Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  At the very most this decree will enable the government to rob a few unfortunate holders of small amounts of currency, to assist some shady stock exchange vendettas, and to foster a demagogic agitation around some prosecutions which will be useful to citizen Hilferding.

  A truth of Herr Stinnes

  Under no obligation to cultivate the bluff of the taxation measures introduced by Stresemann and Hilferding, the journalists getting paid by Stinnes are continuing their direct campaign against the working class.

  Under the headline “Truth,” an “important figure writing anonymously” recently stated in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (leading article of September 8) that “to claim that Germany can be rescued from its current dangerous situation by taxing the propertied classes is a lie.” For the truth is that “the German people must work at least two hours more, with at least the same intensity as before the war.” In so many words.

  This is the viewpoint of business circles who don’t want to pay. Their resistance to taxes is growing, taking on varied aspects. On September 3 and 4, Berlin markets were completely out of butter and fats. The landowners in Herr Helfferich’s party107 don’t want to sell them for paper money and are thus showing the government their disapproval of its taxation policy. The Bavarian industrialists are protesting against the new tax laws. The Saxon farmers too. In Bavaria, the whole of public opinion has been mobilized to this end. We should remember that the taxes on capital whose repeal they are demanding were voted for under Cuno on the eve of the last general strike in an atmosphere of growing anxiety. When the factory committees grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, the German bourgeoisie shouted out: “All right, I’ll pay.” But citizens Hilferding and Severing have soothed its fears. It is tightening its purse strings once more. It has lost sight of the fact that, despite being sometimes legally dissolved, the factory committees are nonetheless a little stronger every day.

  Journeys

  Herr Stresemann has gone to exchange compliments with Herr von Knilling, head of the pro-fascist Bavarian government. Herr Hitler, the Bavarian sub-Mussolini, the most competent person to organize the next fascist coup, has come unhindered to Berlin to confer with the nationalist orator Reinhold Wulle. Herr Stinnes and Herr Hindenburg108 are visiting Ludendorff at his home in Ludwigshöhe (in Bavaria, of course). A reactionary plot is being hatched.

  However, Sedan Day (September 2)109 has been a defeat for fascism. It didn’t show itself on the streets anywhere, except at Nuremberg, where although there was an impressive mobilization—nearly a 100,000 demonstrators, one worker killed—the action was considered a failure for various reasons, notably because of internal disagreements that came into the open on this occasion.

  All the severity of the Great Coalition is reserved for the revolutionaries—whose movements have been eventful in a different way. A local congress of factory committees was due to be held on Sunday (September 9) in Berlin. Severing banned it. Five hundred workers’ delegates then took the train and met at Velten, where the political police came to move them on. The congress was concluded in the open air. The police from the social democratic ministry110 arrived too late and attacked local militants, some of whom were arrested. It sounds like an account of a clandestine congress of Russian revolutionaries before 1917. The methods used against the labor movement by citizen Severing did not work for Tsarism. Will they bring good fortune to the party of Noske and Hilferding?

  In the social democracy

  While Stresemann and Hilferding are quietly capitulating to M. Poincaré and preparing to form, with the Comité des Forges,111 a powerful Franco-German syndicate for the exploitation of the German proletariat from which they expect their salvation, the dollar has gloriously risen above a 100 million marks and social democratic workers, ever more anxious, ever more indignant, are wondering what their leaders are doing in the Great Coalition government.

  The internal crisis of the SPD is developing quite rapidly. On September 7, the leading militants in the social democratic organization in Berlin, after having heard reports from citizen minister Severing and the former USPD member Crispien, voted for a thoroughly subversive motion which noted the ineffectiveness of the Great Coalition, demanded a break with class collaboration politics, the exclusion of those leaders who advocated such a policy and the formation of a socialist government…

  The Berlin “Mensheviks” are coming on well! M. Renaudel112 will blush at belonging to the same international as these social democratic “office-holders” who have clearly come too much under the influence of Communist agitation. Their attitude should not surprise us. These militants are in contact with the masses, with people on the streets. And the movement which is taking the masses forward is irresistible. (And that is precisely why Stresemann and Hilferding don’t want to delay the capitulation by a single hour.) Elsewhere, Saxon social democrats are demanding the expulsion from the party of citizen…Ebert. They’re damn right. But who would have thought it?

  In Thuringia…

  In Thuringia, the social democratic Frölich113 cabinet is on its way out, forced to resign by the Communists. It was a curious situation. The SPD had 22 seats in the Thuringian Landtag; the bourgeois parties had 26 and the Communists six. However, these six—representing the most conscious and energetic working-class element, and backed up for some time by the most advanced of the SPD workers—held the balance. The Frölich government was not so much vicious as cowardly. By overthrowing it, the Communists have got the Thuringian SPD leaders cornered. Either they too will form a Great Coalition—which their own supporters don’t want—or else they will have to resign themselves to carrying out a genuinely socialist policy, with the support of the masses and of the KPD. A terrible choice for the old reformists who are comfortably settled in—action or discredit!

  …not a halfpenny!

