2. In the Throes of Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
The German Revolution of 1918–19 was not a single, unified event but a bitter struggle between two irreconcilable political strategies. The old regime, sensing its doom, attempted a pre-emptive “revolution from above,” installing Prince Max von Baden’s parliamentary government and co-opting the Social Democrat Scheidemann. These reforms came too late. When the High Command ordered a suicidal naval battle on 28 October, mutiny erupted at Kiel on 3 November. Sailors seized ships, workers’ and soldiers’ councils formed, and by 7–8 November the revolution held Hamburg, Bremen, Munich, and beyond.
The SPD leadership—Ebert, Noske, Scheidemann—moved to contain the upheaval. Ebert told Prince Max he hated revolution “like sin”; his first act as Chancellor was to seek a constitutional monarchy. Scheidemann, against Ebert’s wishes, proclaimed a republic. The workers’ and soldiers’ councils held effective power but handed it to an SPD-USPD coalition. The SPD’s overriding aim was to restore order and convene a Constituent Assembly, thereby strangling the council movement. The Spartacists, by contrast, denounced the Assembly on principle, counterposing “All power to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.” This ultraleftism proved disastrous.
Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism had already warned German leftists that declaring parliamentarianism “politically obsolete” was a dangerous mistake: millions of proletarians still believed in it, and the lefts had mistaken their own desire for objective reality. The genuine Marxist participates in workers’ struggles with all their illusions, raising consciousness through shared experience, not by shouting from the sidelines. The Spartacist boycott of the National Assembly was wrong: 83 percent of the population voted. Lenin had insisted that “Down with the Provisional Government” was adventurist without a solid, class-conscious majority. The Bolshevik task was patient explanation and winning a majority—not putschism. The Spartacists’ failure to train cadres in strategy allowed ultraleftism to dominate.
By late December 1918, the Spartacus League founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Despite Rosa Luxemburg’s advice, the founding conference voted 62-23 to boycott the National Assembly elections. Further motions sought to declare trade union membership incompatible with party membership, ignoring that union membership had risen from 1.5 million to 2.2 million. The leadership barely prevented these resolutions being voted on. The revolution was being lost not by the councils’ weakness, but by the left’s refusal to learn from Lenin’s strategic lessons.