The March Movement in Germany¶
Core Argument¶
The March Movement in Germany, written on 18 April 1921, identifies Westphalia, and specifically the Mansfeld mining region, as the epicentre of the German revolutionary movement. The chapter’s core argument is that the most backward, semi-feudal layers of the proletariat—those most oppressed and least touched by reformist party machinery—become the most explosive revolutionary force once they break from their old allegiances. The miners of Westphalia are compared directly to the workers of the Urals in Russia: attached to the soil, owning cottages and a few cattle, living under an “industrial feudalism.” Only after the revolution did these workers transform into the most temperamentally revolutionary section of the German working class.
The chapter traces their political trajectory: from Social-Democracy to the Independent Social-Democratic Party (USPD), and finally, when the USPD’s left wing joined the Communists, into the Communist Party en masse. This path is presented as evidence that the most dynamic revolutionary energy comes not from the advanced, bureaucratised layers of the working class, but from those previously considered backward, even those burdened with “Christian and monarchist prejudices.” The author argues that such workers, once awakened, are free from the dictatorship of the party, the trade unions, and their bureaucracy, making them the motive force of the most positive revolutionary actions.
The chapter contains a sharp polemic against Freiheit, the newspaper of the USPD, which had mocked the ignorance and superstition of these workers and their leaders. The author dismisses this scorn as a failure to understand the dialectic of revolutionary development: the advanced layers are often fettered by old habits and professional party bureaucracy, while the “young force” of the backward strata, though inexperienced, can rapidly acquire discipline through struggle. The March events, despite their sacrifices, are presented as a severe school of revolutionary discipline for the Westphalian workers. The theoretical context is the Marxist analysis of uneven revolutionary consciousness and the role of the most oppressed, rather than the most skilled or organised, sections of the proletariat in driving forward the first stages of revolution.