  The pro-fascist Bavarian government has decidedly not forgiven the Berlin rulers for having voted for the taxes of fear on the eve of the general strike, the first taxes aimed at the propertied classes voted through since the victory of the social democratic counterrevolution in 1918-19. The von Knilling government has announced that it will stand as the “defender of the true interests of the German economy,” and demands moderations, reductions, special exceptions, delays, in short the cancellation of the new tax legislation without it even being very well disguised. Like Stinnes, it sees no salvation except in the intensification of labor. Fascist Bavaria has thus in no uncertain terms put itself at the head of the movement of protest by the bourgeoisie against the new taxes, and solemnly identifies the sabotage of these taxes with the “higher interest of the nation.”

  At least its policy has one advantage over that of Hilferding, namely honesty.

  The Kölnische Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt have joined forces to denounce the “scandalous immorality” of the Ruhr profiteers, highly patriotic traders and industrialists who have used the millions (in gold) which Herr Cuno generously gave them to support passive resistance for buying foreign currency. The scandal, it is said, is only just beginning. We can bet that citizen Hilferding will hush it up.

  The propertied classes—including the Ruhr profiteers—don’t want to let go of a single halfpenny. Herr Stresemann had better hurry up and capitulate so they can shelter their safes behind the tanks of General Degoutte! Time is running out.

  Continuing inflation was leading to outbreaks of popular violence, to which

  the authorities, local and national, responded with brutal repression. In

  Bavaria the extreme right was growing ever stronger.

  The Sorau massacre

  Correspondance internationale, September 22, 1923

  Sorau, a small industrial town in Lausitz, has just (September 15) been the scene of a massacre. Workers there are on short time. Just recently they were receiving wages of nine to fifteen million marks a week, that is, a third, a quarter or a fifth of one dollar. The disturbances began in the market and ended (?) with a massacre. There are tw
elve dead, including two women, and several dozen injured. Noske’s Vorwärts indignantly relates that the mayor of Sorau, urged by workers’ representatives to withdraw the police stationed on the public square, replied: “I take full responsibility.” The words are well chosen. German mayors today have got guts. But I like the way Vorwärts gets so indignant. Isn’t this gentleman a social democrat?

  The Sorau massacre has occurred at the very moment when we learn that the social democrats in Thuringia have decided to negotiate with the KPD about the formation of a workers’ government. Red patches are growing across the map of Germany. But to make sure than they are genuinely red, the bourgeoisie is soaking them in blood. But when it does that to make it last, when each of its crimes produces the counterweight, if not the backlash, of a Communist victory, then the great settling of accounts is at hand…

  Herr von Knilling threatens

  Herr von Knilling is the Bavarian prime minister who has the job of filling in the gap until the restoration of King Rupprecht114 or the advent of a Hitler. Herr von Knilling carries out his duties conscientiously, and not without a certain arrogance. Under his rule, the various Bavarian fascist organizations are able to infringe, openly and with impunity, the emergency legislation for the defense of the republic. Anti-Semitism is flourishing in Munich to such an extent that the newspapers recently reported the scandal of the expulsion from Bavaria of a foreign Jewish child adopted by Jews who had long been settled in Munich. Several large fascist mobilizations like those which took place in Nuremberg at the beginning of this month have gone ahead with the cooperation of the state railways. However, German citizens in the rest of the Reich cannot travel freely into this state which is part of the federation that makes up their own country.115 Moreover, shady deals are being arranged between the leaders of Bavarian nationalism and the agents of the rival imperialisms in Britain and France, agents assigned to the most obscure tasks. Finally, to complete the main lines of this rapid sketch, let us remember that Bavaria has taken the lead in the protest movement of the propertied classes against the new taxes voted on the last day of the Cuno government.

  Herr Stresemann, having recently conferred in the most amicable fashion with Herr von Knilling, off the record notes he informed the German press of the complete agreement that had been reached between the leader of the Great Coalition and the official representative of the Bavarian reactionaries. This official optimism was exaggerated. The Stresemann-Hilferding government’s indulgence failed to disarm counter-revolutionary Bavaria, which is confident in its strength and is systematically preparing for civil war.

  On Sunday, September 16, Herr von Knilling made a speech in Munich to a mass meeting of a peasants’ league, a speech which can be interpreted as a declaration of war against the Great Coalition couched in scarcely courteous terms, or else as a vigorous attempt at political extortion directed against it.

  Herr von Knilling stated that the Stresemann-Hilferding government “should not expect to find in Bavaria the same kind of support that Herr Cuno received.” South German fascism had much greater sympathy for the great squanderer of the Reich’s gold reserves and the accomplice of the Ruhr profiteers! If necessary, Bavaria is determined to pursue “its own food supply policy.” It will also have no fear of resorting to a tax strike. But it has no separatist intentions…of course not! However, “if the conflict in the Ruhr were resolved in a manner that was unacceptable to Bavaria, it would be prepared for all eventualities.” The turn of phrase is deliberately vague and can be interpreted as one wishes. Even in the case of a left wing dictatorship, Bavaria would not secede from the Reich, but it would “strengthen its links with all the healthy elements in the other German states” in order to crush the enemy within. “Two irreconcilably hostile ways of thought are confronting each other in Germany: the national Christian and the international Marxist.” The salvation of Germany lies in the triumph of the former. Not, perish the thought, through civil war, but “by such a strengthening of the patriotic movement than the anti-national tendencies can no longer show their face…” This is how Herr von Knilling understands the preservation of national unity and social peace!

