Postscript

Liebknecht and Luxemburg were not the only people murdered by the counter-revolution. In the months that followed their deaths, several other leaders of the newly-founded Communist Party were also murdered. After Rosa Luxemburg’s death, Leo Jogiches threw all his energy into investigating her murder and ensuring that those guilty were convicted. But, just a couple of months later, in March 1919, he too fell victim to the Freikorps. The counter-revolution had succeeded in severing the head of the young Communist Party. However, it failed to stop the onrush of the German working class. After Luxemburg’s death, the German Revolution continued for several years. Indeed, the German workers had several opportunities to seize power in that time.

In late January 1919 the scheduled elections to the National Assembly were held. The USPD received 2.5 million votes, while the SPD received 11.5 million. Following the decision at its founding congress, the KPD boycotted the elections. Despite the SPD continuing to enjoy the support of broad layers of the working class, the workers continued to shift to the left in the early part of 1919. In more and more workers’ councils, SPD delegates were replaced by USPD members and Communists. In February, 1,500 delegates met for a joint meeting of all the workers’ and soldiers’ councils in Berlin. The composition of the assembly showed just how far the balance of forces had changed: the USPD and KPD now held the majority, while the SPD was reduced to a minority. Resolutions were passed, and the meeting raised a series of demands, including the organisation of a workers’ militia and the abolition of the Freikorps. With 90 per cent of delegates voting in favour of calling a general strike to achieve their demands, in twenty-four hours, Berlin was paralysed by a general strike. Strikes, demonstrations and uprisings also erupted in other cities across Germany. In Munich, a workers’ republic was declared and, for a short while, the Communists held power in much of southern Bavaria.

However, the counter-revolution was also rearming. SPD Minister of Defence, Gustav Noske, ordered 30,000 Freikorps soldiers to smash the general strike. Despite the fact that the strike was drawing to a close by 9 March, the Freikorps continued their campaign of terror. By the time the smoke had cleared, between 2,000 and 3,000 workers were dead. In other German cities too, the Freikorps began a reign of terror. The workers’ and soldiers’ councils were dissolved using brute force. In Munich alone, upward of 1,000 workers were killed by the forces of counter-revolution. By the summer of 1919, every single workers’ council in cities across Germany had been smashed by the counter-revolution. But the revolution was not yet defeated, and the bloody setback it had received remained, as yet, only temporary.

When the immediate threat of revolution subsided, the capitalists believed that it was time to take back full control. They had been forced to grant enormous concessions to save the system from complete overthrow. For the ruling class, part of the plan of returning to some kind of ‘normality’ also meant jettisoning the Social-Democratic government of Ebert, Scheidemann and Noske. Their job was done. They had played their part as a break on the movement and in executing thousands of revolutionary workers. Now the real masters – the capitalists – demanded complete control. Several plans were hatched by the general staff to launch coups against the government, but it wasn’t until March 1920 that they finally felt strong enough to carry their plans through to victory. These were the events that came to be known as the Kapp Putsch.

On 13 March 1920, 12,000 soldiers marched into Berlin to establish a military dictatorship. Wolfgang Kapp, a founder of the Fatherland Party, was declared chancellor. Noske ordered the Reichswehr officers to smash the rebellion of the general staff but they refused. The government fled Berlin. Suddenly, the bureaucrats of the SPD, USPD, and the trade unions realised that now it was their lives that were on the line. They therefore appealed to the workers to fight the military coup and to defend the republic. The workers mobilised en masse against the counter-revolution. A general strike brought Berlin to a complete standstill. The young KPD adopted a sectarian line at first, and called on the workers to adopt a neutral stance, arguing that what was unfolding was a struggle between two “counter-revolutionary camps”. But within twenty-four hours the KPD was forced to change its position as it became obvious that the Berlin workers supported the strike to a man. The Communists had little choice other than to participate in the struggle. The coup attempt brought the working class across the country to its feet in a massive counter-mobilisation. Mass protests even drove the military out of many cities. The workers started to arm themselves and red militias were established. In one giant sweep, the attempted counter-revolutionary coup was crushed beneath the overwhelming might of the united, battle-ready working class. While the Kapp Putsch was defeated, once again, the movement of the working class failed to reach its full potential owing to the lack of a strong, revolutionary leadership. Momentum was lost, and the movement ebbed.

The SPD, however, emerged from the struggle massively discredited.^[1] As such, the USPD began growing by leaps and bounds in terms of both membership and votes. At the election in June 1920 the USPD doubled its number of votes compared to 1919, receiving almost 5 million, while its membership grew to 800,000. The rank-and-file of the USPD began moving sharply to the left. As early as March 1919, at a party conference, the USPD declared itself in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat and a soviet government. By December 1919, it broke with the Second International and opened negotiations with the newly-established Third (Communist) International. In October 1920, the majority of the USPD decided to join the new International, after which fusion negotiations commenced between the USPD and the KPD. The KPD had also grown in the same period – from between 3,000 and 4,000 members at its founding conference to 78,000 in the wake of the Kapp Putsch. Following its fusion with the USPD, the Communist Party finally became a mass party with over half-a-million members.

