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Germany 1918-19
The revolution begins
This November marks the 90th anniversary of the
start of the German revolution. It took place in what was the most
industrialised country in the world, involving its most powerful working
class. Hot on the heels of the Russian revolution of 1917, it had the
potential to change the course of history. ROBERT BECHERT looks at these
incredible revolutionary events, assessing their relevance for
socialists today.
AS CAPITALISM ENTERS probably its worst crisis since
the 1930s, discussion is already developing as to what will be the
economic, social and political impacts. As banks and stock markets fell,
the spectre arose of another Great Depression, lodged in popular memory
as a period of economic disaster, deprivation, bitter struggles, civil
wars and, of course, the rise of fascism, particularly in Germany.
This coincides with the 90th anniversary in Germany
of the overthrow of the Kaiser and the beginning of the 1918-23
revolution. The issue of ‘Weimar’, meaning the history and fate of the
first German republic born in 1918-19, has never completely disappeared
in post-1945 Germany. The famous revolutionary martyrs of the beginning
of the revolution, Karl Liebknecht and particularly Rosa Luxemburg, are
not forgotten. Oskar Lafontaine, the co-leader of Germany’s third
biggest party, Die Linke (The Left), for example, mentioned both in his
speech to its first congress last May.
The media picture often painted is that the 1930s
economic collapse almost directly led to Hitler’s victory – sometimes
the hyper-inflation of 1923 is thrown in as well as a reason for the
Nazis’ success. However, as Leon Trotsky first explained, this was not
the case. The immediate key sources of Hitler’s triumph lay in the
refusal of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) leadership to break
with capitalism and, later, the ultra-leftism of the Communist
International leadership which led it, in practice, to reject a united
front of workers’ organisations against fascism.
However, as in most attempts to mislead, there is a
grain of truth in the idea that one source of Hitler’s success was the
1923 crisis. But 1923 is not simply the widely known hyper-inflation.
Fundamentally, it is the story of a missed opportunity. Germany 1923 saw
the end of the revolution that had begun in 1918 but also was the one
occasion, so far, when a majority of the working class in an
industrialised, imperialist country supported a revolutionary Marxist
party, in the shape of the German Communist Party (KPD).
For many years, Marxists had seen Germany as a key
country, both because of its very strong, Marxist-led workers’ movement,
and because of its economic power. Despite its defeat in the first world
war and the subsequent reparations, Germany was still the decisive
country in Europe. In the early 1920s, Berlin was the fourth most
populous city in the world and, internationally, the largest industrial
city.
When, in 1918, the German November revolution began,
almost exactly a year after the Bolsheviks had come to power in Russia,
Vladimir Lenin was ecstatic. Nadya Krupskaya, his wife, later wrote that
Lenin was "completely carried away by the news", and that "the days of
the first October anniversary were the happiest days in his life". Not
only because of the overthrow of the Kaiser and the probable end of the
first world war, but also because Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks
understood that the ultimate fate of the Russian revolution was tied to
the success of the socialist revolution in the rest of Europe,
particularly Germany.
As the German and Austrian-Hungarian revolutions
began, Lenin wrote to the Soviet leadership that "the Russian
proletariat is following events with the keenest attention and
enthusiasm. Now even the blindest workers in the various countries will
see that the Bolsheviks were right in basing their whole tactics on the
support of the world workers’ revolution".
But, as we bitterly know, the German revolution did
not succeed and, instead of the creation of a socialist society,
capitalism continued. Not only did this failure result in the horrors of
fascism and the second world war, it also opened the way to the victory
of Stalinism in Russia and, ultimately, the complete undermining of the
gains of the Russian revolution.
Alongside its historical importance in helping set
the course of the 20th century, the story of the German revolution
between 1918 and 1923 contains many important lessons for Marxists
today. It is, so far, the only example of a revolution unfolding over a
number of years in a modern, industrial country and can illustrate many
questions of programme, strategy and tactics that will face Marxists in
the more stormy times we are entering. In particular, these questions
centre around how a mass Marxist party can develop, how it can win
majority support in the working class and, ultimately, what it should do
when it reaches that position.
