Matière et Révolution

Ernst Meyer (1927) Spartakus im Kriege - Einleitung

Alex — 2025-10-19T04:44:29Z

Voir la traduction Spartakus dans la guerre - Introduction

1. Der vorliegende Band enthält die wichtigsten Dokumente des Spartakusbundes bis zu seiner Umwandlung in die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands im Dezember 1918. An der Hand von ihnen läßt sich die allmähliche Loslösung dieser revolutionären Gruppe von der alten Sozialdemokratie und ihre Scheidung von der Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratie verfolgen. Die Flugblätter geben zugleich ein Bild von der ungeheuren illegalen und revolutionären Arbeit, die den Spartakusbund zum gefürchtetsten -Gegner der Imperialisten und Konterrevolutionäre in Deutschland machte. Sie können auch heute, in der Zeit der wiederum sich steigernden Kriegsgefahr, als anfeuerndes Beispiel unermüdlicher revolutionärer Arbeit dienen.

2. Der Spartakusbund ist entstanden aus dem linken Flügel innerhalb der SPD, der unter der Führung von Rosa Luxemburg und Franz Mehring schon in der Vorkriegszeit nicht nur den Revisionismus und Reformismus bekämpfte, sondern auch zu den entschiedenen Gegnern des Kautsky'schen Zentrismus gehörte.

3. Zwar kam für den radikalen, linken Flügel in der SPD. der ungeheuere Verrat der Kriegskreditbewilligung am 4. August 1914 ebenso unerwartet, wie für die übrigen, auf dem linken Flügelkämpfenden Mitglieder der 2. Internationale, der auch die Bolschewiki angelıörten. Aber daß das „Zentrum“ prak- tisch rnit dem Retorınismus gehen würde, hatte Rosa Luxem- burg schon nach dem Jenaer Parteitag der SPD. vom Jahre 1913 in einem (von der Redaktion der Leipziger Volkszeitung zurückgewiesenen) Artikel auf Grund der Jenaer Debatten über den Imperialismus klar folgendermaßen formuliert :

Wer diesmal zusammen mit diesem revisionistischen Drittel die Mehrheit gebildet hat, das war jene unentschlossene und schwankende Schicht der Mitte, die Bebel in Dresden, nach den bekannten Bezeichnungen des Konvents der Großen Französischen Revolution, den Sumpf genannt hat (...) Während der ganzen letzten Periode der Kämpfe mit dem Revisionismus unterstützte der Sumpf den linken Flügel der Partei (...) Die imperialistische Periode, die verschärften Verhältnisse der letzten Jahre stellen uns aber vor neue Situationen und Aufgaben. (...) Hier versagt zunächst der „Sumpf“. Als konservatives Element wendet er sich jetzt genauso gegen die vorwärtsstrebende Linke, wie er sich bis jetzt gegen die rückwärtsstrebende Rechte wendete. (...) Diese neue Konstellation ist kein Zufall, sie ergibt sich logisch aus den Verschiebungen in den äußeren und inneren Bedingungen unseres Parteilebens, und wir tun gut, das Andauern dieser Konstellation vielleicht für eine Reihe von Jahren in Aussicht zu nehmen, wenn nicht äußere Ereignisse den Gang der Entwicklung plötzlich beschleunigen.

4. Die von Rosa Luxemburg genannten Gründe führten dazu, daß am 4. August 1914 sich nur ein ganz kleines Häuflein von aufrechten Genossen um Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Klara Zetkin und Marchlewski (Karski) scharten.

5. „Die Opposition", wie sie schlechtweg von den Gegnern genannt wurde, suchte mit allen Mitteln die sozialdemokratischen- Arbeiter, die in den letzten Julitagen in ehrlicher Überzeugung die Friedensdemonstrationen des Parteivorstandes mitgemacht hatten, für sich zu gewinnen. Einige Genossen verfaßten Referentenmaterial für die Mitglieder- und öffentlichen Versammlungen, und die Gesinnungsgenossen im ganzen Reich mit Tatsachen und Argumenten zu versorgen, da die sozialdemokratische Presse unter der doppelten Zensur der Militärbehörden und des Parteivorstandes der Opposition verschlossen blieb. Auch die Satire fehlte nicht, wie die Umdichtung des Sozialistenmarsches (Dokument 2) beweist. Der Parteivorstand leitete gegen den angeblichen Verfasser des Gedichtes Hermann Duncker « ein hochnotpeinliches Untersuchungsverfahren ein und verbot auch bald das Referentenmaterial.

6. Die mutige Tat der erstmaligen Ablehnung der Kriegskredite im Reichstage durch Karl Liebknecht am 2. Dezember 1914 fand in den Massen ein gewaltiges Echo. Da Liebknechts- antiimperialistische Erklärung zu seiner Abstimmung weder in das amtliche Reichstagsprotokoll aufgenommen, noch in der ? Presse veröffentlicht werden durfte, wurde diese Begründung in Tausenden von Exemplaren illegal verbreitet [Dokument 3]. Die Anhänger der Kreditbewilligung hüteten sich, Liebknecht sachlich zu widerlegen. Sie begnügten sich mit dem Geschrei über Bruch der Fraktionsdisziplin, worauf Liebknecht in einem Flugblatt [Dokument 4] nachwies, daß die Revisionisten fest. entschlossen waren, sogar einem Fralktionsbeschluß auf bloße Stimmenthaltung nicht Folge zu leisten. Dem Nachweis, -was unter Parteidisziplin im echten Sinne zu verstehen ist, dient außerdem der als Sonderdruck verbreitete Artikel „Parteidisziplin“ [Dokument 5] -Rosa Luxemburgs aus der von ihr gemeinschaftlich mit Mehring und Karski herausgegebenen Sozialdemokratischen Korrespondenz. Mit welchen Verleumdungen die Burgfriedenspolitiker sofort gegen die Opposition vorgingen, beweist der geharnischte Brief Mehrings an die Hamburger Parteigenossen (Dokument 6)

7. Neben der innerparteilichen Diskussion betrachtete die Opposition die Agitation unter den Massen von vornherein als ihre Aufgabe. Eines der ersten, noch in Schreibmaschinenschrift vervielfältigten Flugblätter ist der Aufruf ,,Die Welt speit Blut ", vom Winter 1914/15 (Dokument 7). Der Aufruf , der von dem Genossen Fritz Ausländer vefaßt ist, trägt noch einen stark pazifistischen Charakter und überschätzt auch die zentristischen Oppositionsströmungen im Auslande . Aber dieser Aufruf fand trotzdem ein starkes Echo und war neben der Abstimmung Karl Liebknechts vom 2. Dezember 1914 eines der ersten Dokumente, das in- und außerhalb Deutschlands Kunde von dem Friedenswillen des deutschen Proletariats gab . Eine noch stärkere Wirkung hatte dann das von Karl Liebknecht verfaßte Flugblatt ,,Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land" (Dokument 8) anläßlich der Kriegserklärung Italiens.

8. Die theoretischen und praktisch-politischen Mängel des Auftretens der Opposition waren den Führern der linken Opposition durchaus bewußt. Zur Überwindung dieser Schwächen schufen Rosa Luxemburg und Franz Mehring im April 1915 ,,Die Internationale" , eine Monatsschrift für Praxis und Theorie des Marxismus, die legal erschien und sofort von den Militär- und Justizbehörden verboten wurde. Mehring bezeichnete in seiner Einleitung als Programm der Zeitschrift : „Selbstverständigung über die Kämpfe der Zeit" , und Rosa Luxemburg formulierte die Aufgabe der Sozialisten knapp und treffend : Entweder Bethmann Hollweg oder Liebknecht. Entweder Imperialismus oder Sozialismus, wie ihn Marx verstand."

9. Der sozialdemokratische Parteivorstand wußte gegenüber der vernichtenden Kritik seiner Politik nichts anderes zu sagen, als über Zerstörung der Partei durch die Opposition zu schimpfen . Herausgeber und Mitarbeiter der Zeitschrift antworteten darauf mit einem als Flugblatt verbreiteten Protest (Dokument 9), der offensiv gehalten den Parteivorstand und seine Anhänger von neuem des Verrats an den Beschlüssen der internationalen Kongresse anklagt.

10. Wie tapfer und sicher auch sonst Franz Mehring die Klinge führte, beweist sein als Flugblatt verbreiteter Artikel der Bremer Bürgerzeitung gegen den Umlerner Konrad Hänish : „Wohin geht die Reise ?“ (Dokument 10) und sein gegen den Sozialverräter Paul Lensch gerichtetes, ebenfalls gedruckt vertriebenes Schreiben an den Parteiausschuß von 12. Juli 1915 (Dokument 11)

11. Während R o s a L u x e ın b u r g eine bereits vor dem Kriege verhängte einjährige Gefängnisstrafe wegen ihres Kampfes gegen den Militarismus antreten und Klara Zetkin wegen ihrer Antikriegs-Propaganda ins Untersuchungsgefängnis wandern mußte, gaben sich die sozialdemokratischen Führer auf Grund des mit Hindenburg geschlossenen Burgfriedens in immer größere Abhängigkeit von dem deutschen Generalstab, Einzelne Reichstagsabgeordnete hatten schon bei Beginn des Krieges im Auslande massenhaft das deutsche Weißbuch verbreitet, das von der deutschen Regierung zu ihrer und des Kaisers Reinwaschung von der Kriegsschuld zusammen gefälscht worden war. Immer schamloser wurde ihre Propaganda zugunsten des deutschen kriegführenden Imperialismus, und schließlich scheuten sie sich nicht, als Gäste im kaiserlichen Hauptquartier zu erscheinen, während ihre Parteigenossen in den Gefängnissen saßen und in den Schützengräben verbluteten. So entstand das auf Grund von Originalphotographien zusammengestellte Flugblatt „Bilder ohne Worte" (vergleiche Abbildung), das wie alle diese Flugblätter sofort verboten wurde.

12. Im Frühjahr 1915 hatte die Opposition bereits tiefe Wurzeln gefaßt. Wie groß der Unwille selbst in den Kreisen der sozialdemokratischen Funktionäre über die Burgfriedenspolitik war, zeigt das vom 9. Juni 1915 datierte Protestschreiben an die Vorstände der Sozialdemokratischen Partei und der sozialdemokratischen Reichstagsfraktion (Dokument 12], das von etwa 1000 Funktionären der Partei und der Gewerkschaften aus ganz Deutschland unterzeichnet wurde.

13. Das Schreiben vom 9. Juni richtete sich zwar formell nur gegen Partei- und Fraktionsvorstand, aber sachlich trat es auch die schwankenden Gestalten der Opposition, die ihren Mannesmut nur im Fraktionskämmerlein zeigten. Das Schreiben vom 9. Juni, dem Entwürfe von Karl Liebknecht und Georg Ledebour zugrunde lagen, nahm auf die Zögernden um Ledebour in der Form und zum Teil sogar in der Sache noch Rücksicht. Trotzdem war die Sprache deutlich genug ; das Schreiben endete mit einer nur wenig verhüllten Androhung der Parteispaltung.Rosa Luxemburg war Gegnerin dieses Zusammengehens mit der Ledebourschen Fraktionsminderheit ; al sein paar Monate später von ihr Thesen für eine Verständigung der linken Opposition ausgearbeitet wurden, warnte sie Karl Liebknecht ausdrücklich, diese Thesen den Ledebour-Leuten auch nur vorzulegen

14. Unter dem Druck des Protestschreibens vom 9. Juni bequemten sich Parteivorstand und Fraktion Anfang Juli dazu, ihrerseits Richtlinien und Aufrufe zur Friedensfrage zu erlassen. Aber es handelte sich dabei selbstverständlich nur um ein demagogisches Manöver. Sie sprachen vom Frieden, um zum „Durchhalten“ aufzufordern und luden die Verantwortung für die Fortsetzung des Krieges statt der eigenen Regierung den Regierungen und Sozialisten des Auslandes auf.

15. Ihre Friedensziele waren rein imperialistisch, wie aus der ausführlichen Antwort der Opposition „Krieg und Proletariat" [Dokument 13] hervorgeht. Wie wenig die Mitglieder von den Schritten des Parteivorstandes befriedigt waren, zeigt auch die Ansprache einer Frauen-Deputation [Dokument 14]. Gegen die unverschämten Annexions-Forderungen der Industriellen und bürgerlichen Professoren, deren Denkschriften die Opposition in Sonderabzügen verbreitete, richtete sich eine kleine Broschüre : „Der Annexionswahnsinn“ [Dokument15].

16. Die steigende Lebensmittelnot, die immer stärkere Heranziehung der Bevölkerung zum Heeresdienst und zur Arbeit in der Munitionsindustrie, das immer frechere Auftreten der bürgerlichen Annexionisten schufen für die Opposition einen günstigen Boden. Die vertraulichen Informationsbriefe erschienen da er in immer rascherer Folge. Die illegalen Flugblätter wurden in immer größerer Auflage verbreitet und nahmen selbst die Form von Broschüren an [vgl. Dokument 16 : „Wer hat die Schuld am Kriege ?“] Den ersten Friedensdemonstrationen vom Frühjahr 1915 folgten solche mit größerer Beteiligung. In den Fabriken wuchs die Gärung wegen der harten Arbeit und der ungenügenden Ernährung. Die erste Zimmerwalder Konferenz von Anfang September 1915 gab den gequälten. nach einem Ausweg suchenden Massen aller Länder die Gewißheit, daß auch jenseits der Schützengräben der Wille nach Kriegsbeendigung vorhanden war. Die für die Zimmerwalder Konferenz von Karl Liebknecht geprägte Losung : „Nicht Burgfrieden, sondern Burgkrieg" schlug zündend in die Massen. Ohne daß die entschiedene Opposition um Liebknecht und Luxemburg der Plattform der um die Bolschewiki sich scharenden „Zimmerwalder Linken" offiziell zustimmte, ergab sich in der Propaganda eine Annäherung an den Hauptpunkt der bolschewistischen Forderung : „Überleitung des imperialistischen Krieges in den Bürgerkrieg." In den illegalen Flugblättern für die Massenagitation, wie zum Beispiel in dem Anfang Dezember verbreiteten Flugblatt : „Ein Ende dem Winterfeldzug" [Dokument 17], gibt es noch rein pazifistische Sätze. Aber bei den inneren Auseinandersetzungen innerhalb der Opposition zeigte sich eine immer deutlichere Scheidung zwischen der Gruppe um Liebknecht und Luxemburg einerseits und der Gruppe der Fraktionsminderheit um Ledebour und Adolf Hoffmann andererseits. Die Weigerung dieser beiden in Zimmerwald, eine formelle Verpflichtung auf Ablehnung der Kriegskredite unter Bruch der Disziplin einzugehen, war nicht nur in Zimmerwald von den Vertretern der Liebknechtgruppe Ernst Meyer und Berta Thalheimer aufs schärfste bekämpft worden. Auch in Deutschland herrschte in breiteren Kreisen der Opposition eine starke Empörung über die Ablehnung der Taktik Liebknechts durch die Ledebourgruppe. Zwar gab es noch gemeinsame Besprechungen der Gesamtopposition. Aber beide Strömungen begannen gesondertes Informationsmaterial herauszugeben, und die eigenen Publıkatıonen der Ledebour-Richtung bewiesen da- bei, wie sehr diese Richtung unter dem Einﬂuß des zentristischen „Sumpfes" stand. -Das ist um so erklärlicher, wenn man' sich daran erinnert, daß die Führer der Ledebour-Richtung waren : Hugo Haase, der zweimal die Begründung zur Bewilligung der Kriegskredite für die Mehrheit verlesen hatte Karl Kautsky, der die 2. Internationale „im wesentlichen als ein Friedensinstrument, aber „kein wirksames Werkzeug im Kriege" bezeichnete ; Eduard Bernstein ; der theoretische Begründer des Revisionismus und ententefreundliche Pazifist.

17. Als sich endlich am 21. Dezember 1915 ein Teil der Fraktionsminderheit entschloß, dem Beispiel Liebknechts zu folgen und die Kriegskredite auch in öffentlicher Sitzung des Reichstages abzulehnen, da fiel die Begründung für diesen Schritt so aus, das sie einer theoretischen Rechtfertigung der Kreditbewilliger gleichkam. Den Kampf gegen die zentristischen Auffassungen in aller Öffentlichkeit empfanden die Anhänger Liebknechts ebenso als revolutionäre Pflicht, wie den Kampf gegen Scheidemann und Bethmann Hollweg. Die Liebknechtgruppe hatte am 1. Januar 1916 bereits eine selbständige größere Reichskonferenz unter Ausschaltung der Ledebourgruppe abgehalten. Am 27. Januar 1916 gab sie den ersten, mit dem Pseudonym Spartacus bezeichneten politischen Brief heraus, der durch den Artikel Liebknechts "Die Dezember-Männer von 1915" eine scharfe Abgrenzung von der Ledebour-Gruppe vornahm.

18. Die Spartakusbriefe, die jetzt in rascher Folge erschienen, machten ein ungeheueres Aufsehen und bald bezeichnete man die Liebknecht-Anhänger, die Sich Selbst nach der Zeitschrift „Gruppe Internationale“ nannten, nur noch als Spar- takus-Leute. Der Name Spartakus vereinigte im Munde des Bürgers Seinen Haß gegen die kleine, aber rührige revolutionäre Gruppe, im Munde der revolutionären Arbeiter der ganzen Welt aber die Achtung und Anerkennung für den unbeugsamen, durch tausend Opfer gehärteten Willen zum Kampfe für die evolution.

