* * *¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The German Question and the Fourth International¶
This chapter presents a trenchant Marxist critique of the post-war settlement and the betrayals of the German working class, arguing from the standpoint of the Fourth International. Its core argument is that both world wars, the rise of Nazism, and the subsequent occupation of Germany are not the fault of the German people, but the direct result of capitalist and imperialist rivalries. The letter vehemently rejects the notion of collective German guilt, insisting that workers everywhere are victims of their own ruling classes. Allied imperialists—Britain, France, and America—are condemned for arming and financing Hitler to crush the German labour movement, making them equally culpable for Nazi crimes. The Stalin-Hitler pact and the Potsdam agreements are denounced as predatory imperialist settlements, not democratic peaces.
The chapter’s key claims centre on the catastrophic role of Stalinist and social-democratic leaderships. By declaring social-democrats the main enemy in the name of socialism, the Stalinists are accused of splitting the working class and preparing Hitler’s victory. The Communist Party’s programme for a parliamentary democratic republic is attacked as a repetition of the fatal 1918 mistake of not overthrowing capitalism. The only solution proposed is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a Socialist United States of Europe, led by a working-class policy of internationalism, not class collaboration or subservience to the victors. The Fourth International is presented as the sole inheritor of Lenin’s teachings, having upheld internationalism by refusing to support its own rulers and pursuing class fraternisation with German workers in uniform.
The chapter also engages in a notable polemic against the Soviet bureaucracy, arguing that the Communist Parties have abandoned Lenin’s four conditions for working-class rule—elected Soviets with recall, abolition of the standing army, no official paid more than an average worker, and no permanent officialdom—creating a privileged bureaucratic caste in Russia. The Fourth International fights to restore these conditions and calls for genuine socialist democracy based on soviets. The programme demands the expropriation of big capitalists and Junkers, land for peasants, withdrawal of occupation armies, self-determination, no reparations, and workers’ control of production. It insists that German workers must not be trapped into supporting bourgeois democracy, and that unity with the international movement is essential, for the working class of Britain, America, Europe, and Russia will never be free while Germany is occupied.