The turning point
ALONGSIDE GERMANY’S ECONOMIC strength, a key element
in this revolution was the power of its workers’ movement. Before the
1914-18 war, the SPD was internationally seen as a model and was the
leading party in the Second International, which was then fundamentally
comprised of Marxist parties. The SPD had paved the way in building
massive working-class organisations that, formally at least, had the aim
of overthrowing capitalism. Rejecting attempts to formally commit the
party to simply reform capitalism, the 1901 SPD congress, for example,
condemned "revisionist efforts… to supplant the policy of the conquest
of power by overcoming our enemies with a policy of accommodation to the
existing order". Organisationally, the SPD enjoyed massive growth. After
emerging from twelve years of illegality in 1890, the SPD’s vote
increased in every national election, reaching 4.25 million (34.7%) in
1912. The following year, its individual membership peaked at 1,085,900.
However, the SPD’s revolutionary heritage was being
undermined by a combination of illusions sowed by that period’s economic
growth and, paradoxically, the year-by-year growth of the SPD itself.
Most of the leading layers within the SPD and trade unions began to
assume that the movement would continue to progress almost automatically
until it won a majority and that step-by-step reforms would steadily
improve workers’ lives. Over time, this led to the de facto abandonment
of the expectation that crisis would grip the system, and of a
revolutionary perspective, as the majority of the leadership thought
that, generally, capitalism would carry on steadily developing.
It was the outbreak of the war that brought out into
the open that the majority of the SPD leadership had clearly adopted a
pro-capitalist position and would, in future, oppose a socialist
revolution. This was the essential meaning of the turning point of 4
August 1914, when the SPD voted to support ‘its’ side in this
inter-imperialist war waged by what were, at best, only
semi-democracies. The possibility of war had been widely discussed for
years in the workers’ movement, but what was a complete shock was that
in most combatant countries the parties of the Second International
immediately decided to support ‘their own’ sides, with the only
exceptions being in Russia and Bulgaria. That the SPD decided to support
this war, unlike its opposition to the 1870 Prussian-led occupation of
France, and collaborated with the government, was a stunning blow that
effectively marked the end of that party’s claim to be revolutionary.
This was a decisive step towards the SPD leaders’ integration into the
capitalist system and prepared the way for the openly
counter-revolutionary role they played after 1918.
The anti-war mood grows
BUT THIS WAS not entirely a bolt from the blue.
Already, before 1914, there had been a sharpening political struggle
within the SPD. During this period, Luxemburg became the leading
opponent of the growing reformist, non-revolutionary trends within the
party. By 1914, the SPD was divided into three tendencies: the openly
reformist wing; the so-called centre (led by Karl Kautsky); and the
radicals (ie the Marxist left) led by Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others.
But, unlike the Bolsheviks in their struggle between 1903 and 1912 in
the Russian Social Democracy, Luxemburg did not draw together the
Marxist wing into a coherent opposition that systematically fought for
its ideas and to build support. Tragically, this contributed to their
weakness at the beginning of the revolution in 1918 and to subsequent
lost opportunities and defeats.
Right from 1914 there was opposition to the SPD
leaders’ pro-war line from many activists defending the party’s, up to
then, traditional socialist internationalist position. For a time, they
were swamped and relatively isolated by the patriotic wave that
initially swept all the combatant countries and they faced increasing
repression from both the SPD leadership and the military authorities.
Furthermore, the internationalists were not particularly well linked
together in terms of a common, clear programme or activities. Partly,
the anti-war SPD members had been hit by a new experience: hardly any
expected the SPD to be pro-war and, at worst, many left-wingers thought
the SPD leadership would try to be ‘neutral’. Lenin, at first, did not
believe the news that the SPD had voted in favour of the war. The SPD
left’s lack of political and organisational coherence made it far more
difficult to respond.
Nevertheless, as it became clear that the war would
not be a short one, as news spread of the horrific slaughter of trench
warfare and as food shortages developed at home, opposition to the war
mounted. Relativity soon, protests against both the war and its effects,
particularly on prices and sometimes drastic cuts in food supplies,
began to develop on the streets, in workplaces and in parliament. By
1916, strikes were taking place on the issues of food supplies and wages
and, after the 1 May arrest of the left anti-war SPD MP, Liebknecht,
there was a 55,000-strong protest strike in Berlin. In December 1914,
Liebknecht had been the first of the 110 SPD MPs to vote against the
war. A year later, 20 voted against and 24 abstained.