19. Auf der Reichskonferenz vom Januar hatte die Spartakus- Gruppe als Plattform für ihre weitere Tätigkeit die von Rosa Luxemburg verfaßten Leitsätze [abgedruckt auch als Anhang zu ihrer Broschüre Junius, die Krise der Sozialdemokratie] angenommen. (Bei uns abgedruckt im Dokument 18.] Diese Thesen halten zwar der Kritik L e n in s [vergleiche im Sammelband „Gegen den Strom" seinen Aufsatz über die Juniusbroschüre] nicht stand, bedeuteten aber in den entscheidenden auch von Lenin anerkannten Punkten einen gewaltigen Fort- schritt gegenüber den zentristischen Auffassungen der Ledebour-Gruppe. Ledebour und Hoffmann stießen sich gerade an der Betonung der Unterordnung der nationalen Sektionen unter die Internationale. Sie nahmen damit vorweg die Argumente, die später von der Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratie- Deutschlands gegen die 21 Bedingungen des 2. Weltkongresses erhoben worden sind. Die Spartakusgruppe betrachtete aber gerade diese angegriffenen Sätze als so wichtig, daß sie sie fortan als Motto den meisten ihrer Flugblätter voransetzte. (Vgl. Rosa Luxemburgs Verteidigung der Leitsätze in ihrer Broschüre : „Entweder — oder“, Dokument 18.] '

20. Alle Bemühungen der Ledebour-Gruppe, die Spaltung der Reichstagsfraktion und damit der Sozialdemokratischen Partei zu vermeiden, waren vergeblich. Eine harmlose Etats rede am 24. März 1-916 im Reichstage seitens eines Ledebour-Anhängers führte zum Ausschluß der ganzen Gruppe und zur Bildung der 'Fraktion „A r b e i t s g e m e in s c h a f t". Die parlamentarische Tätigkeit dieser Fraktion war und blieb aber weiter ganz kompromißlerisch. [Vgl. „Die Lehre des 24. März", Dokument 19.] Ledebour verteidigte im Reichstage am 15. Januar 1916 das Recht Deutschlands „auf das freie Meer", worauf die Spartakusgruppe in einem ausführlichen von Marchlewski verfaßten Flugblatt : „Unterseebotkrieg, Völkerrecht und Völkermord" [Dokument 20] antwortete. Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft begeisterte sich weiter für Besitzsteuern, trotzdem auch diese Besitzsteuern zur Verlängerung des Krieges dienten. Rosa Luxemburg hatte bereits in dem oben zitierten Artikel für die Leipziger Volkszeitung die Bewilligung von direkten Steuern für den Militarismus als Opportunismus gebrandmarkt. Jetzt, wo es sich um die Verwendung aller Steuern für ausgesprochene Kriegszwecke handelte, hätte der Arbeitsgemeinschaft eine richtige Stellungnahme noch leichter fallen müssen als dem Kautsky'schen Zentrum im Jahre 1913. Das wiederum von Marchlewski verfaßte Flugblatt „Die Steuerfrage“ (Document 21) mußte deshalb den Arbeitern den alten sozialistischen Grundsatz „dem Militarismus keinen Mann und keinen Groschen“ auch in bezug auf direkten Steuern auseinandersetzen.

21. Auf einer neuen Reichskonferenz, die Mitte März 1916 in Berlin stattfand, wurden die organisatorische Zusammenfassung der Spartakusgruppe und ihre Aufgaben eingehend besprochen. Die dort an-genommenen Resolutionen bezeichnen im einzelnen die Stellungnahme der Spartakusgruppe zu Zimmerwald und zu den politischen Problemen der Kriegszeit. (Vgl. Spartakusbriefe. Neudruck Bd. I, Seite 99 ff.)

22. Als die Delegierten der 2. Zimmerwalder Konferenz sich noch auf der Rückreise befanden, war der rührigste Revolutionär und Agitator des Spartakusbundes den Schergen des deutschen Militarismus in die Hände gefallen. K a r l L i e b k n e c lı t hatte zu Demonstrationen am 1. Mai 1916 aufgerufen (vergleiche das von ihm verfaßte Flugblatt : „Auf zur Maifeier I“, Dokument 22] und war an der Spitze der Demonstration auf dem Potsdamer Platz verhaftet worden. Ihn schützte nicht die Immunität als Reichstags- und Landtagsabgeordneter. Der Reichstag selbst erteilte bereitwillig die Genehmigung zur Verhaftung und Verurteilung. Schmählicher als die Haltung der Liberalen und der Konservativen war dabei die der sozialdemokratischen Durchhaltepolitiker. David erdreistete sich, Karl Liebknecht zu entschuldigen : Ein Hund, der laut bellt, beiße nicht. Rosa Luxemburg antwortete auf diese Infamie in einem Flugblatt „Hunde politik“ [Dokument 23], dessen Sätze die verlogenen Mehrheitssozialisten wie Peitschenhiebe trafen. Zur revolutionären Ausnutzung der Verhaftung Liebknechts gab der Spartakusbund eine ganze Reihe von Flugblättern heraus [ Dokument 24 : „Was ist mit Liebknecht“, aus der Feder Rosa Luxemburgs. Dokument 25 aus der Feder Franz Mehrings]. Gleichzeitig bereitete der Spartakusbund eine Demonstration am Tage des Prozesses Liebknechts vor. Um die Vorbereitungen zu stören, wurden Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, wie schon vorher Marchlewski. in Schutzhaft gesteckt. Kurz vor der Demonstration wurde auch eine große Zahl von Vertrauensleuten des Spartakusbundes und der Arbeitsgemeinschaft, die in den Betrieben für den Streik agitierten, ins Gefängnis geworfen.

23. Trotzdem kamen Demonstrationen am Vortage der ersten Ver- urteilung zu 2 1/2 Jahren Zuchthaus, und am Tage des Prozesses Selbst ein großer Proteststreik in der Munitionsindustrie Berlins und Braunschweigs zustande, (Vergleiche das Flugblatt : 21, Jahre Zuchthaus“, Dokument 26.) Dem nach Rach2 dürstenden Militärbehörden genügte diese Verurteilung nicht. In zweiter Instanz wurde Liebknecht zu 4 Jahren Zuchthaus und 12 Sechs Jahren Ehrverlust verurteilt. Kurz vor der letzten Verhandlung Setzte der Spartakusbund in einem neuen Flugblatt der Arbeiterschaft noch einmal auseinander, wofür Liebknecht kämpfte und weshalb er zu Zuchthaus verurteilt wurde (Dokument 27) und forderte erneut zu einer Demonstration auf (Dokument 28). Unter dem Eindruck dieser Demonstrationen und der wachgenden Unruhe der Arbeiter Schwangen Sich die Regie- rungssozialieten zu einer „Friedenspetition“ auf, die von der Spartakusgruppe als „Petition gegen den Frieden“ (vgl. Dokument 29) unbarmherzig zerpflückt wurde.

24. Die Verschärfung der militärischen, wirtschaftlichen und politischen Lage in Deutschland führte die Machthaber zu dem Versuch, die gesamte männliche Bevölkerung in Form des „Vaterländischen Hilfsdienstes" zu militarisieren und unter die Knute zu bringen. Durch ein aar soziale Schutzbestimmungen suchte man auch die Sozialdemokratie zu ködern. Welche Wirkungen dieses, im Dezember 1916 mit Zustimmung der SPD. angenommene Gesetz haben würde, sagte das Flugblatt des Spartakusbundes : „Deutschland - ein fertiges Z u c h t h a u s I" [Dokument 30] richtig voraus. Im Winter 1916/17 trat dazu eine so unerhörte Not an Nahrungsmitteln ein, daß es in verschiedenen Orten zu Lebensmittel-Pünderungen kam. Das Flugblatt : „Hunger !" [Dokument 31] ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie die Spartakusgruppe auch diese Wirkung des Krieges zur Aufklärung und Mobilisation der Massen auszunutzen suchte.

25. Trotz der zahlreichen Verhaftungen im Sommer 1916 entfaltete die Spartakusgruppe eine immer stärkere Agitation. Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht arbeiteten auch vom Gefängnis aus lebhaft mit. Die Kassiber, manchmal umfangreiche Manuskripte, wanderten regelmäßig aus der Zelle in die illegalen Druckereien. Seit September 1916 gelang es Leo Jogiches, die Spartakusbriefe, die bisher nur in Schreibmaschinenabzügen versandt waren, als gedruckte Zeitschrift herauszugeben.

26. Inzwischen war dem Ausschluß der Fraktionsminderheit die Spaltung der Parteiorganisation durch den Sozialdemokratischen Parteivorstand gefolgt. Der Parteivorstand hatte einer Reihe von Organisationen ihre Zeitungen geraubt. Zuletzt auch den Vorwärts, über dessen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft zuneigende Re- daktion er bereits Seit dem Frühjahr 1916 neben der Militär- zensgur einen eigenen parteipolitischen Zensor eingesetzt hatte. Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft fand auch hier nicht den Mut zum offenen Auftreten. Sie wagte nicht einmal die Losung des offenen Boykotts gegen den jetzt völlig militärfromm gewor- denen Vorwärts. Andererseits wurde die Arbeitsgemeinschaft wider Willen durch den Parteivorstand zum Zusammenschluß gezwungen. Ende September 1916 hatte noch der Parteivorstand eine Reichskonferenz einberufen, die scheinbar der Einigung der Gesamtpartei dienen Sollte. Neben den Refe- renten Ebert von der Mehrheit und H aas e von der Arbeitsgemeinschaft trat dort Käte Dunker für die Spartakusgruppe auf ; die Basis ihres Korreferats war die grundsätzliche Ab- lehnung der Vaterlandsverteidigung. Aber Schon zwei Wochen Später nahm der Parteivorstand gewaltsam den Vorwärts in Besitz. Endlich entschloß Sich die Arbeitsgemeinschaft, eine von der Spartakusgruppe länget geforderte Konferenz aller oppositionellen Gruppen") aus dem ganzen Reiche für Anfang 1917 nach Berlin einzuberufen.

27. Die Spartakusgruppe entschloss sich damals noch nicht zur offenen Losung der Spaltung von der SPD. Aber die von ihr aufgestellten Richtlinien ihres Auftretens auf der Konferenz (vergleiche die von Jogisches verfaßten Dokumente 32 und 33) bereiteten faktisch die Spaltung vor. Der Spartakusbund verlangte nicht nur Beitragssperre gegenüber dem Parteivorstand, selbständige Aktionen und Organisierung einer Gewerkschaftlichen Opposition mit einem eigenen Gewerkschaftsblatt, sondern erklärte auch grundsätzlich :

„Die Zugehörigkeit zu der gegenwärtigen Sozialdemokratischen Partei darf von der Opposition nur solange aufrecht erhalten werden. als diese ihre selbständige politische Aktion nicht hemmt. noch beeinträchtigt. Die Opposition verbleibt in der Partei. nur um die Politik der Mehrheit auf Schritt und Tritt zu bekämpfen und zu durchkreuzen. . .“

28. Aber auch gegenüber der Arbeitsgemeinschaft behielt sich die Spartakusgruppe oder „Gruppe Internationale", wie sie sich noch immer nannte, ihre völlige Handlungsfreiheit und ihre gesonderte organisatorische Existenz vor.

Die gleichen Vorbehalte machte die Spartakusgruppe bei dem Eintritt in die Anfang April 1917 in Gotha gegründete Unabhängige Sozialdemokratie Deutsch- lands. Die Meinungen über die Zweckmäßigkeit des Eintritts in die USP. waren innerhalb der Spartakusgruppe keineswegs einheitlich. Nicht nur blieben die zur Zimmerwalder Linken zählenden Bremer Linksradikalen der USP, fern ; auch eine ganze Reihe von Spartaknsorganisatiorıen folgten nur widerwillig und zum Teil gar nicht den auf Eintritt lautenden Beschlüssen der Spartakusl-ıonferenz, die kurz vor dem Gründungsparteitag der USP ebenfalls in Gotha stattfand.

29. Zwar hat die Spartakusgruppe ihre organisatorische Selb- Ständigkeit und ihre politische Handlungsfreiheit auch nach dem Eintritt in die USP. voll bewahrt, aber auf der letzten Reichs konferenz der Spartakusgruppe Anfang Oktober 1918 war die allgemeine Ueberzeugung so, wie sie in dem Bericht über diese Konferenz (im letzten Spartakusbrief vom Oktober 1918) formuliert wird : ;

„Es wurden die Erfahrungen über die Zusammenarbeit mit der Unab- hängigen Partei ausgetauscht, Günstige Erfolge Sind in keinem Orte mit der USP. gemacht worden. Nur in den Orten, wo sich die Organisation der USP. völlig in den Händen von Spartakusanhängern befinden, Sind die Genossen mit dem in Gotha vollzogenen Zusammenschluß zufrieden.“

30. Ähnlich hatte Sich Schon Franz Mehring in Seinem Brief an die Bolschewiki vom 3, Juni 1918 (erschienen in der Peters- burger „Prawda“ vom 13, Juni) ausgesprochen :

„im Gegengatz zu der Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratie hat die Gruppe Internationale gleich bei Beginn des Krieges allen Illusionen Valet gesagt und in ihren Thesen und anderen programmatischen Erklärungen nie vergessen, daß nach dem schrecklichen Zusammenbruch vom 4. August 1914 -der völlige Neuaufbau der Internationale möglich und notwendig ist...

Nur einen Fehler haben wir gemacht, nämlich den, daß wir nach Gründung der Organisation der Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratie uns ihr angeschlossen haben, selbstverständlich unter Wahrung unseres eigenen Standpunktes, in der Hoffnung, daß es uns gelingen wird, Sie vorwärts zu treiben. Auf diese Hoffnung haben wir schon lange verzichten müssen.“ (Zitiert nach der Leipziger Volkszeitung vom 4. Juni 1918.)

31. Der Gründungsparteitag der USP. in Gotha stand schon Stark unter dem Einfluß der russischen Februarrevolution von 1917. Aber man verabsäumte es dort, die Lage in Rußland zu analysieren und die entsprechenden Lehren zu ziehen. Die USP.-Führer brachten nicht mehr auf als ein paar Sympathie-erklärungen. Aber sie dachten nicht daran, die Konsequenzen für Deutschland zu ziehen. Die Losung der Republik durch Revolution oder gar der proletarischen Diktatur blieben unausgesprochen, Am 8. April schrieb das Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeitsgemeinschaft bzw. USP. für Berlin wörtlich folgendes :

„Darum ist es auch falsch, die revolutionären Mittel des eigenen Landes Schematisch auf ein anderes Land übertragen zu wollen... Wir haben mit anderen Verhältnissen zu rechnen als drüben in Rußland ; der Kampf um unsere innere Freiheit muß daher andere Formen annehmen. Dieser Kampf hat in diesen Tagen unter dem moralischen Eindruck der Vorgänge in Rußland auf parlamentarischen Boden eingesetzt.“

32. Rosa Luxemburg antwortete darauf in den Spartakusbriefen vom Mai 1917 treffend. „Also ein unzweideutiges Bekenntnis zu der Weisheit : In Rußland macht man Revolutionen, in Deutschland hingegen „kämpft“ man im Reichstag.“

33. Die Reform des preußischen Dreiklassenwahlrechts wurde vom Landtag abgelehnt. Auf einen Massenstreik Berliner Arbeiter vom April 1917 folgten nur leere Versprechungen der Regierung auf erhöhte Nahrungsmittel-Rationen (vergleiche Dokument 34). Für das Volk hieß es trotz russischer Revolution so, wie die Ueberschrift eines illegalen Flugblattes lautete : „Weniger Brot, keine Rechte, neue Steuern“ (Dokument 35). Und wo gar revolutionäre Soldaten sich politisch betätigten, wurden sie blutig bestraft. Selbst die Erhebung der Matrosen im Sommer 1917, die mit der Erschießung von Reichpietsch und Köbis endete, fand indessen bei den Abgeordneten der USP. eine so lahme und feige Verteidigung, daß sie einer Verurteilung gleichkam. Der Spartakusbund dagegen trat offen für diese Vorläufer der Novemberempörer ein (vgl. Dokument 36).

34. Ernster als die USP. faßte der Spartakusbund die Februarereignisse in Rußland auf. Er gab neben verschiedenen Flug- blättern (vgl. Dok. 37 u. 38) ein Sonderheft der Spartakusbriefe über die Februarrevolution heraus, das neben Dokumenten einen Leitartikel ,,Der alte Maulwurf " über die allgemeine Bedeutung der Februarrevolution enthält. Rosa Luxemburg sucht in ihren Artikeln über die russische Revolution die keineswegs immer richtige Analyse der Situation zu einem Appell an die revolutionäre Aktionsfähigkeit auszumünzen. Es gibt keinen anderen Weg zum Frieden , als die Revolution - diesen Satz variiert sie immer wieder, um die deutsche Arbeiterschaft aufzurütteln. Gleichzeitig reizen sie die Vorgänge in Rußland zu immer neuen Erklärungen und Voraussagen . So beschäftigt sie sich in dem Spartakusbrief vom August 1917 unter dem Titel : ,,Brennende Zeitfragen " in einem besonderen Abschnitt mit der notwendigen Entwicklung der russischen Revolution zur Diktatur des Proletariats und erklärt da- bei, also mehr als drei Monate vor der Novemberrevolution, wörtlich folgendes :

„Das neue Koalitionsministerium wird kraft der inneren logischen Entwicklung über kurz oder lang einer rein Sozialistischen Regierung, d. h. der tatsächlichen und formellen Diktatur des Proletariats Platz machen müssen “

35. Die vollständig richtige Erkenntnis der Entwicklung in Ruß- land wurde Rosa Luxemburg allerdings verwehrt durch die Ab- lehnung des Selbstbestimmungsrechtes der Völker, die Ver- neinung der Möglichkeit der Aufrechterhaltung der proletari- Schen Diktatur in einem Lande ohne Sofortige Weltrevolution und durch die Verkennung der revolutionären Wirkungen des Friedens von Brest-Litowsk auch für Deutschland.

36. Diese Fehler gehen aus dem Spartakusbrief vom Januar 1918 trotz der auch darin enthaltenen Anerkennung für die Leistungen der Bolschewiki deutlich hervor. Wie glänzend Rogsa Luxemburg dennoch die Tat der Bolschewiki im revolutionären Sinne auszunützen verstand, zeigt der Artikel : „Die geschichtliche Verantwortung“ in der gleichen Num- mer der Spartakusbriefe.

37. Daß Rosa Luxemburg's Kritik an den Bolschewiki keineswegs von allen Spartakus Anhängern geteilt wurde, zeigt die von mir als dem damaligen Herausgeber der Spartakusbriefe geschriebene redaktionelle Anmerkung zu ihrem Artikel. “ Die russische Tragödie“ aus den Spartakusbriefen vom September 1918, worin ich von der Kritik Rosa Luxemburgs abrückte, was der allgemeinen Stimmung in den Spartakus kreisen entsprach.

