Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  All the parties and president Ebert hesitate in face of a dissolution of the Reichstag, their only constitutional expedient. For then they would either have to violate the constitution by postponing the elections, or call them within sixty days on the basis of universal suffrage. Now there are many indications, notably the recent local elections in Bremen, which have revealed the mood of the electorate. A regroupment of parties would work simultaneously to the advantage of the most open reactionaries and of the most energetic proletarian action, and to the detriment of the DDP and above all the SPD. And since nothing entitles the reactionary parties to count on a parliamentary majority, the new chamber might well be nothing other than a civil war parliament…

  So a chancellor is needed. They need an eloquent and flexible minister, who at one and the same time would serve the interests of the big monarchist landowners, of the tycoons of heavy industry, of the generals anxious to restore order—which is disturbed by the hungry—and of the most cowardly of social democratic parties, solely concerned with saving republican appearances… While they look in vain, the real German government is doing deals with French imperialism, signing profitable capitulations, economically detaching the Rhineland and the Ruhr from the Reich, and confirming the legal cancellation of the eight-hour day. The Rhineland industrialists Stinnes, Vögler, Krupp and Wolff have signed agreements with the MICUM.184 They have made peace with the French enemy. They have got their 48 percent. They have the support of the French bayonets against the Rhineland proletariat. An official note passed to all the newspapers has observed that the 1918 demobilization decrees which established the eight-hour day in Germany have not been extended. The SPD did not bat an eyelid. And this ending of the eight-hour day, the only serious gain made by the workers in the 1918 “revolution,” seems to us much more important than the cabinet crisis.

  The Communist Party legally illegal

  On the very day when the KPD was dissolved by order of General Seeckt, a party member said to me with a smile: “This changes nothing. We were already illegal; our press had already been suppressed ; our central committee was already in hiding… This situation has now had a legal ratification. We used to be in a way illegally illegal—now we’re legally illegal…”

  He added: “For my part I can see only advantages.185 The situation is clear now. All comrades will have to exercise prudence and revolutionary guile, whereas previously their old habits of social democratic legality still often had a pernicious influence. Our education as conspirators will be speeded up and made more systematic on a large scale. Our slightest moves which, when legal, might have gone unnoticed amid the minor events of political life, will at last take on a revolutionary significance and will be noticed by the bourgeois press. And finally, it will no longer be possible to exercise any supervision over our party’s activity…”

  The fact is that the harsh measures taken by General von Seeckt, wittily nicknamed the last mainstay of the Republic and the last hope of the monarchy—scandalous in a democratic republic, absolutely without precedent (we should recall that the decree of dissolution also lays down the confiscation of all the property of the KPD and the Third International in Germany), seem totally pointless and totally unworkable. The illegal publications of the KPD, even in Berlin, are plainly continuing to appear; the Communist organizations have not been impaired in any way. The central committee has been dissolved; it has been replaced by a directory186 which “is based abroad.” In formal terms, the members of the CC, who no longer hold office, should not need to be in hiding, so paradoxically the dissolution of the party could be an advantage for them. To top it all, on Wednesday, November 28, it was necessary to mobilize all the police and army in Berlin to prevent a big Communist demonstration…which they failed to prevent.

  At noon on that day, an alarming statement from police headquarters informed the population of Berlin that the police had been instructed to show the utmost ruthlessness against any attempt at a Communist demonstration. At 4:00pm the Reichstag was surrounded by a heavy police cordon. An impressive array of police were gathered in the Wilhelmstrasse area, around the residence of President Ebert. Armored cars crossed Unter den Linden.187 Despite the efforts of the police of the social democrats Weiss, Richter and Severing, at 5:30pm, in the Lustgarten,188 there were more than 30,000 Communist workers singing the Internationale . This crowd which, in various places, had to fight the police to get to the assembly point fixed by the party, stood up to several charges by mounted police. In a neighboring street, they erected an improvised barricade. They took away their wounded, who numbered about a hundred; then they finally dispersed through the prosperous districts, despite the police brutality. This deserves to be reported. On the evening of the demonstration it was sufficient to appear on the thoroughfares of central Berlin badly dressed—that is, dressed as a worker or an unemployed person—to be pursued by the municipal police with truncheons. In the Lustgarten, the mounted police charged, armed with a new weapon, a whip with a short handle and a long lash. Its proper name is Russian—nagaika.

  Ebert and von Seeckt are installing the rule of the nagaika.

  They are still playing their role. Nonetheless, according to Die Tribune, the banned KPD was able to bring onto the streets of Berlin, on this bleak, cold winter evening, some sixty thousand organized, combative demonstrators.