Opposition to the war received an enormous boost
from the 1917 Russian revolution, both the February overthrow of tsarism
and October’s Bolshevik victory. Immediately for German workers, Russia
became an example of overthrowing a monarchy and establishing a
republic. In particular the ‘soviets’ (councils) formed by the Russian
workers, soldiers and peasants became an example. The strikes of around
300,000 workers in April 1917, particularly in Leipzig, saw the first
formation of workers’ councils (called Räte) in Germany. Alongside a
growing radicalisation among workers, unrest was spreading within the
military with sailors forming a secret organisation. The appeal of the
Russian revolution grew enormously after the October revolution, when
power passed into the hands of Bolshevik-led soviets. A key factor in
this was the Bolsheviks’ consistent policy of consciously appealing to
workers in the rest of Europe, particularly Germany, to follow the
Russian workers’ example of winning democratic rights, ending the war,
and overthrowing capitalism.
Against this background, the January 1918 strikes
were even more widespread. The slogans of ‘Peace, Freedom, Bread’ were
close to the Bolsheviks’ ‘Peace, Land, Bread’ and, in Berlin, half a
million workers struck for five days in protest at the government’s
annexationist demands at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks with Soviet
Russia. Significantly, the SPD leaders, while saying they supported
workers’ economic demands, still argued that they should work for
‘victory’ in the world war.
Organising the left
ALMOST FROM THE war’s beginning, the anti-war left
faced obstacles. Alongside the impact of being, initially, largely
caught by surprise, it saw the state and the SPD leadership moving
against it, using censorship, military call-up and repression from the
state and within the SPD, a determined drive to silence opposition. More
fundamentally, the question was what lessons and conclusions needed to
be drawn from this turning point, with the SPD’s transformation from a
weapon to be used to overthrow capitalism into an instrument seeking to
secure capitalism. This was a new experience in the workers’ movement.
While there had been examples of individuals rejecting the idea of
fighting for a socialist revolution, and others openly supporting
capitalism, this conversion of the bulk of the Socialist International’s
parties was then unprecedented.
What was needed was a clear programme and approach
towards those workers who still supported the SPD out of a mixture of
past loyalty, hopes that it would be still be an instrument of change
for the working class, and those not fully understanding the issues
posed by the SPD’s transformation.
But the past failure to organise the revolutionary
elements within the SPD made it more difficult to draw the necessary
political and organisational conclusions. The February 1916 publication,
in Switzerland, of Luxemburg’s Junius pamphlet had a big impact on the
anti-war left in Germany. However, in his review of the pamphlet, Lenin,
while saying that "on the whole it is... a splendid Marxist work",
commented that it gave a "picture of a lone man" struggling and that,
unfortunately, the German left, working in a semi-dictatorship, suffered
from a "lack of compact illegal organisation".
January 1916 saw a meeting of supporters of Die
Internationale – the paper Luxemburg had helped launch – adopt her
thesis on the war and establish the Gruppe Internationale, which rapidly
became known as the Spartacists, after the series of Spartacus Letters
they issued from 1916 onwards.
Luxemburg feared that organising an independent
revolutionary organisation could lead to isolation from the broad masses
that still looked to the SPD (and, later, the USPD). But while Marxists
had to avoid creating a sectarian barrier between themselves and the
broader working class, non-organisation was not the answer. Without
organisation there would be no arena where ideas and experiences could
be discussed, and proposals formulated and implemented in a concerted
way. Luxemburg, reacting from the way in which the SPD’s organisation
had become a bureaucratic obstacle to workers’ struggle, believed that
when workers were in struggle the necessary political clarity and
organisation could spontaneously develop.
Expulsions from the SPD
THE GROWING OPPOSITION to the war and anger at what
was correctly seen as the SPD leaders’ betrayal were reflected in
struggles in the SPD. While the SPD leadership had passed over to the
side of the ruling class, within its ranks were still many who supported
the party’s Marxist traditions and anti-war policy.
