This general account of the fortunes of the KPD first saw the light in 1985 as part of an attempt to draw out its political lessons for the use of revolutionaries working in the labour movement.
Although a great wealth of original documentation exists in German, in spite of the importance of this topic, little of it has ever surfaced in Britain. But there do exist a number of first hand accounts of varying worth. Among the general memoirs that cannot be neglected are Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, Cambridge, 1948; Rosa Levine-Meyer, Inside German Communism, London, 1977; and Levine, London, 1973. Particularly valuable descriptions of shorter episodes include Icarus (Ernst Schneider), The Wilhelmshoven Revolt, London, 1944 (and subsequent editions); the eyewitness accounts, 'Workers' and Soldiers' Councils across Germany' and '1920 -- Military Coup Defeated by German Workers' which appeared in Militant on 17 November and 8 December 1978; Louis C Fraina's The Social Revolution in Germany, reprinted London, 1977; and the Council Communist description, The Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany, 1918-39, a Workers' Voice pamphlet. Liebknecht's speech to the naval committee and extracts from Levine's court testimonial were recently printed (as 'Liebknecht Rallies the Sailors' and 'Levine's Last Speech') in Workers' News, May 1989. The impact of these events on the international revolutionary movement can be examined in Dave Riddell (ed). The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents 1918-19, New York, 1987 (cf the review by Steve Coiling in Marxist Review, vol iv, no 6. June/July 1989, pp16-18).
General accounts of the whole period also differ widely as to scope, relevance and worth. The most recent is Rob Sewell, Germany: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution, London, 1989 (cf the review by Al Richardson in Revolutionary History, Volume 2, no 1, Spring 1989, p45). A general series of articles on the whole span of the history of the KPD by Tom Kemp was printed in Workers Press from 28 September to 28 October 1972. Whilst Robert Black's impressive Fascism in Germany (2 volumes, London, 1975) is mainly concerned with the end of the period dealt with here. Chris Harman's focus in The Lost Revolution (London, 1982) is upon the crucial period 1918-23, as is Waiter Held's classic Trotskyist version, 'Why the German Revolution Failed', in Fourth International (SWP). December 1942, pp377-82 and January 1943, pp21-6. Stalinist rationalisations include Eric Hobsbawm, 'Confronting Defeat: the German Communist Party' in New Left Review, no 6, May/June 1970, pp93-92, and Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929-1933, Cambridge, 1983.
Material concerning the 1923 events includes the Deutscher/Brandler correspondence between 1952 and 1959 in New Left Review, no 105, September/October 1977, pp56-81; Larissa Reissner, Hamburg at the Barricades, London, 1977; and Phil Benson. 'Revolutionaries Without a Revolution: The Third International and German Communism 1918-23', in the Discussion Bulletin of the Socialist Charter, Volume 1, no 7, March 1978. Trotsky's own attitudes can be examined in The Challenge of the Left Opposition, 1923-25, New York, 1975, pp164-74 and 201-2, but the crucial source for his final opinion does not appear in the Pathfinder edition of the works of his last exile, as it only came to light in the Labour History Library in Stockholm after the English edition went to press. It can be consulted in Jakob Walcher's 'Notes sur les conversations entre Trotsky et Walcher', 17-20 August 1933, in the Oeuvres, Volume 2, Paris. 1978, pp93-110. It is to be hoped that the appearance of this vital text in English guise will not be long delayed. even if we have to translate it from the French and not the original.
The writer of the article below first became active in working class politics when he joined the ETU at the time of the witchhunt against the left following the famous ballot-rigging scandal, and gravitated towards the Communist Party. He left it in 1969 after pondering the lessons of the French General Strike and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia the year before, joining the International Socialists (now the SWP) whilst abroad in Denmark. But on his return, repelled by what he regarded as its triumphalism and sectarian attitude, he joined the Labour Party, and until quite recently regarded himself as a supporter of the newspaper Militant.
The history of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) illustrates what happens to a supposedly revolutionary leadership when it abandons scientific analysis for subjectivism; when programme, strategy and tactics are replaced by phrase-mongering, moralism and impatience; when its leading organ is constantly reconstituted, when cadres aren't trained, and when it loses its bond with the masses.
Not only is this history important because the decisive event which led Trotsky to proclaim the need for the Fourth International -- the rise of Hitler to power -- was primarily its responsibility, but also because the strategy and tactics crystallised in the Transitional Programme were tested out by the KPD, and were shown to be the only way of making Communism a material force in the class struggle, as opposed to a mere idea. The Marxists in the KPD leadership had constantly to combat the attempts of the centrists -- under the guise of ultra-lefts, then rightists, then again ultra-lefts -- to abandon this method, and the disputes which dogged the KPD would revolve around the United Front and attitude to reformism, and its extension, the workers' government. The centrists would win this struggle, destroying the KPD as a Marxist leadership, and allowing Hitler to gain power in the process. Therefore the history of the KPD is rich in lessons for those aspiring to Marxism today.
The nucleus of those who were to found the KPD was actively involved in opposition to the First World War, and to the support for it by the SPD, the mass workers' party and the leading party of the Second International. This nucleus was grouped, in the main, around Rosa Luxemburg, though other currents were in existence (the Bremen left, and a youth grouping, among others). Luxemburg opposed splitting from the SPD, even though she had proclaimed the need for a new International (see the Junius Pamphlet), because she understood that the consciousness of the workers hadn't yet reached that level of understanding. She rightly saw such an act as 'flight', as 'betrayal' of the masses, who were being choked in the deadly grip of Scheidemann and Legien, delivered up to the bourgeoisie. She ridiculed those who would rip up their party card in empty gestures, in order to build a sect, describing it is an 'illusion of freedom'. She saw such a belief as 'organisational cretinism', the idea that 'power lies in a membership card'. She knew that the decay of the SPD was an 'historical process of the greatest dimensions', and that the battle would have to be fought out to the end, and that one had to be in place beside the workers, in order for this process to be successfully concluded. [1]
In fact, the SPD was to be split by its own apparatus, who expelled the revolutionary and pacifist opponents of the war, who then went on to set up the USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party), to which the Spartakusbund around Luxemburg affiliated. Karl Liebknecht explained: 'We belonged to the USPD in order to drive the most valuable elements in it forward, to squeeze out of it what we could, to radicalise it, to further its disintegration'. The USPD gave the Spartakists total freedom of action.
Relations with the USPD became problematic after the revolutionary events of November 1918, when the uprisings in the armed forces and among the workers resulted in the declaration of the republic and the joint SPD-USPD government. The task of the government was to stem the revolutionary tide and to roll back the workers' councils, while disarming workers, soldiers and sailors. The USPD was both in government, thus assisting the SPD leaders, and simultaneously pushing towards a workers' council republic, under pressure of its rank and file. Dual power prevailed, but the SPD still dominated the workers' movement. The USPD was attempting to straddle both positions. The Spartakists were still an insignificant minority. At the end of December they decided to set up an independent party, owing to the USPD role in the government (the councils deciding to abdicate power to the latter) and the internal situation in the USPD. A separate 'Communist Party' would be founded, in spite of doubts as to the wisdom of such a step by Leo Jogiches and Luxemburg -- not in principle, purely as a tactic, owing, again, to the workers' consciousness.
The KPD(S) was dominated at its foundation by ultra-left elements who thought that the revolution could be made immediately, although the party was, in reality, only a sect. The group around Luxemburg was in a minority, though they led the party. Two decisions were taken which clearly show the ultra-left influence: one, to boycott the elections to the Constituent Assembly, and, two, to abandon the trade unions. Leo Jogiches had advised against leaving the USPD, and Paul Levi later said that he was proved to be right, that they could have split the workers from their opportunist leaders in three or four months by staying in the party. Heinrich Brandler claims that Luxemburg despaired over the ultra-left influence, and proposed rejoining the USPD.[2] Luxemburg wished to participate in the election in order to educate the workers. She pointed out in her speech that their actions showed that they were not ready to take the power. Membership of the trade unions would leap from 2.8 million in 1918 to 7.3 million in 1919, a clear refutation of those who would abandon the unions under SPD leadership.
USPD representatives left the government in protest at the reactionary measures championed by the SPD. In response to a provocation by the SPD, and owing to pressure from the masses, an attempt was made to seize power in Berlin. This adventurist attempt was forced onto the KPD, and possessing superior forces, the government drowned it in blood. Luxemburg and Leibknecht were among those killed by the SPD-led military units, which laid the basis for the future hostility to the SPD as a whole by the KPD.
