New Introduction¶
Core Argument¶
This introduction frames the Weimar Republic not as a case study in national pathology but as a classical instance of revolutionary defeat, from which the central lesson is the necessity of correct revolutionary leadership. The author, Rob Sewell, explicitly rejects academic approaches that seek a “flawed psychology” in the German people, insisting instead on a Marxist analysis that locates the catastrophe in the failure of the workers’ movement’s leadership. The chapter’s core argument is that the German working class, potentially the strongest in the world, was perfectly capable of blocking the fascist road to power; it was betrayed from above.
The key claims rest on the disastrous impact of Stalinism on the German Communist Party (KPD). Sewell argues that the Stalinist theory of “social fascism”—which equated social democracy with fascism—split the working class fatally, preventing the united front against Hitler that Trotsky urgently demanded. The evidence cited includes Trotsky’s warnings that a fascist victory would “ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank” and the KPD’s grotesque boast, “After Hitler, our turn.” The chapter draws heavily on the historical context of the 1918 revolution, the abortive German revolution of 1923, and the subsequent Stalinisation of the Comintern. It contrasts the Bolshevik leadership under Lenin and Trotsky with the KPD leadership, which “staggered from one ultra-left mistake to another” under Moscow’s dictates.
The polemical target is twofold. First, the Stalinist bureaucracy is attacked for its catastrophic line and for having destroyed the Communist International as a vehicle for world revolution—a verdict confirmed, Sewell argues, by the Spanish Revolution, the Moscow Trials, and the Stalin-Hitler Pact. Second, the reformist social-democratic leadership is indicted for its role in derailing the revolutionary wave of the 1970s. The chapter concludes by drawing the contemporary lesson: the collapse of Stalinism and the degeneration of social democracy have cleared the ground for building a new revolutionary leadership, a task that falls to the International Marxist Tendency. The re-publication of the work in 2014 is presented as timely given the capitalist crisis and the bankruptcy of existing leaderships.