Introduction to the American Edition¶
Core Argument¶
This introduction situates the 2011 American edition of Germany: from Revolution to Counter-Revolution within a dual context: the historical necessity of recovering Marxist analysis of the German Revolution and the contemporary political conjuncture following the 2008 economic crash. The author, Rob Sewell, explains the work’s origin in a 1988 lecture series prompted by the republication of Jan Valtin’s Out of the Night, a semi-autobiographical account of the Communist movement in Germany. Though intended as anti-communist propaganda, Valtin’s book is valued for its concrete insights into the period. The scarcity of English-language Marxist material on the subject is given as a further impetus, with Pierre Broué’s The German Revolution 1917-1923 noted as the definitive scholarly resource, alongside Trotsky’s writings on fascism, which provide both analysis and a programme of action—the united front between Communists and Socialists—that was tragically ignored, allowing Hitler’s victory.
The introduction then pivots sharply to the post-1989 landscape. The collapse of Stalinism is presented as a vindication of Trotsky’s prediction that the bureaucracy would restore capitalism. This triggered a bourgeois ideological offensive, coinciding with a global boom driven by financial deregulation, cheap credit, and globalisation. Sewell argues this boom has now ended with the deepest crisis since the 1930s, ushering in a period of upheaval and austerity. Mass movements in Europe and revolution in the Middle East are cited as evidence of a new radicalisation, the “opening shots of the new world revolution.”
The American situation is treated with caution. Disillusionment with Obama and the absence of a labour party have produced the Tea Party, which Sewell analyses as a symptom of political impasse and growing polarisation, not as a fully formed fascist movement. He warns against crying wolf: fascism arises only after the repeated failure of workers’ organisations to offer a revolutionary solution, driving the middle classes to despair. The ruling class may then turn to reactionary layers, but the working class will have many opportunities to intervene first. The central polemic is against both complacent liberal faith in American democracy and mechanical predictions of imminent fascism. The true lesson of Germany is that the crisis of mankind is the crisis of revolutionary leadership, resolvable only by building a Marxist tendency in the US and internationally. The introduction thus functions as a political intervention, using historical analysis to frame the tasks of the present.