After the mid-January events in Berlin, the government set to work crushing the still rising workers' movement elsewhere, and disarming it. In late February a general strike broke out in Central Germany demanding the 'socialisation' of mines and factories, and for the recognition of the workers' councils. It spread rapidly, and a similar movement began in Berlin soon after. In Munich too, a spontaneous upsurge was developing. All these movements failed, and much blood was spilt. The KPD had tried to restrain the workers from adventurism, but still lacked decisive influence. Leo Jogiches was murdered, as was Eugen Levine, thus robbing the KPD again of two of its most competent leaders. By May 1919 the first post-war revolutionary wave had subsided. The capitalists had made large concessions to the workers, and a certain stabilisation had occurred.
Apart from rebuilding the party, the new leader, Paul Levi, was faced with the task of increasing the party's influence and adapting to the changed circumstances. An economic recovery was beginning in Germany, unemployment was falling and inflation was starting. The factory councils were moribund and the trade unions growing. But at the party conference in Frankfurt the ultra-lefts were still dominant over the Levi leadership, and proposed leaving the unions for the construction of a purer type of 'one big union', a cross between a party and a union. This conference declared itself incompetent. At the Heidelberg Congress in October 1919 Levi pushed through a set of theses which characterised the views of the ultra-left as 'syndicalist' and outside the framework of the party. The ultra-lefts walked out, and were subsequently expelled. This almost reduced the party by half, the membership dropping to 50 000 or so as the lefts resigned, en bloc in some areas. This was the case in Berlin and the Hamburg area, where not much remained.
This ultra-left is an interesting phenomenon. Many of the rank and file were first-generation proletarians, who upon entering the industrial sphere came into the SPD. The war radicalised them, and they then became a vanguard which was the basis for the spontaneous uprisings in the early post-war period. Some came straight from Catholic or Monarchist views direct to Communism. But two things common to all the ultra-lefts were impatience and subjectivism. This was the case with the theoreticians (Gorter, Ruhle, etc), as well as with the elements new to the Marxist movement. They were not prepared to wait for the development in consciousness of the rest of the class, but thought it possible to force the pace through action. They set up a General Workers Union (AAUD) in February 1920, and the Communist Workers Party (KAPD) in April. Neither would succeed in maintaining themselves for more than a few years as a serious force in the workers' movement.
By his ruthless dealing with the ultraleft, although it temporarily decimated the party, Levi saved the KPD and laid the basis for its growth as a mass party rather than a sect. Not only did Levi save the party, he established it as a material force by work in the trade unions, and by influencing the USPD workers towards Communism, and gained the respect of the SPD workers, who were suspicious of the 'Bolshevik' KPD.
In March 1920 the reactionary politician Kapp, supported by Freikorps units, attempted a coup against the Weimar democracy. The KPD leadership met, and under the influence of the 'lefts' headed by Thalheimer, issued a proclamation on 14 March claiming that the proletariat 'would not lift a finger for the democratic republic', and opposing the general strike called by the official trade unions. Levi was in prison at the time. But the workers responded with a massive movement in defence of the republic. Then the KPD changed its line to call for a general strike, the overthrow of bourgeois democracy, and the setting up of a workers' council republic.
The 'leftist' proclamation was totally out of step with the consciousness of the workers, and passed them by. In Chemnitz the KPD was still a mass organisation, and led by Brandler it set up a workers' council, armed the workers, arrested all Kappists, and totally ignored the party proclamation. Thus, it related to the consciousness of the workers, took part in the action, and succeeded in raising it to a higher political level.
The Kapp Putsch failed because of the immediate response of the workers. On 17 March, union leader Carl Legien called for a 'Workers' Government', in order to halt the creeping counter-revolution. At first the KPD left opposed collaborating with the SPD. Then, on 26 March, the KPD organ printed a statement from the leadership saying that it would act as a 'loyal opposition' to such a 'workers' government' if it was formed. By then both the SPD and the ADGB had dropped the idea, apparently due to the USPD leaders' hostility to 'negotiating with traitors to the working class'. Of course, this moralistic leftism let the SPD leaders off the hook, and allowed them to continue disarming the workers and other counter-revolutionary activities.
A majority at the KPD's Fourth Congress condemned the declaration of the 'loyal opposition', including such figures as Clara Zetkin and Ernst Meyer. Levi and Thalheimer spoke in favour of it, though regretting the phrasing. Pieck, being the main author, spoke up for it, drawing upon the Bolshevik example of June 1917, when they called on the Mensheviks and SRs to take power. However, the continuing controversy provoked Lenin into commenting. He said:
'This statement is quite correct both as to its basic premise and its practical conclusions. The basic premise is that at the present moment there is no "objective basis" for the dictatorship of the proletariat because the "majority of the urban workers" support the Independents. The conclusion is -- a promise to be a "loyal opposition"...to a "Socialist government if it excludes bourgeois capitalist parties".
'Undoubtedly, these tactics are in the main correct (Lenin goes on to criticise what he terms 'minor inexactitudes of formulation ')...
'It would have been sufficient to say...as long as the majority of the urban workers follow the Independents, we Communists must do nothing to prevent these workers overcoming their last philistine-democratic.. .illusions by going through the experience of having their "own government".[3]
The KPD won 1.7 per cent of the vote in the Reichstag election of June 1920, to the 18.8 per cent and 21.6 per cent for the USPD and SPD respectively. The USPD was evolving towards Communism, and Levi aimed to split it. This was also the policy of the Communist International (CI). Brandler claims that he supported the idea of winning USPD members slowly, in order to be able to absorb them into the membership, rather than seeing them overwhelm the KPD kernel.[4] The USPD was invited to send delegates to the second CI Congress, as was the KAPD, which Lenin wished to use as a revolutionary yeast to counteract the entrance of the USPD left, whom he assumed would pull the KPD rightwards.
Two of the USPD delegates opposed the '21 Conditions' for entry into the CI, while two (Daumig and Stocker) accepted them. The KAPD was admitted as a sympathising section, giving it time to fuse with the KPD. Levi protested about this. Upon his return to Germany he expressed doubts about the '21 Conditions', seeing them as an 'organisational' way of separating opportunists out, rather than the 'political' way he favoured. Brandler claims that Luxemburg opposed the foundation of the CI originally because it would become a 'Russian shop', when no other mass parties existed outside Russia. Levi, too, doubted the wisdom of giving the Russians too much power, as their domination of the Executive Committee (ECCI) allowed.[5]
In the event, the USPD did split in October 1920 at its Halle Congress, when a majority of delegates accepted the '21 Conditions'. Out of a membership of between 800 000 and a million, only 400 000 eventually joined the KPD, while 300 000 stayed with the USPD, including most of the deputies, functionaries, and union leaders. Possibly between 200 000 and 300 000 dropped out of politics because of the split, which also served to alienate many workers from the KPD. A later byproduct of the split would be the strengthening of the SPD when, in 1922, the USPD would re-unite with it, giving it a new injection of proletarians just as it was becoming isolated from the working class.
At the KPD's Fifth Congress in November 1920, the CI would try to persuade it to show more toleration of the KAPD, but without success. A certain antagonism was developing between the Levi leadership and the CI, especially its president, Zinoviev, who had already begun seeking out allies in order to build his own anti-levi faction in the party. In December, the Sixth (unification) Congress took place, quite successfully, and Daumig and Levi were elected joint chairmen of a leadership of eight former USPD-lefts, and six ex-Spartakists.
Ultra-left impatience raised its head again at the unification congress, its confidence increased by the influx of USPD lefts. A tendency flourished which saw the KPD as big enough to act on its own, to ignore the objective situation and only to heed the subjective desires of the vanguard. However, Levi continued with his United Front policy and the KPD addressed an 'Open Letter' to all workers' parties and unions in January 1921, calling for them to unite their forces in combatting reaction and the capitalist offensive against the workers' vital rights. Their programme of joint action included demands for higher pensions for disabled war veterans; elimination of unemployment; the improvement of the country's finances at the expense of the monopolies; the introduction of workers' control over food supplies, raw materials and fuel; reopening of all closed enterprises; control over sowing, harvesting and marketing of farm produce by peasants' councils and farm labourers' organisations; the immediate disarming of all bourgeois militarised organisations; the establishment of workers' self-defence; amnesty for political prisoners; and the immediate re-establishment of trade and diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.
