much he hates everyone there

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
he talked for literal hours to employ this historical moment to realise the political potency of the labour classes! in front of PM and all!

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
the government replied: no. the spirit of centrism resonates here in that the netherlands proliferated itself as entirely, always neutral

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
this ENERGISED workers – in Den Helder, revolutionaries stormed boats&ships and occupied the harbour. so did police and the army, afterwards

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
and by november 14th, the very real revolutionary attempt had failed. Troelstra, answering angry looks, said “i, uh, made a mistake.”

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
we can fault Troelstra for this huge backdown, but let’s instead blame centrist reactionary and state police measures.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
socialism fails NOT because ‘it doesn’t work’, but bc capitalism kills, if not subvertly with hunger, then overtly with batons and bullets.

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
this has been history with Ruben. xoxo

ruben ferdinand🐌 ‏@urbanfriendden
it says so much entire states would scramble to quell three days of organisation after an old guy and some dock workers went “oh hell yeah”

Twitter, 9 februari 2017

https://twitter.com/urbanfriendden/status/829731968212463616