However, this was by no means the end of the ultra-left tendencies that had marked the Communist Party since its inception. The leadership remained inexperienced and was growing impatient. In 1920, Lenin wrote his classic text, ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: an Infantile Disorder, which was aimed particularly against these ultra-left tendencies in the German Communist Party. Unfortunately, many of the leaders of the International shared the impatience of the German leaders and urged them to take premature action. The result was what came to be known as the ‘March Action’ in March 1921. The Communist Party leaders who advocated this theory of the ‘offensive’ believed that action by the vanguard of the proletariat – the KPD – would ‘electrify’ the rest of the working class, jolting it into action.

The German Communist leaders had resolved that it was high time to launch a ‘revolutionary offensive’. The moment to launch the offensive, according to them, arose during a conflict in central Germany where the army was deployed against the striking miners and to disarm workers who had kept their weapons after the Kapp Putsch. Beginning on 27 March 1921, the KPD called the workers to action and launched a number of more-or-less isolated and desperate actions that posed little threat to the ruling class. The intention was to ignite a new revolutionary movement of the German working class. In the course of these armed actions, communists in Hamburg went as far as occupying the harbour and several factories. But the KPD leadership had completely misread the mood of the working class. A mass movement cannot be brought into existence by artificial means. Outside the mining regions of central Germany, the workers were not yet ready for an uprising. The KPD members who came out on the streets therefore ended up engaging in isolated armed struggles with the police. These engagements led to the death of hundreds of communists, whilst thousands more of the best revolutionary workers were imprisoned. The debacle was for nothing, and 200,000 workers left the KPD in protest at the ‘March Action’.

The ‘offensive’ served to widen the divide between communists and the reformist workers who had remained in the SPD. The failure of the campaign made it clear that the final struggle for power was not on the agenda and that capitalism had succeeded in stabilising itself, at least for a time. Lenin and Trotsky therefore demanded a change of focus in the Third International: from the immediate fight for power, towards the task of winning over the masses. In the course of the debate in the Third International, Lenin and Trotsky won a majority for the tactic of the ‘united front’. In essence, this directed the communists to seek unity with the reformist organisations for the achievement of concrete, practical goals, in the course of the workers’ daily struggles. By engaging alongside reformist workers, the communists could prove that they were the best and most uncompromising class fighters. They could engage in a dialogue with these workers, and patiently explain the limitations of the politics of the reformist parties. In this manner, the communists would be able to win over these reformist workers. This united front tactic did not imply that the communists ought to surrender their revolutionary programme, or abstain from criticising the reformist leaders. The task, however, was to prove the correctness of the communists’ ideas through the masses’ own experience. This turn in the International and in the German party brought the decline in membership to an end, and allowed the KPD to once more build up its influence and standing.

After its defeat in the war, the ‘victor’s peace’ drawn up by Britain and France in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919 forced Germany to surrender a significant chunk of its industrial base to France. France annexed the Saar mines and Alsace-Lorraine, along with its 2 million inhabitants and two-thirds of Germany’s iron production. The southern part of Silesia with its industries and mines were given to Poland, and Denmark received the northern part of Schleswig. The victors in the war charged a hefty payment for their victory: not only did they annex large parts of Germany’s territory, they also demanded enormous war reparations which Germany was unable to pay. In January 1923, the German state ran out of cash. A couple of days later, French troops invaded the Ruhr – the heart of industrial Germany, an area then responsible for 80 per cent of its steel production and 71 per cent of its coal production.

The French occupation created a wave of anger that swept across Germany. Half a million people protested in Berlin. Under the pressure of the masses, the government organised a campaign of ‘passive resistance’. Workers in the Ruhr were asked not to cooperate with the French and to make their occupation as difficult as possible.

The emptying of Germany’s treasury also meant that the state had to finance its expenses through the printing of money. Inflation exploded. In June 1922, one US dollar could be exchanged for 300 marks. In December of the same year, the exchange rate had risen to 8,000 marks, and by January 1923 to no less than 18,000 marks. Not only did this mean a collapse in living standards for the working class – the petty bourgeoisie were even more severely crushed. Then, in 1923, hyperinflation set in. In 1918, the price of a loaf of bread was 0.63 marks, in July 1923 it had increased to 3,465 marks, in September to 1.5 million marks, and in November to 201 billion marks. The mark lost any meaning. It was not worth the paper it was printed on. Wages could not keep pace with this dizzying ascent. At the same time, the struggle against the French occupation was evolving into a bitter class struggle with strikes, general strikes, and rebellions erupting.

