The German Elections (1919)

From the February 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

How they support our contentions

In the December 1918 Socialist Standard we stated that if a General Election were held in Germany the working class there, having the vast majority of the votes, could place a Socialist Government in power should they desire to work for the establishment of Socialism. An Election has now been held, and its results must be exceedingly disappointing to those who claim that the riots in Berlin and other towns showed that the German working class were ready – nay, eager – to see Socialism brought into existence.

The Press reports give the following as the result of the Election:

Majority Socialists                        164 seats
Independent Socialists                     24 seats
German Democratic Party               77 seats
National People’s Party                   34 seats
Christian People’s Party                  88 seats
German People’s Party                    23 seats
Other Parties                                    11 seats
                                          Total     421

The Daily News (24.1.19) divides the above parties into two groups, the first three forming what it calls the “Left”, and the remainder the “Right”. But this division conceals, rather than explains, the real position of the various parties.

The “Christian People’s Party” is the old Clerical Centre Party wearing a new name in the attempt to trim its sails to fit the new conditions. The “National People’s Party” is the old Conservative and Junker organisation with a new label to hide its old crimes.

The German People’s Party is composed of the large industrial and financial capitalists and has made a rather poor show, due, doubtless to the wages disputes raging throughout Germany.

The German Democratic Party is made up of Liberals and Republicans and corresponds approximately to the Asquithian Liberal Party here.

Despite the Daily News division all the above parties are supporters and defenders of the capitalist system and are utterly opposed to the abolition of wage slavery. Combined they hold 222 seats, and if we add the 11 seats of the other anti-working class parties there are 233 avowedly capitalist members against 188 so-called Socialist members. But still this does not complete the survey.

For years we have pointed out that the Social Democratic Party of Germany – now called the “Majority Socialists” – was not a Socialist party. Its persistent support of the capitalist parties at elections, coupled with its advocacy of capitalist reforms, marked it off as merely a reform party similar to the Labour Party in this country, though it carried a Socialist name. And there was another important fact connected with its growth.

The capitalist class in Germany has always been somewhat nervous of the working class there, having, as Engels points out, something to learn from the English capitalist class in this respect. This nervousness was shown in various repressive measures culminating in Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist laws. Repressive measures for the working class, however, also hit the small capitalists and traders in their operations. These latter, who usually form an active portion of the Liberal Party, found the main body of their organisation too timid to fight over these measures, and saw them slink behind the more determined Junker section when there were any signs of trouble ahead. Mr. Small Capitalist had to look for another organisation that was really prepared for the Liberal reforms, and it was at hand in the shape of the Social Democratic Party. Since the days of its famous “Gotha Programme”, so trenchantly trounced by Marx, it had even challenged Bismarck’s rulings. So the small capitalists joined this organisation in large numbers till the total votes ran into millions.

It is clear as noon-day that these votes were neither Socialist nor intended to help forward the cause of Socialism. The “acid test” came with the war. Then, as the Labour Party and Hyndman section here, the German Social Democratic Party supported this capitalist war on their side. Only a small number of the Left wing protested, and Karl Liebknecht was slimed with the praise of the capitalist Press of this country, which, since the signing of the Armistice, have used the foulest language at their command to blacken him in the eyes of the workers. Then came the split and the formation of the “Independent Socialist Party” by the Left wing referred to above.

With the fall of the Kaiser on the signing of the Armistice the Junkers went temporarily under a cloud, and the various sections of the Liberals joined with the Social Democrats to carry on in the interval.

Karl Liebknecht’s attempt to rouse the workers to seize power for themselves as a class met with considerable opposition even in his own stronghold, Berlin. This showed how small was the number of the German working class who were ready to assist in establishing Socialism. The number who understand it must, of course, be smaller still.

The German Election has shown, with the cold, relentless logic of figures, how much Socialist propaganda still must be done in Germany, as elsewhere, before the working class will be in a fit state, and ready, to establish Socialism.

While the old Clerical Party and the Junkers have tried to hide their disreputable pasts under new labels, the Liberals have come out with a party of their own: the German Democratic Party. In spite of this many Liberals have been reassured by the actions of the “Majority Socialists” during the interval, and have maintained their allegiance with them. Hence the “Majority Socialist” vote cannot be claimed to be more than a mixture of advanced Radical and ordinary Labour votes.

