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Issue 224 Dec-Jan 2018/19

The Berlin uprising 1918-19

The sailors’ mutiny in November 1918 had opened the revolutionary floodgates in Germany. Soon after, workers’ heroic struggles to overthrow capitalism were met by savage repression from far-right paramilitaries backed by Social Democratic leaders. The great Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were among those killed. To mark the centenary of their deaths, we are printing an edited extract of an article by SASCHA STANIČIĆ, of Sozialistische Alternative (CWI Germany) – translated by Paul Dennett.

In November 1918 the war-weary German working class and mutinous soldiers overthrew Kaiser Wilhelm II, and formed workers’ and soldiers’ councils throughout the country. Socialism was on the agenda and no political force dared to move against the councils or against the idea of socialist change. Yet these events did not mark a quick victory but were the prelude to five years of revolution and counter-revolution. This ended with the temporary gain of certain democratic and social rights, but also with the consolidation of the power of the capitalists. Eventually, the defeat of the working class also paved the way for the rise of the Nazis.

The rapid development of German capitalism, especially after the formation of the modern German state in the 19th century, had given rise to the strongest workers’ movement in the world – the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and mass trade unions. At the beginning of the 20th century, the SPD was publishing 90 daily newspapers, with 1.4 million subscribers. It had up to 15,000 full-time party workers. However, by the time of the first world war, the cossetted, privileged SPD leaders had been incorporated into the capitalist system. For them, socialism was relegated to a dim and distant aim, to be attained gradually through reforming capitalism. Most SPD leaders backed German imperialism in the war.

This precipitated a series of splits. The Spartacus Group was set up in January 1916, and included the prominent Marxists, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin. It would soon be known as the Spartacus League. The Independent SPD (USPD, or Independents) was set up in 1917, following expulsions from the SPD for opposition to the war. It was a broad party, and grew quickly to 120,000 members. The Spartacus Group joined but remained an independent group within it, as did the Berlin Revolutionary Shop Stewards. Together they made up the left wing of the USPD.

Revolution erupts

The revolution was triggered when the German high command ordered the navy to engage the English fleet, in a battle that could do nothing to stop the German defeat but would have meant the death of 80,000 seamen. On 3 November, they refused to sail. The mutiny began in Kiel, where a workers’ and soldiers’ council took control, sending emissaries to other cities. Within a few days, the revolution had spread nationwide. On 4 November, the whole fleet was taken over. On 9 November, workers and soldiers took Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. Berlin became the epicentre of the revolution.

In the following days a situation of dual power developed. With the workers’ and soldiers’ councils and their executive elected by a delegate assembly of the Berlin councils on 10 November, there were embryonic institutions of a workers’ state. These could have begun to take steps towards a new socialist society. But only if state power had been taken out of the hands of the capitalist ruling class.

The SPD leaders’ strategic aim, however, was to defuse the revolution. Despite all their betrayals, the SPD was still the main mass workers’ party, looked to by millions of workers radicalised by the revolution. Instead of helping to create a republic of workers’ and soldiers’ councils, a ‘transitional government’ was set up including representatives of the SPD and USPD. In line with the Russian revolution, it called itself the Council of People’s Commissars. Unlike Soviet Russia, however, it did not lay a finger on the old capitalist state apparatus.

Ministers and other officials remained in post. This also applied to the provinces and cities, with the exception of Bremen and Hamburg. The tactic of the SPD leadership and representatives of the old order was to participate in the councils and render them impotent. In addition, to lead a campaign for a general election to a constitutional convention or national assembly, the date for which was set as 19 January. All of that under the banner of socialism and the nationalisation of industry! In particular, the soldiers’ councils became dominated by the SPD, often by officers. The Executive Council of the Berlin workers’ and soldiers’ councils confirmed the Council of People’s Commissars.