38. Kennzeichnender für die Spartakusgruppe als die Kritik Rosa Luxemburgs an den Bolschewiki in den illegalen Spartakusbriefen waren die uneingeschränkten Solidaritätserklärungen Franz Mehrings und Klara Zetkins mit den Bolschewiki in den legalen Presse, Ende Mai und Anfang Juni 1918 veröffentlichte Franz Mehring in der Leipziger Volkszeitung vier Artikel : „Die Bolschewiki und wir“, worin er nachwies, daß die weltgeschichtliche Leistung der Bolschewiki als eine Durchführung und Fort- Setzung des Marxismus durchaus zu begrüßen und zu unter- Stützen ist. Mehring verteidigte in diesen Artikeln die Unterzeichnung des Friedens von Brest - Litowsk mit folgenden Worten :

„Will man den Bolschewiki einen Vorwurf daraus machen, daß sie den Krieg nicht fortgesetzt haben, statt Sich dem Frieden zu Brest-Litowsk zu unterwerfen, so muß man nachweisen können, daß die Fortsetzung des Krieges eine europäische Revolution hervorgerufen haben würde. Wer legen Nachweis führen zu können glaubt, der mag den ersten Stein auf die Bolschewiki werfen, Aber bisher ist der Nachweis noch nicht einmal Versucht, geschweige denn geführt worden, daß diese einzige Voraussetzung eines Erfolges auch nur im Bereich einer entfernten Möglichkeit gelegen hätte, Fehlte sie aber, so wäre die Fortführung des Krieges auf ein Verbluten der russischen Revolution hinausgekommen — zugunsten des Imperialismus der Entente, den die Bolschewiki mit Recht nicht minder hassen als den Imperialismus der Mittelmächte.“ (Leipziger Volkszeitung vom 1. Juni 1918.)

39. In Seinem Schlußartikel äußert Sich Mehring dahin : :

„Selbst wenn man von allem Sozialismus absieht, muß schon jeder, der einen demokratischen Verständigungsfrieden nicht bloß mit dem Maule wünscht, die Befestigung und Erhaltung der bolschewistischen Herrschaft in Rußland aufs dringendste zu fördern Suchen ; von einem solchen Frieden unaufhörlich zu Schwatzen und dabei einen dicken Trennungsstrich zwischen Sich und die Bolschewiki zu ziehen, ist der Gipfel jener hoffnungslosen Konfusion, den nur Scheidemann und Seine Gefolgschaft zu erklimmen vermag. Die Bolschewiki sind die einzige russische Partei, die vollkommen Bürgschaft für einen demokratischen Verständigungsfrieden bietet, die vollkommen hieb- und stichfest ist gegen allen und jeden Imperialismus, gegen den englischen Imperialismus nicht minder als gegen den deutschen.“ (Leipziger Volkszeitung vom 17, Juni 1918.)

40. In dem schon erwähnten Schreiben Mehrings vom, 3. Juni 1918 heißt es zum Schluß :

" Ich schreibe diesen Brief, indem ich einem Wunsche nachkomme, der wiederholt aus den Kreisen der Gruppe Internationale geäußert worden ist : um unseren russischen Freunden und Gesinnungsgenossen zu Sagen, daß wir mit ihnen allen durch die Bande leidenschaftlicher und tiefster Sympathie verbunden ind, und daß wir in ihnen und nicht in den Gespenstern der „alten erprobten Taktik“ die stärksten Vorkämpfer der neuen Internationale erblicken.“

41. Ganz ähnlich hat : Sich wiederholt Klara Zetkin öffentlich, z. B. in Artikeln der Frauenbeilage der Leipziger Volkszeitung geäußert : Sie Sandte außerdem an eine Konferenz der USP., an der sie persönlich nicht teilnehmen konnte, einen ausführlichen Brief ; in dem Sie in leidenschaftlicher Sprache für die Bolschewiki und gegen die Kritik der Martow, Kautsky, Ströbel an den Bolschewiki. auftrat. In diesem Brief verteidigt sie die Auflösung der Konstituante, den Frieden von Brest-Litowsk, den roten Terror, wie überhaupt die gesamte Politik der Bolschewiki. Die ersten und die Schluß-Sätze dieses Briefes fassen ihre Stellung dahin zusammen :

„Mit Entschiedenheit und Sympathie bin ich für die Bolschewiki eingetreten, je klarer und befestigter in mir die Erkenntnis wurde von dem großen geschichtlichen Wesen und der weitreichenden Bedeutung des kühnen bolschewistischen Unterfangens. Ich erblicke und bewerte in diesem den zur Faust zusammengeballten, den tatgewordenen Willen, sozialistische Auffassung, Sozialistische Grundsätze von den gesellschaftlichen Dingen aus dem luftigen Reich der Ideen in die harte Wirklichkeit zu übertragen, die Entwicklung eines ganzen großen Volkes auf dem kürzesten Wege plan- mäßig, bewußt in der Richtung zur Sozialistischen Ordnung zu orientieren, ,.
Das Werk der Bolschewiki muß als Ganzes betrachtet und gewürdigt werden ; als die konsequente Auswirkung eines zersetzenden Willens. Der heutige Stand der revolutionären Dinge in Rußland ist die konsequente Fortentwicklung der Novemberrevolution, ist das Ausleben der Grundsätze, von denen ihre Vorkämpfer und Führer geleitet wurden, der Taktik und Methoden, die Sie zur Anwendung bringen.“ (Zum Teil erschienen in der Frauenbeilage der- Leipziger Volkszeitung.)

42. Es Sei hier gleich vorweggenommen, daß der Spartakusbund jederzeit für die Bolschewiki eine uneingeschränkte Pro- paganda machte. So verbreitete er die von Bucharin verfaßten und in Kopenhagen gedruckten) „Thesen über die sozialistische evolution (Dokument 53).

43. Die Schlußfolgerungen, die der Spartakusbund aus den revolutionären Vorängen in Rußland zog, war die planmäßige Vor- bereitung der Revolution in Deutschland. (Vergl. „Die Stunde der Entscheidung“, Dokument 39.)

44. Die erste praktische Auswirkung fand die russiSche Ok- toberrevolution in Deutschland in dem großen Massenstreik vom Januar 1918 zur Zeit von Brest-Litowsk. Hier zeigte Sich die illegale Leistungsfähigkeit des Spartakusbundes auf Seiner ganzen Höhe, Innerhalb weniger Tage brachte der Spartakusbund eine ganze Anzahl von Flugblättern heraus, von denen wir nur Sieben (Dokument 40 bis 46) abdrucken. Zwar kogstete dieser Streik dem Spartakusbund eine große Zahl von Opfern, deren schmerzlichstes die Verhaftung des Hauptorganisators des Spartakusbundes, des Genossen Leo Jogiches im März 1918 war, Aber dieser Streik war zugleich die erste große Kraftprobe der revolutionär gestimmten Arbeiterschaft mit dem deutschen Imperialismus, ein Wetterleuchten, das bereits die revolutionären Novembertage Deutschlands ankündigte. Die organisatorische Vorbereitung dieses Streiks lag zum größten Teil in den Händen der mehr unter dem Einfluß der USP. Stehenden revolutionären Obleute Groß-Berlins, einer Art vorrevolutionären Arbeiterrats. Die Sozusagen parlamentarische Führung des Streiks hatten einige USP.-Abgeordnete wie Haage und Dittmann ; und selbst einige Sozialdemokraten und Gewerk- Schaftsführer nahmen Sich scheinbar der Streikenden an, aller- dings, um, wie Wels im Magdeburger Ebert-Prozeß im Jahre 1925 zynisch bekannte, die Bewegung abzuwürgen, oder wenigstens in das ruhige Fahrwasser eines rein wirtschaftlichen Streiks ohne politiseche Konsequenzen zu leiten. Aber die USP. onnte aus dem Streik nicht allzu viel gewinnen, weil ihr 'ührer Dittmann, der während des Streiks verhaftet wurde, Sich vor dem Kriegsgericht so Schmählich benahm, daß er zwar anders wie Liebknecht mit einer Festungsstrafe davonkam, aber ür auch das Vertrauen der revolutionären Arbeiter zu sich und der USP-Führung einbüßte.

45. Im Laufe des Jahres 1918 galten die Hauptanstrengungen es Spartakusbundes in engster Verbindung mit den Berliner revolutionären Obleuten der Bewaffnung von proletarischen Stoßtrupps zur Vorbereitung des bewaffneten Umsturzes. Der Boden für die revolutionäre Propaganda war bereits 50 gelockert, daß es den Provinzorganisationen des Spartakusbundes verhältnismäßig leicht fiel, mit eigenen Kräften ohne Unterstützung der Zentralstelle Flugblätter herauszugeben, Zentrale und Provinzorganisationen widmeten Sich jetzt auch eifrig der Agitation unter den Soldaten in der Kaserne, in der Etappe und im Schützengraben. Beispiele der Soldatenpropaganda sind neben dem Streikaufruf (Dokument 43) das Flugblatt : „Der deutsche Soldat als Henker der Freiheit“ (Dokument 47) vom Frühjahr 1918 und der Aufruf : Kameraden erwacht !“ (Dokument 48) vom Sommer 1918, In den Flugblättern kehrt immer häufiger die Forderung des revolutionären Massenstreiks wieder (vgl. Dokument 49), der als Vorbereitung es revolutionären Aufstandes gedacht war. Sobald die Sozialdemokratie in die Regierung eintritt, wirft Sich der Spartakus- und diesem neuen Verwirrungsversuch an den Massen entgegen und beweist an der Hand der Erfahrungen über die Sabotage der Amnestie, wie es mit der Demokratie der neuen Volksregierung aussieht (vgl. Dokumente 50 bis 52).

46. Diese Propaganda wird in den mehr theoretisch gehaltenen Spartakusbriefen ergänzt durch eine ätzende Kritik der Friedensillusionen der USP., die sich, je verzweifelter die militärische Lage Deutschlands wurde, zusammen mit den Rechts- Sozialisten ganz auf den Boden der Wilsonschen Täuschungspolitik stellte (vergleiche den Artikel : „Friedensbedin-gungen“ aus den Spartakusbriefen vom Oktober 1918).

47. Seit der Anwesenheit der russischen Botschaft in Berlin drangen jetzt auch Schriften Lenins, Trotzkis und Bucharins in deutscher Sprache nach Deutschland und wurden in den Spartakuskreisen eifrig verbreitet. Von Genossen Bucharin wurden daneben für die deutschen Arbeiter spezielle Thesen über die Sozialistische Revolution und die Aufgaben des Proletariats während Seiner Diktatur in Rußland verfaßt (Doku- ment 53).

48. Anfang Oktober kam in Erwartung der unmittelbar bevorstehenden revolutionären Ereignisse die organisatorische Annäherung zwischen dem Spartakusbund und den „Linksradikalen Deutschlands“ (Gruppen in Hamburg und Bremen) auf einer gemeinsamen Konferenz in Berlin zustande (vergleiche ihren gemeinsamen Aufruf, Dokument 54). Sobald der revolutionäre Aufstand der Matrosen in Nordwestdeutschland (vgl. Dok. 55 und 56) ausbrach, wird die Forderung der Rätediktatur der Zentralpunkt der Spartakusorganisation (vergleiche den Aufruf vom 7, November, Dokument 57), Diese Forderung trennte auch nach dem Sturz der Monarchie in Deutschland den Spartakusbund von der SPD,, die Sich bewußt auf den Boden der bürgerlichen Demokratie stellte, und von der USP,, die in ihrer Konfusion eine Versöhnung des Sowjetsystems und des bürger- lichen Parlamentarismus propagierte. Mit diesem Flugblatt endete die glorreiche Tätigkeit der Spartakusgruppe während der Kriegszeit.

49. Die Flugblätter des Spartakusbundes in der Revolution werden in einem besonderen Bande gesammelt erscheinen. Beide Teile zusammen bilden — neben dem Neudruck der Spartakusbriefe — eine Ergänzung zu meiner in Kürze erscheinenden „Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands“.

Franz Mehring - The Origins of German Middle Class Culture

Robert Paris — 2025-08-20T04:56:00Z

Franz Mehring

The Origins of German Middle Class Culture

The Lessing Legend

(1892/1893)

1. Lessing's Origins

The idea that Lessing was a second Luther must be avoided. Traces of this idea can be found even in Heine and Lassalle ; and even Lessing himself in his theological discussions once referred to the authority of Luther. Unless he did so for tactical reasons, he demonstrated in a curious way that even the clearest minds may not be clear as to the motives that determine their actions. As a matter of fact, from the beginning to the end of his career Lessing directed his hardest blows against Luther and Lutheranism. Luther fought for the class of the princes, while Lessing fought for the middle classes ; the two constitute the most direct opposites known to German history from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Lessing was by no means a Luther on a higher scale. The parson Goeze, Luther's genuine successor, called Lessing the Anti-Luther, and rightly so. In Lassalle's excellent words : “The great fault of the Goezes past and present consists in – being right.”

Yet the fact that Luther and Lessing came from the same state is not unimportant. In that part of Germany which shook off the domination of the Hapsburgs and the Pope, Saxony was by far the most developed economically, and consequently the most civilized. The returns from her mines gave the Saxon princes a great advantage in the beginning of capitalist development. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, there was no more powerful German territorial prince than the Saxon Elector Friedrich. The production of commodities advanced rapidly in Saxony ; the great trade route from the South to the North of Europe passed through Erfurt. The Lutheran movement was born of the struggle for this important commercial centre, which at the same time possessed the most important German university and was the main centre of German humanism. The city of Erfurt, which itself strove for independence from any princely power, had for long been an object of contention between Mayence and Saxony. When the Hohenzollern Albrecht was elected Archbishop of Mayence, the quarrel began again. Under these circumstances it could not be expected that the Saxon Elector Friedrich should allow “indulgences” to be sold in his state by a commissar of Albrecht ; half of the revenues of the sale were intended to pay the 25,000 ducats which Albrecht owed to Rome for his election.

The Elector Friedrich was a peace-loving gentleman. And more, he was an extremely bigoted Catholic, a believer to the same degree that his adversary Albrecht was an unbeliever. His highest ambition was to receive the Golden Rose from the Pope ; he undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and bought for the Wittenberg Palace Church five thousand questionable bones of saints from all over the world. This was the same church on whose doors Luther had nailed his theses against the indulgences – and here these relics were exhibited on a certain day every year for the people to adore. When Luther, just before publishing his theses, had preached against indulgences, he lost the favor of the Elector, who feared that such preaching might lessen the attractions of his relics. However his most peace-loving attitude disappeared when money was at stake. For a long time the Elector had observed to his annoyance that the Roman vendors of indulgences gathered like a swarm of bees in his state, and for very good reasons. However much money he might have spent on the bones of dead saints, he was not inclined to use the money of his state to present the Roman Church with a new living saint in the person of Archbishop Albrecht, who intended to rob him of the rich city of Erfurt. Therefore he allowed Luther to continue, not as a “man of God” but as a tool of his financial policy. Nothing is more unfounded than to see a “world historical action” in Luther's theses against indulgences and to date the beginning of the Reformation from them. The Anti-Roman movement had been in existence for decades in all classes of the German nation, and the fight against the abuses of the church had already found literary expression, for instance in the writings of the humanists. They were much more scathing than the rather tame theses of Luther. who did not even blame the indulgences themselves, but only their “abuses.” It is equally wrong to say that Luther dealt with the questions in a straightforward, vigorous, popular manner, while the culture of the humanists was beyond the reach of the people. Luther's theses, too, were drafted in Latin, and written in the peculiar mysterious style of scholastic theology, which was absolutely incomprehensible to the masses. Luther himself often expressed his surprise at the tremendous consequences of his step. What he did not grasp, and what the bourgeois historians can explain only by some fantastic ideological assumption, is very simply explained by the economic situation of Luther's time. Of the intellectual leaders of the Reformation, Luther, the narrowest mind among them, survived, while the more important intellects, Hutten, Münzer, Wendel Hipler perished. Behind Luther stood the power which was economically the most important – the princes. Behind the others stood the barons, the proletariat, the peasants and the burghers – classes which were either economically declining or just beginning to rise. Because their economic interests were mutually opposed, they could not unite in a common action against the princes. After the rebellion of the barons and especially after the Peasants' War, Luther understood his role very well, as this glorious sentence alone demonstrates :

“That two and five equal seven you can understand with your reason ; but if your rulers say two and five are eight, you must believe it, against your own knowledge and instinct.”

With regard to his really fine achievement – that he, as a poor and unknown monk, recognized and fought the vices of the exploiting Roman Church – Luther neither stood alone among the proletarian part of the clergy of his time, nor in the front rank. Many of those priests honorably bore witness to their hatred of Rome and their faithfulness to their class by dying on the battlefield or on the scaffold. But as a “peasant's son risen high,” a “leader of the nation,” Luther was the Great Man of usual stamp : the exponent of historical evolution tried to master and to check it. Luther could organize the new church according to the needs of German petty despotism ; he could make the very worldly territorial princes bishops of their states, and could attribute to them the right of disposing of the church and monastery demesne. But he could do all this only as a fanatical servant of the princes, as an intellectual champion of the irresistible decay which befell Germany, and at the price of making his name the symbol of the narrowest reaction as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.

The high economic development of Saxony was the most important factor in Luther's rise, yet it imposed certain limits on the omnipotence of the princes which Luther advocated. In a still half-barbarian state like Brandenburg where – as a learned priest said, an educated man was as rare as a white raven – the Elector Joachim could half change over to the cause of the Reformation, in order to spend the revenue of the whole church demesne on his pleasures. In a civilized country like Saxony such a summary method was impossible. Here a more or less important part of the loot had to be devoted to the cultural tasks which the Roman Church had fulfilled, as well as it could up to that time. So the Saxon schools were founded, in Innaberg and Freiberg, in Dresden and Leipzig, in Naumberg and Merseburg, all of them famous in their way, but the most famous of them were the so-called “princes” schools of Grimma, Meissen and Pforta, which had grown out of monasteries.

In Saxony a school system was born that might be called classical, for German conditions. It did not maintain this standard, however, but shared the fate of Saxony's economic prosperity that had brought about these institutions. Through Germany's exclusion from the world market, through the discoveries of inexhaustible supplies of gold and silver in the New World, through the Thirty Years War, and so on, the middle classes in Saxony, as in the whole of Germany, declined economically and grew appallingly servile. The further this decline continued, the more fanatically the Saxon schools – and above all the universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg defended the ideological reflection of their wretched condition, that rigid and fossilized Lutheranism in whose shadow free scientific research could not possibly flourish. Nevertheless Saxony still remained superior to the rest of Germany in education and economic wealth. Dull mirrors as the Saxon schools had become, they were able to receive the first rays of a new culture which was reflected on Germany from abroad.

