1. Before the Storm
The result of the Revolutions of 1848in Prussiahad been that the bourgeoisie
had simply become subordinate to the old feudal order of the state.
Imperial Germanywas a patchwork of smaller kingdoms that simply accepted
Prussianrule. Each locality had its own form of government but was ultimately
subordinate to the Reich.
The bourgeoisie was initially quite hostile to Imperial Germany but Bismarck
worked to change that attitude.
The SPDwas, originally, "revolutionary in theory, gradualist in practice."
The SPDofficially accepted Marxismat the 1891 Erfurt Congress, yielding the
Erfurt program. The Erfurt program contained "minimum demands and maximum
principles."
The party had become increasingly conservative as it went from being radical to
having paid functionaries doing daily, non-revolutionary activities. This
administrative strata of party officials came to be the conservatising force
within the party, bringing the party to a standstill when it came to
revolutionary activity.
Imperial Germanyin the months leading up to the First World Warwas a seemingly
stable society, though after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed, it appeared
that Germany was not so stable.
2. 4 August 1914
Karl Liebknechtwas the first member of the SPDto violate party discipline and
voice his opposition to the war credits (First World Warvote. Later, others
included Rosa Luxemburgand Clara Zetkin By 1915 German enthusiasm for the war
had already started to wain.
The scene has fundamentally changed. The six week march to Paris has become a
world drama. Mass murder has become a boring monotonous daily business, and yet
the final solution is not one step nearer. Bourgeois rule is caught in its own
trap, and cannot ban the spirits that it has invoked… Gone is the ecstasy.
Gone are the patriotic street demonstrations, the chase after suspicious looking
automobiles, the false telegrams, the cholera poisoned wells. Gone the excesses
of a spy hunting population, the coffee shops with their deafening patriotic
songs… The show is over… No more do trains filled with reservists pull out
amid the joyous cries of enthusiastic maidens. We no longer see their laughing
faces, smiling cheerily at the people from train windows. They trot through the
streets quietly, with their sacks on their shoulders. And the public, with a
disturbed face, goes about its daily tasks.
—- Rosa Luxemburg as quoted by the author
As the First World Warwent on, daily life for most German workers became
nightmarish. All the progress that they had made was evaporated by the war.
The right Social Democratic arguments for the war were that it was a defensive
war against "Tsarism."
In 1917, 200,000 workers went on strike due to a cut in the bread ration.
In November 1917 the 1917 October Revolutionoccurred, denouncing the Tsarist
government, exposing the secret cables that led to the war, and renounced
Tsarist Russia's colonial possessions.
Towards the end of the war German and Austrian troops were floating the idea of
a general strike to prevent the war from going on any longer. The SPD on the
German side, only seemed to muddle the situation, as it seems that the workers
had more radical demands than the SPD.
What attitude toward the war did I find in the leading circles of Austrian
Social Democrats? Some were quite obviously pleased with it… These were really
nationalists, barely disguised under the veneer of a socialist culture which was
now melting away as fast as it could… Others, with Victor Adler at their head,
regarded the war as an external catastrophe which they had to put up with. Their
passive waiting, however, only served as a cover for the active nationalist
wing.
—- Leon Trotsky as quoted by the author
Three factions developed within the Social Democratic movement: the left, e.g.
Rosa Luxemburgand Karl Liebknecht the center: Karl Kautsky and the right, the
pro-war leadership.
During the war, breaking with what they felt was a conservative streak in the
SPD Rosa Luxemburg Karl Liebknecht and others formed the Spartakus League
Altogether in the summer of 1918 there were probably three or four thousand
revolutionary socialists in the whole of Germany. They had no united
organisation, no tradition of working within a common discipline, no way at
arriving at an agreed strategy or tactics, no mechanism for selecting from among
themselves leaders who were reliable and had cool heads. Yet these
revolutionaries were about to enter one of the most intense periods of class
struggle in the history of capitalism.
The German Revolutionbegan with sailors in Kiel refusing orders to deploy.
3. The November Revolution
After the events in Kiel, worker's councils took power in the north west of
Germany.
The SPDactively opposed the sailor insurrection at Kiel and condemned it.
In Berlin, the Reich believed that it would be spared from violence, as the army
could theoretically suppress any revolutionary movement. What they didn't count
on was the soldiers of Berlin joining the revolution! A crowd overpowered the
capital and the socialists took control of Berlin on November 6th.
In the aftermath of the takover of the government, the only institutions that
had power were the worker's and soldier's councils.
The SPDrushed into the action to take control of the situation, and on November
10th a "revolutionary government" was formed. It was headed by the same people
who had just a few days earlier worked to suppress the revolution. The SPD
organized a revolutionary assembly and proclaimed Germany a socialist republic.