These tensions were also reflected at the SPD’s very
top, in its parliamentary fraction. After less than two years into the
war, 20 dissidents were expelled from the parliamentary fraction. The
divisions in the SPD continued to grow until, in April 1917, the split
was formalised with the establishment of the left-wing and anti-war
Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). This was provoked by the
expulsion of anti-war oppositionists from the SPD the previous January,
after they had organised a national conference. The new party took
between a quarter and a third of the SPD membership. Its strength varied
from area to area: in Berlin, Leipzig and four other areas, the entire
SPD district organisational structure joined the USPD. The new party had
about half its membership concentrated in Berlin, Leipzig and the
Düsseldorf-Elberfeld area.
Politically, the USPD was very mixed. It included
representatives of the pre-war reformist wing, like Eduard Bernstein,
who were against the war from a pacifist viewpoint. Kautsky, a leading
representative of the pre-war Centre tendency, was also a member. At the
same time, the USPD included many who were moving in a revolutionary
direction, which was the reason why Luxemburg, Liebknecht and the Gruppe
Internationale joined it.
Very rapidly, the situation changed in mid-1918. The
failure of the German army’s spring offensive and the arrival of growing
numbers of US troops convinced the military leadership that the war
could not be won. On 29 September, they requested that the government
ask for a truce. Not wanting to take political responsibly for admitting
the war was lost, and wanting to use the parliamentary leaders as a
cover, the generals gave up their dictatorial rule. The first ever
German government formally responsible to parliament rather than the
Kaiser was formed. In mid-October, it asked US president, Woodrow
Wilson, to help negotiate a truce. Significantly, in an open break with
its past, the SPD supplied two ministers (one of whom was also
vice-chair of the trade union movement), to sit in this capitalist
coalition headed by prince Max von Baden.
November revolution
THE SPARK THAT set the revolution off was a naval
mutiny in Wilhelmshaven that spread to Kiel when sailors refused to
engage in a meaningless last battle with the British navy. This led to a
clash in Kiel on 3 November when seven demonstrators were killed and
many injured. As the sailors sent out emissaries, the revolutionary
upheaval spread throughout the country within days, with workers’,
soldiers’ and sailors’ councils being formed in many cities, towns and
ports.
Events moved rapidly. November 9 saw the SPD leaders
reluctantly declare a republic and, after von Baden’s resignation, agree
to his proposal that the SPD leader, Friedrich Ebert, become chancellor
(prime minister). Desperately, the SPD sought to find ways to control
the situation. Understanding the revolutionary mood, it sought to
appease the working class and rebelling military rank and file while
trying to ensure that the capitalist system continued. Desperate to give
the appearance of being revolutionary, the SPD-led government formed the
next day took the name Rat der Volksbeauftragten (RdV – Council of
People’s Commissars), which could be translated as exactly the same name
as the Bolshevik government in Soviet Russia. But, while the name was
virtually the same, there was a fundamental difference between the SPD
government working to save capitalism and the Bolshevik government
striving to end it internationally.
At the same time, the SPD moved to try to neutralise
the left, under the slogan ‘unity of the working class’, by involving
the USPD in the new government by giving it three People’s Commissars,
the same number as the SPD. The SPD even hinted that Liebknecht, newly
released from prison, would be ‘welcome’ in the government, something he
correctly refused. The USPD leaders had the illusion that they were
entering the government "in order to safeguard the gains of the
socialist revolution". At best, they were indulging in wishful thinking,
as the SPD leaders had already made clear that, while they could still
use socialist phrases, their aim was to safeguard capitalism by
preventing the Russian October revolution being repeated in Germany.