Lassalle has sharply repudiated Julian Schmidt's assertion that Germany was temporarily struck off the register of European civilization by the Thirty Years War ; and he has enumerated the surprisingly large number of outstanding men which Germany nevertheless produced during and after that war. This argument against a remark inspired by shallow ignorance is quite justified, but it must not be extended to the statement that in the seventeenth century Germany was on the same level as other civilized European nations. A great, if not the greatest, part of those important intellects had to go abroad, permanently or at least for a time, in order to have the necessary scope for their talents ; those remaining at home were intellectually dependent on foreign influence, obedient disciples of greater masters, as Thomasius, one of the most important of them, candidly said. This fact is again explained by Germany's economic decay. The great advance in mathematics and the natural sciences which mark the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the result of an international traffic which conquered more and more the whole earth.

This advance could have its real roots only in those nations which had an important part in this traffic, above all England and the Netherlands. The fundamental condition of this progress was a high development of the middle classes, and its consequence was the awakening of a political self-consciousness in these classes. But in Germany there was no middle class as an independent force, since the trade routes had moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean ; the ruling classes in Germany were the princes, and they certainly could not produce a national scientific life.

If one is to believe the patriotic Milites Gloriosi who set the fashion in Germany today, the German worship of foreign culture so predominant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is something which a real patriot can remember only with horror. But the scientific conception which sees in the intellectual life of nations the reflection of class struggles, must distinguish between two quite different aspects of the question. Certainly the imitation of foreign manners by the German princes and aristocracy was a brutal denial of the extremely modest national consciousness ; it will always remain a stain on German history. It meant aping the foreigners, and was born of the vilest interests of petty despotism. But this shameless aping of foreigners did not have to wait for the patriots of today to condemn it, it was denounced already by serious contemporaries, to mention only Klopstock and Lessing. Logau wrote in the seventeenth century :

Servants wear their masters' livery.
France as master, Germany as servant shall it be ?
Free Germany, be ashamed of this vile slavery !

The worship of foreign culture by German scholars calls for quite another and really a contrary judgment. It was the first attempt of intelligent middle class elements to drag their class out of a bottomless swamp. There was no other way to accomplish this aim ; the fruit borne by the native plant of orthodox Lutheranism was indigestible. But it is a difficult and ungrateful task to attempt to revive a dead stem, one that no longer receives any nourishment from its roots by grafting on it branches from foreign trees. Only when the old stem itself returned to life, only when the German middle classes began to recover a little economically, that is, after the middle of the eighteenth century, did the foreign branches grow on the native tree. Until then, no other course was open to German scholars save to seek their intellectual nourishment and even their motherland abroad. The more so as the princes who ruled Germany were either hostile or indifferent to German culture, or else regarded it with a very questionable interest, namely, to make it serve their petty despotism. The princes either allowed German scholars to starve or forced them to go abroad, or attached them to their courts. It is difficult to say which of the three was more disastrous to those concerned. Therefore it is easy to understand why the German scholars who stayed in Germany became rather peculiar characters, and why German enlightenment had such a half-hearted and ambiguous character, so repulsive to a man like Lessing. English and French philosophy were rooted in the middle classes of the English and French nations ; this origin was at once their fetter and their protection. German enlightenment had no such roots and floated in the air ; nothing prevented it from going as far as the “light of reason” shone, but nothing protected it either, when a ray of this light fell too revealingly on the cesspool of despotism ; hence the hypocritical mixture of smiling condescension and pious horror with which the German exponents of enlightenment thought to ridicule the English and French “materialists and naturalists, atheists and Spinozists.” But they made only themselves ridiculous. Bourgeois science has never wholly recovered from this ugly disease, because the German middle classes never dared to stand on their own feet. And since the German bourgeoisie has taken refuge behind Prussian bayonets, this illness has returned, and in an even worse form than ever.

Under such circumstances Saxony had to become the principal country for the intellectual awakening of the German middle classes. The Saxon schools were the only institutions or, at least, the most suitable ones for acquiring the middle class culture of foreign countries. They had fallen very far from their old level through orthodox Lutheranism. The ancient languages were taught only to enable the pupils to discuss endlessly every letter in the Bible. For all this, these languages were no less the keys to the treasury of European science, and from the end of the 17th century until far into the 18th, most exponents of German culture were Saxons, or came from Saxon schools, from Leibnitz, Pufendorf and Thomasius to Gellert, Klopstock, Lessing. Even more : with the entrance of Goethe and Schiller into Saxon culture a new period began in the lives of these Southern Germans. Weimar did not belong to the sphere of military Prussia but to the cultural sphere of Saxony, and Karl August, the duke of Weimar, was not a Hohenzollern, but came of the Wettin dynasty.

But this is already beyond the frame of this essay. Yet part of our task is to indicate briefly the social progress represented by these two groups of names. Leibnitz, Pufendorf, Thomasius stood already on bourgeois ground. It was in the interest of the middle classes that they tried to liberate science from the chains of theology. Leibnitz's philosophical optimism, much as can be said against it, weakened the influence of the orthodox concept of the world as a vale of tears. Pufendorf and Thomasius taught the doctrine that all society was derived from a contract and that the individual had the right to resist against obvious injustice. They denied the divine origin of monarchical power and applauded the pamphlets published in the Netherlands against the despotism of King James II. And it was Thomasius who brought the German language back to the lecture hall of the universities. But the work of these men found no support nor echo in the middle classes. Leibnitz in his lasting achievements was more of a European than a German scholar ; Pufendorf and Thomasius themselves confessed to having taken their ideas from Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. All of them were still dependent on the courts. During his lifetime Leibnitz already became famous for being able to prove anything that princes wanted to have proved. Pufendorf ended his life as a Brandenburgian and Swedish court historian ; Thomasius made the most incredible concessions to monarchical despotism in his later years, when he was a Prussian professor in Halle.

But about the middle of the eighteenth century, Gellert, Klopstock and Lessing not only stood on bourgeois ground, but were already rooted in it. Gellert was a very small figure compared with the other two, but his Fables gave the middle classes their first literary banner, and humble and loyal as Gellert was personally, the first faint sound of middle class opposition can be discovered in his harmless rhymes. Much prouder and more outspoken is this class-consciousness in Klopstock who, later on, was to be the bard of the French Revolution, and above all in Lessing, who disdained the fetters of an office in the service of any court or state, and tried to live for his literary calling in social liberty. It was an enormously bold venture in Germany, and its tragic outcome taught the lesson that the middle classes were not ripe for the boldness of their representative, and this self-confidence, half nonchalant, half defiant, showed the whole Lessing. It was the same whether he wrote as a twenty-year-old youth : “What do I care if I live in wealth or not, as long as I do live !” or as a fifty-year-old man : “I am too proud to think myself unhappy, and gnash my teeth and let the boat drive, as wind and water will ; let it suffice that I myself don't want to overturn it !” It formed the strongest contrast to the anxious and greedy philistine worry about a `”good life,” so obviously displayed in the correspondence of the contemporaries, and something of this frank and free attitude was probably given to Lessing by his school.

2. The Prussian Monarchy

The historians who represent King Frederick as being related in mind and spirit to the bourgeois classics, and particularly to Lessing, usually adduce some of his utterances such as the following : “The sovereign is the first servant of his state” ; “I will be a king of the poor ;” “There should be no restriction on the Press ;” “In my state each can find salvation after his own fashion.”

However, those principles stand in more or less glaring contrast to Frederick's whole reign, one is tempted to take them as a product of the noted liberalism of crown princes. The more so if it is borne in mind that these nice phrases were uttered shortly before or immediately after his accession to the throne – that is, at a time when the dreadful pressure under which his father had held him from infancy was released. As a matter of fact Carlyle takes them as such, and in spite of all his hero worship he remains a practical Englishman, saying : “This beautiful language aroused in the world of that time an admiration which is not immediately intelligible to us, since we have long been accustomed to it and know its usual outcome.” Obviously it did not occur to Carlyle then, in the fifties, that this unintelligible admiration would in the nineties be made the proper duty of every patriotic German !

Even Carlyle's conception is still too favorable to the bourgeois Prussian historians, and far too unfavorable to Frederick himself. It is scarcely necessary to state that scientific historical research has as little to do with the anti-Prussian mythologists as with the pro-Prussian ones. To see in Frederick the source of all evil is the opposite pole of the same folly, namely, to see in his person the source of all good.

Whoever studies the history of this sovereign according to scientific principles will discover as his outstanding talent, as the main cause of his successes, a quality which should be especially appreciated by adherents of the materialist conception of history. Frederick was fully aware that he could not advance even one step more than the economic conditions under which he lived and reigned allowed. Not that his judgments surpassed his time ; rather they lagged far behind it, and were anything but inspired. Not that he never was deceived regarding economic conditions ; he was, often enough, and always paid the price for it.

During the Seven Years War he wrote to his always despondent brother Henry that he will win who has the last thaler in his pocket ; he called the finances the “nerves” of the state, and in his description of the Prussian state put them above everything else, even above the army. So we see that from the very first day to the last of his reign he adhered to this fundamental conception. It is difficult to say when this was most evident : on the day of his accession, when as a man not yet thirty he changed within a moment from an oppressed slave to an absolute despot, or on the last day, when after all his successes and fifty years of despotic reign he remained undeceived as to the limits set by the conditions of his time.

When he said that “the sovereign is the first servant of his state,” he did not mean to submit himself to this ideal, nor did he intend thereby to gain a cheap popularity. He was merely concerned with the free disposal of the country's economic means of power. For this expression – uttered first by the emperor Tiberius – does not imply a limitation but an extension of absolutism, and although this might be a deep secret to the narrow vulgar minds of today, Frederick's contemporaries were well aware of it. So writes Heinse in his Ardinghello :

“How can he be a servant whom nobody commands, who does not recognize a master above him, who makes laws as he likes, issues them and does not accept any, who punishes arbitrarily without law ?”

In effect, when Louis XIV said “I am the State,” a moral responsibility towards the state on the part of the sovereign was still recognized, and this was yet to be shown by the execution of Louis XVI. But if the sovereign makes himself only a servant, but the first servant of the state, this means, in an absolutist state, that he renounces such responsibility. For one cannot make oneself the slave of one's own property, and how far Frederick considered the “state” as his property can be seen from his testament, in which he bequeaths to his nephew not only his “gold and silver vessels, library, picture gallery,” etc., but also “the Kingdom of Prussia,” as if it were an ordinary farm.

In asserting that he was the first servant of the state, Frederick pursued very practical aims. He made this remark about six times, first when he was crown prince, when he opened his Anti-Macchiavell with the statement that there are two kinds of sovereigns : those that see all with their own eyes, and govern their states themselves, and those that rely on the honesty of their ministers and are ruled by whoever gets power over their minds. The first kind are absolute masters, as if they were the souls of their states, they are the first keepers of justice, the high commanders of the fighting army, the directors of the financial administration, in short, the first servants of the state. These Frederick will emulate. The others refer obviously to his father, who in the tragedy of young Frederick had been the blindly raging tool of the Austrian partisans Grumbkow and Seckendorf. And, in general, however strange a tyrant Frederick William I [1] might have been, he created and favored the civil service class, allowing them a more or less important part in the government. Frederick detested the civil servants, considering them an obstacle to his enlightened despotism, and was always trying to remove them.

We shall later deal with the question whether he really succeeded in this or whether his father did not prove the more enlightened despot. Here it only matters to know what Frederick intended. It was his desire that all civil servants blindly execute his despotic will, and the phrase that the sovereign is the first servant of the state was his guide to action. In this he always remained faithful to himself. Forty years after the Anti-Macchiavell he writes that although the sovereign is a “human being” like “the lowest of his subjects,” yet he is at the same time “the first judge, the first financier, the first minister of society,” and has the same interest as the people. This, Frederick argued, would not be the case with an aristocracy of generals and ministers, if he were to surrender to them. Frederick governed without the civil servant class altogether ; he saw the ministers officially only once a year at the so-called “Review of Ministers” in June ; he disposed of all government acts himself, using three so-called Chamber Secretaries, whom he chose almost without exception from subaltern clerks, condemning them to a life of monk-like solitude, or even, as a foreign diplomat said, holding them under guard like state prisoners.

It is somewhat different with “the king of the poor,” for a documentary attestation of this sentence does not exist at all. Treitschke, too, is not quite right when he says : “The most human of the royal duties, the protection of the poor and oppressed, was for the Hohenzollerns a commandment of self-preservation ; proudly they carried the name ‘kings of beggars,' bestowed by French scorn.” This “most human of the royal duties” had no meaning for Frederick. The wealthy and oppressing class, the large landowners and Junkers, were subsidized by the exchequer and were granted licentious privileges. And as for “French scorn,” it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject. It rather refers to a remark which Frederick made some months before his accession to the throne at a dinner of the Duke of Brunswick in Berlin : “If once I mount the throne, I shall be a real king of beggars.” By this he sought either to pave his way with good intentions, or – what is more likely – to hit back at his father's financial art in fleecing the people. It was in this sense that his father himself interpreted the remark ; when informed of it, it brought on his last fit of fury against his son. In any case, this utterance had no practical consequences : financial methods under Frederick remained where Frederick William had left them, and after the Seven Years War they were made infinitely more oppressive.

We come now to the “gazettes,” which “must not be embarrassed” [2], and here we shall witness a little interlude of foreign policy. Through his attitude towards the press Frederick wished to secure for himself another weapon against the European powers. That this is so is apparent from the fact that the historical source of this saying is a letter written by the cabinet minister Count Podewil on the 5th of June 1740, the sixth day of Frederick's reign. It runs as follows :

“His Royal Majesty, after rising from the table, ordered me most graciously to make known in His High name to the ministers of State and War, that an unlimited liberty shall be granted to the Berlin journalists, to write in their articles on the events here, whatever they like, without being censured ; for this pleases His Highness, and then foreign ministers would not be able to complain if they encountered occasionally in the local press passages that might displease them. I took the liberty to suggest that the Austrian court would be very ‘particular' on this subject ; but His Majesty replied that gazettes, to be interesting, must not be embarrassed.”

This glorious “liberty of the press” was nothing but an old and yet eternally new diplomatic trick, making it possible to say all sorts of unpleasant things to foreign powers and yet disclaim responsibility. Besides, the strict press law, repeatedly insisted upon by Frederick, remained, and stipulated “that in public nothing may be printed without higher permission,” and any criticism of the government or administration, even “any discussion of public conditions,” was considered “absolutely impermissible.” In the political sections of the Berlin journals of that time one finds only news of fires, earthquakes, monsters, etc. ...

On principle, Frederick always professed to be opposed to liberty of the press, even in his literary correspondence with French writers, to whom he was wont to display his liberalism ; as, for example, in his letter to d'Alembert dated April 7th 1772 : “One has to suppress everything in books which endangers the general security and the welfare of society.” Even at the close of his life, in a cabinet order issued October 14th 1780, the king rendered homage to liberty of the press in his own peculiar way, by inflicting military service as punishment for “unauthorized journalism that stirred up the subjects and caused insolent vexations.”

Actually there is no more classical witness against the press system of Frederick than Lessing himself, who in the bitterest poverty of his early years was averse to editing a political paper in Berlin under a censorship which suppressed every independent expression ; and who in his mature years characterized with bitter words “the Prussian liberty to think and to write” as being “only and exclusively the liberty to make as many gibes against religion as one likes. The honest man should be ashamed to use this liberty.”

Here we come to the religious policy of Frederick and to the most famous of his winged words. In the phrase : “All religions must be tolerated, and each one must find salvation after his own fashion,” Stahr sees the “fundamental idea of Nathan,” and who knows how many have credulously repeated his wisdom. One might wonder why Stahr and his followers did not prefer to quote another cabinet order issued at the same time on the same question, an order that might even remind one of the parable of the three rings, namely his reply to the request of a Catholic for citizenship in Frankfort : “All religions are equally good, if only the people that profess them are honest people, and if Turks and heathens would come and populate the country, then we would build mosques and churches for them as well.” This indeed would be something like the “three rings,” but – the despairing phrase “and would populate the country” prevented this cabinet order from being developed into another patriotic fable. Frederick wanted to “populate” his poor and sparsely-settled country in order to get recruits for his army and taxes for his exchequer ; and for this purpose Christians, Turks, heathens and – for financial purposes at least – even Jews were highly welcomed, and were granted immediate recognition of their service and protection of religious liberty. As a matter of fact, he never dreamed of granting equal civil rights to all religious bodies ; nothing was ever further from his thought than to consider the Jew, the Turk, the Mohammedan as being equal to the Protestant. Such equality was demanded by Locke in his book on tolerance, and after him by the whole school of bourgeois rationalism.

The Protestant clergy considered Frederick's accession to the throne to be a convenient opportunity to get rid of the Roman Catholic schools established for soldiers' children by Frederick William I. They asked the king to suppress these schools, referring to a report of the chancellor of the exchequer accusing their clerical teachers of subversive propaganda ; but Frederick wrote on the margin of this petition : “The religions must all be tolerated, and the only thing the chancellor has to keep in mind is that no religion prejudices the other, for in this country each one must find salvation after his own fashion.” The so-called “fundamental idea of Nathan” consists thus in nothing more than the maintenance of an institution already established by his father, a sovereign of the most limited church-faith, who did not even recoil from ill treatment of his oldest son, the later king Frederick, for having a different view of some subtle Calvinist dogma than he should have had according to the paternal will. Nevertheless Frederick William I established Roman Catholic schools for soldiers' children, and also maintained in the town of Brandenburg a Russian pope for the Russian soldiers in his army ; he even allowed them, no matter where they were stationed, to journey to Brandenburg for the satisfaction of their religious needs, thus incurring the risk of desertion, which he feared like the pest. It actually happened once that twenty costly-gained Russians took advantage of this to desert from their regiment, which was garrisoned at Halle under the “old Dessauer.” [3] What Stahr and his blind followers took for “the fundamental idea of Nathan” was nothing other than the first commandment of the Prussian military state. The foreign recruiting, in itself already difficult, would have become altogether impossible if the resistance of the governments and the people had been backed by the churches. This was especially true in the case of Prussia, whose chief fields of recruiting were the clerical states of Southern and Western Germany. The Roman Catholic clergy considered Prussia the most heretical state not so much on account of the pronounced “Protestant convictions of the Hohenzollerns,” as represented by the obliging historians, but rather because the kingdom of Prussia proper – the province of East Prussia of to-day – had been expropriated from the Catholic church. The military state of Prussia had every reason to treat the Catholic church delicately, for its very existence depended upon it ; and Frederick, who saw this quite clearly, protected the Catholic soldiers' school from Protestant persecutions and prohibited any attack on Catholicism by Protestant chaplains. He decreed that every regiment should have regular services for the Catholic soldiers and ordered that in all field hospitals a Catholic priest should be present to give religious comfort to his adherents. In 1751 he made known to the “Holy Father” that the Catholics were not only tolerated in his states, but even preferred.

