Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  Life is more expensive in Berlin than in Paris or New York. And the German worker is still paid in paper marks! The dictatorship of the reactionary army was truly necessary, above all in the eyes of SPD ministers!

  The great assault on the eight-hour day

  The great assault on the eight-hour day has been launched all down the line. For the last three days the cabinet crisis has been in the air. Chancellor Stresemann finally resigned yesterday evening (October 3) but was asked by President Ebert to form the new government. The crisis, announced 72 hours in advance by the nationalist organizations, became clear when Herr Scholz, leader of the parliamentary group of the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei)—he replaced the present chancellor as its leader—presented the three demands of the majority of his group, demands which were quite unacceptable to the SPD:1. Enlargement of the Great Coalition to include also the far right DNVP;

  2. An end to the eight-hour day;

  3. Resignation of the SPD ministers Hilferding and Radbruch.

  Herr Scholz also demanded that a conflict between Bavaria and the Reich should be avoided.

  Having thus been treated with contempt by the powerful party of the industrialists in the Great Coalition, the SPD showed itself as conciliatory as it could. Yesterday evening, Wednesday, a solution to the crisis was announced, with the SPD agreeing to dictatorial measures to increase production and to “minister Braun’s flexible formula” on the eight-hour day.

  In other words, in order to save themselves from being driven out of office, the SPD have agreed to vote for an enabling act giving exceptional powers to the government, which will give it the right to exercise a sort of dictatorship over labor; they have agreed to the suppression, scarcely concealed behind an ambiguous terminology, of the eight-hour day; to leave power in the hands of the counterrevolutionary Reichswehr and to stand back from any conflict with armed Bavaria, which is openly preparing its major military assault on proletarian Germany.

  It wasn’t enough. At the last moment, the bourgeois parties made a further effort to throw the SPD out of the government. And that is the point we have now reached.

  The situation is clear. Herr Cuno fell, driven out by the general strike at a moment when a threatening wave of strikes and riots was spreading across the whole of Germany and making the bourgeoisie tremble with fear. The bourgeoisie had to call the SPD to its assistance: without them, its rescue would have been in doubt. In great haste, in a memorably anguished session of the Reichstag, it voted for taxes on the propertied classes, the taxes of fear. Since then, its internal situation has improved. With the complicity of the SPD, it has capitulated to M. Poincaré and established the dictatorship of the generals at home. So now it doesn’t want to pay the taxes of fear. The SPD got it out of difficulties, but now is a nuisance. Armed with the dictatorial power of its generals, it would like to impose on labor the new efforts which are indispensable for the reconstruction of capitalist Germany. Kick out the socialists and a sharp turn to the right!

  The social democrats in the government are pretty spineless, but they can’t retreat too far without discrediting themselves in the eyes of their own party. Moreover, the treatment they are getting from the Gessler-von Kahr dictatorship in Bavaria is showing them what they can expect after a complete capitulation. For the law giving full economic and financial powers that the bourgeois parties need and that they want to use against the workers, with the support of the Reichswehr, and without even the formal control of SPD ministers, must be voted by a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. This means that without the votes of the SPD it cannot be passed in any circumstances. So either the bourgeois parties will come to an understanding with the SPD, which is willing to be obliging to anybody, or else the Reichstag will be dissolved and the bourgeois parties, the military dictatorship and the fascist nationalist gangs will probably try to impose their will on the working class outside of legal channels.

  Küstrin

  The Küstrin incident shows the level of overexcitement now reached by certain counter-revolutionary elements. Commander Buchrucker, leader of the ex-servicemen in the Stahlhelm association—the strongest fascist organization in central Germany—attempted, on the night of October 1, to capture the fortress and the town of Küstrin. For what purpose, good God! The courageous commander doubtless imagined that he was giving the whole of Germany the signal of deliverance, in other words civil war against the proletariat. (They call it, in the words of Herr von Kahr and Hitler, war against Marxism and the Jews: they avoid the word socialism, which Hitler uses in the demagogic propaganda of the National Socialist Party.) He was followed by several hundred men. The Reichswehr had no difficulty in restoring order (one man was killed). Numerous arrests were carried out, but the men of the Stahlhelm, who had come armed from the area around Küstrin, were able to withdraw without any problems.

  There is one remarkable detail. The first official communiqué in Berlin, now forgotten, about the brawl at Küstrin referred to a “national-Communist” riot. This official lie bore the trademark of Vorwärts. It appeared in the newspapers, alongside a decree from Herr Gessler, forbidding the publication of anything other than official information about such events. To prevent the spreading of false rumors…in future only official lies will be published.

  The reactionaries benefit from martial law—a great deal

  In Munich, von Kahr, merely imitating General Müller who is running red Saxony, has banned strikes and threatened to apply the death penalty for acts of sabotage. In Saxony, General Müller has suppressed Communist newspapers, Kämpfer in Chemnitz and Volksblatt in Gotha. The Reichswehr is massing in the vicinity of Berlin. We are assured that 2,000 machine guns have arrived at Spandau—and that the counterrevolution can count on 50,000 armed men in Berlin and the surrounding area (figures according to Klassenkampf).

