Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  (In the last few moments I have heard that the strike has been broken: “Faced with the threats of the military authorities, taking account of the negotiations in progress and the promise to release the arrested militants,” the officials of the print unions have decided to resume work.

  It’s a defeat. Worse: it’s a capitulation.

  When the KPD proposed a general strike, the social democrats replied that the Berlin working class “was too hungry to fight” but that they were going to prepare a workers’ offensive throughout the Reich territory. But throughout the Reich territory, are workers not likewise “too hungry to fight?”)

  Arrests, arrests, arrests…

  Arrests of striking printers… Arrests of striking millers (Berlin, November 15)… Arrests of Communists (on any pretext)… Arrests of journalists… There is talk of nothing but arrests. (In Berlin—not in Munich!) According to the most recent news several dozen Communist militants were arrested yesterday and the day before (November 13-14) at Cottbus, and in Berlin and its surrounding area, on the traditional charge of “plotting against the security of the state.” The journalist Walter Oehme, who has made revelations about the reactionary forces, has been put behind bars thanks to General von Horn. A Jewish social democratic journalist, correspondent of a New York publication, has been arrested for having sent his paper too graphic an account of the recent pogroms.177 Journalists with credentials from major foreign newspapers are prudently taking care not to sleep at home… The prisons are crammed. Arrests at Chemnitz, at Leipzig, at Dresden. At Hamburg, a trial of four-hundred workers is being prepared…

  But Ludendorff is at liberty—didn’t he give his word of honor to…carry on?—and is making speeches over the graves of the victims of his failed coup on November 7. Ehrhardt, the escaped prisoner from Leipzig, for whose capture there are still posters in the stations promising “a substantial reward,” is showing himself at parades in Munich and demanding that he be amnestied. Rossbach, freed by the Leipzig High Court, is reorganizing Hitler’s gangs. In short, nobody has been troubled after the abortion of the grotesque plot in Munich. But, the day after the ransacking of the editorial offices of the SPD paper in Munich, Herr von Kahr finally closed down all the socialist press in Bavaria. To regain some influence with the National Socialists, who were very angry at his aboutturn, he has announced that the KPD is dissolved…

  A final detail of this overall picture: Crown Prince Wilhelm has returned to his estate in Silesia. On this point, it is not generally known that he was given permission to return by the Stresemann cabinet at a time when it still included the social democrats. Perhaps our great Socialist politicians wanted to stir up discord between the monarchist clans of Wittelsbach and Hohenzollern178 by facilitating the Crown Prince’s return. They have achieved this result, but at the price of a new outbreak of reactionary intrigues.

  A comic paper

  Uncurbed repression against the left. Arbitrary actions by the generals. Non-stop reactionary and monarchist plots. The instigators of reactionary civil war go unpunished. Outrages by the nationalist gangs. Arms for the nationalists. Open preparation of a coup on a massive scale. That is the balance sheet of the present period. The United Social Democratic Party has finally begun to seek remedies to all these ills, remedies that are worthy of the Second International. To seek? What am I saying? It has found them. Listen carefully. Don’t dare laugh. The SPD is demanding a meeting of the Reichstag. It… ah! But this time it will be serious! It is preparing to ask parliamentary questions! It is going to ask seven questions, perhaps even eight, of Herr Stresemann! Even if it means provoking a new cabinet crisis, it will no longer give him a vote of confidence! You must believe me!

  Vorwärts sets all this out with imperturbable gravity, foresees a dissolution of the Reichstag and prepares its readers for intense struggle…through the ballot box. For, you see, if the Reichstag is dissolved according to the terms of the constitution, elections must take place within a period of sixty days. The fact that gentlemen like Stinnes, von Kahr, Stresemann, von Seeckt and Ludendorff don’t give a damn for the constitution doesn’t seem to have occurred to the editorial staff of Vorwärts as yet. Vorwärts is a comic paper.

  By mid-November Stresemann’s government was drawing to its close. However, it succeeded in carrying through two important measures. The establishment of the Rentenmark on November 15 meant that hyperinflation was at last being checked. And on November 17 the legally protected eight- hour day was finally abolished.

  The fate of the eight-hour day

  Correspondance internationale, November 20, 1923

  The fate of the eight-hour day is being decided at this very moment. The “demobilization decrees” of 1918, which provisionally established the eight-hour day, expired on November 17. They have remained in force for five years, without the SPD—which for the first two years was a leading party in the German Republic—ever thinking of bringing in a law to guarantee the gain of the eight-hour day, despite its temporary character. The eight-hour day has now been legally canceled, a few days ago. Herr Stresemann never concealed his intention not to extend the demobilization decrees. Doubtless the reformist unions asked for them to be extended; but the bourgeoisie would be very stupid and very softhearted to yield to the timid, hesitant and formal demands of the unions. In Berlin and various other cities the authorities have clearly stated that there can now be no question of maintaining the eight-hour day. On this subject, the opinion of the German bourgeoisie is unanimous. In the Ruhr in particular, the lock-out in the mines and the iron and steel industry had the object of imposing the ten-hour day on workers. “The Ruhr employers state that they are not in a position to continue production if expenses are not considerably reduced. The only way to reduce them, they believe, is by extending the working day and dismissing about one third of the labor force…” I take this precise accusation from Vorwärts which thus explains the complete cessation of work in the Ruhr mines that has been announced for November 30.