There was another very important military consideration. In spite of every vigilance, and the bloodiest of articles of war, desertion continued rife among his hired troops, and against so obstinate an evil even religious means were not to be despised. The military regulations decreed that “the boys should fear God,” that on Sundays they were to be led to church twice, and they “should always silently and with reverence listen to God's word.” To make the military oath effective, its “holiness” had to be pumped into “the boys” by a clergyman of their own faith. It is characteristic that Frederick held the Jesuits, with their strict discipline, in highest esteem ; and he cruelly punished a priest of this order who dared to doubt the “holiness” of the military oath. After the abolition of the Jesuit order Frederick sent word to Pope Clemens XIV through his Roman chargé d'affaires : “I never found better priests than the Jesuits, in any respect.” He maintained the Jesuits without frock as “priests of the royal schools” in his country. Perhaps the liberal Jesuit-haters and culture-mongers of to-day call this “Frederickian tradition” ! But when a certain recaptured deserter declared that the Jesuit father Faulhaber had explained to him in Glatz at confession that although desertion was a great sin still it was a sin that could be forgiven, then Frederick without trial, even without confession, ordered that this priest be hanged next to a deserter who had already been rotting for half a year.

Frederick treated the Protestant clergy more contemptuously. He used them also for his military and educational purposes, to keep the army and the people in humility, obedience and ignorance ; but he had a much lower estimate of their efficiency, and whenever these poorly-paid people asked for a small increase in salary or any other improvement of their situation, he used to fob them off by pointing to the apostles who had preached for nothing – in short with remarks that Lessing might rightly call “gibes at religion.”

To the superficial observer Frederick's religious policy presents a contradictory picture, but in fact it is linked up logically with the possibilities of existence of the Prussian state of that time.

The development of the Prussian state brought Frederick into the strongest opposition to the Catholic church, and accordingly, Frederick took care that those admitted to the important administrative posts of the state and municipalities were Protestants ; but the maintenance of this state forced upon him a military and population policy the first condition of which was the toleration of all religious faiths, and even to a certain degree the favoring of the Catholic church. And as supports of his despotism he preferred the Jesuits to all other priests.

In all this there is not to be found the least shred of Frederick's personal liberalism.

But what has this to do with Nathan, what has Frederick to do with Lessing ? About as much as, or even less than the emperor William II had to do with Lassalle and Marx. In a narrow sense parallels can be found between Frederick and the young William II : “The sovereign is the first servant of his state” – William dismisses Bismarck ; “King of the beggars” – February decrees ; “Freedom of the press” – abolition of the anti-socialist laws ; “Each one must find salvation after his own fashion” – Prussian draft of law for primary schools. In each case there was a peaceful separation of the faiths, but every faith in its realm had to hold spiritual domination over the masses.

However, nowadays one who called the emperor William II a “collaborator and fellow-combatant of his great contemporaries” Lassalle and Marx would be entrusted to the care of a lunatic asylum, provided he did not find himself within prison walls for lèse-majesté.

It is still more absurd to paint Frederick and Lessing as being akin in mind and spirit. They had nothing in common ; being the most gifted representatives of their respective classes, they embodied the most acute differences of their time in the most acute way. Frederick deeply despised the “roture,” whose advocate Lessing was, and with his own hands expelled every bourgeois element from the ranks of his officers. Lessing, in absolute agreement with his spiritual kinsmen Herder and Winckelmann, loathed Frederick's state as “the most servile country in Europe.”

Footnotes

1. Frederick II's father.

2. Frederick's literal words.

3. Leopold of Dessau, Prussian general.

3. Minna von Barnhelm :
A Satire on the Prussian State

Earlier than any Frenchman, Lessing so to speak discovered the English bourgeois tragedy. Lessing, however, merely remained subject to its immediate influence. In the meantime Diderot had further developed and popularized this tendency in France. He was the first to show that the serious conflicts of honorable characters arising from the circumstances of bourgeois life – even if they are not tragic – provide a new and rich source for dramatic subjects. Lessing was further stimulated by the practice as well as the theory of Diderot. Already in 1760 he had translated in two volumes the Theatre of Monsieur Diderot, containing Le Fils Naturel, Le Pere de Familie and the essay on dramatic poetry. While Minna leans aesthetically on a French model, and her “plagiarisms” are generally believed to be borrowed from English comedies, nevertheless it is an out-and-out German play. What could be more German than that the classical bourgeois comedy should deal with military life ?

This is not only meant satirically, it touches the very essence of Minna. One should not be mystified by the bourgeois critics of literature who allege that Minna glorifies king Frederick or the Seven Years War. Even Goethe in a weak moment succumbed to this absurd idea ; but the same Goethe later said :

When people compare the pieces of Lessing with those of the ancients, and call them paltry and miserable, what do they mean ? Let them rather pity the extraordinary man who lived in a time too poor to afford him better materials ; pity him because he found nothing better to do than to meddle with Saxon and Prussian transactions in his Minna. [1]

Again Lessing is too badly judged. Lessing was really capable of finding better subject matter than the quarrels between Saxons and Prussians, or even the glorification of Frederick. But in order to portray serious conflicts of honorable characters he was forced by the meanness of German affairs to deal with army life ; yet he saw the social aspect of this life, and here too waged the struggle against social oppression. Lessing's comedy is so little a glorification of Frederick that it scourged his despotism precisely where it was most mortal.

It is in the very nature of despotism to take revenge upon every insurmountable resistance to its tyranny by inflicting malicious vexations upon the individual resister. Thus Frederick, unable to shake the economic basis of the Prussian army, and forced to exalt an officer caste, tormented and tortured the individual officer. The length to which he would go in this respect is almost incredible, as can be seen from his cabinet-orders, to quote only one example. If he was obliged to grant leave to an officer because of serious illness, he would least satisfy his despotic temper to the extent of ordering a different cure or a different bath than that ordered by the doctor. Or, he just drove him out of the service. Frederick in a bad mood would use the least occasion to dismiss an officer. At every inspection the individual officer had to fear immediate dismissal, and once dismissed it was rarely possible for him to enter the army again. It was one of the inviolable principles of Frederickian despotism that the king could never be wrong, and Frederick clung to this principle even in those cases where he himself was afterwards forced to recognize his injustice. “My army is no brothel” was his standing answer to all petitions of dismissed officers for re-entry into the army, and his refusals increased in scorn the more the personal feelings of honor and justice of the individual officers had been the cause of dismissal, as in the case of Blücher and of Yorck.

The king never tortured his Prussian officers more subtly than before and after the peace of Hubertusburg. It was at this time that Lessing lived with the army. The king kept his winter-quarters during 1761-62 in Breslau, in monk-like solitude, in gloomy despair, for the last ray of hope seemed to have vanished ; but suddenly, in January 1762, the death of the Czarina Elizabeth brought redemption. However, Frederick's feeling of relief was mingled with shame that chance rather than his own might had been his saviour, by bringing a fool to the Russian throne. It is easy to understand that in reaction to this he behaved more than ever like a despot and conqueror, as far as his power reached. By holding superfluous parades he spoiled the recreation of the harassed troops at winter-quarters. He deprived the officers of the so-called douceur-money, which in reality was no present, but rather an indispensable aid towards equipping them for the new campaign. He demanded such enormous contributions from the town of Leipzig, already drained of the last penny, that the major and adjutant von Dyherrn, charged with enforcement, felt impelled to make serious objections ; these objections being unavailing, the major awaited only the peace to throw his sword before the king's feet. When in February 1763 peace was made, Frederick inflicted anothur judgment on the army : he turned away all the troops he could no longer use during peace-time and pitilessly threw all the bourgeois officers on the street, although their courage and loyalty had just saved him his crown. In their place he put foreign adventurers of noble extraction – their nobility being often as dubious as that of Riccaut de la Marlinière. [2]

It was under these conditions that Lessing lived, and out of them arose his Minna von Barnhelm. Here he glorifies a spirit by no means military, but very bourgeois ; a spirit that even in the face of royal despotism clings inflexibly to its sense of justice. It is in this spirit that Tellheim [3] thinks and acts. For Tellheim, “the service of the great is dangerous, does not repay the trouble, the restraint, the humiliation which it costs.” He does for the great little by inclination, not much more by duty, but all for his own honor's sake ; and at best he cannot regret having become a soldier. “I became a soldier for party-feeling – I do not myself know on what political principles – and from the whim that it is good for every honorable man to try the profession of arms for a time, to make himself familiar with danger, and to learn coolness and determination. Extreme necessity alone could have compelled me to make this trial a fixed mode of life, this temporary occupation a profession.” (V, 9, Vol.II, p.404.) To go soldiering for its own sake, “is only travelling about like a butcher's apprentice, nothing more.” Certainly in Tellheim the Frederickian officer is much idealized, and a good portion of Lessing is contained in him. Yet no other German has been able to present on the stage such a finished and solid personality. What does it matter then if Lessing for the theme of his comedy did borrow this or that small feature from foreign models ?

Have the bourgeois historians of literature at all understood the story of Minna ? On the basis of shadowy analogies they look for its origin in Shakespeare, in the Spanish plays of cape and sword and even in Plautus ; yet in fact the truth was near at hand for these patriots ! The story of Minna is nothing else but a sharp satire on the regime of Frederick. Tellheim, the major, has been discharged after the peace, and subjected to a painful inquiry. He had been required to enforce with the utmost severity a contribution in cash from some Thuringian estates ; but as they could not pay, he had advanced the sum from his own pocket. When peace was signed he intended to have this bill entered “amongst the debts to be rectified” : but it is alleged that he was bribed by the estates to accept the lowest possible contribution. Frederick learns from his brother that Tellheim is “more than innocent” of bribery, and informs him that the court's treasury has ordered that the bill in question be tendered and the money refunded to Tellheim. Tellheim is asked to re-enter the service.

Lessing could not have satirized more grimly the real practice of Frederick's regime than by this innocent idyll. The reference to “the debts to be rectified” is pure irony ; for out of Saxony alone Frederick had squeezed during the Seven Years War more than 50 million thalers, of which, of course, not one penny was “rectified.” Far from making “advances” from the court's treasury, Frederick in reality refused every petition for compensation of war damages with the notorious stereotype remark : “Perhaps next the petitioner would like to have his damages from the Great Flood refunded as well.” No less ironical is the king's spontaneous invitation to a discharged officer to re-enter the army !

Friedrich Schlegel has already referred to the fact that the characters in Minna speak rather “Lessingish.” This is just as true of Emilia and Nathan. Lessing as a dramatist was all reason ; he lacked the poetical imagination from which image after image arises independent of its creator. The heroine of his comedy, too, is infused with his spirit, and, as Goethe says, the “subalterns” make the poet ; and as Lessing made classical a petty despot in Emilia and an orthodox zealot in Nathan, so in Minna he immortalized two despicable types of Frederickian despotism : the shallow foreign-aristocrat adventurer, for whose sake bourgeois blood is ill-treated by the sovereign, and the spying innkeeper. The inn-keepers and the managers and proprietors of the restaurants in the big towns were Frederick's informers. He paid all or half their rent, in return for which they had daily to report to the police all conversations and meetings held in their rooms, and to deliver “as reliable as possible a protocol-summary” of the “papers carried” by suspicious personalities.

Lessing's contemporaries of course understood the comedy differently from the bourgeois critics of today. Nicolai complained, “as a Prussian subject,” of “the many pricks against the Prussian government” ; but when Döbbelin put Minna on the stage in Berlin in 1768 it received loud applause and was played ten times in succession. In Hamburg the Prussian Consul General Hecht at first objected to the production, and Herr Erich Schmidt therefore called him “a narrow man.” Frederick fortunately was still narrower, for if he had read the play, or even understood its implications, he would have bestowed upon it the same “simple eloquence” which he bestowed upon Voltaire's Akakia [4], and it would have been burned by the executioner on the Gendarmen-Market ! [5]

Footnotes

1. J.P. Eckermann : Gespräche mit Goethe [7 February, 1827], Vol. I, p.243, Leipzig : Reclam : 1884. In S.M. Fuller's translation, Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, p.208, Boston 1852.

2. Character of Lessing's play Minna von Barnhelm.

3. Leading character of Minna. Quotations following from Act V, Scene 9, and Act III, Scene 9, in the translation of Ernest Bell, The Dramatic Works of G.E. Lessing, Vol.II, pp.404 and 374, London 1909.

4. Doctor Akakia, a satire by Voltaire on Frederick II and his protege Maupertuis.

5. Square in Berlin.

4. Lessing and the French Classics
Emilia Galotti

It is impossible to understand Lessing's “dramaturgie” [1] unless its social aspects are considered. It is no theory of the drama valid for all time. Applied by the hands of aesthetic dullards, this fine and elastic weapon has done much harm. How often has poor Lessing himself been attacked with it, sometimes out of intentional malice, sometimes – which was still more dangerous – out of well-meaning stupidity. He to whom nothing was more foreign than senseless chauvinism is supposed to have hoisted the banner of German against that of French art, to have critically destroyed the French drama in order to lead German drama “towards a better glory,” “in the steps of the Greeks and the British.”

Schiller's meaning in the following epigram is quite sensible, although he expressed these ideas much more strongly than Lessing ever did :

The French must never become a model for us,
No live spirit speaks from their art.

To be sure, Lessing's Dramaturgie was the greatest national manifestation Germany had seen since Hutten's broadsides. But the national point of view is always determined by the social interests of the classes representing it, in Hatten's case the German aristocracy, in Lessing's the German middle class. It never occurred to Lessing to attack Molière and Destouches in the same strain as he attacked Corneille and Racine, or to throw Voltaire the writer of middle-class comedies overboard with Voltaire the author of court tragedies. Like all ideology, aesthetic and literary criticism is in the last analysis determined by the economic structure of society. Under fundamentally changed economic conditions, we have now arrived at aesthetic and literary views different from Lessing's. His Dramaturgie is neither an infallible revelation nor a faulty stylistic exercise : it must be judged from the social aspect to which it belongs historically. Regarded from this point of view, it is most delightful to read this work, and everywhere one feels the manly and courageous spirit of Lessing, to whom dramatic art was not an idle game but, like all art, a lever of human culture.

The wretched conditions in Germany forced any “National Theatre” to live mainly on foreign plays. With a few mediocre or bad German plays no attractive program could possibly be created ; with Lessing's Sara and Minna at least not a varied one. Among foreign plays the French stood in the front rank, through Gottsched's endeavors and through the great number of translations as well. In this state of affairs only Lessing's Dramaturgie caused a certain change. In the main, it still had to settle accounts with French dramatic art. Thus Lessing wrote his famous condemnation of the French court tragedy, which would have been like poison to the middle class if transplanted to Germany. Lessing overlooked that Corneille and Racine must somehow have been rooted in the national soil in order to become the classical authors of a great nation ; he overlooked that their tragedies were rich in theatrical effects and full of powerful tension for their contemporaries. He made fun of the “monsters” of women that Corneille liked to show, and yet Corneille's contemporaries had seen these “monsters” in reality – the princesses of the Fronde. In an even more biased manner than against Corneille, Lessing proceeded against Voltaire as a writer of tragedies – often not without some malice, due to his experiences in Berlin. Lessing's prejudice seems the greater for the very reason that in his tragedies Voltaire had begun a certain reaction against Corneille and Racine. Nevertheless essentially Lessing was right in fighting against French tragedy. Whatever roots it might have had in a certain historical soil, for all that as a model it was disastrous to middle class art in Germany. And Lessing speaks as an advocate of this art, not as a critic, enthroned above the clouds, above all times and all nations – none such has ever existed anyway.

It might seem, though, as if in the Dramaturgie itself Lessing had presented Aristotle as such an eternally infallible judge. But here again one must know how to make distinctions. Corneille founded the court tragedy on Aristotle's rules ; it was the last echo of the appalling treatment that had made the ancient Greek the canonical philosopher of the middle ages. Lessing swept away all this ; he opposed to the wrongly understood Aristotle the correctly understood Aristotle. Indeed, he contrasted the Greek tragedy with the French, and never tired of repeating that rules do not create the genius, but genius makes the rules, and that any rule can at any time be brushed aside by a genius. In the triumphant progress of his victorious polemics, he remarks insolently that the aesthetics of Aristotle are as infallible as mathematical truths, and that he could improve any play of the great Corneille according to Aristotle's rules. But he adds at once that for all that he would be no Corneille, and would not have created a masterpiece.

Already in the Letters on Literature Lessing had pointed out that according to Greek standards Shakespeare was a much greater tragic writer than Corneille, that he always achieved the aim of the tragedy, while Corneille never did so, even though he followed the path marked out by the ancient Greeks.

Thus Lessing understood that all aesthetics are historically conditioned, and if he did not grasp this fact theoretically, it is implicit in all his writings.

It is quite true to say that in Germany Lessing was the first to point out Shakespeare's greatness ; in the Dramaturgie especially he praises Shakespeare in many marvellous comparisons. But he always contrasts Shakespeare's historical tragedies solely with the historical tragedies of the French, and it is quite incorrect to trace the German “Shakespearomania” to Lessing ...

Not the historical tragedy but the middle class drama is the ideal of this aesthetician. Diderot is his man, not Shakespeare. Nobody who has really read the Dramaturgie can doubt this, and Lessing prefers the French comedy to the English as decidedly as he prefers the English tragedy to the French. It is clear then how hopeless it is to regard aesthetics as a purely intellectual matter. Of course Lessing knew that from an aesthetic point of view it was ridiculous to mention Diderot and Shakespeare in one breath. He refuted such an equalization, at least indirectly ; he did not think of giving Diderot the honor which he attributed so generously to Shakespeare.