Within a week the revolution had broken out all over Germany. Demonstrations and
meetings of workers were held. But there was no longer any threat. They were
festivals of friendship. Red flags flew, red ribbons flaunted in buttonholes,
and faces laughed. It was as if the dim, rainy November days had turned into
spring. Everyone bathed in mutual trust. The revolution had begun, and it had
begun with a universal fraternisation of the classes.
—- P FrΓΆlich, as quoted by the author
4. Days of worker's power
In the days of the November revolution soldiers formed soldiers' councils, which
sprang up spontaneously.
It was clear in the early days of the revolution that, although the German state
was controlled by councils, those councils were confused about what they
intended to do.
The SPDworked to curtail the movement of councils so as to reign in and crush
its power. They also looked for support in the bureaucrats of the Kaiser's
state, keeping judges, officers, teachers, etc. in their posts.
On the second day of the revolution in Berlin, 10 November, Ebert had been
confirmed in power by the stormy meeting of workersβ and soldiersβ delegates in
the Circus Busch. Shortly afterwards he was confirmed in power in a quite
different way. He received a phone call from General Groener, who told him that
the Imperial High Command would recognise the government.
βWhat do you expect of us?β Ebert asked. βField Marshal Hindenberg expects the
government to support the officer corps in maintaining strict discipline and
strict order in the army.β βWhat else?β βThe officer corps expects that the
government will fight against Bolshevism and places itself at the disposal of
the government for such a purpose.β Ebert asked Groener to pass on βthe
governmentβs thanks to the Field Marshalβ.9
Hindenberg had exercised a virtual military dictatorship in the last two years
of the war. Now Ebert was pledging to maintain control over the armed forces for
him and the rest of the old officer caste. Fourteen years later they were to use
this control to install Hitlerin power.
In December there was an attempted coup and counter-revolution by the military,
though the military was split on how it felt about the SPD being in power, so it
collapsed.
The revolutionary government attempted to form a red guardout of the security
forces around Berlin, though the SPDfought this since they felt that it would
scare the bourgeois parties.
The Freikorps an officer corps who mostly came from aristocratic backgrounds
and highly-trained soldiers, called stormtroopers, had nothing to lose in the
revolution and therefore were staunchly anti-revolutionary.
On 22 December the Social Democrat government agreed that one of the imperial
generals, MΓ€rcher, should organise these officers and stormtroopers into a
highly paid mercenary force, the Freikorps.
βMost of the leaders were monarchist in spirit. Conspicuously lacking were the
moderate, organised workersβ.16 After seeing the Freikorps on the march, the
conservative historian Meinecke commented, βIt was as if the old order rose
again.β
Yet when he first saw these troops on parade on 4 January, the Majority Social
Democrat Noske turned to Ebert and said, βJust be calm. Everything is going to
be all right again.β
In December of 1918, delegates from the Spartakus Leagueand independent left
radicals formed the first fully independent communist party in Germany, the KPD
In contrast to the Bolsheviks the Spartakus Leaguewere somewhat suspicious of
trade unions, and were impatient of their growth and coming to the political
scene.
Friedrich Eberthad been in charge of the German state since the takeover,
though he was losing ground. He enlisted the help of the Freikorpsto help him
keep power.
Ebertand the SPDfelt that they had to make the first move against the
Spartakists who they feared would stage a coup themselves.
Rosa Luxemburgfelt that the demand to overthrow the Ebert government was simply
a rallying cry.
In December the Spartakistsand the Independent Social Democratic Partyagreed
that the Ebert government had to go. The Spartakistsoccupied several important
buildings throughout Berlin. This period of the revolution is known as the
Spartakist Uprising
The government managed to blame the Spartakistsfor the unrest in Berlin in
December and January.
The Revolutionary Committee of the Spartakistswas too uncoordinated, and once
they realized the government wasn't going to collapse, they opened negotiations.
The French Jacobinspointed out that βthose who half make a revolution dig their
own gravesβ, and Karl Marxreiterated the point when he argued that βthe
defensive is the death of any insurrectionβ. An uprising can only succeed if
the masses feel they have a chance of success. They are not drilled military
formations, trained to maintain their ranks in retreat as in advance. They are
men and women who will give their all if they believe they are going to achieve
liberation, but who will quickly disperse and drift back to their normal,
hum-drum lives in the factory, the tenement, the pub, if they feel that that
objective has been abandoned. A revolutionary movement that is sure of victory
will forget everything else. But the moment the leaders acknowledge that the old
order is to continue, by negotiating with it, the rank and file will begin to
worry about their jobs, their homes, the attitude of the foreman and the local
policeman. Even under the best conditions, negotiations with the enemy mean that
support begins to crumble. This was what happened now. A bad situation for the
revolutionaries was turned into an appaling one.