The left in the KPD leadership described the tactic as opportunist, as did Zinoviev and Bukharin. The leaders of the main workers' organisations rejected the call, but the rank and file Social Democrats sympathised with it, and they began to see the KPD in a better light. Lenin, again, intervened at the CI's Third Congress when the 'Open Letter' was condemned as opportunist. He described it as 'a model political step', and continued:
'It is a model because it is the first act of a practical method of winning over the majority of the working class. In Europe where almost all the proletarians are organised, we must win the majority of the working class, and anyone who fails to understand this is lost to the Communist movement; he will never learn anything if he failed to learn that much during the three years of the great revolution.'[6]
Meanwhile Levi had a dispute at the congress of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) at Livorno in January 1921, where he represented the KPD, which was to have tragic repercussions for Communism. The PSI had affiliated en bloc to the CI, but had not yet expelled the reformists. Serrati, the PSI leader, was avoiding expelling the reformist wing led by Turati, and the ECCI delegates Rakosi and Kabakchiev were determined to get the PSI to adhere to the '21 Conditions', even if it meant splitting with Serrati and his grouping. Levi, too, wished to expel the reformists, but opposed the crude 'mechanical' methods of the two ECCI delegates. Their will triumphed, and a small PCI was founded around Bordiga. The PSI majority sympathetic to Communism was left outside with Serrati.
Levi published an article in the KPD organ Die Rote Fahne criticising the role of the two ECCI delegates in Italy. He claimed that but for them similar results to the process with the USPD could have been achieved. Then the left in the KPD leadership moved to undermine Levi by a resolution of censure. By criticising the ECCI delegates, some of whom Levi accused of aborting the Hungarian revolution, he was seen as criticising Zinoviev or, worse still, the Russians in general. Levi was backed by a majority in the leadership, but the lefts put the resolution to the party council, the body holding sovereign power between congresses. It received a small majority, resulting in the resignation of Levi, Clara Zetkin, Daumig, Otto Brass and Adolf Hoffmann from the leadership.
Brandler and Stocker (the mover with Thalheimer of the resolution) were elected joint chairmen, and five new members were co-opted onto the leadership. The new leadership declared that it had no differences in principle with the old. It motivated its voting for the censure out of 'loyalty' to the ECCI. This was to be the start of a process of automatic subservience to the Russians, in the main by men better theoretically equipped than their advisers. Also, the shift to the left in the KPD leadership strengthened a 'putschist' trend.
The PCI developed quickly into a rigid sect isolated from the working class, and a struggle was waged to wrest its leadership from the hands of Bordiga by Gramsci's grouping. Later, with the benefit of hindsight, Gramsci was to agree with Levi. He wrote that the way whereby the PSI was split at Livorno 'was undoubtedly reaction's greatest triumph'.
The theory of the 'revolutionary offensive', where the action itself would create the necessary conditions for victory, had been gestating for some time, and with Levi out of the way a chance arose to test it out. For the workers of the province of Halle-Merseberg, the only area where the KPD was the majority workers' party, the announcement by the provincial governor that he intended to occupy the industrial districts with police was seen as a gross provocation. The miners had already thrown out a private police force from the mines. Using the unruliness of the workers as an excuse, he intended to disarm them and reintroduce the authority of the central government. The KPD decided to generalise the resistance into a general strike and then to spread it to the rest of the country.
The local party press called for a general strike, and in Berlin Die Rote Fahne called for the workers to take up arms, but apart from the Hamburg dockworkers, the movement had little support outside of the Mansfeld district. The KPD called it off on 1 April. Some 200 000 workers supposedly participated. This adventure was a disaster for the KPD. It started it without any analysis of the balance of forces, without estimating whether other workers would follow the Mansfeld miners, and without any clear perspective of what it was aiming at.
Later, it emerged that Hugo Eberlein had organised a series of provocations in Central Germany to involve more workers. Workers' leaders were kidnapped, buildings blown up, etc, and the blame was put onto the police. The party even drove workers out of the factories at the point of a gun. The SPD published in Vorwdirts some KPD documents seized by the Prussian police, which served to alienate workers from the party. It also emerged that the ECCI had sent instructions to Germany by its emissaries backing such an action, in order to assist Soviet Russia.
The KPD lefts actually saw such an action as a step forward, and began to generalise their theory of the 'revolutionary offensive' with backing from the ECCI. Levi saw all this, saw that no opposition was being mounted to this non-Marxist theory, and on 12 April he issued a pamphlet against it, Unser Weg: Wider den Putschismus, which described the March Action as 'the greatest Bakuninist coup so far in history'. He showed how the party had issued pure propaganda slogans without content in the week after his resignation, and had then launched itself into an uprising without any change in the objective situation in Germany. He blamed the influence of the ECCI and the second-rate emissaries it sent out.
Although he had written to Lenin who, along with Trotsky, backed his views, Levi sent out his pamphlet before any reply arrived. Obviously it was the act of a desperate man. The KPD had actually issued a pamphlet on the 'revolutionary offensive', claiming to draw out the lessons of the March Action with a view to stimulating similar adventures. The theory was winning support in many Communist Parties, and the ECCI had put a seal of approval on the action by its statement. proclaiming: 'the Communist International says to you: You acted rightly!' As a result Levi was expelled from the KPD, the expulsion being upheld by the ECCI, and then by the CI's Third Congress, which was dominated by a struggle between the lefts and the right, which included Lenin and Trotsky, and the KPD minority. Lenin, in fact, was prepared for a split if the left had won. In the event, he concluded a compromise with them, which was a tragic error.
The Russian leadership was split over the March Action (Zinoviev and Bukharin for, Lenin, Trotsky and Radek against), so a compromise was reached within its delegation. Lenin set out his views to Zinoviev in a letter of 10 June: 'It is necessary to fight unceasingly and systematically to win the majority of the working class, at the outset within the old trade unions...All those that have not understood the tactic of the Open Letter to be obligatory must be expelled from the International within a month. I see clearly that it was a mistake on my part to have agreed to the admission of the KAPD. This must be corrected as quickly as possible.'[7]
He wanted Levi to be suspended from the party for six months, but said that he was correct in his critique of the KPD leadership in the main, though he wouldn't use the term 'putsch' for the March Action.
In the 'Tactics of the Comintern', the compromise expressed itself in seeing the action as 'forced upon the VKPD by the government's attack upon the proletariat of Central Germany', and by seeing the party as having showed itself to be truly the 'party of the revolutionary proletariat of Germany'. But this compromise wasn't enough for the leftists, who tried to present the action as exemplary. The Russians -- differing among themselves would grant the above concession, in order then to go on to point out the faults, in an attempt to steer the KPD away from its disastrous course, which if followed by them and the CI, would have left just a series of sects after a few years.[8]
Trotsky and Varga drafted the 'Theses on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Comintern', which the former introduced with a speech 'Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International', a text considered an exemplar of Marxist analysis.[9] Trotsky pointed out that capitalism was stabilising itself, although he saw it as being of a short-term character, the end of the decade bringing new upheavals. The theses were even more unambiguous about the stabilisation, and both received heavy criticism from the KPD delegation. The theses were sent back to the commission to be 'sharpened' and to predict the collapse of capitalism somewhat earlier. The result was discrepancy between the analysis of the objective situation and the noted stabilisation upon which perspectives and tasks would be based. By compromising with the leftists and characterising the situation as still objectively revolutionary, the Marxists undermined the battle against the theory of the 'revolutionary offensive', and the whole United Front policy, and thus left the door open for ultra-leftism to flower.
After the Third Congress, the KPD held its Seventh Congress in August 1921, and set out to implement the decisions. Brandler was wanted by the authorities and thus in exile, so Ernst Meyer was elected Chairman. Under Meyer the KPD again began to implement the United Front policy developed by Levi, and turned toward the SPD and other workers, to end the identification of the whole party with its traitorous leaders, to deal with the SPD and ADGB leaders, etc, all in an attempt to come closer to the working class.
The United Front aims to create the maximum unity of the working class in the struggle for its immediate aims. Within this unity Communists strive to show the workers adhering to other organisations their superiority, and the inadequacy of their existing leaderships.
Lenin sent a letter to the KPD's Seventh Congress, where he set out the lessons of the CI's Third Congress. He described the development of the Communist movement in Germany, bemoaning the belatedness of the split and how bitter hatred for the SPD opportunists had 'blinded people and prevented them from keeping their heads and working out a correct strategy'. What he recommended was to '...rectify the mistakes of the past; steadily win over the mass of the workers both inside and outside the trade unions; patiently build up a strong and intelligent Communist Party capable of giving leadership to the masses at every turn of events; and work out a strategy...' He continued, turning to the KAPD, then to Levi. He said that the semi-Anarchists of the KAPD had been tested out. Now they could join the KPD or turn into a sect. But he went into great detail on Levi and 'why I defended Paul Levi so long at the Third Congress'. He had met Levi in 1915 or 1916 and he was already a Bolshevik. But, 'incomparably more important was...that essentially much of Levi's criticism...was correct...' Lenin explained how Levi spoiled this by his style, and by his rushing unpreparedly into battle, and by the fact that he had committed 'a breach of discipline'. He explained why it was necessary to fight the left and to be on the right at the Third Congress, and his attitude to those shouting out 'Menshevik' about Levi. He said:
'Granted that Levi has become a Menshevik...if the point is proved to me. But it has not been proved. All that has been proved till now is that he has lost his head. It is childishly stupid to declare a man a Menshevik on these grounds. The training of experienced and influential party leaders is a long and difficult job...In Russia it took us 15 years (1903-17) to produce a group of leaders...'