But if aesthetics, too, belongs to the superstructure of the class struggle, the connection is quite clear. Shakespeare was no court author, but still much less a middle class writer. He occasionally paid homage to the court in Henry VIII, but whenever he lets the Lord Mayor of London appear, he invariably portrays him in a manner either ridiculous or contemptible. This is understandable considering that the Puritans hated the theatre bitterly while the court granted it a certain protection. The theatre found its real support in the aristocratic youth, which was vigorous and manly, and – all its limitations granted – still the leading class of a great nation in a period of powerful advance when new horizons were appearing. [2] In Shakespeare's tragedies the surge of the sea is heard, while in Corneille's the fountains of Versailles murmur. But how could Shakespeare be a model to Germany, whose aristocracy was as decadent physically as mentally ? Lessing therefore unswervingly pointed to the English and French middle class plays as models for German tragedy and drama. The French comedy, however, was much superior to the English : the middle class opposition in England had long had its Parliament and its periodical press, while in France it still had to concentrate its whole intellectual vigor in the comedy. Because of Shakespeare's hostile attitude to the middle class of his time, his comedies moved in a world of fairies and fairy tales, adventures and romanticism, with one exception : the Merry Wives of Windsor.

Though second-rate as comedy, historically this is a highly important satire. Shakespeare portrayed the aristocrat who has come down in the world and is ridiculed even by the women of the middle class. But what sort of model could this be to the German middle classes, the great majority of whose women did not as yet know a greater honor than to be ridiculed by decadent despots ? [3]

Probably Shakespeare did not intend Merry Wives of Windsor to be a historical satire ; it would be the only occasion on which he scorned the aristocracy to the greater glory of the middle classes ! According to an old account, his only middle class comedy is supposed to have been written for a very harmless reason : to grant the wish of Queen Elizabeth to see the brave Sir John as a lover for once.

When in 1757 Lessing conceived the first plan for his middle class Virginia, Emilia Galotti, he did not imagine what a scathing satire on German conditions posterity would see in the catastrophe of his dramatic masterpiece.

Emilia implores her own father to kill her, as she cannot rely on her senses and her blood in the struggle against the amorous advances of the despot who had ordered her fiancé to be murdered just before their wedding ... Emilia does not love the prince. But the fact that she and her father know no way to escape the despot's power other than the murder of the daughter has a ghastly effect on the spectator. It can cause neither fear nor pity. It cannot have any tragic effect, even if it can be traced to real history. Lessing himself has convincingly demonstrated this in Chapter 79 of the Dramaturgie.

From the point of view of tragic art the end of the play is indefensible, the reason being that it can be defended only too well from the point of view of history ...

In Livy's famous story, the young Lessing saw first the most revolting and striking accompaniment of social oppression : the attack on virginal honor which was as topical in the eighteenth century as it had been two thousand years before, as it still is to-day and will be as long as social oppression exists.

Lessing revealed his dramatic instinct in recognizing the general historical import of this tragic problem as far more important than the single case which had been the cause of a political revolution. He wished to write a middle class Virginia, since “the fate of a daughter who is killed by her father, to whom her virtue is worth more than her life, is tragic enough and has sufficient power to impress the whole soul, even if no political revolution follows it.”

Compared with the original story, Lessing's treatment of the subject is not shallower, as Dühring asserts, but deeper.

In eighteenth century Germany a middle-class author who wished to write a middle class Virginia with a really tragic ending would have faced an impossible task. A short time before Emilia Galotti was published, in Lessing's Saxon state, an aristocratic family had solemnly celebrated the “wedding” of their daughter whom the ruling despot had chosen as one of his mistresses. On German soil neither an Emilia nor an Odoardo could be imagined ; here one of the most tragic motives of world history challenged the pen of an Aristophanes rather than a Sophocles.

But Lessing would not have been the champion of the middle classes if he had been scornful of this shame rather than incensed by it. In order that his play might be psychologically true, he had to move the scene of action from the half boring, half libertine world of the philistines of his country to the country of the more passionate nation from which the Roman Virginia sprang. Still, if circumstances are otherwise equal, the social forms of life never depend on frontiers ; in disunited Italy petty despotism ruled no less than in disunited Germany, though thanks to the ancient culture of the country, in finer and more polished forms.

But essentially petty despotism remained everywhere what it was and was bound to be. There was no punishment for its grotesque and ghastly crimes, and if it is doubtful whether Emilia Galotti is a real tragedy, nevertheless the play is rooted in the economic structure of the society in which Lessing's figures lived. And the author could not go beyond those barriers ..

Outstanding contemporaries understood the social meaning of the tragedy at once. Herder called the author “a real man” and proposed to him to give the tragedy the motto : “Discite moniti. “ Goethe saw in it “the deciding step towards a morally inspired opposition against tyrannical autocracy,” and even in later years he praised it as an excellent work, a piece full of intelligence, of wisdom, of deep understanding of the world, the expression of an admirable culture “compared with which we are already barbarous again,” and one that would appear new in any epoch.

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Footnotes

1. A book of dramatic criticism written by Lessing when he was dramatist to the German National Theatre in Hamburg.

2. The question – For whom did Shakespeare write ? is excellently treated by Rümelin, Shakespeare-Studien, pp.34ff. Among bourgeois historians of literature Rümelin is by far the most advanced in recognizing that poets do not write in heaven and wander in the clouds, but that like other people they live and create in the class struggles of their times. – F.M.

3. It would require a separate treatise to show in detail how German bourgeois aesthetics since Lessing's time has been continually built in the shape of bourgeois class interests. But we cannot refrain from introducing an illuminating example. Gustav Freytag, the classic man of bourgeois literature at the time when the German bourgeoisie was going from its idealistic to its mammonistic epoch, wrote in his Technik des Dramas, p.57 :

“If a poet wanted to dishonor art so completely as to use the social perversion of real life, the tyranny of the rich, the tormented plight of the oppressed, the position of the poor who get from society almost nothing but suffering, in a polemic and propagandistic manner as the plot of a drama, he would probably arouse the vivid interest of his audience, but at the end of the play this interest would disappear in a tormented depression of spirits. The depiction of the spiritual processes of a common criminal belongs in the court room, care for the improvement of the poor and oppressed classes should be an important part of our practical interest in life, the muse of art is no merciful nun.”

In this passage Freytag takes the same position toward the working class as Gottsched took toward the bourgeoisie. One sees, too, in these sentences, Freytag in the process of casting off the shell of the idealistic period of the bourgeoisie for the shell of the mammonistic period. He is still honest enough to admit that the poor get from society almost nothing but suffering, but he is not ashamed of the unpretty act of seeing in the lives of the working class nothing but a subject for the attention of the overseers of the poor and the sick. That was a generation ago, and how things have changed since then ! The mammonism of the bourgeoisie has completely defeated its idealism, and the most famous piece of literature of our day, the touching novel of economical Agnes, pictures the raptures of joy and delight which the poor get from present-day society, while the “revolutionary” poetasters of the bourgeoisie empty into “art” all sorts of “social perversions, “ brothels, bar-rooms and jails. – F.M.

5. Lessing and Religion

The instinct of bourgeois class interest determined Lessing's thoughts and actions ; and from this point of view his philosophical struggles appear as one undivided whole. [1]

Lessing, a cheerful child of this world, did not possess any theological streak at all. When only twenty he already began “to doubt wisely,” striving to come to a conviction in religious questions, but he never arrived at a positive conviction. Indeed we are informed that in the last year of his life he became an ...ist, that is, a Spinazist. But even then all he said, according to Jacobi's report, was : “If I must follow someone, I know nobody else whom I could follow other than Spinoza ... the orthodox notions of divinity convey nothing to me, I cannot stand them.” Not long before, Lessing had written in the preface to Nathan : “Nathan's opinions against all positive religion have always been mine,” [2] and this was absolutely correct. Already a generation earlier the young Lessing had called “all positive and revealed religion equally true and wrong,” and stated that for his part “man is created to act and not to subtilize.”

It was bourgeois class instinct that led Lessing to adopt an attitude which proletarian class consciousness formulated in the words “religion must be a private affair.”

He troubled nobody with his religion, and did not interfere with the religion of others. Although he always fought orthodoxy, he fought it only as implying social oppression, as restraining scientific research, and as an ideological symptom of royal despotism. Rationalism meant for Lessing that the bourgeois classes came to understand their life interests. Everyone may believe what he likes, but no belief entitles anyone to persecute and oppress others because they hold different beliefs. This is directed principally against orthodoxy as a despotic means of power, but in practice even orthodoxy as religious doctrine benefited by it. Lessing never participated in dogmatic quarrels ; as a religious system dogmatism was as good as any other, and he always detested cheap jokes against religion. He would have assisted a persecuted orthodoxy as readily as he opposed a persecuting one, and he denounced as unjust the prohibition of the Jesuit order by the pope. Religion was for him simply a private affair, and should not interfere with bourgeois legal conditions. His tolerance was very distant from the “tolerance” of Frederick, representing bourgeois as against despotic tolerance ...

As might be expected, Lessing dealt his chief blow against shallow rationalism, which spoiled religion as well as philosophy, and which impeded alike liberty of thought and of belief. In a very different and more profound sense than Frederick he wanted everyone to find salvation after his own fashion, but he fought every religion as soon as it began to restrain liberty of scientific research and as soon as it degenerated into an instrument of Frederickian or any other despotism. For him every religion was right as far as it constituted a step forward in the mental development of humanity, every religion was wrong as far as it wanted to fetter the further mental development of humanity. Lessing conceived religions not as logical but as historical categories, to use a modern expression ; they were not imperishable but indispensable steps in the evolution of the human mind.

He saw during his own lifetime how the orthodoxy of despotism gradually entered into the philosophy of the bourgeoisie ; and he knew well that a historical process cannot be hastened by external means, still less by forcible ones. The cowardly and lazy rationalists interfered clumsily in this mental process, they purposely obliterated the demarcation which had become clear between philosophy and religion ; they represented a supposedly purified but actually falsified Christianity with much greater intolerance ; they made the orthodox system seemingly a bit more reasonable but actually even more senseless. This “refined error” was a heavy impediment in the current of free thought and endangered the mental development of the German bourgeoisie, which now threatened to become absolutely stagnant. Even the plain old orthodoxy appeared firm against these “rationalists” and it was against this fatal error that Lessing warned.

... Lessing calls his Nathan the Wise a son of his old age, born of controversy ; and of the verse of this dramatic poem he says that it would be much worse if it were much better. One should be contented with this criticism of the great critic. Nathan is a play most characteristic of Lessing, an enduring possession of our literature, a precious vessel into which he poured the still magnificent though vanishing power of his heroic spirit ; but it has the traces of age and polemic. Unfortunately Jacob Grimm is not quite wrong in saying that it compares with Emilia as Don Carlos compares with Fiesco. [3] Nathan is rich in beautiful and profound words, though sometimes one would prefer to have them in the classical prose of Lessing rather than his awkward verse. Some secondary characters, like the dervish, the friar and the patriarch, representing classically orthodox fanaticism, have become classical figures, not to forget the scene between Nathan and Recha, written with the whole warmth of his heart ; but the absolutely unhistorical assumptions and the comfortable manner of the discussion on tolerance between the Jew, the sultan and the Knight Templar brought upon Nathan the worst fate that could have befallen a play of Lessing ; it became the banner of the garrulous and bumptious rationalist, the very type whom Lessing always challenged.

One must be careful not to judge the value of this dramatic poem by its present followers. It remains the solemn accord in which Lessing's greatest struggle ended. Lessing wrote to his brother : “It will be anything but a satirical play, ending in ironical laughter. It will be the most touching play I ever wrote.” He says, too : “My play has nothing to do with our present blackfrocks ... though the theologists of all revealed religions will always abuse it, they will know better than to declare themselves publicly against it.” Lessing wrote Nathan under the most difficult conditions, the deadly disease already in his lungs, paralyzed in his literary activity by police persecution, broken by the death of his beloved wife, tormented by worries over his daily bread. Regarding the royalties from his poem, he wrote that maybe “the horse will have died of hunger before the oats have ripened.”

From all this misery his high spirit rose to the serene naiveté which Goethe had already praised in Nathan. On the best of his contemporaries the play acted like an overwhelming revelation.

“For a long, long time,” wrote Elise Reimarus, “no drop of water, drunk in a dry desert, could have been more refreshing than the Nathan was to us ... What a Jew, what a sultan, what a Recha, Sittah, what men ! If there were to be many such as these, who would not like to live on earth as much as in heaven ?”

In spite of the defects claimed by famous and non-famous critics, the shortest and best criticism remains Herder's words to Lessing : “I do not say a word of praise ; the work praises the master, and this is a man's work.”

Nobody, not even the cleverest man, can surpass the possibilities of his time ; what we know to-day on the basis of modern science, namely that historical religions only reflect different economic levels in the development of human society, Lessing could only feel intuitively. He viewed religious quarrels from a bourgeois idealistic standpoint as the causes rather than the results of social struggles. He remarked : “I do not know any place in Germany where this play could yet be performed, but good luck to him who first performs it.” Well, two years after his death Nathan was performed in Berlin, but this did not signify very much. Frederick remained the enlightened despot, using the positive religions as means of power. The Jewish usurer continued to enjoy “the liberty of a Christian banker,” but the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was merely tolerated, and after his death his daughter Recha did not even know where to put her head. Lessing could not see to the very bottom of things, his understanding being limited by the conditions of his time. Nonetheless admirable is the clarity with which he expressed a point of view which the best men of our time have failed to surpass : the view that religious belief is the private affair of each individual ; and therefore all religions whatever their designation which restrain scientific research and are used for social oppression must be relentlessly fought. The young Lessing considered all revealed religions equally right and wrong, the aging man gave expression to the same trend of thought in the parable of the three rings, already known in world literature since the days of the Crusades : No ring is the true one, the true ring possibly was lost, but he who believes his ring to be the true one should reveal its power by hearty tolerance and by good deeds.

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Footnotes

1. The essential blame for the one-sided, distorted conception of Lessing's theological controversies is due to the intellectual flatness of the German bourgeoisie. Individual writers are scarcely to be made responsible for it, but the conception finds an especially glaring expression, as one might expect, in Protestant theology, as in Karl Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe. Then Röpe turned the tables in his work on Goeze ; he is followed by Redlich in the article on Lessing in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XIX, pp.756ff, and by Christian Gross in Lessing's Werke, XV, pp.9ff. Gross makes the glorious discovery of Lessing's “unclear, yes, in the deepest sense, untrue position” ; he also attacks in an unworthy fashion Johann Jacoby's excellent essay on Lessing as a philosopher. The most penetrating and thorough work in this direction was done by Hehler in his Lessing-Studien and by Zeller in his essay on Lessing as a theologian in the Historische Zeitschrift, XXIII, pp.343ff. – F.M.

2. Italics are Lessing's in both cases. Translation by E.K. Corbett, ed. Lessing's Nathan the Wise, p.xix, London 1833.

3. Plays by Schiller.

6. Lessing and the Proletariat

In the year of Lessing's death there appeared three sharply contrasting publications.

Frederick the Great's pamphlet on German literature [1] made clear to all what an insurmountable barrier lay between German intellectual life and Prussian despotism ... Frederick's ignorance serves to excuse him, to a certain extent – he had not the slightest conception of the development of the middle class ; nor is it possible to deny that his “omniscient despotism” thereby demonstrated its impotence. But it is equally undeniable that in a mood of despotic megalomania his intention was to pour abuse on German literature. In all dutiful humility, but still candidly enough, the minister Hertzberg had pointed out to the king the most serious errors of the pamphlet, but he had answered “ungraciously” enough : “I shall make no such trifling alterations.” It is no wonder that the champions of the middle class regarded the pamphlet as a de-liberate insult. Herder spoke contemptuously of a “ghost that walks in broad daylight,” and Klopstock attacked the despot in angry odes. Goethe's answer to the king's insult was, unfortunately, influenced by considerations regarding his position at court. We know nothing about Lessing's opinion of the pamphlet except that a few days before his death he read the shallow reply of the abbot Jerusalem. The king, about whose despotism Lessing had no illusions left, could no longer take him by surprise ; he found it quite in order that the Muse of Germany went unhonored and defenceless from Frederick's throne, as Schiller later wrote. It was largely due to Lessing that German literature acquired its worth by its own efforts. In vain are attempts to draw the loyal conclusion from a rather apocryphal remark made by Frederick to Mirabeau some five years later to the effect that the king had decided to leave German literature to itself so that it might develop more vigorously. The conclusion of this pamphlet can have no other meaning but that literature can reach its highest development only through the patronage of the court. “Give us Medicis and we shall see geniuses flourishing. An Augustus will produce a Virgil.” And a despot like Frederick could hardly think otherwise.

One must not be deceived on this point by the byzantinism with which present-day literary historians try to cast a better light upon it. Scherer calls it “indescribably touching,” and Suphan curtsies like a debutante : “Against the stubbornness of the king nothing could be done. It belonged to his greatness.” The lack of intelligence that stares out of every page of the pamphlet may belong to the greatness of despotism ! Yet no one can deny that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between despotism and our classical literature, and that Frederick's booklet destroys the Lessing legend. One has to be more of an idiot than a patriot to be touched to tears by Frederick's sentimental talk on the future flourishing of German literature.

In the year of Lessing's death Schiller's Bandits was also published. With his first work – and it was a work of genius – Schiller took up Lessing's life work : the struggle against tyrants. Soon Fiesco and Luise Millerin [2] followed, inspired by Lessing's spirit and borne on the wings of a much more powerful talent. But the middle class had no ear for this voice that spoke of such great things ; after a short but brilliant beginning Schiller had to exchange the “narrow circle” of middle class life for a so-called “higher plane” which was in reality a much lower one. [3]

The reconciliation with German philistinism was fatal to German literature. Its decline was slow, but steady. The sword of a foreign conqueror achieved what the middle class could not : the domination of Napoleon swept away the worst feudal debris from German soil. But this foreign ruler was himself an intolerable burden for all classes of the nation. And Romanticism mirrored this curiously ambiguous situation. The national and social interests of the German middle class found themselves in opposition to each other, in irreconcilable antagonism. This class could not throw off the foreign yoke without submitting again to the heavy yoke of native despotism. In vain did the leaders of Romanticism try to bridge the abyss by artificial imitation of the ways of genius, and by their famous “romantic irony” ; in vain did they search the literature of all nations and all times for ground in which to gain a footing. Romanticism had to seek this ground in the “magic night” [4] of the middle ages ; only in this tradition were national ideals to be found for Germany. But the middle ages had been the epoch of the most blatant class-domination by the Junkers and priests. There was no escape from this antagonism between national and social interests. The most gifted writer of Romanticism, Heinrich von Kleist, perished in madness and suicide.