  Yet he is neither a contemptible joker nor a crude specious reasoner. He speaks on behalf of reactionary elements, the masters of Southern Germany, armed for the class war, ready to begin fighting, inspired by the most profound contempt for democratic hypocrisy, a contempt which they are willing to express aloud with only the strict minimum of rhetorical precautions.

  On the streets of Berlin

  You can’t walk a hundred meters on the streets of Berlin without encountering the same sights of poverty. It grips the whole street. Every day, outside the shops there are gatherings for endless hours of women, children, old men, unemployed, penniless housewives, servants. They queue for milk (which is often totally unavailable), for potatoes (also in short supply), and for margarine (which traders have stopped selling for a day, while awaiting a profitable price rise). They are queuing as they did during the war, but with less resignation and in infinitely worse conditions.

  Less resignation, for no egalitarian measures, no rationing obliges the rich to put up with the slightest fraction of the present deprivation. In infinitely worse conditions, because of the frantic stock exchange gambling which is one of the main causes of the famine. In the marketplaces, stallholders only start selling after 11am, when they have had the first news from the stock exchange. They get messages informing them hour by hour of the rate of the dollar, each increase in which immediately determines a general price rise…

  The worker has received his wages on Saturday, say 100 million, when the dollar was worth 30 or 40. A good wage for a skilled worker. He thinks he has three dollars to spend for the week and it’s scarcely half or a third of what he needs. On the Monday, his partner goes to the market: no milk, no eggs, no potatoes, no vegetables. The market gardeners are waiting, before selling, for Tuesday’s stock exchange figures. By Tuesday the dollar has doubled, and prices have risen even more. Our housewife can scarcely buy a third of what she was hoping for. She has quite openly been robbed of two thirds of her week’s money.

  I’m passing close to a wretched queue outside a shop in a poor district. Thirty women. Threadbare shawls with holes and darns. Gnarled old hands. Faces marked by weariness and suffering. Their irritated voices make a low, continuous murmur. The shopkeeper has put his prices up three times in a single morning. There’s one continuous shout: “Smash his face in.”

  But there are two green policemen, with polished peaked hats, chinstraps, and revolvers in their belts just three steps away from the starver’s counter.

  “Hilferding and Stresemann,” a young worker calls, mockingly, as he passes. People laugh. You can laugh with hatred.

  Further on, reading a poster, there is another bunch of people, discussing. The municipal authorities are increasing the price of gas with retrospective effect for the last 15 days, and calculating it in gold at the current rate of the dollar (150 million today).

  An old gentleman, looking like a longserving office worker, takes off his pince-nez and says sententiously: “Rogues.”

  I get into conversation with another old gentleman. After a moment he declares: “It’s clear. That’s the way we’ll have to go!”

  “Which way?”

  “The same way as the Russians, of course!”

  It really is clear. Very clear indeed, if this reasonable gentleman, this worthy gawper on the Wilhelmstrasse can see it too.

  The two little sentences he spoke to me are in the air. With minor variations, I heard them three times in the same morning.

  Newspapers cost a million, a tram ticket two million. The trams—although the number of lines running has been cut to thirty—are more or less empty. In the third-class carriages of the suburban trains you hardly see anybody reading a newspaper. A newspaper is a luxury. You read it over the shoulder of a more fortunate neighbor. To pass the time on the journey you bring some old novel
on paper yellowed by age…

  Yes, sir, very probably that is “the way we’ll have to go.”

  Murder of the hungry

  From one end of this hungry country to the other, there is a wave of disturbances. Strikes, looting of shops, uproar in the streets, volleys of shots fired… In Upper Silesia, the landowners are refusing food supplies to the mining districts. They aren’t happy with the new taxes. On Thursday (September 13), when the workers get their wages, all the shops are shut. At Beuthen, the poor people break down the grocers’ doors. The police of Stresemann and the SPD opens fire: seven dead, 30 wounded.

  Two days later, on September 15, brawls and volleys of shots at the Sorau marketplace: 12 killed, 46 injured.

  In the Grand Duchy of Baden the strike which began at Lorrach has spread. The authorities have responded by martial law. Thus far there have been three dead, several dozen wounded and 200 arrests. Because it stated that “the government is shooting down hungry workers” the Mannheim Arbeiterzeitung has been suspended for three months, at the request of the Interallied Commission.

  From Upper Silesia to the Rhine, this is a land of hunger, anger and despair. This is the land where they murder the starving.

  Starvation wages

  The inadequacy of wages is too blatant, the automatic theft from these derisory wages too flagrant, the impotence of the government too obvious. As obvious as its bad faith.