SPD betrayal
THE SPD LEADERS had a conscious policy to prevent
the overthrow of capitalism. On the eve of the Kaiser’s abdication,
Ebert complained that "if the Kaiser doesn’t abdicate the social
revolution is unavoidable. But I don’t want it; indeed I hate it like
sin". Using the prestige of the SPD, still seen by many German workers
as ‘their’ party, the SPD leaders strove to win time for the
stabilisation of capitalism. In some areas, it was the local SPD leaders
who took the initiative in forming councils, in order to ensure they had
control of them. The revolution brought demands for ‘socialisation’
(nationalisation under democratic control) so, as both a gesture towards
this demand and as a way to sideline it, the RdV decided in mid-November
to establish a committee to see which industries were ‘ripe’ for
socialisation – needless to say, nothing came out of this body. When the
first National Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ councils opened in
December, Ebert declared that "the victorious proletariat will not
institute class rule".
Again learning lessons from the Russian revolution,
the SPD leaders sought to quickly minimise and then sideline the
councils. At the December national congress of councils, the SPD secured
344 votes to 98, rejecting the declaration of a socialist republic and,
instead, calling elections in January for a national assembly, with the
clear aim of writing a constitution for a capitalist republic.
But the revolution was moving quickly, especially in
Berlin and some other areas. Sections of workers, soldiers and sailors
were, within weeks of the revolution’s start, frustrated and angered
that the old regime and capitalist system had not been completely
finished off. At the end of November, left-wing protesters in Berlin
were shot at. In early December, 14 were killed in Berlin by government
supporters firing on a revolutionary soldiers’ protest. Two days later
there was an attack on the Spartacists’ daily paper, Die Rote Fahne, and
an attempt to seize Liebknecht, which led to a 150,000-strong protest
the next day.
Facing this radicalisation and growing support for
the left, the SPD leaders attempted to reassert control. December 24 saw
an attack on the People’s Naval Division (Volksmarinedivision), a force
that originally had been sent to Berlin to safeguard the SPD but which
had become increasingly radicalised. After it had participated in a
Spartacist-led demonstration and held hostage Otto Wels, an SPD leader,
the government ordered that 80% of its forces be discharged. When the
sailors refused this order, the SPD sent other military units to attack
them, resulting in the so-called ‘Bloody Christmas’, when the sailors
successfully defended themselves.
This led to the final crisis in the SPD-USPD
coalition, with the USPD People’s Commissars resigning on 29 December
over ‘Bloody Christmas’ and also the refusal of the SPD to implement the
‘Hamburg Points’, a programme for giving powers to the soldiers’
councils that had been agreed by the national congress of councils. The
USPD commissars were replaced by three more SPD representatives,
including Gustav Noske, who became responsible for the army and navy. He
quickly began organising the military forces of counter-revolution, the
Freikorps (many of whom in the 1920s joined the Nazis). By the end of
1918, the SPD had begun to deploy Freikorp units near Berlin in
preparation for a blow against the revolution.
Early hopes and illusions
IN ONE SENSE, how the early stages of the German
revolution unfolded were similar to that in Russia but, initially, at a
much quicker pace. The November revolution had resulted in councils
taking effective power in a number of cities like Hamburg. In Bavaria, a
‘council republic’ had been declared. In Saxony, a manifesto jointly
issued by the councils of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz declared that
capitalism had collapsed and the working class had seized power. In some
areas, armed workers’ units were formed to protect the revolution.
Revolutions are characterised by the broad masses
taking the stage and this was the case in Germany. Workers’
organisations grew extremely rapidly, partly as demobilised soldiers
rejoined organisations but, mainly, because large sections of the
working class took the first steps into activity. Trade union
membership, 2.8 million in 1918, jumped to 7.3 million the next year.
The SPD grew from 249,400 in March 1918 to over 500,000 a year later,
while the left-wing USPD grew from 100,000 to 300,000 between November
1918 and February 1919.
Initially, this sudden increase tended to push the
more active, radicalised layers into a minority, as the newly active
tended to have more illusions and hopes in the SPD and trade union
leaders. This was also the case in the early days of the Russian
revolution when the Bolsheviks, despite being the largest workers’ party
before February, became a minority in the soviets as support went to the
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. But a combination of workers’ and
peasants’ experience and the work of the Bolsheviks meant that, within
months, they regained majority support and were in a position to carry
through the October revolution.