He ended that section criticising Arkadi Maslow for his 'leftism', and proposed that he and his supporters should be sent to Moscow to learn some sense. The last section deals with the stages of development of the CI, and points out that the Third Congress determined:
'...taking account of the practical experience of the Communist struggle already begun, exactly what the line of further activity should be in respect of tactics and of organisation...We have an army of Communists all over the world. It is still poorly trained and poorly organised. It would be extremely harmful to forget this truth, or to be afraid of admitting it. Submitting ourselves to a most careful and rigorous test, and studying the experiences of our movement, we must train the army efficiently; we must organise it properly, and test it in all sorts of manoeuvres, all sorts of battles, in attacks and retreats. We cannot win without this hard schooling.'
He attacked those delegations who tried to amend the 'Tactics of the Comintern' at the congress, as they were rejecting the correction of the line -- the compromise which favoured the left, going as far as possible already in the direction of the 'revolutionary offensive' supporters and he insisted that it was vital 'to win over the majority of the proletariat'. The leftists had tried, among other things, to delete 'majority'.[10]
The letter from Lenin to the KPD, accompanied by one from the ECCI critical of the 'ultra-lefts' (the Fischer-Maslow faction), was intended to ensure that the party stuck to the agreements made in Moscow -- the deals worked out to prevent a split -- and that it carried out policies such as were set out in 'Tactics', that is, the United Front. The tactical theses set out for the first time the transitional method to be utilised by the CI sections:
'The Communist parties do not put forward any minimum programme to strengthen and improve the tottering structure of capitalism. The destruction of that structure remains their guiding aim and their immediate mission. But to carry out this mission the Communist parties must put forward demands whose fulfilment is an immediate and urgent working class need, and they must fight for these demands in mass struggle, regardless of whether they are compatible with the profit economy of the capitalist class or not...
'If these demands correspond to the vital needs of broad proletarian masses, and if these masses feel that they cannot exist unless these demands are met, then the struggle for these demands will become the starting point of the struggle for power. In place of the minimum programme of the reformists and centrists, the CI puts the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletariat, for a system of demands which in their totality disintegrate the power of the bourgeoisie, organise the proletariat, represent stages in the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, and each of which expresses in itself the need of the broadest masses, even if the masses themselves are not yet consciously in favour of the proletarian dictatorship.'[11]
Against sectarianism, the theses proclaim: 'It is not a question of proclaiming the final goal to the proletariat, but of intensifying the practical struggle which is the only way of leading the proletariat to the struggle for the final goal.' And they also stress that the way the demands are posed must also tend to 'organise' the masses: 'Every practical slogan which derives from the economic needs of the working masses must be channelled into the struggle for the control of production...' Quite clearly, this represented a return to the method of Luxemburg and of her Spartakist associates, and was a rebuff for the 'left' and 'ultra-left', mainly from the USPD left. The theses, drafted by the Russians, were an attempt to put the lessons of the Bolsheviks to the parties coming from the minimum-maximum programme tradition, from propagandism, etc.
Although the KPD leaders had agreed with the Moscow compromise on paper, in fact they set out to utilise it for their own ends. The contradictory evaluation in the main theses (the 'positive' assessment of the March Action, and characterisation of the situation as 'objectively revolutionary', etc) gave them the basis for opposing the practical action demanded ('United Front'). Leading rightists like Zetkin and Malzahn were kept off the leadership, and the 'left' (Stocker, Koenen and Co) leaned towards the ultraleft (Fischer, Maslow, Urbahns and Co). At the Seventh Congress the stress was put on the collapse of capitalism, while the tendency towards stabilisation was downplayed. Every compromise in the Report by Trotsky and Varga was played up, while that which did not suit them was attacked. In fact they 'sharpened' the Third Congress' views.
This sharp practice, the separation of the subjective from the objective, was an abandonment of the Marxist method of analysis and the practical policy flowing therefrom. The ambiguity in the Third Congress texts permitted this.
Although Lenin had stuck his neck out in defending Levi -- whom he wanted back in the party -- and insisted that he had only 'lost his head', while mildly criticising him to satisfy the left, Levi rejected the conditions for his re-entry into the KPD. He did this, not out of vanity or any baser motive, but out of his evaluation of the party's development. He had ruthlessly ejected the semi-Anarchists in 1919, and opposed testing out the KAPD, and the Moscow compromise with the left (other old Spartakists shared his views, but stayed in the party to try to change it). In his magazine Unser Weg the KPD documents were analysed, and in No 3 he described the Seventh Congress as 'the victory of putschism'. According to Fowkes, Levi had said that he might have accepted the conditions for his re-entry earlier, but after the Congress he saw the KPD as being dominated by semi-Anarchists, and in a letter to a friend said that 'in Germany Lenin is...the grey theory, Bela Kun is the practice, of the Comintern'.'[12]
The emissaries of the ECCI would be the basis for the next KPD crisis, when party co-chairman Ernst Friesland (Reuter) tried to mobilise opinion against 'the pernicious influence' exercised by some of them. It was normal for them to build up their own personal following in the CI sections, to by-pass the party leaders, and Zinoviev in particular used this to expand his leverage within the Russian party. The crisis ended with the expulsion of Friesland, who then joined Levi's group, and was followed by the exit of a series of leading trade union figures, among them Richard Muller and Paul Wegmann (leaders of the revolutionary shop stewards in 1919), Paul Neumann, Heinrich Malzahn and Fritz Winguth (Metalworkers Union), and Otto Brass. In fact, few of the trade union figures who came from the USPD left stayed in the KPD after the March Action, and its membership dropped to less than 50 per cent of that at unification. By then Daumig, too, had joined Levi.
The loss of Levi would be followed by the eventual elimination of most of the old Spartakists, the pupils and collaborators of Rosa Luxemburg. Others would become corrupted. Thus anyone capable of making an independent judgement was removed or neutralised. Those remaining lent themselves to the shifts and turns of the dominant centrist clique in Moscow. However, this was still in the future, and nothing is predetermined in politics. The KPD would have many chances to turn itself into a real revolutionary leadership before its self-destruction in 1933.
Two German Marxist historians (Hans Dieter Heilmann and Bernd Rabehl) have gone through the CI documents, the KPD congress documents, the internal party education materials, the critiques in Unser Weg, etc, in researching the decline of the party. They perceive a marked change after the resignation of the Levi leadership in February 1921. Before that date they find the analyses of the party and the tasks flowing from them of a high quality. Soon after, however, a wishful thinking and catastrophism takes over, with talk of the approaching, inevitable, collapse of capitalism, and the impossibility of stabilisation. The will of the party thus became the overriding determinant, instead of a rigorous analysis of the objective situation. Heilmann and Rabehl assess the practice of the Levi leadership as scientifically based. Its views of the situation obtaining in Germany corresponded with reality. From then on, a decline, both theoretically and politically, set in.. [13]
Germany experienced a recovery in 1922 in terms of increased production, but also a rapid inflation which ate away the value of real wages. The bosses were on the offensive and attacked the eight hour day, a gain from the November revolution. The KPD under the Meyer leadership carried out joint United Front struggles, and its own campaigns to defend the vital needs of the masses, as set out in the CI theses. It gained influence in the official unions, the factory councils, the trades councils, and even got non-party workers to its gatherings, in spite of the hostility of the ADGB leadership. It even initiated a movement of price-control committees to fight against the effects of inflation. By the end of the year KPD influence was such that they had taken over many local union leaderships, many large factories, and stood stronger than ever before among workers of all persuasions. In June 1922, at the ADGB Eleventh Congress in Leipzig, the KPD had 90 delegates out of 691, an increase from a total of seven at the previous one. The number of delegates understated the party's strength. Leading trade unionist August Enderle put it as representing one third of the union membership. This estimate is also born out by the present-day continuation of the Brandler current, the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik.' [14]
On 24 June a nationalist gang murdered Waiter Rathenau, the Foreign Minister and the main proponent of the fulfilment of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. It was only one of a series of actions by reactionaries opposed to the democratic republic. Everywhere mass demonstrations in defence of the republic took place. The KPD joined a united front of all the main workers' parties and union federations.