  Acts of white terror

  The social democratic prime ministers of Saxony and Thuringia, Frölich and Fellisch, together with the left social democratic deputy Kurt Rosenfeld, brought before the Reichstag on November 23 some damning reports of the outrages committed by the soldiery of von Seeckt in the two workers’ states of central Germany. Harmless people, suspect not of communism but of democratic sympathies, mayors, municipal councillors, students, arrested without rhyme or reason, imprisoned in barracks, insulted, thrashed with rifle butts, stripped naked to be beaten up, thrashed, etc. A large number of such facts were cited. We know of others. Despite the denials of the Reichswehr minister, Herr Gessler (DDP), who has been exposed as a blatant liar by the deputies from Saxony and Thuringia, the solemn admission of these acts of white terror has just been formulated by General Müller, dictator at Dresden. In an order to his troops, General Müller has reminded them that “it is dishonorable for soldiers to harass unarmed populations.” And he has recognized that “regrettable excesses” have taken place. We learn that a number of Reichswehr officers and NCOs have been pensioned off as a disciplinary measure.

  This is a formal confession. Despite the silence which followed the revelations made on the floor of the Reichstag, the scandal is obvious. And we don’t think the confessions of General Müller will diminish their impact.

  We must note the attitude of Vorwärts in this context, for it is worse than odious. Vorwärts said virtually nothing about the indignant protest of the social democrats Frölich, Fellisch and Rosenfeld in the Reichstag. It published none of their evidence; but it devoted fifty lines to the embarrassed response of minister Gessler. So that must be their political line. Was not Vorwärts indignant, a few days ago, at the fact that the nationalist press had accused Ebert of still being subject to Marxist influences? Imagine the anger of the editorial staff of Vorwärts at the idea that anyone could still take Ebert for a socialist! Finally, did not Vorwärts publish a statement from the central office of the SPD in which this party solemnly dissociated itself from the “anti-constitutional” actions of the Communists? They have picked their time. German social democracy remains true to itself, that is, to its cowardice, its treachery, its endless servility to bourgeois dictatorship…

  Herr Severing’s opinion

  Herr Severing’s opinion on the current political situation in Germany, and in particular in Prussia, is interesting to discover. Citizen Severing, social democratic minister of the interior in the Great Coalition government in Prussia, has done remarkable service for the bourgeoisie. He played a notable role in the provocation which led to the Communist rising in March 1921. He th
en and subsequently allowed a certain number of workers to be murdered. In Prussia he dissolved the workers’ hundreds and the central organizations of the factory committees. His contribution is therefore considerable in the eyes of the reactionaries. The DNVP nonetheless demanded his removal from the Prussian cabinet in recent days, as well as that of the other SPD ministers. For they don’t think this Socialist minister is reactionary enough yet. They think that from now on they can do without the Socialist lackeys of bourgeois power.

  Two days ago Herr Severing granted a long interview to a journalist from Der Abend (The Evening), of which we shall give a summary of the main passages:—In Prussia two military organizations, the Young German Order (Jungdo189) and the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), dissolved on Herr Severing’s instructions, have just been given authorization to function by the Reichsrat. All the armed reactionary associations were encouraged by this. “The danger of an extreme right wing coup in Prussia and at Berlin cannot be considered as completely excluded. In the area around Berlin, a large number of officers from General von der Golz’s Baltic troops have taken refuge on the estates of large landowners. At the beginning of November we found out that General von der Golz and his friends were actively considering a plan to march on Berlin.”

  “A right wing government would at the very least tolerate the armed organizations of the extreme right, which would enable them to import Bavarian methods into North Germany.”

  Citizen Severing thinks that for the SPD to leave the Prussian government would be a disaster, for the consequence would be an acute intensification of the class struggle in Prussia. So the socialism of the Second International has nothing to do with class struggle, does it?

  Citizen Severing does not think that the German Republic needs to be defended by private organizations such as exist, for example, in Austria. Here are his reasons: “Everything depends on the attitude of the Reichswehr. If the Reichswehr defends the constitution and the republic, then all the attacks on them will easily be repulsed. If the Reichswehr turns against the Republic, then the republican population, which is more or less disarmed, cannot win. Thus if the Reichswehr is for the Republic, then the Republic has no need of other defenders; if the Reichswehr is against it, then nobody can now save the Republic.”

  I’ve translated this word for word. So the Prussian social democratic minister, in his horror at class struggle and revolutionary action, thinks that the German bourgeoisie needs no more than a hundred thousand reactionary soldiers to impose on eighteen million people in humble circumstances, who now face ruin, any ostensibly republican regime in which the monarchists are pulling the strings, or even an undisguised dictatorship or restored monarchy.

  Citizen Severing puts all his hopes—as does president Ebert; that is no secret—in the inscrutable General von Seeckt. And he says so quite clearly to the Abend journalist, Herr H. Frei:

  “General von Seeckt’s attitude will have a very considerable importance. Von Seeckt is an extremely intelligent man, politically realistic and clear-headed. It may be said that for as long as Germany’s internal regime has to reckon with external difficulties, then General von Seeckt will see no possibility of modifying the established order…”

  Shall I take the liberty of interpreting this sentence which is scarcely ambiguous? As long as the governments in Paris and London, or at least one of them, have not indicated their acquiescence in a restoration of the monarchy in Germany, then the cautious General von Seeckt will not throw into the scales his sword which is heavier than the will of a whole proletariat, of the best organized proletariat in Europe.