  The cabinet crisis and the press campaign, spearheaded by Kölnische Zeitung and Stinnes’s major paper, Allgemeine Zeitung, prove that the aims of the bourgeoisie’s current offensive are, above all, economic. Its most urgent priority is the cancellation of the eight-hour day. It is interesting to note that on this point the German reactionaries are in absolute agreement with the French bourgeoisie. For months now Le Temps 132 has been pursuing a campaign for the lengthening of the working day in Germany—and also in France! While Herr Scholz was presenting his ultimatum to the SPD ministers, in Düsseldorf, general Degoutte was making known the conditions posed by the French for the resumption of work. And they are: repeal of the law on factory committees, the ten-hour day, etc. Stinnes, Scholz, Ludendorff, Degoutte and Primo de Rivera are all in complete agreement.

  Social Democracy judged by its allies

  It is curious to observe how social democracy is judged by the worthy German bourgeoisie, for whom, just a month ago, it performed such noteworthy service. A few days ago, under the signature “Ulysses,” the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung published an intriguing article entitled: “Germany and world revolution.” Let us quote a few lines from it: “As long as Germany was one of the dominant nations in the world, the idea of revolution remained suspect to it and was repugnant to its bourgeoisie. The latter left the revolutionary principle to the social democracy, which, as the representative of the rising classes, was able to exploit it very successfully. But since the SPD has ceased to be a socialist party and is only a bunch of petty bourgeois full of fear and hope, it has lost the idea of salvation through revolution, and that idea, that invigorating element, no longer exists in Germany. When the author of these lines tried to present the World War as a worldwide revolutionary upheaval and to deduce from this fact some practical conclusions for German politics, he came up against a complete lack of understanding on the part of the social democrats. Social democracy had already turned away from the dialectical revolutionary conception of history and was dreaming only of pacifism. […]

  “Thus when this great party entered the government in 1918, it could no longer add anything precious or original t
o the political life of the mind for the German bourgeoisie. We must remember the bitter disillusion of the German bourgeoisie after 1918, when faced with the impotence of the social democracy in all spheres. They did not understand it. They expected it to contribute fresh forces…which Germany needed so much: a bold revolutionary conception of world history which concludes from the wretchedness of the present that there must be something better in the future.”

  When it had to be, the bourgeoisie was able to be revolutionary. Even today, to maintain its dominance, to subdue the proletariat, it does not hesitate to slough off the old, to cast its democratic clothing away, and to establish dictatorships, to set up as a principle the everyday use of class violence. It is quite right to despise the degenerate socialism, which first of all frightened it, in which it thought it had found its master, and which is now crawling on its belly before it.

  When dealing with the Communists, its language is quite different: “Marxism is the mortal enemy of German culture,” says Herr von Kahr.

  For the last week rumors in Berlin have been promising a nation wide coup which was due to take place the day before yesterday, and which is now predicted for Friday… Apart from this expectation of a sudden action by right wing elements, martial law is hardly noticeable. General von Horn has not dared add to the normal persecution which the government dishes out to German workers. But isn’t it significant that there has never been so much talk of a reactionary coup as since Herr Gessler has had all political power in his hands?

  Small official posters prohibit the sale or distribution of the Communist papers Der Rote Kämpfer, Die Arbeiterfaust (The Red Fighter, The Worker’s Fist). Yet this morning the citizen of Berlin can read Klassenkampf (Class Struggle). Thus every day, despite the suppression of Die Rote Fahne, the KPD publishes a new paper, either improvised illegally on the spot, or printed in the provinces. Proceedings have begun against those writing and distributing Communist leaflets that have been duplicated by hand and given out in the factories. Just like in Russia under tsarism!

  Numerous Jewish families in Berlin have this week received threatening letters, signed by an “Anti-Semitic League,” announcing an imminent massacre of Jews in the course of which “not even children will be spared.” So there are people who think this is the way to save German capitalism!

  Léon Daudet advocates the same methods to regenerate French capitalism.

  Stresemann’s cabinet collapsed on October 3, but was reconstituted on a similar basis on October 6, though without the “Marxist” Hilferding. One of Stresemann’s main aims was to establish a ten-hour working day, thus destroying the basic gain of the 1918 revolution. Meanwhile “workers’ governments” (SPD-KPD coalitions) were established in Saxony (October 10) and Thuringia (October 13).

  Correspondance internationale, October 13, 1923

  The cabinet crisis has been resolved, probably for a short time only, by the formation of a new Stresemann cabinet. It was merely the expression of an attempt by the big bourgeoisie to take dictatorial powers legally—more or less—while making no secret of the intention to use them exclusively against the working class.