'They agreed to work in any way they could for the defence of the republic, a purge of Monarchists from the army, the police and the courts, the dissolution of all anti-republican armed groups, and a political amnesty. A joint appeal to the German working class was issued to that effect. The response was tremendous, culminating in a massive demonstration on 4 July, and clashes with the police...' [15]
The SPD broke off relations with the KPD shortly after, obviously terrified of being out-manoeuvred. Fowkes draws the strange conclusion that the Rathenau campaign was a 'disaster for the KPD', although he notes that 'it marked the beginning of the movement of Proletarian Hundreds [armed workers detachments], the first attempt to solve the military problems facing the workers on a mass basis rather than through conspiratorial organisation.' [16].
No small success!
Trotsky evaluated the Rathenau campaign positively, quoting Klara Zetkin:
'In the Rhine and Westphalian provinces, with their large industrial centres, Committees of Action in many cities and districts have been organised, composed of representatives of the two reformist parties, the Communist Party and the trade unions. (In some cases, committees were organised in the Gewerkschaftliche Kartel of particular localities or districts and representatives of the three workers' parties were elected to them.) Under the pressure of the organised masses, the leaders of the reformist parties, particularly the ADGB, found themselves compelled to establish relations with the Communist Party. Notwithstanding the brief duration of this joint activity, two large demonstrations were held in quick succession in Germany; and thanks to these negotiations and demonstrations the Communist Party made intimate contacts with the working masses in rather large areas. Committees of Action set up for the purpose of disarming counterrevolutionary elements continued to function after the protest movement had waned so quickly, owing to the treachery of the reformists.
'The idea of the United Front is again marching forward with giant strides...To illustrate we cite the joint meeting of the factory delegates in Berlin. More than 6000 of these delegates attended, despite the warning by the trade union bureaucracy, by the USPD and SPD, that it was impermissible for their members to attend this meeting.
'This gathering...elected a committee of 15 to arrange an all-German conference of factory and shop delegates. This committee is composed of members from all the workers' parties. It is instructed to call the convention if the Executive Committee of the ADGB fails to do so. The aim is to establish Control Committees to supervise production, distribution, prices and so on. In many industrial centres such Control Committees have already been formed. There is quite a large number of cities where the workers have called meetings of factory and shop delegates at which committees were organised demanding control over production. Everywhere the Communists were at the head of this movement, whose aim is to bring about unity in the struggle.' [17]
The above-quoted letter was dated 13 September 1923, and indicates enormous success for the United Front wielded by the KPD in the aftermath of the Rathenau murder. Not only had the party increased its influence massively over the members of other workers' parties, and over nonparty workers, but a significant raising of consciousness and organising of workers had occurred. The reformist leaders had been forced to deal with the KPD. Trotsky is unequivocal: 'The unquestionable political successes of the United Front policy are already clear, as is attested by a report of Comrade Klara Zetkin...' [18]
However, during this period the Fischer-Maslow group worked to undermine the United Front policy and Ernst Meyer. They succeeded in removing him from the leadership and replacing him with the now-amnestied Brandler.
In November and December the Fourth Congress of the CI took place. The United Front was at the centre of the discussion, and its extension, the workers' government. This had become actual for the KPD, as its influence upon the SPD left in Saxony and Thuringia had grown so much that the majority for the two workers' parties in the Landtag of both states posed the issue, and in November the Saxon SPD approached the KPD with an offer of ministerial posts. The offer was rejected by the KPD after advice from the ECCI, on the grounds that revolution was not on the immediate agenda.
In his 'Report on the Fourth Congress of the CI', at the Tenth Congress of the Soviets in December 1922, Trotsky explained the tactic:
'If you (the KPD leaders) are of the opinion that a revolution is possible in the next few months in Germany, then we would advise you to participate in Saxony in a coalition government and to utilise your ministerial posts in Saxony for the furthering of political and organisational tasks and for transforming Saxony in a certain sense into a Communist drillground so as to have a revolutionary stronghold already reinforced in a period of preparation for the approaching outbreak of the revolution.' [19]
The 'Theses on Tactics' adopted were a development of those of the previous congress. Five distinct forms of 'workers' government' were set out. However, the concept proved highly contentious and was never fully developed. Zinoviev, Bukharin and the KPD left emptied the tactic of its dialectical content, just as with the United Front tactic in general. Zinoviev insisted that the workers' government was 'nothing other than the application of the dictatorship of the proletariat'. He was opposed by Radek and Meyer, among others, the latter pointing out that the workers' government is a 'slogan we advance to win over the workers to a common struggle against the bourgeois class', and that if it is 'followed by the majority of workers, can lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat or long phases of sharp struggle'. Trotsky described it as:
'...a wedge driven by the Communists between the working class and all other classes: and inasmuch as the top circles of the Social Democracy...are tied up with the bourgeoisie, this wedge will act more and more to tear away...the left wing of Social Democratic workers from their leaders. [20] He likened a CP/SP-left government in Europe to the 'workers' and peasants' government' created in Russia 'together with the Left Social Revolutionaries'.
The 'Theses on the Eastern Question', the elaboration of the United Front tactic in the backward countries (the Anti-Imperialist United Front), various programmes, etc, were also discussed, but remain outside the scope of this text.
Ruth Fischer had led the KPD left attack upon the United Front and the Meyer leadership at the Fourth Congress, and she intensified it during the KPD's Eighth Congress, in late January 1923. Fischer characterised the whole period of the United Front work under Meyer as 'opportunist', and the lefts tried to sharpen up the theses in a sectarian direction. Some small concessions were made to them, but in essence Brandler continued the line of Meyer, merely decorating it with verbal radicalism .
On 11 January French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in order to enforce the reparations set out at Versailles. It resulted in galloping inflation, rising unemployment, a great agitation among the workers, and confrontations with the occupying forces. The SPD left grew rapidly, as did KPD influence in the working class. The factory councils movement spread, as did other forms of organisation of the type mentioned in Zetkin's report (Price Control, Action, Production, etc, Committees, plus the armed workers' detachments, the Proletarian Hundreds). Increased KPD influence reflected itself in elections to the factory councils, where they gained one-third of the positions. The unions were becoming communist at rank and file level.
June and July saw a growing strike movement. The Fascists, too, were preparing to attack. In Saxony and Thuringia the state governments were encouraging the Proletarian Hundreds against the Fascist threat. Yet nobody in the leadership of either the KPD or the CI saw the situation as one of immediate revolution. The KPD carried on with its United Front policy, seeing the situation as one of defensive struggle. The strike movement in mid-August, which led to the downfall of the Cuno government, was inspired by the KPD, against the will of the ADGB. Cuno was replaced by Stresemann, who brought in the SPD, and his government began talks with Dawes over US loans, and with the French over reparations, and was able to stabilise the mark. Wage rises were given to workers, which helped dampen down strikes, and repression was stepped up. From then on, with the workers in retreat, the economic and political situation improving, and the government prepared, all the objective factors ran counter to the idea of seizing power.
In the meantime some of the Russian leadership became convinced that revolutionary situation existed in Germany. Trotsky became convinced after a discussion with Enderle and Walcher, two leading KPD trade unionists. Zinoviev and Bukharin became convinced, while Stalin recommended holding the Germans back. The RCP politbureau decided to plan for an insurrection, and in September summoned Brandler to Moscow. Against his better judgement he left again in early October, having agreed to attempt to seize power starting from bases in Saxony and Thuringia, where the KPD should enter workers' governments with the local left SPD.
One reason for entering the state governments was to attain control over the police and its weaponry, but very few weapons were obtained for the arming of the Proletarian Hundreds. Brandler explained later that the arsenals in both states had been empty, since the workers had seized their contents during the Kapp Putsch and the March Action. After that the police had to borrow from the military. [21] Meanwhile planning went ahead. Russian experts were sent. Radek and Pyatakov were sent to lead the action (Brandler had requested Trotsky, but he was already out of favour with the dominant clique, and thus ruled out). Open political activity stopped in this period, as the KPD went over to conspiratorial activity. This resulted in a certain isolation from the masses. On 21 October Brandler addressed a conference of factory councils in Chemnitz, his Saxon base, and put the case for a general strike against the Fascist threat from Bavaria. After three or four hours talking he failed to convince the delegates. That evening the KPD leader ship decided unanimously to call off the uprising. Radek and Pyatakov supported the decision. The Reich government, using the emergency powers granted by the Weimar Constitution, dissolved the Saxon government after sending in the army to put Saxony and Thuringia under central government control.
