To the Spartacus League of Germany and the Communist Party of German Austria¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter is a letter of solidarity from the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to the Spartacus League in Germany and the Communist Party of German Austria, dated 5 January 1919. Its core argument is that the German and Austrian revolutions are being strangled not primarily by open counter-revolution, but by the treacherous policy of social-democratic leaders who, under the signboard of a socialist republic, are actively safeguarding capitalist order and private property. The letter identifies the key obstacles to revolution as Anglo-French-American imperialist intervention, the betrayal of the “socialists in government,” and the obstructive role of “independent” groups whose participation in government gives cover to the “criminals of yellow social-democracy.”
The chapter makes several sharp polemical claims. It asserts that the much-vaunted democratic republic and national assembly are nothing but a dam to hold back the revolutionary wave. It condemns the “Eberts and Renners” for leaving the entire old state apparatus of the monarchy intact, having been conditioned throughout their lives to revere bourgeois police power. The letter argues that actual power in Germany and Austria remains in the hands of the old monarchical functionaries, preserved with the blessing of “socialist” puppets. This must be replaced, it insists, by the “steel-like revolutionary dictatorship” of the proletariat.
Drawing on the Russian experience, the chapter presents a stark binary: either the “rabid and unbridled bloody barbarism” of a capitalist dictatorship of generals, or the dictatorship of the workers building a new world on the ruins of war. The Bolsheviks, who began the revolution dismissed as a “gang of lunatics” but have now held state power for over a year, express joy that fraternal parties in Germany and Austria are moving toward the same goal along the same path—through the dictatorship of the working class. The letter concludes with a declaration of inevitable victory and calls for world revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the international socialist republic, and communism.