Rosa Luxemburgwas opposed to the actions of the Spartakist Uprising though,
having been put in that position by Karl Liebknecht she worked to carry out the
uprising.
Ebertgave the command to the Freikorpsto march on Berlin and crush both the
SPDsoldiers as well as the Spartakists The violence was attributed to the
Spartakistsand even the SPDcalled for their deaths.
On January 16th, 1919 Rosa Luxemburgand Karl Liebknechtwere captured and
killed in Berlin.
The Berlin proletariat was sacrificed to the carefully calculated and artfully
executed provocation of the government of the day. The government sought the
opportunity to deal the revolution its death blow; the January movement offered
this opportunity.
—- Eichhorn, deposed revolutionary police chief, as quoted by the author
In the author's opinion the biggest problem with Rosa Luxemburgwas that her and
her party did not have the power of the masses behind them.
A key difference between the Bolshevik seizure of powerand the German
Revolution was that the Bolsheviks were incapable of holding the masses back,
unlike the SPD They were more unified than the German socialists, and were able
to mobilize the mases.
6. The months of civil war
The SPDwas extremely popular even throughout the revolution, and many workers
were sympathetic to it and helped it crush the revolution.
The government used the Freikorpsto crush not only any revolutionary sentiment,
but worker sentiment in general across Germany.
The Bremen Soviet Republic after existing for only 25 days, was crushed by the
Freikorps
The situation in the Ruhr developed more or less organically. Miners began
unofficial strikes for six hour work days, and began fighting with official
trade unions once those strikes broke out.
The behaviour of the Freikorps worried even one of their own generals. MΓ€rcher
wrote to his superior LΓΌttwitz on 25 January:
In actual fact the population of Berlin were kept for ten days in terror of
their lives by irresponsible elements of the Freikorps. The latter are becoming
a danger to the capital and I consider it quite probable that before long
fighting will take place between the various korps.
One historian has claimed, on the other hand, that sections of the Freikorps
began to hesitate in the execution of their duties:
The experience of firing on German workers, of searching their flats for arms
and facing the hate-filled glances of the workers in the streets, was too much
even for the Freikorps. Their officers became alarmed at the change in the
attitude of the troops and abruptly pulled them out of the capital.
7. The Bavarian Socialist Republic
In 1918, Kurt Eisner, the founder of the Bavarian SPD, was murdered.
The government in Bavaria was extremely unstable, and the German communists
managed to seize power briefly for six days before losing control again. Out of
the failure of the first republic, the workers' councils formed a council
republic, thereby creating the Bavarian Socialist Republic.
The Bavarian Socialist Republic formed independently of the events in Berlin, and
wanted nothing to do with the Reich government.
After about two months, the Freikorpsentered Bavaria and executed as many
communist revolutionaries as they could find, ending the Bavarian Socialist
Republic.
8. Balance of the first year
By the summer of 1919 the power of the SPD was beginning to wain, as much of
Germany saw that the cause for so much disorder was the Freikorps.
Germany's industry had been decimated by the First World War production had
been halved and working conditions were getting worse. Meanwhile, strikes shot
up. The Social Democratsworked to break these strikes.
The process of movement from βdemocraticβ and βsocial democraticβ ideologies to
revolutionary socialism was by no means as complete everywhere as in Hamborn.
Different traditions and different struggles interacted in different parts of
Germany to produce differing degrees of radicalisation.
There is always a relation between the readiness of people to envisage social
change and the possibilities of success in the struggle for it. An experience of
successful struggle opens the minds of large numbers of workers to the notion
that their class can go further and revolutionise society. By contrast,
struggles that end in defeat can all too easily rob such ideas of any
credibility. People feel that if they cannot act together to change small
things, then they certainly cannot change big ones. Even people who previously
believed in a total transformation of society can retreat. As a defeated,
demoralised class fights among itself for day-to-day survival, former
revolutionaries can all too easily come to think that the best that can be done
is to cling to what is rather than fight for what might be.
Hence it is that after any great revolutionary period, only a minority of the
participants continue to adhere to explicit, thought out revolutionary theories.
The rest will be won back to such ideas only when they gain new credibility from
fresh achievements of collective struggle.
At the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the SPDbelieved in the benevolence
of the Allied powers. However it was clear that the Allies would not let Germany
off the hook so easily, and so the SPD sided with the nationalists and voted for
the treaty. The SPD was trying to avoid revolution at home.