When, on 16 December, the Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils convened for eight days, right-wing SPD leaders had an absolute majority. Out of 492 delegates, 298 belonged to the SPD, 101 to the USPD (ten of whom were Spartacists). The rest were without party affiliation but mostly voted with the SPD. Still more revealing was the composition of the congress. Only 179 of the delegates were workers, 31 Independents and SPDers were full-time editors, MPs, party or trade union officials, and 71 were intellectuals. Neither Karl Liebknecht nor Rosa Luxemburg was a delegate, and the congress rejected two motions to call them into the debates.

Founding the Communist Party

This polarisation between a radicalising Berlin working class on one side, and the government, general staff and capital on the other, was the background for the congress (30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919) to found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was set up by the Spartacus League and the IKD (International Communists of Germany), formed in November 1918 and based mainly in Bremen, Hamburg and Dresden.

In the light of the defeats at the council congress and the fickleness of the USPD leaders, many Spartacists had begun to see the need to build their own, tightly organised party, and to make a clean break with the USPD. Although the Spartacus League had been independent, publishing from 9 November 1918 its own daily paper, Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), and taking no responsibility for the USPD leadership’s policies, it had continued to be in the party and was very loosely organised.

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had not begun the essential task of bringing together their comrades in one revolutionary organisation. This had been damaging. The predecessor of the Spartacus League, Gruppe Internationale, had only been set up after the start of the war, although Luxemburg had recognised the degeneration of the SPD leadership earlier than others.

Wartime censorship and repression made the task extremely difficult but, even so, the need to build a united force had been underestimated by the Spartacus leaders. This made it impossible to engage in the revolution in a united way, and the potential for them to expand their influence in the workers’ and soldiers’ councils was not realised. It also led to an absence of collective discussion and thus a lack of political clarity in the Spartacus League itself.

Early ultra-left missteps

Even worse, many of the delegates at the founding congress of the KPD were not the most experienced local leaders. In fact, the lack of organisation resulted in local delegates being decided by chance, to a large extent. There was a heavy price to pay. The congress was dominated by ultra-left forces enraged by the pro-war SPD leaders and anxious to support the Russian revolution. They were full of revolutionary impatience and failed to recognise that winning the working class to a programme of workers’ power was a necessary step for the seizure of power

It decided – against Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches and other members of the leadership – to boycott elections to the national assembly. From a correct fundamental position – workers’ democracy instead of capitalist-parliamentary democracy – the KPD delegates drew a false tactical conclusion. They underestimated working-class illusions in elections and misjudged the necessity of using the election campaign and the platform of parliament for revolutionary propaganda.

Rosa Luxemburg stressed that a protracted struggle lay ahead: "I am speaking of the mighty masses, not the groups to which we belong. We are talking about millions of people, men, women, youth, soldiers. I ask you whether you can say in good conscience that these masses, if we decide here to boycott the national assembly or turn our backs on the elections, will raise their fists all the more against the national assembly? You cannot claim that in good conscience… In what way do you wish to influence the elections, if you declare in advance that we consider the elections null and void? We have to show the masses that there is no better answer to the counter-revolutionary resolution against the council system than to achieve a mighty rallying of voters, in which the people vote directly for those who are against the national assembly and for the council system".

The boycott was voted through by 62 votes to 23. That was a critical reason for the Revolutionary Shop Stewards not joining the KPD. They remained in the USPD. Further ultra-left positions were adopted on the trade unions, even if not formally passed. The majority of the delegates did not acknowledge the influx of workers into the unions and took the view that communists should not work in them. The KPD isolated itself from the masses.

In the national assembly elections, the first with universal franchise, 83% of the electorate took part – 11.5 million (37.9%) voted SPD, 2.3 million (7.6%) USPD. Bourgeois parties constituted the majority. The project of the capitalists and SPD leaders to save the capitalist system through the national assembly was successful at the first attempt.