  In the Vossische Zeitung, Georg Bernhardt, who is by no stretch of the imagination a socialist, wrote quite explicitly: “Ultimately the question is who will pay the expenses of the last few months (the economic war in the Ruhr) and whether the stabilization of the German economy is to be accompanied by an extraordinary effort exclusively on the part of the working class.” In fact, all the efforts of the Center Party and the German Democratic Party to revive the Great Coalition, all the indulgences of the SPD, which is willing to effectively sacrifice the eight-hour day, have failed in the face of the indomitable determination of Stinnes’s party (the German People’s Party), which wants a right wing coalition with the DNVP and no longer wants a government that is either parliamentary or constitutional.

  In its opinion, the time has come for the dictatorship of the large employers. From today onwards, it is necessary to oblige the German people to work ten hours a day and to eat even less than they are eating now in order to pay the reparations, to pay the costs of passive resistance in the Ruhr—which has enriched the Rhineland industrialists and plenty of other swindlers—and to put German industry back on its feet so it can take its place in the international market. There is no way to impose such an effort on the working people of Germany—undernourished, overworked and embittered, while the best of them are conscious of their class interests—without a ruthless dictatorship whose immediate task would be to reduce all workers’ organizations to impotence, decimate the KPD and enforce a thoroughly Prussian labor discipline.

  This is what Herr Stinnes has long wanted. The great plutocrat, who during the war boasted of organizing the exploitation of occupied Belgium, and, after the war, came to an understanding with French capital (the Stinnes-de Lubersac agreement), has long been the promoter of a right wing, anti-working class, anti-democratic politics, which must begin by imposing the ten-hour day. During the cabinet crisis, of which he was one of the perpetrators, he was very visibly active in the Reichstag. On October 3 and 4, it was he who negotiated a resumption of relations between his German People’s Party and the DNVP. His newspaper—Die Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung—has been using a new language for the last few days. It speaks only of “revolutionary methods”—to be applied boldly by the employers—for the rebirth of Germany. It professes “joyous optimism and combativity that will irresistibly draw it towards the right and in which the sociologist will recognize evidence of the decomposition of the old parties.” In its number of October 4 it declares that it is “dealing with a work (of regeneration) which is primarily the responsibility of the parties of the right and which obviously cannot be carried out democratically or through parliament.” Do you recognize the language? Word for word it is the terminology of the fascist ideologists in Mussolini’s press.

  Die Zeit, inspired by Herr Stresemann himself, has envisaged the dissolution of the Reichstag and the exercise of extra-parliamentary power: bourgeois dictatorship without any mask.

  A manifesto from the landowners demands a “fresh start,” getting rid of social democratic influence, and the formation of a bourgeois government including the nationalists; it promises that if this is not done, “there will be torrents of blood.” Meanwhile the Bavarian government has sent Berlin a telegram demanding the alleviation and revision of taxes on the propertied classes. The same day, in Saxony, General Müller banned until further notice the publication of all Communist papers.

  Interregnum

  The patching up has been arduous, but it has finally succeeded. The Great Coalition of the bourgeois parties and SPD has been reformed, without citizen Hilferding, who really was too incompetent. Right up to the last moment, the thing seemed impossible. There was talk of a “directory”133 of six bourgeois, of a purely bourgeois coalition, of a dissolution of the Reichstag, of a right wing dictatorship… What new factor has come to modify the course of events? A mass of things are happening behind the scenes. We can simply note that:Herr Stinnes, according to the revelations of Germania (Catholic), decided on the crisis a few days before it broke out—the association of employers in the iron and steel industry—equivalent to the Comité des Forges—the Verband Eisen-und Stahlindustriellen—has, like some landowners and Stinnes’s newspaper, persistently proclaimed the end of parliamentary politics and a right wing dictatorship;

  The center parties (DDP and Catholic) did their utmost to revive the Great Coalition;

  The social democrats sacrificed Hilferding and the eight-hour day.

  At the last moment the bourgeoisie backed off in the face of the threat of civil war. The permanent class conciliators came out on top.

  The impotence of the Stresemann-Robert Schmidt government remains total in the face of the victorious rise of the dollar, the arrogance of the Bavarian reactionaries, the demands of the kings of mine and ironworks, of bank and press.

  It can do nothing but
worship the dollar, capitulate to Munich, and serve capital, a churlish master that is preparing to dismiss it tomorrow. There is only one new claim in the programmatic statement of the chancellor, made on October 6 to the Reichstag:

  “[…] To intensify production, we shall appeal to the goodwill of the workers, and, if need be, to the law.”

  The compromise formula, accepted by the social democrats, states in effect, after having discussed technical improvements, that a “new set of regulations concerning working hours will be drawn up, with the eight-hour day still being considered as normal in principle.” The Great Coalition, the last resort of German democracy, has been revived by virtue of this double-talk.

  Meanwhile, the dollar has climbed the following heights: October 1, 242 million marks; October 3, 440; October 5, 600 million; October 6 (convertible currency at Berlin), 740 and 775 million, according to Die Morgenpost…