9. The Kapp putsch 1920
The Kapp putsch was an event whereby a group of right-wing generals marched into
Berlin and declared the government overthrown. Such generals included Pabst, the
one that had helped kill Rosa Luxemberg, and the general that had crushed the
Bavarian Soviet.
The putsch was successful in terms of controlling the government, however the
military could not keep control given the sheer mass of striking workers.
The Social Democratic government struggled to adequately deal with this problem.
Their lack of action caused a rift with their long-established trade union
relationship, and many of the putschists went unpunished.
During all this the KPDdid not do anything of note. This is perhaps another
example of the masses being more revolutionary than parties
10. The March madness of 1921
In April of 1920, splitting with the KPD the KAPDwas formed (Communist Workers
Party). The KAPD has a reputation for being "ultra-left#34;.
The KPD hurt many of its chances to take revolutionary action by not having a
clear and direct plan, and frequently it alienated its membership when it did
take action.
The central question dividing communists in 1921 was whether or not to take
immediate action or to wait for the masses.
11. Year of crisis 1923
It was in 1923 that Germany seemed as though it were at the end of its history.
This was the year that Germany experienced runaway inflation the mythological
kind you often hear about.
The inflation crisis ended up undoing all the gains the workers had made in the
revolution of 1918.
It was in this time period too that the nationalist right in Germany began to
emerge: The Allies began ask for reparations and the government, which could not
afford the Versailles reparations, said 'no'. France invaded Germany and
nationalist rallies were held across the country. Nationalist sentiment was as
high as it had been in 1914. It was in this nationalist fervor that a nascent
Nazi partybegan to gain prominence. The Nazis were also used to control the
left and the workers.
The KPD gained some power back in this period too, organizing strike actions and
winning over union members.
12. The hot summer
In the summer of 1923 there were formations of workers' defense organizations
called the "Proletarian Hundreds" which were a bulwark against the rising right
wing. They were only sometimes associated with the KPDand organized
spontaneously.
Inflation continued to skyrocket during the summer of 1923. This led to a wave
of strikes.
National Communism was born in this time.
Many of those who since attacked this policy have identified it with the
National Bolshevism of Laufenberg (the Hamburg βleft Communistβ) which Radek
himself had bitterly denounced in 1919, and with the National Communism preached
by the Stalinised Communist Party of the early 1930s. Both of these made
considerable concessions to the Nazisβ own ideologyβand in the 1930s there was
also a tendency to a rabid nationalist phraseology that had little to do with
working class internationalism. The tone of the Communist statements of 1923 was
very different.
The Communist leaders did not grasp this. They pursued an
aggressive united front policyβbuilding the Hundreds, the Control Committees,
the factory councils, and drawing under the influence of the party many
previously Social Democratic workers. But they did these things on a purely
defensive basis, without preparing their party to use the positions won in the
defensive struggle to go over to the offensive.
The party was taken by surprise by the May-June strike wave: as we have seen, it
took it four days to intervene effectively in the Ruhr strike. This need not in
itself have mattered. It is often the case that the spontaneous militancy of
workers takes established leaders, even revolutionary leaders, by surprise. But
even when the party had grasped that a new militancy was developing, its posture
was still defensive. It seemed to be embarrassed by the militancy of the
Hundreds in the Ruhrβpossibly because of the influence within them of
syndicalists and former members of the KAPD. And it urged an early ending of the
strike, without noticing the pressure for action that was growing elsewhere in
Germany.
When strikes did break out elsewhere, the party certainly did its best to
encourage them. But Rote Fahne, for example, did not give the impression that
the party leadership realised there had been a qualitative change in the mood of
the class. Indeed, there seems to have been a lessening of party activity during
the strike wave compared with the beginning of May, when there had been a series
of big propaganda meetings and mass demonstrations by the party in
Berlin.
13. The German October
The revolution approaching in Germany is the most important international event
of our time. The victory of the German Revolution will be still more important
for the proletariat of Europe and America than was the Russian Revolution of six
years ago. The victory of the German Revolution will transfer the centre of
world revolution from Moscow to Berlin…
—- Stalin
The abortive uprising in 1923 marks the end of the German Revolution
14. Legacy of defeat
Ultimately the ruling class of Germany betrayed the SPD for the Nazi party.
Those who had believed in capitalism with a human face, in βthe orderly march
towards socialisationβ, in βthe anchoring of the councils in the constitutionβ,
only ensured that all Europe was subjected to a medieval barbarism armed with
the monstrous devices of modern technology.
The KPD, rather than continue revolution, aligned themselves with the SPD.
The degeneration had come full circle. The whole world has had to pay the price.