Due to their action in opposing the later war-credits the “Independent Socialist” vote is a much more reliable index to the number of Socialists in Germany. Even here, however, the breaking away of the Spartacus group adds to the difficulty of forming a sound judgement till more detailed information is available. Until then even the most optimistic who have any acquaintance with German conditions, cannot claim more than the 24 “Independent Socialist” members as an expression of the desire for Socialism on the part of the working class in Germany.

There, as in all capitalist countries, the fight for the Social Revolution has yet to take place.

Jack Fitzgerald

Split (2012)

Book Review from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zinoviev & Martov: Head to Head in Halle. With introductory essays by Ben Lewis and Lars T. Lih. (November Publications. 2011.)

In October 1920 the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), which had broken away from the pro-war SPD in 1917 and which numbered amongst its members such pre-WWI Social Democrat tenors as Kautsky, Bernstein and Hilferding, met in Halle to decide whether or not to affiliate to the Russian Bolsheviks’“Comintern”or “Third International”.

The German authorities allowed the head of the Comintern, Gregory Zinoviev, to enter Germany while the Bolshevik authorities allowed the leading Menshevik Julius Martov to leave Russia, both to take part. Zinoviev spoke for over four hours in what Ben Lewis claims was “one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century workers’ movement.”

Lenin had justified the Bolsheviks seizing power in backward Russia on the grounds that this was only the first event in the world socialist revolution. He also justified the Bolsheviks using all means to stay in power –including suppressing opponents, invading Poland and stirring up a holy war against the West amongst Muslims, all of which Zinoviev defended in his speech –until they were rescued by the revolution spreading to Europe and in particular Germany.

In 1920 the leading Bolsheviks were still in this mode. There is no doubting their sincerity, only their judgement. Zinoviev’s main argument was that as the world revolution was under way you were either for or against the government of the one place where it had already triumphed. How divorced from reality he was can be gauged from his claim that in England “the beginning of the proletarian revolution can be clearly seen”.  He added, “I am convinced that in two or three years, it will be said that this was the beginning of a new era. The proletarian revolution has a great chance in England.”

In his contribution Martov argued that the workers in Europe were certainly discontented but that this was not an expression of socialist consciousness but of elemental despair. He accused the Bolsheviks of exploiting this to come to power instead of trying to turn it into the socialist understanding required before socialism could be established, a view which he claimed the USPD was committed to. Hence the title of his talk “May the USPD be preserved”.

Referring to Russia, he said that the Bolshevik party had “conquered state power in a country with a proletariat that was numerically insignificant, a country with an insignificant productivity of labour, with a complete lack of the basic economic and cultural preconditions for the organisation of socialist production - and these objective conditions presented the Bolsheviks with an insurmountable obstacle for the realisation of their ideals.”He went on to point out that “the development of the revolution in the West …is not going as quickly as the Bolshevik party had reckoned when it obtained state power through a fortunate confluence of circumstances and then used this power in an attempt to turn Russia into a socialist country by a radically accelerated path.”

The extent to which the Bolshevik leaders really did believe at this time that they were turning “Russia into a socialist country”can be gauged from a passage in an article included in this book that Zinoviev later wrote on his “Twelve Days in Germany”:

“We are approaching a time when we shall do away with all money. We are paying wages in kind, we are introducing free tramways, we have free schools, a free dinner, perhaps for the time being unsatisfactory free housing, light, etc.”

Zinoviev won the debate and a majority of the USPD voted to affiliate to the Comintern and become the Communist Party of Germany (the minority eventually rejoined the SPD). But within a year Martov was proved right about the Bolsheviks’ prospects in Russia. In 1921 they were forced to abandon trying to establish a moneyless society and to introduce the New Economic Policy, described by Lenin as “state capitalism”or the development of capitalism under the control of the “proletarian state”(as he called the Bolshevik regime). Four years later when he broke with Stalin, Zinoviev went further and described Russia’s nationalised industries as “state capitalism”(see Weekly Worker, 8 January, 1926) and was criticised by both Stalin and Trotsky for admitting this.

Lih says that Martov could be seen as a sort of “premature Trotskyist” in that he applied the same arguments to why the Russian Revolution would degenerate (economic backwardness and isolation) “to events and processes that the Trotskyist tradition treats in a more admiring way”- in fact from day one of Bolshevik rule.

Martov, wisely, did not return to Russia and died in exile in Germany in 1923. Zinoviev ended up being shot in 1936 as a “counter-revolutionary”, a victim of the same sort of terror and logic he had defended in Halle in 1920.

Adam Buick