Nothing was salvaged from the situation. The plan foisted upon the KPD was of an 'offensive' type, in conditions where the majority of the workers saw no cause. A defensive plan might have galvanised the Saxon and Thuringian workers into action as part of repulsing the Fascist threat and the Reich government attack upon their state governments. In Hamburg some street fighting took place after local Communists attempted an insurrection, due to circumstances never clarified. The majority of workers were spectators only.
This defeat would have tremendous repercussions for world Communism, and for Soviet society. It sharpened the factionalism, and led to the spread of a lack of faith in the European proletariat by elements in the RCP, eventually giving rise to the idea of 'Socialism in one country', the theoretical justification for the ruling bureaucratic stratum headed by Stalin.
In the immediate aftermath nobody thought of blaming Brandler for the October fiasco. Only with the search for a scapegoat by Zinoviev and elements within the KPD leadership did Brandler receive the blame. Radek, Pyatakov and Trotsky defended him. The latter saw the problem as one of inadequate leadership in the KPD and the CI as a whole, rather than one of individuals. Trotsky went against the removal of the Brandler leadership and its replacement by another, as he saw its mistakes as:
'...only a reflection of the general mistakes of the Comintern leadership (and) because I judged the German defeat to be much more serious than did the majority of the (Russian) Central Committee. In this case, as in others, I fought against the inadmissible system which only seeks to maintain the infallibility of the central leadership by periodic removals of national leadership...' [22] Then Zinoviev, his position being shaky, put the blame on Brandler. Soon after a sector of the Brandler faction split away and formed the 'centre group' around Meyer.
Of the balance sheets of the defeat, the left focused on opposition to the United Front, the centre pointed out the failure of the KPD to realise how the objective situation would change in favour of revolution after the invasion of the Ruhr in January, and to plan accordingly, whereas the Brandler group focused on the objective conditions obtaining in October, as well as the failures and errors in preparation. The Brandler group was the only one to issue a full analysis, which should be read by serious students of Communism, as a myth has grown up since that time based on a few phrases of a general theoretical nature by Trotsky, of a revolutionary opportunity that was missed in October. [23] Serious students should beware of some of the notes attached to historical texts by so-called Trotskyist groupings. They are often only marginally more truthful than those in Stalinist publications. [24] Trotsky wrote a number of articles dealing with October 1923, but mainly from a general methodological and theoretical angle. He himself admitted that he noticed no revolutionary situation until the summer. But by the end of the 9-14 August strike movement the whole situation was to change. Reformist workers, seeing their material conditions being bettered, were no longer prepared to follow the KPD. Revolution is a risky business. Rather than taking up and perpetuating myths, an evaluation of reality is required. A useful look at 1923 with the benefit of a decade's hindsight is contained in 'Notes on Discussions with Trotsky' by Walcher, agreed as a true record by Trotsky.
Walcher stresses that:
'...their most important mistake was in not having taken account of the financial, political and revolutionary consequences which would flow from the conflict in the Ruhr in time, and only to have recognised the existence of a revolutionary situation in relation to the Cuno strike at the moment when, as a result of the entry of the Social Democrats into the government and the news of the creation of the Rentenmark, the situation had begun to relax and the revolutionary wave had ebbed.
'The KPD leadership, and possibly that of the Communist International, which until July had seriously underestimated the situation, henceforth overestimated it in the same manner...no notice was taken of what was actually happening at that moment in the working class. Thus the scissors opened wide between the policy of the party and reality...The party leadership, as a result of having wanted the impossible in the second stage of development was incapable of carrying out what was still possible in it.' [25]
In reply to Walcher's view, Trotsky agreed that it wasn't the case 'that the decisive mistake had been made in October', reiterated that 'great objective possibilities for revolutionary struggle had been bungled', and 'stated with satisfaction that one could note complete agreement between his point of view and that developed by' Walcher. [26] The ECCI met in January 1924, and Zinoviev blamed Brandler for the defeat. He called for his leadership to be deposed, with one from the majority (centre group) and the left to replace it. A resolution was adopted combining the views of the centre and the left, rather than the centre and the Brandlerists, which would have been more in line with reality. This was dangerous, because implicitly it would mean a rejection of the United Front, and this in part occurred. The ECCI declared that 'one cannot negotiate with the lackeys of the white dictatorship', in other words the Social Democratic leaders, described, moreover, as 'a faction of German Fascism'. Therefore the United Front was reduced to 'unity from below'. Moralism and phrasemongering replaced the thoroughly dialectical and revolutionary tactic which had served the KPD so well under the Marxists (Levi, Brandler, Meyer et al), and the slide into ultraleftism -- centrism -- would begin. The situation in Germany was characterised as though October had not occurred, and therefore one 'must not erase the question of the uprising and the seizure of power from the agenda'.
In February the KPD party council elected a new leadership comprised of five from the centre and two lefts. Remmele was chairman, and Thalmann vice-chairman. Brandler and his supporters were removed.
Leftism flourished in the KPD rank and file in the period of anger and despair following October. Up to the Ninth Congress in April 1924 the left won in the majority of district conferences. The centre had a significant basis, but Brandler's supporters were marginalised. Consequently the congress was dominated by ultra-left phrases, demagogy and subjective wishful thinking. The revolution was on its way, it had to be 'organised', the KPD was declared to be the party of the proletariat by right, and its role was to 'impel' the masses forward. Some of the lefts wanted to leave the official unions. In such a situation the centre group, wishing to carry on United Front work and serious work in the unions, was isolated. Zinoviev, who is wrongly credited with putting the Fischer-Maslow group into the leadership (whereas in reality it was a bitter rank and file), disappointed over October, took fright at the upsurge of the left and sought to split it. He related to Fischer-Maslow, but simultaneously sought out Thalmann in order to break him from them. He was seen by the CI as 'proletarian gold' -- as opposed to the intellectuals among the left leaders -- and an injection of revolutionary elan into the KPD CC. The new Leadership elected at congress comprised either 11 to 4, or 10 to 5, for the left and the centre respectively. Conflicting figures exist owing to the illegality of the KPD at the time and thus the non-publication of details. After a few months the supporters of the centre were removed from key party positions.
Fischer-Maslow were allied with the ultra-left, represented on the leadership by Scholem, Katz and Rosenberg, and therefore a sector of the left majority wished not only to end United Front work, but to split the unions as well. It stood further to the left than Zinoviev, and was thus bound to conflict with the CI.
The Fifth Congress of the CI took place in the summer of 1924. Varga gave a report on the world economic situation, and attempted to point out the end of the post-war revolutionary wave. He saw the original theses of the Third Congress as being proved correct (before 'sharpening'). However, the dominant view was that the revolution was still marching onward, and Varga adjusted his analysis to suit. Zinoviev saw 'the general political perspectives...remain essentially as before. The situation is pregnant with revolution'. [27] Zinoviev, Bukharin, Ruth Fischer and Co condemned the Russian Opposition as opportunists and liquidators for pointing out the revolutionary ebb and the temporary stabilisation. 'Throughout 1924 and for the greater part of 1925 the leadership of the Comintern held the view that the highpoint of the German crisis was still ahead'. [28] The defeat of 1923 was seen as 'only an episode'. Trotsky shows the dishonest nature of the analysis of October 1923: 'Zinoviev...(and) the whole Fifth Congress simply passed over this greatest defeat of the world revolution. The German events were analysed principally from the angle of the policies of the Communists...in the Saxon Landtag. The Congress praised the ECCI for its condemnation of the 'opportunist conduct of the German Central Committee, and, above all, its perverted application of the United Front during the Saxon government experiment' [29] Trotsky ridiculed this critique for missing the point, but clearly one can see the scapegoating process in action.
'The fundamental tasks of the Fifth Congress were: firstly to call this defeat clearly and relentlessly by its name, and to lay bare its "subjective" cause, allowing no one to hide behind the pretext of objective conditions; secondly, to establish the beginning of a new stage during which the masses would temporarily drift away, the Social Democracy grow, and the Communist Party lose its influence; thirdly, to prepare the Comintern for all this so that it would not be caught unawares and to equip it with the necessary methods of defensive struggle and organisational consolidation until the arrival of a new change in the situation. [30] A year would pass before economic stabilisation was recognised, but by that time the Opposition had already analysed 'tendencies undermining this stabilisation'. [31] And: 'From the basic strategic mistake of the Fifth Congress necessarily had also to arise a lack of understanding of the processes occurring within the German and the international Social Democracy'. [32] Trotsky stressed the revival of Social Democracy and the decline of Fascism. The first Labour government had come into office in Britain! Obviously, the task was now one of United Front work, and especially in the unions. Trotsky also argued against the identification of Social Democracy and Fascism at the Fifth Congress. One can conclude that the movement was totally disorientated by the failure scientifically to analyse the October 1923 events, and the changed objective situation, which, in turn, necessitated new methods of work for the new period.
