The Tragedy of the German Proletariat¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 9: The Tragedy of the German Proletariat
The German proletariat, the most powerful in Europe by industrial weight and organisational strength, offered no resistance to Hitler’s accession and first attacks. This fact must ground all future strategy. The Italian analogy is false; National Socialism’s fate depends on German and international conditions, not historical parallels. A long-range policy is now required, not the short-range policy demanded since September 1930. The proletarian vanguard must reorient, understand the defeat, assign responsibility, and regain confidence.
The Social Democracy’s criminal role needs no commentary; the Comintern was founded to counter it. The direct blame for the proletariat’s impotence falls on the post-Leninist Comintern leadership. Since 1923, Stalinist leadership indirectly aided Social Democracy to derail and enfeeble the German proletariat: restraining offensives, proclaiming revolutionary situations after they passed, making agreements with petty-bourgeois phrase-mongers, limping behind Social Democracy under a united front cover, proclaiming the ‘third period’ during political ebb, isolating communists from mass unions, identifying Social Democracy with fascism, rejecting the united front against Nazi bands, and deceiving workers about the real relationship of forces. Thälmann’s April 1931 speech, denouncing ‘pessimists’ and claiming Hitler’s best day was past, exemplifies this policy. Thälmann is now arrested; his policy is Stalin’s, and it caused the party’s complete demoralisation. A false political theory punishes itself.
The Stalinist bureaucracy has a dual propensity for opportunism and adventurism, using grandiose adventures to refurbish its reputation after defeats, as in Estonia, Bulgaria, and Canton. Such adventures disorganise the masses further. The Stalinists have converted the crisis of capitalism and reformism into a crisis of communism. In Germany, unlike China, the Opposition’s warnings were public at every stage. The Stalinists slandered the Opposition, blocked the united front, helped the social-democratic bureaucracy dismantle local defence committees, and paralysed the proletariat. They now fear light and criticism, proclaiming the loss of 1.2 million votes as a victory. The 5 million votes the Communist Party received only show what it could have achieved with trustworthy leadership. But the party is absent from factories and streets, demoralised and broken by bureaucratic terror. Stalinism in Germany has had its 4 August 1914. The official KPD is doomed and will decompose. German Communism can be reborn only with a new basis and leadership. In Germany, Stalinism will never return. Advanced workers must build a new party, and Bolshevik-Leninists will give all their forces to this work.