This was something that the SPD leaders desperately
wanted to stop. Consciously, they acted to prevent a successful
overthrow of capitalism. It was not only the working-class movement that
learnt from the Russian revolution, the counter-revolution also became
more conscious.
Immediately after November, Germany faced a
situation of dual power. On the one hand, the revolution had swept from
power large parts of the old regime. For a few weeks at least, the
workers’, soldiers’ and sailors’ councils held real power. But this was
not consolidated and the SPD leaders worked with the capitalists to
neuter the councils and restore normal bourgeois government. The SPD had
to move very carefully, however, because the revolutionary tide had not
ebbed. Nevertheless, as happens in most revolutions, there came a time
when sections of workers felt that their power was slipping away and the
capitalist order was being re-imposed. In many cases, as in the ‘July
Days’ of the Russian revolution, this can lead to spontaneous attempts
to stop the revolution being rolled back. The SPD leaders moved to try
to provoke the more radicalised workers into taking premature action –
premature because the mass of workers had not yet drawn the same
conclusions as they had.
In the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks had
understood this and sought to provide a leadership and strategy that
would prevent the more advanced activists being isolated and to enable
them to convince the mass of the working class and poor of the actions
needed to complete the revolution. At this time in Germany, there was no
equivalent force able to play the role that the Bolsheviks did.
Impatient for change
THE SPARTACUS LEAGUE was formed only in mid-November
1918. Its strength is not clear but, while it probably then had around
10,000 supporters, its initial membership was a few thousand, although
it started to grow quickly. From the outset there were debates within
the Spartacists and the wider revolutionary left on how to work.
From the USPD’s foundation, Luxemburg, Liebknecht
and the Spartacists had been active in the new party while maintaining
their own group and publications. This had continued during the
revolution with, for example, a big debate in Berlin in mid-December on
whether the USPD should remain in the coalition government.
At the same time, there was a debate on whether the
Spartacists, along with others working outside the USPD like the Bremen
Left, should form a Communist Party. Luxemburg tended towards remaining
in the still-growing USPD, at least until its next congress, while
Liebknecht and others wanted to found a party immediately. Clearly, an
independent revolutionary party was necessary. It was also important to
pay attention to what was happening inside the fast radicalising USPD.
In fact later, in 1920, the Communist Party (KPD) became a truly mass
force when it fused with the majority of the USPD.
But, at that time, there was a great deal of
impatience among many German revolutionary socialists. This was because
of a number of factors, especially the urgent need to complete the
November revolution, and help Soviet Russia, by overthrowing capitalism
in Germany. In addition, there was tremendous, growing hatred of the SPD
leaders because of what they had done during the war, the role they were
playing in the revolution and, increasingly, the SPD leaders’
willingness to bloodily suppress opposition on their left.
It was against this background that, when the KPD
was founded at the very end of 1918, a majority decided to abstain in
the forthcoming elections to the national assembly, against the wishes
of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others. Unfortunately, the majority did not
see how, at that time, the elections to the assembly, the first ever
fully democratic vote in German history, would have large support and
that it was necessary for Marxists to use the elections to explain their
position to the voters. At the same time, the radicalisation in Berlin
and some other areas led to an overestimation of the support then
existing for another revolution to complete November’s. An illustration
of this mood was when, on Christmas day, some Spartacists in Berlin
published a paper which called for the immediate overthrow of the
government and its replacement "by real Socialists, that is, by
Communists".
One feature of the German revolution was that it
unfolded at a different pace around the country. In different areas
there were repeated attempts by workers to take control into their
hands. But there was no national force able to give direction to these
attempts, including judging what the best timing was or how to
consciously win nationwide support. Tragically, although the government
was too weak to simultaneously crush all the movements, the
counter-revolution utilised the different speeds to move around Germany
city-by-city. But at the start of 1919 Berlin was the key, as the dual
power situation there was unresolved.