  In these statements by minister Severing, social democrat Severing, there is nothing but double dealing, admission of impotence, admission of betrayal, awareness of the weakness of social democracy. Few contemporary documents seem to us to be more revealing of the state of mind of a great workers’ party in degeneration.

  A Marx government

  Today a Marx government is being formed, headed by one of the leaders of the Catholic Center Party. The new chancellor expects to govern with the support of the center parties and the benevolent neutrality of the DNVP. Herr Stresemann and Dr. Jarres remain in his cabinet, as do Gessler of the DDP and the former member of the German National Party, Baron Kanitz. Herr Marx offered the ministry of economics to the general manager of the Stinnes companies, Minoux, who refused it.

  The new cabinet, not much different from the old one, whose policies it will continue in every respect, is a cabinet in which bourgeois interests are concentrated. It intends to hold elections, but in a few months—a few long months, during which an effort will be made to disarm the proletariat and to eliminate from the administration of the nation the social democratic element, which despite its servility is unreliable in the eyes of the leaders of heavy industry and agriculture.

  The latter are setting out their plans so clearly that Herr Hergt has just written to president Ebert to ask him to form a right wing government in which the DNVP would have the place it deserves!

  And the SPD?

  Vorwärts this morning (November 30) makes flattering advances to Herr Marx, praising his “reasonable character,” his positive spirit, and his honesty, and promising him the benevolent neutrality of the VSPD, doubtless on condition that his way of serving reaction is not too shocking to the democratic circles who are determined to make any capitulations that are in the slightest degree respectable.

  In the same issue of Vorwärts, citizen Dittmann, who now signs himself “former member of the council of people’s commissars” 190 of the German Republic—who would have guessed it?—has discovered a completely forgotten law, promulgated on November 12, 1918, by the people’s commissars, which legally established the eight-hour day. The official point of view of the German government is different. And the “former people’s commissar” must be very naïve to imagine that digging up a scrap of paper, signed by himself and other colleagues of the same quality, will impose on Stinnes, Krupp, Wolff, von Seeckt, Marx and their associates any respect for the eight-hour day which they claim is legally canceled!

  This was Serge’s last “report from Germany”—in fact he had already left the country. On November 30, Wilhelm Marx had formed a government based on a coalition of the Center Party, the DDP, the DVP and the Bavarian People’s Party. The SPD remained outside, but voted for the government which did not have a majority without it. The new government did in fact overcome the more dramatic aspects of the short term economic crisis. But the long term crisis of German capitalism remained, and the next ten years were to see its fateful outcome.

  The balance sheet: formidable powerlessness

  Correspondance internationale, December 19, 1923

  Is there still a parliament in Germany? Under chancellor Marx the fiction of a democratic regime is based only on wearisome combinations of parliamentary arithmetic, which, moreover, are so unreliable that they give the present government no stability and no strength and do not even succeed in concealing some brutal realities…

  True executive power is concentrated in the hands of the social democrat Ebert and General von Seeckt, but there is no question of them having equal amounts of power. For, in the opinion of social democratic minister Severing himself, it is the attitude of the cautious general—who is doubtless no republican, but who rejects adventurism—which is decisive.

  The likes of Ebert and von Seeckt, like Marx, merely carry out orders. Behind them act, or dictate their will, the men of money, of trade and industry, for whom Germany, looted, ravaged, starved and battered by their own hands, is nothing but a sick hunted animal that must be kept out of the hands of the revolution—and cured: for a slave who is too sick cannot work.

  These true masters of the hour have got rid of the costly weapon of fascism, since social democratic treachery enabled them to fulfill their task without civil war. Their politics has two faces: high treason and repression.

  High treason, the capitulation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr—which co
nsumed the last resources of the Reich—in the face of French imperialism. High treason, the “legal” separation of the Rhineland destined to form immediately an autonomous state “within the framework of the Reich” (they’re not asking much!) High treason, the alliance of heavy industry with French imperialism against the workers of Rhineland-Westphalia. High treason, all the shady plots whose threads stretch between Berlin, Cologne, London, New York and Paris, constantly tightening the links of the international capitalist plot against world peace and the elementary rights of labor!

  Repression, the closure of mines and factories in order to starve workers into submission. Repression, the closing down of the Communist press and the dissolution of the KPD. Repression, the outrages of the soldiery in Saxony and Thuringia, the thousands of arrests, the murders of poor people by the troops. Repression, the scandalous measures taken by the military authorities against strikers. Repression, the brutal campaign against the eight-hour day, backed up by shootings and sackings.

  In the face of this cruel German reality we are left disconcerted. How was it possible? They have dissolved a revolutionary party of at least 400,000 members, followed by two million vigorous proletarians! They have closed down a working-class press that had nearly 40 daily papers! They have rescinded the eight-hour day, which was the result of a revolution, the collapse of an empire and four insurrections! Starved, trampled under foot, this proletariat, the best organized, the most educated in the world, which has fourteen million trade unionists!