State provocation

Before the elections took place, however, the revolutionary workers of Berlin were provoked into a battle which led to a heavy defeat. Counter-revolutionary forces – including the Anti-Bolshevik League, supported by the SPD – fomented ever more aggressive incitement against the Spartacus League in December and January. There were open calls for the murder of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and other leaders on placards and leaflets.

The army leadership and SPD government were preparing a decisive blow against the revolution, making use of the volunteer Freikorps formed in the preceding weeks. These consisted of the most reactionary elements of the army. Many were later found in the ranks of the Nazi Party and its vicious paramilitary organisations, the SA (Sturmabteilung) and SS (Schutzstaffel).

A provocation was organised to get the KPD, USPD and revolutionary workers to take action, and to serve as the pretext for military oppression. The provocation was the sacking of the Berlin police chief, Emil Eichhorn, a USPD member who had brought 2,000 workers and soldiers into a ‘left’ police unit. Eichhorn was ordered to resign by the interior ministry on 3 January. As expected, he refused.

The USPD, Revolutionary Shop Stewards and KPD called a demonstration in his defence on 5 January. This was to be a peaceful protest. Hundreds of thousands took part. The masses were pressing for action and, when a provocateur called on them to occupy the office building of Vorwärts (Forwards), the main SPD newspaper, they complied. Vorwärts was infamous for anti-revolutionary articles, and had already been occupied by workers in December for a short time.

The leaders of the USPD – in Berlin, dominated by the left wing – the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, and Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck of the KPD, met and formed a revolutionary committee. They decided to take up the struggle to overthrow the government. This was a mistake, and would have dire consequences. Even if the working class of Berlin had been capable of carrying it out, the movement in the rest of Germany was not at the same level.

A lesson from Russia

The situation was reminiscent of the July days in Russia in 1917. There, workers in the capital Petrograd also spearheaded the revolution, full of impatience and revolutionary fervour. They rushed ahead and tried to overthrow the government. However, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky recognised that would have been premature. While they were not able to dissuade important sections of the workers and soldiers from an armed demonstration, they put themselves at the head of the movement to ensure that it was a largely peaceful, organised protest.

They succeeded in stopping decisive sections of the Russian working class sacrificing themselves. That meant that these forces remained intact, ready for the right moment to seize power, in October 1917. Rosa Luxemburg and the majority of the KPD leadership recognised the error and did not support Karl Liebknecht on this, but neither did they stop him from joining the revolutionary committee and calling on the workers to fight.

On 9 January, Karl Radek, who liaised between the Bolsheviks and the KPD at the time, wrote to its Central Committee: "In your programme booklet ‘What Does the Spartacus League Want?’ you claim you want to take over the government only when you have the majority of the working class behind you. This completely correct standpoint finds its justification in the simple fact that workers’ government is unthinkable without the mass organisations of the proletariat. Now, the only mass organisations in question, the workers’ councils, exist almost in name only. They have still led no struggles which could trigger the mass forces. And accordingly, the upper hand in them is held not by the party of the struggle, the Communist Party, but by the Social Patriots [war-supporting social democrats] or the Independents. In this situation the seizure of power by the proletariat is absolutely inconceivable.

"If the government were to fall into your hands through a coup, you would in a few days be cut off and strangled by the provinces. In this situation the action decided by the Revolutionary Shop Stewards on Saturday, on account of the attacks by the social-patriotic government on the presidency of the police, should take on the character of a protest action only. The front ranks of the proletariat, embittered by the policy of the government, misled by the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, which without any political experience is not in a position to view the balance of forces in the whole empire, have in their zeal turned this movement from a protest movement into a struggle for power. That allows [SPD leaders] Ebert and Scheidemann to deliver the movement in Berlin a blow which could weaken the whole movement for months".

Radek and Luxemburg suggested steps towards an organised retreat and for new elections to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. But it was too late, the fight had begun. The revolutionary committee then committed the even more unforgivable error of not leading with determination the struggle they had called, not taking the measures required to achieve their goals and, at the high point of the mobilisation, only issuing slogans calling for more demonstrations.