The Berlin provocation
IN DECEMBER the SPD government decided to organise a
provocation in Berlin. Having gathered counter-revolutionary Freikorp
troops outside the city, it ordered the removal of Berlin’s police
chief, the USPD member, Emil Eichhorn. The Berlin USPD, the
Revolutionary Shop Stewards organisation, and the KPD, called a mass
demonstration for 5 January to defend Eichhorn’s position. The success
of that protest convinced some of the leaders that it was possible to
overthrow the government and an Interim Revolutionary Committee of the
three organisations was established. In this committee, Liebknecht,
supported by the later East German leader, Wilhelm Pieck, argued in
defiance of KPD policy that it was "possible and necessary" now to
overthrow the SPD government. The next day, 6 January, saw a bigger
demonstration of around 500,000 workers, many armed, but they waited for
hours in the rain before dispersing, as the Revolutionary Committee was
unable to put forward any proposals for what they should do.
This attempt to seize power was premature, falling
for the SPD leaders’ provocation. They could portray it as an attack on
the government, the national councils’ congress majority, and the
forthcoming national assembly elections. It is probably the case that,
on the 5 January protest, agent provocateurs encouraged the occupation
of the offices of the SPD and bourgeois newspapers, not the most
important immediate targets for a successful revolution, but favourable
terrain for the Freikorp troops. Although the revolutionary workers were
probably strong enough to rule Berlin alone, this was not the case in
much of the rest of Germany, where illusions and hopes still existed in
the SPD government. As was seen in other German cities in the following
few months, at that time a victorious insurrection in Berlin would have
probably been isolated and open to counter-revolutionary attack.
On 8 January, Noske’s troops began their offensive,
politically dressing it up as a fight against ‘terrorism’. In a
statement, Noske, claiming to be defending the SPD’s history, said that
he, "a worker, stands at the peak of power in the socialist republic".
The reality was brutally different. Noske was not joking when he said,
just before this battle: "If you like, someone has to be the bloodhound.
I won’t shy away from the responsibility". Noske helped organise the
Freikorps as a counter-revolutionary force one of whose tasks was to
attempt to behead the revolution by killing the most well-known
Communists, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, and suppressing it in the capital.
Thus, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered by Freikorp officers on 15
January, three days after the fighting had stopped.
While this bloody defeat was a major blow against
the revolution and the KPD in particular, it did not end the
radicalisation of the Berlin proletariat. This was reflected in the
national assembly elections only a week after the suppression of the
‘Spartacus uprising’, with the left-wing USPD winning 27.6% in Berlin,
compared with 7.6% nationally, while the SPD’s Berlin vote was 36.4%
(37.9% nationally).
As the fighting in Berlin was coming to an end, a
council republic was proclaimed in Bremen. After finishing in Berlin,
Noske ordered Freikorp units to crush the movement there. This, in turn,
provoked mass strikes and fighting in the Ruhr, Rhineland and Saxony
and, at the beginning of March, a general strike and more fighting in
Berlin. In other areas, like Hamburg and Thuringia, there was also a
near civil war situation, while in Munich the council republic was one
of the last to fall, in early May.
The November revolution showed the colossal power of
the working class in modern society. The German workers were able to
overthrow the virtual military dictatorship which ruled the country
during the war and the imperial regime. They created workers’ and
soldiers’ councils across the country, poured into political parties and
trade unions, and demanded ‘socialisation’. They had the possibility of
taking power in their own right but were blocked by the role of the SPD,
the party that had originally been established to overthrow capitalism.
German capitalism was only able to survive in 1918 courtesy of the
Social Democrat leaders, who bear a major responsibility for the history
of the rest of the 20th century.
Even when defeated in 1918-1919, however, the
movement’s strength was enough to prevent the counter-revolution
crushing all democratic rights. The counter-revolution had been forced
to take a ‘democratic’ form, even sometimes dressing itself in
‘socialist’ phraseology – for the time being.
There was still the opportunity for the KPD to learn
from the experiences of the November revolution. Although capitalism
survived this first round, the German revolution was not over, as
millions of workers moved to the left, stopped supporting the SPD and,
by the end of 1920, made the KPD a truly mass force. However, the
tragedy is that when, after a series of heroic struggles, the KPD was
able to get majority support from workers in 1923, it let the
opportunity slip, with the disastrous consequences that, instead of the
world being completely transformed, there was the rise of Stalinism and
Hitler’s later victory, with all that those events meant for humanity.
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