The German workers increasingly turned to the Communist Party, seeking a radical solution to their desperate situation. A revolutionary situation was quickly maturing in Germany. But, unlike in March 1921, when the leadership of the German Communist Party was attempting to push too far ahead of events, they now lagged seriously behind. The class struggle was once more becoming extremely intense and bitter. In August, the government was forced to resign. Trotsky, who had led the Revolutionary Military Committee that had organised the practical seizure of power in Russia in October 1917, urgently advised the German communists to name the day for an armed insurrection. To hesitate now would be fatal. Although the KPD had secretly built up a military organisation over the course of the year, the leadership rejected Trotsky’s appraisal of the situation. They were backed by other leaders of the Third International, including Stalin, Zinoviev, and Radek, who advised the KPD to hold back.

But the situation was reaching fever pitch and, at last, the KPD began preparing a national general strike as a springboard for an uprising. In Saxony and Thuringia, the Communists joined the Social Democrats in the regional state governments on a radical, socialist programme. This action was utterly unacceptable to the central government, and troops were sent to Saxony to put down the workers. The final showdown was rapidly approaching, but the communist leaders continued to hesitate. In the end, they gave way to the counter-offensive of the national Social-Democratic leaders against the revolutionary wave. At the very last moment, the KPD called off the uprising. In Hamburg, however, the local communists had not received the message cancelling the uprising. For three days, hundreds of brave communists fought the police in the northern port town. But Hamburg was completely isolated, and all the forces of counter-revolution nationally could be focused on this single city. The rebellion was crushed with the utmost brutality.

Prevarication had caused the Communist Party to miss its chance. The result was the most terrible kind of defeat – a defeat without having waged a battle. It caused widespread demoralisation among the German workers and communists. It was made worse by the fact that there was never an attempt by the party to honestly evaluate what had gone wrong. Instead, blame was placed on a couple of leaders who were made into scapegoats and excluded from the party.

The 1923 defeat had serious consequences internationally – especially in the Soviet Union. For years, the Russian workers had endured the most inhuman levels of suffering and deprivation due to the isolation of the revolution. They were clinging to the perspective that the world revolution would come to their aid. The defeat in Germany killed this hope. It made clear that the isolation of the Russian Revolution would persist for some time. This was more than the Russian workers could take. Apathy took hold among the Russian masses. Upon this basis, Stalin and the rising soviet bureaucracy began to wrest power from the working class in order to concentrate it in their own hands. Stalin’s anti-Marxist ‘theory’ of building “socialism in one country” reflected the needs of the bureaucracy, and fed on the disillusionment after the German defeat.

The Stalinist degeneration in the Soviet Union spread to every party of the Communist International, with fatal consequences.

The repeated defeats suffered by the German working class, and the many mistakes of the Communist Party leaders not only demoralised the German working class – it also led to disenchantment among the petty bourgeoisie. In the period from 1918 to 1923, these layers had been inclined to look to the working class, but their expectations had been badly disappointed. When the economy experienced a further collapse in the course of the Great Depression, the German petty bourgeoisie was no longer inclined to place its hopes in the working class. On the contrary, it now looked in precisely the opposite direction for a lead.

By 1928, Stalin and the bureaucracy had launched the policy of the so-called ‘Third Period’ across the Communist International. They claimed that capitalism had entered its final crisis and that it was only a matter of time before it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Stalin identified the social democrats, who the communists labelled ‘social fascists’, as the greatest obstacle to the socialist revolution. In Germany, this insane policy had the practical consequence that the communists first and foremost fought against the social democrats, rather than the fascists, who had emerged as a growing force, lavishly sponsored by the ruling class. In fact, the communists even directly cooperated with the Nazis on several occasions in order to break up social-democratic meetings.

Hitler and the Nazis cynically played upon the desperation of the ruined petty bourgeoisie in order to elevate themselves to power in 1933. They were able to do so without facing any serious resistance from either the social democrats or the communists, who were busy fighting one another. And yet, the members of both parties were among the first victims of Hitler’s hangmen after the Nazis seized power.

There can be no doubt that the victory of the German workers in the revolutionary period between 1918-23 would have utterly changed world history. The enormous natural resources of soviet Russia would have been combined with the industry and the educated working class of Germany. The victory of the German working class would have meant that the process of bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union would have been reversed and a genuinely revolutionary Communist International would have developed as a powerful beacon of hope and galvanised the oppressed masses throughout the capitalist world. It would also have given a massive impetus to revolution in other countries across Europe and beyond. Instead, the defeat of the German Revolution paved the way for Hitler and Nazism in Germany, and for the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in the Soviet Union.

History has proven Rosa Luxemburg’s prediction to be absolutely correct: the choice before humanity was indeed “socialism or barbarism”. The defeat of the revolution led to Hitler, to the Holocaust, and to the slaughter of 60 million people in the Second World War. We have a duty to learn from Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary legacy and to do our part to ensure that, in the revolutionary epoch opening up, history will not repeat itself. This time the working class must be victorious.

Endnotes

[1] In the 1920 election, the SPD’s vote halved, plummeting to 5,614,000 votes. After 1920, governments were formed through various coalitions of the SPD and bourgeois parties. The SPD leader, Ebert, nevertheless remained president until his death in 1925.