  In a country where there are, at the lowest estimate, a million and a half unemployed, where several million workers are already working short time, where it is impossible for the state to give assistance to the unemployed, where the unemployed are condemned to the most wretched poverty and death by starvation, the heads of industry see no salvation—for their profits and for the social order they represent—except in increasing unemployment and extending the working day. They are thus, quite deliberately, creating an intolerable situation: for the masses of unemployed cannot consent to die slowly and peacefully of hunger, and nor can the masses of workers still employed in the mines and factories accept complete enslavement, which, moreover, would mean the unemployed were condemned without hope of appeal…

  But the bourgeoisie is calculating shrewdly. It believes it will be safe against an insurrection, thanks to the dictatorship of General von Seeckt and even more thanks to the incredible cowardice of the social democracy; it no longer fears the ADGB (Federation of German Trade Unions), which is demoralized and penniless, and whose leaders, like those of the SPD, are willing to put up with anything…

  In the coming days the eight hours will be discussed in the Reichstag. Already it is being said in Berlin that the social democrats, who were supposed, this Tuesday, to overthrow the Stresemann cabinet with a great barrage of questions, will do nothing of the sort. So the man at the center of the intrigues against the working class will probably remain in power. Unless the reactionaries want to replace him with somebody more energetic. The social democrats will abstain from voting and the eight-hour day will have had its time…

  Rentenmark and wage-mark

  Berliners facetiously ask each other; “Have you seen the Rentenmark?” As people might say at Tarascon: “Have you seen the Tarasque?”179 But this is no joking matter. We must take note of the total scandalous failure of the first “real value” currency created by the Reich government…to satisfy a demand from the trade unions concerning the payment of wages in pa
per that is worth something. The 800 million of the gold loan has been entirely swallowed up by financial speculators who have achieved enormous profits from it. Not one worker in Germany has seen a single banknote even of the lowest value.

  So now we have beginning, in identical conditions, the experience of the Rentenmark…

  The Rentenmark has been in circulation since November 15. Nobody has seen it. Apparently you can get it clandestinely at crazy prices. Wages continue to be paid, without any hope of a change, in paper marks which we have now definitely decided to call wage-marks. Of the appearance of the Rentenmark, the general public knew nothing except for some indirect but very suggestive information.

  A statement to the press tells us that, on November 15, the chancellor met the directors of the Rentenbank. The president of this bank made him a speech about the appropriate way of stabilizing the financial situation in Germany. The directors of the new bank have all been selected from among the most influential figures in industry, trade, agriculture and banking. All, in short, are big capitalists. And here is the obligatory advice they came to impose on the head of government:

  German foreign policy must take account of the economic weakening of the country (translation: accept all capitulations that suit capitalist interests). The state budget must be balanced by measures of strict economy; administrative staff must be limited in numbers (translation: sacking of civil servants, ten-hour day, abandoning nationalized enterprises to private capital…) Taxes “harmful to production and trade” must be removed (obviously taxes on property, capital and profits)… The financial autonomy of the states must be extended (as Bavaria wishes, and to ensure that the Rhineland state of tomorrow belongs to the plutocrats alone)… Production expenses must be cut by lengthening the working day (final agreement!).

  The directors of the Rentenbank stressed to the chancellor that the creation of the Rentenmark was a sacrifice agreed by the possessing classes who are fully entitled to compensation. In reality these gentlemen already constitute a “Directory” which has the government of the Reich by the throat, since they can cut off its resources whenever they please; and it has been widely noted that they have, for obviously political reasons, delayed the appearance of the new paper money by several weeks.

  It’s easy to see what the Reich is losing by the operation. What is not at all easy to see is what it could possibly hope to gain from it. The financial mess is such that Herr Stresemann found it necessary to appoint an extraordinary commissioner for currency, Währungskommissar, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht,180 who is said to be more than usually competent and honest. But what powers does he have? He can prevent measures being taken, but he can’t require them to be taken. He has no authority over the Rentenbank. Has he any more power over the Reichsbank? No. Questions of taxation do not fall within his competence, but are the responsibility of the ministers of finance and economics. The backing of the gold loan and other similar possible issues concerns the whole cabinet and does not concern Herr Schacht. Budgetary savings are the sole province of the minister of finance. But what then are the powers of the new commissioner? I’ve no idea. It could be another Berlin joke: “Do you know Dr. Schacht’s powers?”