This next period saw the KPD lose contact with the working class, a dramatic decline in support, the loss of half of its membership, and suffering harsh repression. Its trade union fractions disintegrated. At the Breslau ADGB Congress in 1925 only three KPD delegates participated. The Fischer-Maslow leadership had to come into conflict with the CI, as it saw its German party being destroyed, and belatedly realised that a stabilisation was taking place.
In January 1925, the KPD blocked the offer of a United Front to the SPD recommended by the CI, 'against the monarchist danger', and in defence of the republic. The fifth (enlarged) meeting of the ECCI in the spring of 1925 was informed by Zinoviev of the 'ending of the acute revolutionary situation -- above all in Germany'. Stabilisation had occurred, though he stressed that the world situation was still 'objectively revolutionary'. At this meeting Ruth Fischer recognised that the CI was moving rightward, and the KPD offered a United Front with the SPD, and even a bloc with the centre against the monarchist threat.
The Presidential elections saw Thalmann, the KPD candidate, lose a million votes. Zinoviev called for the KPD to withdraw in the second round in favour of Braun, the SPD candidate. The far-right advanced Hindenburg, and Zinoviev argued that the choice was now between a republic or a monarchy, 'and for the working class there is a real difference between the two'. Maslow offered to withdraw, but put conditions which 'seemed more calculated to secure a refusal from the SPD'. [33] The SPD, in an attempt to block the reaction, then withdrew in favour of the Centre Party candidate. The workers' vote was split and the KPD advanced Thalmann, the result being the victory of Hindenburg.
The rightward shift by Fischer-Maslow resulted in the left splitting up. The ultraleft Scholem /Katz/Rosenberg group broke with Fischer. The ultras were purged from key party posts.
At the Tenth KPD Congress in July 1925, it noted finally 'the absence of an acute revolutionary situation' in Germany. Otherwise the analysis of the economic situation was contradictory and bedecked with phrases. Stabilisation was down-played and the next crisis was forecast. Furthermore, the party had foreseen the development, and previous prophesies were declared to have been proved correct. The congress was stage-managed to give an impression of unity. The ultraleft was almost absent. Zinoviev sent a letter to the congress explaining how the C1 saw the situation and the tasks. He still saw the SPD as a Fascist party, but urged a United Front; he urged that the right and centre be drawn into the leadership, and that ultra-leftism be purged. In the event, three ultra-lefts were elected to the CC, but no right or centre people. In spite of an Action Programme being adopted and a report on trade union work by Thalmann, which called for a return to serious work in this field, discontent began to surface, especially among factory worker members.
Not long after the congress the ECCI summoned the KPD leaders to Moscow. There the congress was criticised by Zinoviev and Bukharin. Fischer had made a deal with the ultra-left, was delimitating herself from the CI, hadn't put congress decisions into effect, had a system of 'double book-keeping' (she was only pretending to shift rightward), was dictatorial, and had divorced the party from the masses. She signed a criticism of her own conduct which was published as an 'Open Letter' of the KPD delegation and ECCI on 1 September 1925. A conference of the party was organised at the end of October, and leadership was put into the hands of Thalmann and Dengel. A series of tasks were set out, and at last it was decided to reconstruct the party on a factory cell basis.
Levine-Meyer says that the 'Open Letter' was 'a cynical disregard of truth', and an 'attempt to shift the responsibility for all errors from the Party to a few individuals'. She points out also that 'Thalmann (had been) a faithful follower of Ruth Fischer, who never displayed a policy of his own'. [34] His role was to be that of a tool of Moscow.
The new leadership set about purging the ultra-left (Katz, Schwartz and Korsch were expelled in early 1926), and succeeded in undermining Fischer's base in Berlin. The party rank and file supported the 'Open Letter' in general, as the policies of Fischer-Maslow had been destroying the party (at the sixth ECCI plenum, Manuilsky attacked Fischer, pointing out that in the Ruhr, 'our most important organisation, there are only 4000 members left after you. After you went, within a few months, membership has been increased by more than double'). Also, they had sabotaged attempts to restructure the party on a factory cell basis. After the October defeat, before the left took over, the centre group had constantly attempted to carry this out when it had a majority. Once the left took over, Ulbricht, the key protagonist, had to give up his work and go to Moscow.
It is worth making a few key points about factory cells and why they are crucial for a combat party. From its inception, the Spartakusbund saw the need to centre itself in the factories, and it did so, but owing to the situation of spontaneous uprisings and marginality in which it found itself, no attempt was made to make the factory cell its basic unit. The revolutionary workers opposed centralism at the time because they associated it with the SPD, and great illusions existed in the factory council movement, which inevitably dissolved itself after the founding of the republic, dominated as it was by reformism. After each uprising the party had to rebuild itself. Then came the split with the semi-Anarchists in late 1919, which decimated the party in many key areas. But, most significantly, after fusion with the USPD left, in late 1920, the old Social Democratic geographical unit was adopted as the basic unit. The March Action, the result of impatience from the newly gained USPD left, also exposed the inadequacy of this form of organisation in conditions of heightened class struggle, when the party was repressed. The October 1923 events would underline this fact, although steps had been taken to rectify the situation. The August strike movement demonstrated that the party wasn't sufficiently rooted in the factories, wasn't capable of giving the necessary leadership, and didn't have a close enough bond with the struggling workers. This was all discussed after the October defeat, but the attempts to rectify it were blocked by the new left leadership. For the left, the final battle was around the corner, to be impelled by their windy rhetoric, once the reformists were exposed by their moralising, and then the workers would adhere to the 'only workers' party'. In fact, during the repression following on from October, the KDP was severely dislocated, precisely because of the lack of workplace-based units.
The structure of a combat party is firstly a political question, and an organisational one second. For the democracy to function, the militants at the base must be able to participate and to shape policy; they must be able to reach the leadership. A division between functionaries and activists, as in reformist parties, cancels out the significance of a combat party. The leadership must have its finger on the pulse of the class struggle, and it must have tight bonds with the workers; hence the factory unit.
For the centralism to function in order to give leadership, the same thing applies. Of course, for the party of the proletariat, the workers must be the decisive force, and it was no coincidence that the KPD ultra-left sprang from the intelligentsia, who joined the party with the USPD left. The trait often displayed by the intellectual in the workers' movement is to dole out knowledge sparingly, while flattering and manipulating the worker. This method ensures their influence and dominance. An example to hand is that of Thalmann, a sincere class fighter corrupted by such methods. Contrast him with Brandler or Heckert, workers educated in the Luxemburg tradition, capable of independent thought (though the latter was to succumb to Stalinist corruption).
Although the fall of Fischer was brought about by the ECCI intervention without discussion, it was welcomed by the rank and file. A return to United Front work took place, and the KPD began again to attain influence within the working class. The Communist-led unions were wound up and the militants integrated into the ADGB unions. Levine-Meyer mentions the successful campaign against compensation for the Raiser's family. The SPD began opposing it, 'but the Communist-led drive found a wide response among workers and a great number of ruined and non-compensated middle class people... (and) popular feeling compelled the SPD to sanction the movement and collaborate with the Communists. [35]
It would be an error to evaluate this turn in a totally positive light. The new leadership, while fighting the left, also fought the right. Brandler was seen as just as dangerous, and the centre group were described as 'rightists' too. Meyer criticised the leadership for still comparing Social Democracy with Fascism, and the KPD-led Red Front Fighters League for engaging in street fighting with the republican Reichsbanner units, which hindered real United Front work. The KPD was still seen as the 'only workers' party'.
In Stalinist legend, this period is called one of 'Bolshevisation', and the Thalmann cult was built up as part of this. What it really involved was a 'Stalinisation', or bureaucratisation, of the KPD. This paralleled events in the RCP; the ousting of Zinoviev, continued struggle against Trotsky, and the dominance of Stalin-Bukharin. The latter's sociology replaced the pseudo-Marxist rhetoric of Zinoviev. The move against Fischer was organisational (Maslow was in prison at the time), and it went together with the abandonment of theoretical discussion. It was replaced by the Lenin cult, the wielding of quotes from the master taken out of time and space. 'Trotskyism', 'Luxemburgism', 'Brandlerism', etc, were discovered as heresies. Myths were created in order to wall off militants from the Marxist method as one of living criticism. Reorganisation of the party into factory units, while necessary, was a result of the disastrous effects of the politics of Fischer-Maslow, backed by the CI, and not a result of genuine balance sheet of the experience of the KPD since 1923. Reorganisation was then seen, not as a political question, but as an organisational one. In consequence it resulted not in a party of democracy and centralism, but in a bureaucratic apparatus -- the Stalinist type we know of today.