Thanks to the immaturity of the middle class in Central Europe, feudal legitimacy won in the struggle against the modern era which began to dawn over Europe in 1789. There were good reasons for Byron's burning hatred of the victors of Waterloo, for Heine's enthusiastic cult of Napoleon, and Platen's biting question : “Wars of liberation, indeed ! Was Miltiades allied to the barbarian Tartars when he defeated the Persians ?”

The greatest sacrifices had proved fruitless ; the bitterest struggles had won neither political freedom nor national unity ; a dull, stupid, petty reaction, that would have liked to set a bailiff on the track of every thought, oppressed men's minds. Romanticism lost itself in a ridiculous cul de sac. It was in the struggle against these unbearable conditions that Platen learned to use his shining weapons ; in his Romantic Edipus he made fun of “the last of the romantic whining we have been hearing for decades.” But Heine sang “this last free song of Romanticism” in “the fanciful dreamy manner of that romantic school in which I whiled away my happiest years of youth, and then wound up by thrashing the schoolmaster.” [5]

German literature received new impetus when the middle class stirred again after its deepest wounds had healed. But the confusion that still reigned is apparent from the ugly quarrel between Heine and Platen, who failed to understand each other – not to mention the mass of middle class philistines who did not understand either of them. Heine was buried in Paris and Platen in Syracuse ; and the brilliant men who followed them in the Thirties and Forties had to go into exile. In the end the German philistine proved incorrigible, and so he was defeated in 1848 after all.

After that he no longer thought of fighting for the advancement of his class by means of thought or literature or the sword, but only by means of the winged angels of Prussian banknotes. He devoted himself completely to his material interests. Middle class literature ceased to be the intellectual leader of the nation ; instead it became the obedient servant of the bourgeoisie ...

In his most famous novel, Debit and Credit, Gustav Freytag showed the self-satisfied and solvent morality of the German philistine in glittering contrast to bankrupt Polish aristocrats and unscrupulous Jewish usurers. The respectable youth, sitting for countless years in his office chair, writing letters and invoices in quiet servility, became the ideal embodiment of the German “worker.” The fiery songs of Platen, Lenau and Herwegh addressed to the Poles were forgotten ; instead the middle class novelist calculated how many bales of merchandise might be lost in the useless disturbances of the Polish rebellions. In Freytag's novel Mr. Anton Wohlfahrt, clerk to the firm, demonstrated how amidst the desperate death struggle of a nation the German as “worker,” hero and patriot knew no higher task than to recover outstanding debts to the last cent.

The same spirit inspired the drama. Otto Ludwig's Forester [6] comes to his tragic end because he does not understand that being an employee he may be thrown out into the street by his employer at any moment. But dirty scoundrels express the ideology of the bourgeois revolution in the words :

Now men know that those who are in prisons are martyrs worthy of veneration, and that the noblemen are rascals, be they ever so honest. And the industrious people are rascals, for it is their fault that honest people who do not like to work are poor. [7]

In 1866 and 1870 the possessing classes and especially the German bourgeoisie found their refuge in the protection of Prussian bayonets. In all corners of the German Reich it was said that the political advance could now be followed by an unparalleled literary advance. As if great thinkers and writers could have been produced by a class which was proud of having for a backbone the sabre of the Prussian officer ! Instead of the expected giants there appeared an inane mob the like of which has never dishonored and corrupted the literature of a great nation. Capitalist business enterprise brought under its rule all branches of literature, and the theatre was not the last. The proscenium of Lessing and Voltaire became a speculative investment, if it did not fall to the level of a brothel ...

Only the rapidly rising star of the working class movement threw light on bourgeois literature. Such bourgeois writers as had some talent began to revolt against all this unspeakable meretriciousness and falsity. They wanted to get back to nature and truth, but since in bourgeois society nothing but sham is to be found, the new naturalist movement fell a victim to hopeless pessimism. Everywhere they seek for decadence and rottenness ; a younger writer, Kurt Eisner, who himself approaches the naturalist school, has rightly jeered at the “disciples of decadence and pirates of decay, sniffing for rottenness and boasting of syphilis to prove their virility.” Apart from the skilled literary artisans who follow naturalism because it is fashionable and piquant, the few naturalists who are better and more vigorous only know how to describe things that are dying down, and never those that are rising. Their future depends on whether they are able to cross the broad moat between the capitalist and the proletarian world. Bourgeois society cannot and will not produce a new hey-day of literature ...

Also in the year of Lessing's death, Kant's epochmaking magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason was published. With this book “there begins in Germany an intellectual revolution which offers the most striking analogies to the material revolution in France ... It developed itself in the same phases, and between both revolutions there exists the most remarkable parallelism.” [8] Strangely enough, all the great German philosophical revolutionaries, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, have done their work in that same Prussian state which the classical authors of the German middle class loathed so intensely. The Prussian state persecuted Kant “for distorting and disparaging some of the fundamental teachings of the Holy Scripture and of Christianity,” it categorically ordered him “not to publish any more such writings and teachings,” and was pleased by the wise man's wise answer :

“Disavowal and renunciation of one's convictions is despicable, but silence is the duty of the subject in a case like the present. Everything one says must be true, yet duty does not force us to speak every truth in public.”

Classical philosophy did not speak the truth so publicly that the Prussian officer's sabre would have understood it. When it culminated in Hegel's philosophy it even became the official Prussian religion, with which, for example, candidates for the teaching profession had to be thoroughly acquainted, while the Ministry of Education warned them expressly against other “shallow systems of philosophy.” Whatever was real, was reasonable [9] ; and since the Prussian state with its fortresses and dungeons was real, it was reasonable as well ; whoever doubted this was converted to reason and reality by the methods applied against “demagogues.”

But what Hegel had said of the French Revolution was also true of his own philosophy : it turned everything upside down. It had to be turned back again, to show its core of reason and revolution under its husk of reaction and realism. Out of the Prussian state philosophy was born revolutionary socialism. Marx concluded the epoch of classical philosophy with the hopeful struggle of the working class, while Lessing had begun this epoch after the hopeless struggle of the bourgeois class. Engels says rightly that the German working-class movement is the heir of classical philosophy. With the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848, German middle class philosophy was dead. Its representatives as the universities continued dishing up eclectic soups that became more and more indigestible from decade to decade. The philosophical needs of the bourgeoisie were supplied by a succession of fashionable philosophers who came one after another according to the changing development of capitalism.

From the beginning of the Fifties to the middle of the Sixties, the man of the day was Schopenhauer, the philosopher of the frightened philistine, the furious hater of Hegel, the man who denied any historical development, a writer not without paradoxical wit and not without his share in the splendor of classical literature. But in his sneaking, egoistic and slandering manner he was the true intellectual representative of the middle class, which, frightened by the clash of weapons, had withdrawn trembling to its private income and passionately disavowed the ideals of its greatest period.

From the middle of the Sixties to the beginning of the Eighties, his place was taken by Eduard von Hartmann, who taught that liberal ideas were but a nineteenth century rash. He discovered that the boom of industrial enterprise – and financial swindling following 1871 paved the way to higher forms of economic life and constituted a step towards the solution of the social question. He praised Bismarck's anti-socialist laws as an excellent way of educating the working class. Finally he declared that he “followed in the footsteps of those three philosophers whose greatness had inspired the historic world mission of Prussianism : Kant, Fichte and Hegel.”

But at the beginning of the Eighties Hartmann was superseded by Nietzsche, the philosopher of the grande bourgeoisie. “The historic world mission of Prussianism” had done its duty. In its essence this bourgeois slogan expressed the satisfaction felt by the German bourgeoisie on the elimination of bonds which had hampered the expansion of capitalism, namely the small German states with their outdated institutions. But in the course of a development proceeding with unparalleled speed and vigor, the “national idea” became a fetter which the expanding power of capitalism sought to shake off. In the age of cartels and trusts on the one hand and class movements on the other, the national colors on the national boundary posts grew paler. Capital bred a new caste ruling Europe, and this caste is the same in London as in Rome, in Madrid as in Moscow. Nietzsche became the German philosopher of this caste. He saw in the “historic world mission of Prussianism” nothing but “entr'acte policy.” He scorned the so-called “greatness” of statesmen, who made the spirit of a nation “narrow” and its taste “national.” He made fun of the politicians “of short sight” and “rash hand” who set the barrier of “nationalist madness” between nations. But he did not care for the people, for “the herd creatures of Europe” who pretended to be the “only legitimate kind of human being,” who praised as virtues their own attributes : “social sense, benevolence, consideration, industry, moderation, modesty, indulgence.” He praised the lonely minds, the supermen, the free spirits, the noble souls to whom the “exploiter nature” belongs as the organic functions belong to life. They live “beyond good and evil,” they consider it “pure justice” if others must be sacrificed for them. It is corruption if an aristocracy sacrifices its privileges out of an extravagance of moral feelings. The “essential thing in a good and healthy aristocracy is this : with good conscience they receive the sacrifices of an immense number of people who for their sake have to be degraded to stunted creatures, to slaves, to tools.” And so on. Nietzsche was not only the herald but the victim of capitalism. A fine and rich mind like his felt horror and loathing for the immense misery created by capitalism. But grown up in wealth, spoiled by women, he was unable to discover the hope for tomorrow in the misery of to-day. Therefore he searched feverishly for the inherent reason of capitalist society. It only caused him to lose his own reason, in the saddest sense of the word. But the mad talk of this pitiable man is praised as final wisdom by the hacks of the same bourgeoisie which could once call Lessing its first representative.

The work of Lessing's life does not belong to the bourgeoisie, but to the proletariat. In the middle class of the eighteenth century both classes were still united. But the nature and the aim of Lessing's struggle have been relinquished by the bourgeoisie and taken up by the proletariat ; the bourgeois class struggle for which Lessing found the refuge of philosophy was taken out of this sphere by Marx and became the proletarian class struggle. As the bourgeoisie rejected the intellectual work of its representatives, this precious inheritance had to become the arsenal from which the working class took their first keen and shining weapons. This world is not so devoid of all sense that the Lessings fight and suffer only for the amusement of the philistines. Lessing belongs among the intellectual patrons of the proletariat, his life and work has gone over into the flesh and blood of the fighting and suffering workers, little as they may know of Lessing's work – thanks to our “magnificent” popular education.

But all this will change. When Gervinus wanted to stir the political consciousness of the bourgeoisie, he concluded his work with the words : “The contest of art is finished ; now we must set ourselves another target, never yet hit in our country. We must see whether Apollo will grant in this sphere the glory he did not refuse us in another.” [10] The target to which Gervinus alluded has not yet been hit and the glory which Apollo granted “in another sphere” has also waned. In the rough and difficult days of conflict the Muses are silent, but for all that their wreaths will not be denied. Those will be the gifts for their day to come, and then Lessing, too, will be vindicated of every sin committed by his contemporaries and posterity against this noble fighter for the freedom of humanity.

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Footnotes

1. De la Litterature Allemande, 1780.

2. The earliest title of the play later known as Kabale und Liebe.

3. Schiller turned from writing middle class plays to writing historical tragedies.

4. Quotation from a play by one of the leaders of German Romanticism, Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853).

5. H. Heine : Atta Troll (Preface), translated by H. Scheffauer, p.30, London 1913.

6. Christian Ulrich, chief character of The Hereditary Forester, translated by A. Remy in The German Classics, Vol.IX, pp.280-376. New York 1914

7. Ibid., p.327 (Act III, Scene 2).

8. H. Heine : Religion and Philosophy in Germany, translated by J. Snodgrass, p.102. London 1882.

9. Hegel's Philosophy of Right.

10. Allusion to the necessity of a democratic revolution in Germany.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1892/lessing/index.htm

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions

Robert Paris — 2025-08-18T05:03:00Z

Rosa Luxemburg

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions

(1906)

I. The Russian Revolution, Anarchism and the General Strike

Almost all works and pronouncements of international socialism on the subject of the mass strike date from the time before the Russian Revolution [of 1905], the first historical experience on a very large scale with the means of struggle. It is therefore evident that they are, for the most part, out-of-date. Their standpoint is essentially that of Engels who in 1873 wrote as follows in his criticism of the revolutionary blundering of the Bakuninists in Spain :

“The general strike, in the Bakuninists' program, is the lever which will be used for introducing the social revolution. One fine morning all the workers in every industry in a country, or perhaps in every country, will cease work, and thereby compel the ruling class either to submit in about four weeks, or to launch an attack on the workers so that the latter will have the right to defend themselves, and may use the opportunity to overthrow the old society. The proposal is by no means new : French and Belgian socialists have paraded it continually since 1848, but for all that is of English origin. During the rapid and powerful development of Chartism among the English workers that followed the crisis of 1837, the ‘holy month' – a suspension of work on a national scale – was preached as early as 1839, and was received with such favour that in July 1842 the factory workers of the north of England attempted to carry it out. And at the Congress of the Alliancists at Geneva on September 1, 1873, the general strike played a great part, but it was admitted on all sides to carry it out it was necessary to have a perfect organisation of the working-class and a full war chest. And that is the crux of the question. On the one hand, the governments, especially if they are encouraged by the workers' abstention from political action, will never allow the funds of the workers to become large enough, and on the other hand, political events and the encroachments of the ruling class will bring about the liberation of the workers long before the proletariat gets the length of forming this ideal organisation and this colossal reserve fund. But if they had these, they would not need to make use of the roundabout way of the general strike in order to attain their object.”

Here we have the reasoning that was characteristic of the attitude of international social democracy towards the mass strike in the following decades. It is based on the anarchist theory of the general strike – that is, the theory of the general strike as a means of inaugurating the social revolution, in contradistinction to the daily political struggle of the working-class – and exhausts itself in the following simple dilemma : either the proletariat as a whole are not yet in possession of the powerful organisation and financial resources required, in which case they cannot carry through the general strike ; or they are already sufficiently well organised, in which case they do not need the general strike. This reasoning is so simple and at first glance so irrefutable that, for a quarter of a century, it has rendered excellent service to the modern labour movement as a logical weapon against the anarchist phantom and as a means of carrying out the idea of political struggle to the widest circles of the workers. The enormous strides taken by the labour movement in all capitalist countries during the last twenty-five years are the most convincing evidence of the value of the tactics of political struggle, which were insisted upon by Marx and Engels in opposition to Bakuninism ; and German social democracy, in its position of vanguard of the entire international labour movement is not in the least the direct product of the consistent and energetic application of these tactics.

The [1905] Russian Revolution has now effected a radical revision of the above piece of reasoning. For the first time in the history of the class struggle it has achieved a grandiose realisation of the idea of the mass strike and – as we shall discuss later – has even matured the general strike and thereby opened a new epoch in the development of the labour movement. It does not, of course, follow from this that the tactics of political struggle recommended by Marx and Engels were false or that criticism applied by them to anarchism was incorrect. On the contrary, it is the same train of ideas, the same method, the Engels-Marxian tactics, which lay at the foundation of the previous practice of the German social democracy, which now in the Russian Revolution are producing new factors and new conditions in the class struggle. The Russian Revolution, which is the first historical experiment on the model of the class strike, not merely does not afford a vindication of anarchism, but actually means the historical liquidation of anarchism. The sorry existence to which this mental tendency was condemned in recent decades by the powerful development of social democracy in Germany may, to a certain extent, be explained by the exclusive domination and long duration of the parliamentary period. A tendency patterned entirely upon the “first blow” and “direct action,” a tendency “revolutionary” in the most naked pitchfork sense, can only temporarily languish in the calm of parliamentarian day and, on a return of the period of direct open struggle, can come to life again and unfold its inherent strength.

Russia, in particular, appeared to have become the experimental field for the heroic deeds of anarchism. A country in which the proletariat had absolutely no political rights and extremely weak organisations, a many-coloured complex of various sections of the population, a chaos of conflicting interests, a low standard of education amongst the masses of the people, extreme brutality in the use of violence on the part of the prevailing regime – all this seemed as if created to raise anarchism to a sudden if perhaps short-lived power. And finally, Russia was the historical birthplace of anarchism. But the fatherland of Bakunin was to become the burial-place of his teachings. Not only did and do the anarchists in Russia not stand at the head of the mass strike movement ; not only does the whole political leadership of revolutionary action and also of the mass strike lie in the hands of the social democratic organisations, which are bitterly opposed as “bourgeois parties” by Russian anarchists, or partly in the hands of such socialist organisations as are more or less influenced by the social democracy and more or less approximate to it – such as the terrorist party, the “socialist revolutionaries” – but the anarchists simply do not exist as a serious political tendency in the Russian Revolution. Only in a small Lithuanian town with particularly difficult conditions – a confused medley of different nationalities among the workers, an extremely scattered condition of small-scale industry, a very severely oppressed proletariat – in Bialystok, there is, amongst the seven or eight different revolutionary groups a handful of half-grown “anarchists” who promote confusion and bewilderment amongst the workers to the best of their ability ; and lastly in Moscow, and perhaps in two or three other towns, a handful of people of this kidney make themselves noticeable.

But apart from these few “revolutionary” groups, what is the actual role of anarchism in the Russian Revolution ? It has become the sign of the common thief and plunderer ; a large proportion of the innumerable thefts and acts of plunder of private persons are carried out under the name of “anarchist-communism” – acts which rise up like a troubled wave against the revolution in every period of depression and in every period of temporary defensive. Anarchism has become in the Russian Revolution, not the theory of the struggling proletariat, but the ideological signboard of the counter-revolutionary lumpenproletariat, who, like a school of sharks, swarm in the wake of the battleship of the revolution. And therewith the historical career of anarchism is well-nigh ended.