  Before being appointed, Dr. Schacht had insisted on all the dangers involved in the issuing of the Rentenmark and he had proposed remedies that were apparently serious. This Utopian had asked that measures should be taken to insure against the corporate-capitalist character of the management of the issuing bank; that steps be taken to prevent a new inflation which, thanks to the old credit mechanism, would again become a source of enormous profits for certain circles; that the mortgage taken by the issuing bank on private assets should be distributed equally, without shady schemes; that measures should be taken so that the Rentenmark was not monopolized by speculators as the gold loan had been… He went so far as to ask that in making economies they should remember that “the physical existence of the citizen must have priority over reason of state,” in other words that, on economic grounds, they should try to avoid condemning millions of poor people to permanent starvation (according to Leopold Schwarzschild in ontag Morgen). Is it not amusing to find a bourgeois journalist quoting these cruel suggestions by a bourgeois financier? So the Rentenmark scarcely permits any illusions…

  …And the wages-mark carries on with its work. A professional worker who is a friend of mine, “very well paid” in his own words, had the following misadventure just last week. He learned on Wednesday that his earnings for the week were fixed at seven billion. He was satisfied. Since that day the gold mark was worth two billion, that meant he had 85 gold marks for the week. But when he collected his seventeen trillion on Friday, November 12, the gold mark having risen in the meantime to 600 billion, the sum was now worth only 27 marks… This Friday many workers for their part received only 7, 8 or 9 trillion, roughly a French five franc piece from before the war,181 for a week’s work, to live for a week! But from November 10 to 16, while the rate of the dollar rose only by 166 percent, the cost of living rose by 224 percent. The new inflation—that of papers with real value—continued. Calculated in gold, the cost of living had gone, in those six days, from 104.6 percent to 127 percent (the cost of living in 1914 being represented by 100) and the cost of food from 152.6 percent to 183.2 percent. I have taken these figures from the main paper controlled by Stinnes, who certainly doesn’t produce it to help Communist propaganda. They prove just how much harm is done to the worker paid in wages-marks by the issue of paper money with “real value.”

  Let’s conclude. The looting of Germany, the robbery of the working classes and the middle classes, the systematic starvation of the proletariat are continuing. These are the results of class politics carried out very consciously. The task is to carve up and degrade the nation, to sacrifice its unity, to wreck its culture, and to injure its deep vital energies in order to save the capitalist order.

  On November 23 Stresemann finally resigned. On the same day the KPD was made illegal. Correspondance internationale did not appear between November 20 and December 13; its Berlin offices were closed as part of the repression against the KPD and the journal moved its headquarters to Vienna. To cover this period an article is included from Bulletin communiste, weekly journal of the French Communist Party, which frequently reproduced Serge’s articles.

  Wanted: a chancellor

  Bulletin communiste, December 6, 1923

  Berlin, November 29–30, 1923.182

  I’m writing these lines on the evening of November 29. In formal terms the cabinet crisis has already lasted since November 23, but in reality it has been going on much longer, and in “well-informed quarters” there is not the slightest hope of finding a satisfactory solution to it. Herr Stresemann has resigned. After a lot of beating about the bush, president Ebert had entrusted one H. Albert with the job of forming the new government, leaving aside all party motives. Although H. Albert had made known his intention to leave most of the retiring ministers with the same portfolios, and to give Stresemann the foreign affairs ministry, his scheme collapsed when faced with the dissatisfaction of the parties. In fact, heavy industry and the landowners have had enough of transitional solutions.

  We should simply note which “unpolitical” figure president Ebert had chosen. Doctor Albert—with whom the author of these lines, who is not happy at sharing the name, has nothing in common!—a senior civil servant of the pre-war regime, who during the war, at the most difficult times, was the closest collaborator of Herr Helfferich. He drew up the economic clauses of the imperialist treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk. He was obviously qualified to interpret the Treaty of Versailles.

  There is also a von Kardof plan. But Herr von Kardof, a member of the German People’s Party of Stresemann and Stinnes, has not found much support in his own party. Just this morning there was talk of a government headed by Stegerwald, leader of the Christian unions—which are continuing to abandon him—and of the right wing of the Center Party, a government which would include
the German National People’s Party (monarchists and revanchists183), the German People’s Party (Stinnes), the Catholic Center and the German Democratic Party. Another failure, this time caused by the intransigence of the DNVP, who demanded the break-up of the Great Coalition in Prussia, with the clear aim of immediately proceeding to take advantage of their presence in the Reich government to carry out the Bavarianisation of Prussia. (To use their own words: “Purge of the administration, reorganization of the police, etc., in a national spirit…”) Finally there was talk of a Jarres government, which would have been merely an dubious substitute for a Stresemann government. Now they’re talking of a Marx government (Catholic Center).

  We shall not waste time examining all these wretched parliamentary combinations. It is more important to draw the general conclusions from this long crisis. In reality, the present Reichstag can no longer constitute a viable government, since it no longer represents the real forces confronting each other in the country. The DDP and the SPD still have more than 230 seats. The parties of the extreme left and the extreme right are weak there, while in the country all real power—money, army, authority—belongs to the big industrial and landowning capitalists; all the real resistance to reaction, the resistance of the proletariat and of the proletarianized middle classes, tends to concentrate around the KPD. Heavy industry and the proletariat, the forces confronting each other are immense; parliament realizes it. Quite unable to come to an agreement, the parliamentary groups which represent—very, very badly—the contending classes cannot either find grounds for agreement or decide on clear solutions that might unleash forces which the big bourgeoisie is rightly afraid of.