For two days, 5/6 January, the government was unable to function. The 6th saw a general strike with half-a-million workers on the streets. Gustav Noske, another SPD leader – responsible for military affairs in the government – admitted that, with determined leadership, the masses could have taken Berlin into their own hands. However, that did not happen. Blaming USPD inactivity, Liebknecht and Pieck withdrew from the revolutionary committee.

Repression unleashed

While negotiations with the government were taking place, it struck. In his memoirs, Noske wrote about government discussions on 6 January: "My opinion, that it must now be attempted to impose order by force of arms, was not opposed. The war minister, Colonel Reinhardt, drew up an order through which the government and the central council named Lieutenant-General von Hoffmann, who was not far from Berlin with a few units, supreme commander. Against this it was objected that the workers would be most strongly opposed to a general. We were standing around in Ebert’s office, amid some excitement as time was pressing and our people were calling for weapons in the streets. I demanded that a decision be made. Whereupon somebody said: ‘Then you do it!’ To which I replied determinedly: ‘I don’t mind! Someone must be the bloodhound. I won’t shy away from the responsibility!’"

The bloodhound led the Freikorps against the workers in the editorial offices – several newspaper buildings had been occupied – and brutally put down the uprising. Fighting carried on until 12 January. Officially, 156 people lost their lives, but many more died.

In the USPD journal Freiheit one prisoner reported: "When the prisoner transport came in front of the Alexander Barracks, there were five of them… placed up against the wall openly in the street… and shot down by government soldiers. The remaining prisoners, while they were being transported through the gate into the barracks yard, were assaulted in an unheard of manner by the government soldiers, so-called ‘cockchafers’, and struck with rifle butts. A 16-year-old boy who found himself among the prisoners, of course a civilian, shouted from the barracks yard ‘Up with Liebknecht!’ and received… with the rifle butt a blow on the head which fractured his skull".

Incitement against the KPD escalated. On 15 January, the calls for the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were acted upon by Freikorps soldiers. Although the two most important personalities of the revolutionary leadership were in hiding, they did not wish to disappear completely and, as they saw it, abandon the workers. They were tracked down by the Freikorps, beaten savagely then shot dead.

The end of the first phase

That closed the first phase of the German revolution of 1918 to 1923. The KPD was hit hard. Robbed of its strongest theoretician in Rosa Luxemburg, and the leader most esteemed among the working class in Karl Liebknecht, the KPD could not immediately build on a mass basis, incapable of seizing the opportunities for overthrowing the capitalist order which arose in the years that followed. After the crushing of the Berlin uprising, the Freikorps passed through Germany establishing ‘peace and order’ in one town after another, smashing the revolutionary councils. In May, the Bavarian Council Republic was the last to fall.

The working class had suffered a heavy setback but it was not defeated. At the end of February, new elections to the Berlin workers’ councils led to a strengthening of the USPD and KPD. Hundreds of thousands joined the USPD across Germany. Strike waves for the nationalisation of industry and other demands swept the country. On 4 March, a general strike in Berlin demanded the recognition of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, the release of all political prisoners, the arrest of the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and the dissolution of the Freikorps. Noske invited 30,000 mercenaries to occupy Berlin, and the strike was brutally suppressed on 8 March.

During those days, the new leader of the KPD, Leo Jogiches, was murdered. Yet even these setbacks did not mark a lasting defeat for the working class. Such was the deep and widespread radicalisation that the counter-revolution had to take on a democratic form. The November revolution won important gains like the eight-hour day, state unemployment insurance, improvements in working conditions and equal voting rights for men and women.

Further opportunities for successful revolution developed as early as 1920, and in 1923. And so the words of Rosa Luxemburg’s last article of 14 January 1918 were confirmed: "Order rules in Berlin! You witless lackeys! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Even tomorrow the revolution will rise up with a crash, and to your horror with the blast of trumpets proclaim: I was, I am, I will be!"


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