The Netherlands: 1 May statement

We share the translation of the Statement by the Communist Committee of the Netherlands.

On the First of May, we join the international proletariat in commemorating a legacy born in the flames of class struggle—from the matyrs of the Dutch resistance against the German fascists, to the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, to the guerrilla fighters waging People’s War across the globe today. This is not a holiday. This is not a parade. This is a day of rebellion, a day to raise the red flag of revolution and declare our undying commitment to the overthrow of imperialism, capitalism, feudal remnants, and all reaction.

In the imperialist core, in the belly of the beast, we stand amid a deepening crisis. The illusion of peace, of social progress within the system, is collapsing. Beneath the painted surface of “democracy” and “human rights”, the Dutch state remains what it has always been: a machinery of class oppression, racism, and global imperialist parasitism.

We call on the working class and the oppressed in the Netherlands to wake up from the stupor of reformism. The old road is dead. The revolutionary road must be taken.

The Dutch proletariat today suffers under the growing contradictions of late capitalism. Even in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the working class is squeezed, suffocated, and alienated.

Wages stagnate while inflation devours every euro. Workers in logistics, healthcare, education, and delivery are overworked and underpaid. The gig economy chains a new generation to platforms with no rights and no security. Pension reforms and austerity slash into hard-won gains from past struggles. Young people face a future of insecure housing, climate collapse, and endless war.

And yet, while we toil, the ruling class feasts. Shell, Philips, ING—all built from stolen labor and colonial plunder—expand their profits. Dutch imperialism continues to exploit the Global South, export arms to fascist regimes, and greenwash its global crimes through corporate climate conferences and phony sustainability campaigns.

Migrant workers—especially from Eastern Europe—face the most brutal forms of exploitation. These workers, essential to the functioning of agriculture, construction, and services, are treated as disposable. The bourgeoisie fuels xenophobia and Islamophobia to divide the class and hide the real enemy: the capitalist system itself.

Only the most hardened fool can believe that this system can be reformed. Only a new revolutionary path, forged by the proletariat and and its Communist leadership, can truly liberate the people.

The Dutch proletariat is not without a tradition of struggle. From the Red Aid networks of the 1930s to the heroic resistance to Nazi occupation, from the resistance against the colonial war in Indonesia to the squatters’ movement of the 1980s—workers and revolutionaries in this land have taken up arms before.

 But today, the working class stands disorganized, ideologically disarmed, and politically directionless.

Why?

 Because the Communist Party, as a militarized vanguard of the proletariat, no longer exists. The old revisionist parties have collapsed into opportunism, parliamentarism, and NGO politics. Revisionists and Oppurtunists offer no revolutionary science—only disorientation, tailism, and defeat. Without a reconstituted and ideologically unified Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, the class cannot fulfill its role as the gravedigger of capitalism. Therefore, the primary task of all revolutionaries in the Netherlands is the reconstitution of the Communist Party. This is not a matter of nostalgia—it is a matter of survival. Without revolutionary leadership, the masses will either be misled into reformism or descend into despair. The Party must rise again—not as a legal electoral vehicle, but as a fighting organization, capable of guiding the masses through revolutionary violence to the seizure of power.

This task requires years of ideological, political, and organizational struggle. 

We raise our fists in unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people, who continue to wage heroic resistance against the genocidal Zionist occupation. The recent massacres in Gaza, the expansion of illegal settlements, and the open ethnic cleansing in the west bank are not isolated incidents—they are the logical extension of a settler-colonial project backed by the imperialists.

Dutch weapons, surveillance technologies, and diplomatic cover all help sustain Israeli apartheid. The Dutch ruling class sends “humanitarian aid” with one hand and sells bullets with the other. This hypocrisy must be exposed and denounced. We support the Palestinian resistance in all its forms—especially its revolutionary, armed expressions that refuse to surrender to negotiations, normalization, or imperialist schemes.

The liberation of Palestine will come through people’s war, not through peace talks with the oppressor. And we call on all comrades in the Netherlands to actively build anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist resistance within our own borders: through agitation, sabotage, and organizing against Dutch imperialist complicity.

The road to power is not paved by elections, petitions, or NGOs. It is paved by revolutionary violence. From India to the Philippines, from Peru to Turkey, the masses are proving the universality of People’s War, the military-political strategy applied by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties around the globe. These are not distant struggles. They are our struggles. They demonstrate that revolution is not a dream—it is a scientific process grounded in reality. They show the absolute necessity of a militarized, clandestine Communist Party leading the masses in protracted warfare against the state.

We study these People’s Wars, support them, and prepare ourselves for the day when this path becomes a reality here. To those who call this madness, we say: what is more insane—fighting for liberation or accepting a dying world of exploitation, war and genocide?

Let this May Day be a clarion call—not to mourn, not to vote for bourgouis parties but to organize in the streets, in the factories, in the neighborhoods and in the schools. Let us build a revolutionary movement rooted in the masses, guided by Maoism, and oriented toward the seizure of state power. We make no promises of comfort. We offer change through revolution.

Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
Reconstitute the Communist Party of the Netherlands!
Down with Dutch Imperialism!
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!

Workers of the World, Unite!

Communist Committee of the Netherlands – National Leadership
25th of April, 2025