Fischer was exiled to Moscow. Hugo Urbahns took over the leadership of the left, which by now had broken with the ultras, who were all gradually expelled from the party. He fought for the right of free discussion within the party, and the Urbahns-Fischer-Maslow group, although accepting the right turn in Germany, came out for the Zinoviev-Trotsky Opposition in the RCP. For this they were all expelled in late 1926.
In December 1926 the ECCI called representatives of the KPD's factions to Moscow, to assess the effects of the Open Letter by Zinoviev. Meyer was pressured into signing a declaration pledging loyalty to the KPD CC, and promising to fight the 'right'. Levine-Meyer believes that this act broke his spirit; that its aim was to split his faction 'of old experienced leaders, which included many Brandlerites', and to break up an independent group of people who could challenge the CI. [36]
The declaration had the desired effect. It 'caused a storm among the Brandlerite section of Ernst's group'. [37] This act was to destroy any opposition to the Thalmann group and its masters in Moscow. It was a tragic error.
The centre group was to be brought into the leadership, but had effectively erased themselves. The policies would not be United Front work such as they had carried out earlier and since proposed, but opportunist zig-zags with a leftist trend still present. At the Eleventh Congress of the KPD in March 1927 the SPD left was described as 'the main enemy'. The ECCI declaration of December 1926 had called the SPD left leadership 'counterrevolutionary'. The main task for the KPD which was emerging was to defend the USSR, and the SPD was seen as the main enemy and lackey of imperialism in that respect.
After the congress the centre group was integrated into the leadership, and Meyer became one of five politburo members. The KPD began to differentiate between right and left in the SPD, and between leaders and the ranks. In September a resolution was adopted by the CC calling for Thalheimer to be recalled to Germany to take up party work again. Meyer 'never stopped campaigning for the return of Brandler and Thalheimer', says Levine-Meyer. [38]
Although after Meyer's declaration the ECCI had called for 'a concentration of forces' in the KPD leadership, it kept sniping at Meyer, attacking the Brandlerites, and propping up the Thalmann group. Meyer protested that his declaration did 'not include any obligation to join...in ultra-left criticism of Brandler and Thalheimer. [39] The ex-Brandlerists of the centre group, old Spartakists like Walcher, Enderle and Bottcher, along with Frolich and Wolfstein, broke with Meyer over his accommodation with the ex-lefts. Buttcher said: 'A concentration of forces was only possible if the left errors of the past were corrected'. [40] At the end of 1927 the Ruhr barons refused to implement the eight-hour shift, a law passed by the Reichstag, and threatened a lock-out. In this situation the SPD press called for expropriation of the mines, which exactly caught the mood of the workers. 'Instead of seizing this demand and calling upon the SPD and the ADGB to mobilise the masses for this aim, the KPD leadership launched the slogan "strike". Such a demand...could not demonstrate the leading role of the Communists in practice, but led to the opposite.' The leftist kink cancelled out the United Front concept.
In the critical material Trotsky presented to the CI's Sixth Congress, he analysed the whole period from October 1923: 'The mistakes of pseudo-"leftism" which hampered the development of the Communist parties, later gave an impetus to new empirical zig-zags: namely, to an accelerated sliding down to the Right. (This shift) was the attempt at a half-blind, purely empirical, and belated adaptation to the set-back of revolutionary development caused by the defeat of 1923.' [41] The 'pseudo-Leftism' was seen by Trotsky as a shift 'from the proletarian line to the centrist, that is, to the petty bourgeois line which, in the course of the increasing stabilisation, was to liberate itself from its ultra-left shell and reveal itself as a crude collaborationist line in the USSR, in China, in England, in Germany, and everywhere else'. [42] The text deals in depth with the betrayal of the General Strike, then the miners' strike (1926) by the TUG, and the cover provided for it by the CI; it deals with the idealisation of the peasantry, and the Farmer-Labor Party in the USA, and the opportunism towards the Kuomintang in China.
Trotsky points out that a sharp shift occurred in 192A, but it took the CI a year and a half to recognise it. He says that it was hardly surprising then, that 'the years 1924-25 were the years of Left mistakes and putschist experiments. The Bulgarian terrorist adventure, like the tragic history of the Estonian armed uprising of December 1924, was an outburst of despair resulting from a false orientation. The fact that these attempts to rape the historical process by means of a putsch were left without a critical investigation led to a relapse in Canton towards the end of 1927. In politics not even the smallest mistakes pass unpunished, much less the big ones. And the greatest mistake is to cover up mistakes, seeking mechanically to suppress criticism and a correct Marxist evaluation of the mistakes'. [43]
Writing in September 1930, Trotsky analysed the new right turn, which followed the sharp left turn in 1928: 'What has called forth the turns of the Communist International since the death of Lenin? The changes in the objective situation? No. It can be said with confidence: beginning with 1923, not a single tactical turn was made in time, under the influence of correctly estimated changes in the objective conditions...On the contrary: every turn was the result of the unbearable sharpening of the contradictions between the line of the Comintern and the objective situation. We are witnessing the very same thing this time, too.' [44]
1. See R Luxemburg, Offene Briefe an Gesinungsfreunde, Von Spaltung, Einheit und Austritt.
2. New Left Review, no 105.
3. V1 Lenin, 'Left Wing Communism -- an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Volume 31, pp109-10.
4. New Left Review, no 105.
5. Ibid.
6. VI Lenin, 'Speech in Defence of the Tactics of the Communist International', CW Volume 32, p470.
7. Beitrage zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, no 4, 1965, cited in Fowkes, Communism in Germany Under the Weimar Republic.
8. LD Trotsky, 'Speech on Radek's Report on Tactics of the CI', First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 1, p269.
9. Ibid, pp290-313, 226-278.
10. V1 Lenin, 'A Letter to the German Communists', CW, Volume 32, pp512-523.
11. See J Degras (ed), The Communist International 1919-43 -- Documents, Volume 1, pp241-56.
12. Fowkes, op cit. Run was the ECCI emissary whom Levi -- and others -- charged with the defeat in Hungary.
13. See 'Die Legende von der "Bolschewisierung" der KPD', Sozialistische Politik, nos 9, 10, translated in Politiske Arbejdstekster, December 1975.
14. Quoted in Politisk Revy, no 214, 2 February 1973.
15. Fowkes, op cit, p82.
16. Ibid, p83.
17. LD Trotsky, 'Letter to the Congress of the French Communist Party', First Five Years..., Volume 2, p179.
18. Ibid, p170.
19. LD Trotsky, 'Report on the Fourth Congress of the CI', ibid, p325.
20. Ibid, p324.
21. New Left Review, no 105.
22. LD Trotsky, The Third lnternational After Lenin, p95.
23. See A Thalheimer, 1923: Fine Verpasste Revolution?, available today from the political continuation of the Brandler current, the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik.
24. The notes to First Five Years..., Volume 1, describe the Brandlerites as 'a centrist movement headed for the camp of the bourgeoisie' (p403). Whilst Jay Lovestone ended up thus, Brandler inspired groupings in both halves of Germany after the Second World War, holding the same views as before. And SWP (US) and WRP publications refer to Meyer, Walcher et al as 'Brandlerites', after they had broken politically from Brandler. Presumably this falsification results from the said individuals having disagreed with Trotsky during the period concerned. This is the method of a cult.
25. LD Trotsky, 'Notes on Discussions with Trotsky, 17-20 August 1933', Oeuvres, 2.
26. Ibid.
27. Cited in LD Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, p103.
28. Ibid, p100.
29. Ibid, p102.
30. 30. Ibid, p101.
31. Ibid, p104, cited from his Where is Britain Going?
32. 32. Ibid, plO5.
33. See R Levine-Meyer, Inside German Communism, p76.
34. Ibid, p87.
35. Ibid, p91.
36. Ibid, pp108-24.
37. Ibid, p113.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid, p121.
40. Fowkes, op cit, p142. These arguments are set out from Meyer's viewpoint in Levine- Meyer.
41. LD Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, pp125-6.
42. Ibid, p124.
43. Ibid, p118.
44. LD Trotsky, 'The Communist International and the Situation in Germany', The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, p9.