On the other hand, the mass strike in Russia has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of jumping suddenly into the social revolution by means of a theatrical coup, but as a means, firstly, of creating for the proletariat the conditions of the daily political struggle and especially of parliamentarism. The revolutionary struggle in Russia, in which mass strikes are the most important weapon, is, by the working people, and above all by the proletariat, conducted for those political rights and conditions whose necessity and importance in the struggle for the emancipation of the working-class Marx and Engels first pointed out, and in opposition to anarchism fought for with all their might in the International. Thus has historical dialectics, the rock on which the whole teaching of Marxian socialism rests, brought it about that today anarchism, with which the idea of the mass strike is indissolubly associated, has itself come to be opposed to the mass strike which was combated as the opposite of the political activity of the proletariat, appears today as the most powerful weapon of the struggle for political rights. If, therefore, the Russian Revolution makes imperative a fundamental revision of the old standpoint of Marxism on the question of the mass strike, it is once again Marxism whose general method and points of view have thereby, in new form, carried off the prize. The Moor's beloved can die only by the hand of the Moor.

II. The Mass Strike, A Historical and Not an Artificial Product

The first revision of the question of the mass strike which results from the experience of Russia relates to the general conception of the problem. Till the present time the zealous advocates of an “attempt with the mass strike” in Germany of the stamp of Bernstein, Eisner, etc., and also the strongest opponents of such an attempt as represented in the trade-union camp by, for example, Bombelburg, stand when all is said and done, on the same conception, and that is the anarchist one. The apparent polar opposites do not mutually exclude each other but, as always, condition, and at the same time, supplement each other. For the anarchist mode of thought is direct speculation on the “great Kladderadatsch,“ on the social revolution merely as an external and inessential characteristic. According to it, what is essential is the whole abstract, unhistorical view of the mass strike and of all the conditions of the proletarian struggle generally.

For the anarchist there exist only two things as material suppositions of his “revolutionary” speculations – first, imagination, and second goodwill and courage to rescue humanity from the existing capitalist vale of tears. This fanciful mode of reasoning sixty years ago gave the result that the mass strike was the shortest, surest and easiest means of springing into the better social future. The same mode of reasoning recently gave the result that the trade-union struggle was the only real “direct action of the masses” and also the only real revolutionary struggle – which, as is well known, is the latest notion of the French and Italian “syndicalists.” The fatal thing for anarchism has always been that the methods of struggle improvised in the air were not only a reckoning without their host, that is, they were purely utopian, but that they, while not reckoning in the least with the despised evil reality, unexpectedly became in this evil reality, practical helps to the reaction, where previously they had only been, for the most part, revolutionary speculations.

On the same ground of abstract, unhistorical methods of observation stand those today who would, in the manner of a board of directors, put the mass strike in Germany on the calendar on an appointed day, and those who, like the participants in the trade-union congress at Cologne, would by a prohibition of “propaganda” eliminate the problem of the mass strike from the face of the earth. Both tendencies proceed on the common purely anarchistic assumption that the mass strike is a purely technical means of struggle which can be “decided” at their pleasure and strictly according to conscience, or “forbidden” – a kind of pocket-knife which can be kept in the pocket clasped “ready for any emergency,” and according to the decision, can be unclasped and used. The opponents of the mass strike do indeed claim for themselves the merit of taking into consideration the historical groundwork and the material conditions of the present conditions in Germany in opposition to the “revolutionary romanticists” who hover in the air, and do not at any point reckon with the hard realities and the possibilities and impossibilities. “Facts and figures ; figures and facts !” they cry, like Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens' Hard Times.

What the trade-union opponent of the mass strike understands by the “historical basis” and “material conditions” is two things – on the one hand the weakness of the proletariat, and on the other hand, the strength of Prussian-German militarism. The inadequate organisation of the workers and the imposing Prussian bayonet – these are the facts and figures upon which these trade-union leaders base their practical policy in the given case. Now it is quite true that the trade-union cash box and the Prussian bayonet are material and very historical phenomena, but the conception based upon them is not historical materialism in Marx's sense but a policemanlike materialism in the sense of Puttkammer. The representatives of the capitalist police state reckon on much, and indeed, exclusively, with the occasional real power of the organised proletariat as well as with the material might of the bayonet, and from the comparative example of these two rows of figures the comforting conclusion is always drawn that the revolutionary labour movement is produced by individual demagogues and agitators ; and that therefore there is in the prisons and bayonets an adequate means of subduing the unpleasant “passing phenomena.”

The class-conscious German workers have at last grasped the humour of the policemanlike theory that the whole modern labour movement is an artificial, arbitrary product of a handful of conscienceless “demagogues and agitators.”

It is exactly the same conception, however, that finds expression when two or three worthy comrades unite in a voluntary column of night-watchmen in order to warn the German working-class against the dangerous agitation of a few “revolutionary romanticists” and their “propaganda of the mass strike” ; or, when on the other side, a noisy indignation campaign is engineered by those who, by means of “confidential” agreements between the executive of the party and the general commission of the trade unions, believe they can prevent the outbreak of the mass strike in Germany.

If it depended on the inflammatory “propaganda” of revolutionary romanticists or on confidential or public decisions of the party direction, then we should not even yet have had in Russia a single serious mass strike. In no country in the world – as I pointed out in March 1905 in the Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung – was the mass strike so little “propagated” or even “discussed” as in Russia. And the isolated examples of decisions and agreements of the Russian party executive which really sought to proclaim the mass strike of their own accord – as, for example, the last attempt in August of this year after the dissolution of the Duma – are almost valueless.

If, therefore, the Russian Revolution teaches us anything, it teaches above all that the mass strike is not artificially “made,” not “decided” at random, not “propagated,” but that it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability. It is not, therefore, by abstract speculations on the possibility or impossibility, the utility or the injuriousness of the mass strike, but only by an examination of those factors and social conditions out of which the mass strike grows in the present phase of the class struggle – in other words, it is not by subjective criticism of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is desirable, but only by objective investigation of the sources of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is historically inevitable, that the problem can be grasped or even discussed.

In the unreal sphere of abstract logical analysis it can be shown with exactly the same force on either side that the mass strike is absolutely impossible and sure to be defeated, and that it is possible and that its triumph cannot be questioned. And therefore the value of the evidence led on each side is exactly the same – and that is nil. Therefore, the fear of the “propagation” of the mass strike, which has even led to formal anathamas against the persons alleged to be guilty of this crime, is solely the product of the droll confusion of persons. It is just as impossible to “propagate” the mass strike as an abstract means of struggle as it is to propagate the “revolution.” “Revolution” like “mass strike” signifies nothing but an external form of the class struggle, which can have sense and meaning only in connection with definite political situations.

If anyone were to undertake to make the mass strike generally, as a form of proletarian action, the object of methodological agitation, and to go house-to-house canvassing with this “idea” in order to gradually win the working-class to it, it would be as idle and profitless and absurd an occupation as it would be to seek to make the idea of the revolution or of the fight at the barricades the object of a special agitation. The mass strike has now become the centre of the lively interest of the German and the international working-class because it is a new form of struggle, and as such is the sure symptom of a thoroughgoing internal revolution in the relations of the classes and in the conditions of the class struggle. It is a testimony to the sound revolutionary instinct and to the quick intelligence of the mass of the German proletariat that, in spite of the obstinate resistance of their trade-union leaders, they are applying themselves to this new problem with such keen interest.

But it does not meet the case, in the presence of this interest and of this fine, intellectual thirst and desire for revolutionary deeds on the part of the workers, to treat them to abstract mental gymnastics on the possibility or impossibility of the mass strike ; they should be enlightened on the development of the Russian Revolution, the international significance of that revolution, the sharpening of class antagonisms in Western Europe, the wider political perspectives of the class struggle in Germany, and the role and the tasks of the masses in the coming struggles. Only in this form will the discussion on the mass strike lead to the widening of the intellectual horizon of the proletariat, to the sharpening of their way of thinking, and to the steeling of their energy.

Viewed from this standpoint however, the criminal proceedings desired by the enemies of “revolutionary romanticism” appear in all their absurdity, because, in treating of the problem, one does not adhere strictly to the text of the Jena resolution. The “practical politicians” agree to this resolution if need be, because they couple the mass strike chiefly with the fate of universal suffrage, from which it follows that they can believe in two things – first, that the mass strike is of a purely defensive character, and second, that the mass strike is even subordinate to parliamentarism, that is, has been turned into a mere appendage of parliamentarism. But the real kernel of the Jena resolution in this connection is that in the present position of Germany an attempt on the part of the prevailing reaction on the parliamentary vote would in all probability be the moment for the introduction of, and the signal for, a period of stormy political struggles in which the mass strike as a means of struggle in Germany might well come into use for the first time.

But to seek to narrow and to artificially smother the social importance, and to limit the historical scope, of the mass strike as a phenomenon and as a problem of the class struggle by the wording of a congress resolution is an undertaking which for short-sightedness can only be compared with the veto on discussion of the trade-union congress at Cologne. In the resolution of the Jena Congress, German social democracy has officially taken notice of the fundamental change which the Russian Revolution [of 1905] has effected in the international conditions of the proletarian class struggle, and has announced its capacity for revolutionary development and its power of adaptability to the new demands of the coming phase of the class struggle. Therein lies the significance of the Jena resolution. As for the peaceful application of the mass strike in Germany, history will decide that as it decided it in Russia – history in which German social democracy with its decisions is, it is true, an important factor, but, at the same time, only one factor amongst many.

III. Development of the Mass Strike Movement in Russia

The mass strike, as it appears for the most part in the discussion in Germany, is a very clear and simply thought out, sharply sketched isolated phenomenon. It is the political mass strike exclusively that is spoken of. What is meant by it is a single grand rising of the industrial proletariat springing from some political motive of the highest importance, and undertaken on the basis of an opportune and mutual understanding on the part of the controlling authorities of the new party and of the trade unions, and carried through in the spirit of party discipline and in perfect order, and in still more perfect order brought to the directing committees as a signal given at the proper time, by which committees the regulation of support, the cost, the sacrifice – in a word, the whole material balance of the mass strike – is exactly determined in advance.

Now, when we compare this theoretical scheme with the real mass strike, as it appeared in Russia five years ago, we are compelled to say that this representation, which in the German discussion occupies the central position, hardly corresponds to a single one of the many mass strikes that have taken place, and on the other hand that the mass strike in Russia displays such a multiplicity of the most varied forms of action that it is altogether impossible to speak of “the” mass strike, of an abstract schematic mass strike. All the factors of the mass strike, as well as its character, are not only different in the different towns and districts of the country, but its general character has often changed in the course of the revolution. The mass strike has passed through a definite history in Russia, and is passing still further through it. Who, therefore, speaks of the mass strike in Russia must, above all things, keep its history before his eyes.

The present official period, so to speak, of the Russian Revolution is justly dated from the rising of the proletariat on January 22, 1905, when the demonstration of 200,000 workers ended in a frightful bloodbath before the czar's palace. The bloody massacre in St. Petersburg was, as is well known, the signal for the outbreak of the first gigantic series of mass strikes which spread over the whole of Russia within a few days and which carried the call to action of the revolution from St. Petersburg to every corner of the empire and amongst the widest sections of the proletariat. But the St. Petersburg rising of January 22 was only the critical moment of a mass strike, which the proletariat of the czarist capital had previously entered upon in January 1905. The January mass strike was without doubt carried through under the immediate influence of the gigantic general strike, which in December 1904 broke out in the Caucasus, in Baku, and for a long time kept the whole of Russia in suspense. The events of December in Baku were on their part only the last and powerful ramification of those tremendous mass strikes which, like a periodic earthquake, shook the whole of south Russia, and whose prologue was the mass strike in Batum in the Caucasus in March 1902.

This first mass strike movement in the continuous series of present revolutionary eruptions is finally separated by five or six years from the great general strike of the textile workers in St. Petersburg in 1896 and 1897, and if this movement is apparently separated from the present revolution by a few years of apparent stagnation and strong reaction, everyone who knows the inner political development of the Russian proletariat to their present stage of class consciousness and revolutionary energy will realise that the history of the present period of the mass struggles begins with those general strikes in St. Petersburg. They are therefore important for the problems of the mass strike because they already contain, in the germ, all the principal factors of later mass strikes.

Again, the St. Petersburg general strike of 1896 appears as a purely economic partial wage struggle. Its causes were the intolerable working conditions of the spinners and weavers in St. Petersburg ; a working day of thirteen, fourteen or fifteen hours, miserable piecework rates, and a whole series of contemptible chicaneries on the part of the employers. The workers, however, patiently endured this condition of things, for a long time till an apparently trivial circumstance filled the cup to overflowing. The coronation of the present czar, Nicholas II, which had been postponed for two years through fear of the revolutionaries, was celebrated in May 1896, and on that occasion the St. Petersburg employers displayed their patriotic zeal by giving their workers three days compulsory holidays, for which, curious to relate, they did not desire to pay their employees. The workers angered by this began to move. After a conference of about three hundred of the intelligent workers in the Ekaterinhof Garden a strike was decided upon, and the following demands were formulated : first, payment of wages for the coronation holidays ; second, a working day of ten hours ; third, increased rates for piecework. This happened on May 24. In a week every weaving and spinning establishment was at a standstill and 40,000 workers were in the general strike. Today, this event, measured by the gigantic mass strike of the revolution, may appear a little thing. In the political polar rigidity of the Russia of that time a general strike was something unheard of ; it was even a complete revolution in little. There began, of course, the most brutal persecution. About one thousand workers were arrested and the general strike was suppressed.

Here, already, we see all the fundamental characteristics of the later mass strikes. The next occasion of the movement was wholly accidental, even unimportant, its outbreak elementary ; but in the success of the movement the fruits of the agitation, extending over several years, of the social democracy were seen and in the course of the general strike the social democratic agitators stood at the head of the movement, directed it, and used it to stir up revolutionary agitation. Further, the strike was outwardly a mere economic struggle for wages, but the attitude of the government and the agitation of the social democracy made it a political phenomenon of the first rank. And lastly, the strike was suppressed ; the workers suffered a “defeat.” But in January of the following year the textile workers of St. Petersburg repeated the general strike once more and achieved this time a remarkable success : the legal introduction of a working day of eleven hours throughout the whole of Russia. What was nevertheless a much more important result was this : since the first general strike of 1896 which was entered upon without a trace of organisation or of strike funds, an intensive trade-union fight began in Russia proper which spread from St. Petersburg to the other parts of the country and opened up entirely new vistas to social democratic agitation and organisation, and by which to the apparently death-like peace of the following period, the revolution was prepared for by underground work.

The outbreak of the Caucasian strike in March 1902 was apparently as accidental and as much due to pure economic partial causes (although produced by quite other factors) as that of 1896. It was connected with the serious industrial and commercial crisis which, in Russia, was the precursor of the Japanese war and which, together with it, was the most powerful factor of the nascent revolutionary ferment. The crisis produced an enormous mass of unemployment which nourished the agitation amongst the proletarian masses, and therefore the government, to restore tranquillity amongst the workers, undertook to transport the “superfluous hands” in batches to their respective home districts. One such measure, which was to affect about four hundred petroleum workers called forth a mass protest in Batum, which led to demonstrations, arrests, a massacre, and finally to a political trial in which the purely economic and partial affair suddenly became a political and revolutionary event. The reverberation of the wholly “fruitless” expiring and suppressed strike in Batum was a series of revolutionary mass demonstrations of workers in Nizhni Novgorod, Saratov, and other towns, and therefore a mighty surge forward of the general wave of the revolutionary movement.

Already in November 1902 the first genuine revolutionary echo followed in the shape of a general strike at Rostov-on-Don. Disputes about the rates of pay in the workshops of the Vladicaucasus Railway gave the impetus to this movement. The management sought to reduce wages and therefore the Don committee of social democracy issued a proclamation with a summons to strike for the following demands : a nine-hour day, increase in wages, abolition of fines, dismissal of obnoxious engineers, etc. Entire railway workshops participated in the strike. Presently all other industries joined in and suddenly an unprecedented state of affairs prevailed in Rostov : every industrial work was at a standstill, and every day monster meetings of fifteen to twenty thousand were held in the open air, sometimes surrounded by a cordon of Cossacks, at which for the first time social democratic popular speakers appeared publicly, inflammatory speeches on socialism and political freedom were delivered and received with immense enthusiasm, and revolutionary appeals were distributed by tens of thousands of copies. In the midst of rigid absolutist Russia the proletariat of Rostov won for the first time the right of assembly and freedom of speech by storm. It goes without saying that there was a massacre here. The disputes over wages in the Vladicaucasus Railway workshops grew in a few days into a political general strike and a revolutionary street battle. As an echo to this there followed immediately a general strike at the station of Tichoretzkaia on the same railway. Here also a massacre took place and also a trial, and thus even Tichoretzkaia has taken its place in the indissoluble chain of the factors of the revolution.

The spring of 1903 gave the answer to the defeated strikes in Rostov and Tichoretzkaia ; the whole of South Russia in May, June and July was aflame. Baku, Tiflis, Batum, Elisavetgrad, Odessa, Kiev, Nikolaev and Ekaterinoslav were in a general strike in the literal meaning of those words. But here again the movement did not arise on any preconceived plan from one another ; it flowed together from individual points in each one from different causes and in a different form. The beginning was made by Baku where several partial wage struggles in individual factories and departments culminated in a general strike. In Tiflis, the strike was begun by 2000 commercial employees who had a working day from six o'clock in the morning to eleven at night. On the fourth of July they all left their shops and made a circuit of the town to demand from the proprietors of the shops that they close their premises. The victory was complete ; the commercial employees won a working day from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and all the factories, workshops and offices, etc, immediately joined them. The newspapers did not appear, and tramway traffic could not be carried on under military protection.

In Elisavetgrad on July 4 a strike began in all the factories with purely economic demands. These were mostly conceded, and the strike ended on the fourteenth. Two weeks later however it broke out again. The bakers this time gave the word and the bricklayers, the joiners, the dyers, the mill-workers, and finally all factory workers joined them.

In Odessa the movement began with a wage struggle in the course of which the “legal” workers' union, founded by government agents according to the programme of the famous gendarme Zubatov, was developed. Historical dialectics had again seized the occasion to play one if its malicious little pranks. The economic struggles of the earlier period (amongst them the great St. Petersburg general strike of 1896) had misled Russian social democracy into exaggerating the importance of so-called economics, and in this way the ground had been prepared amongst the workers for the demagogic activities of Zubatov. After a time, however, the great revolutionary stream turned round the little ship with the false flag and compelled it to ride right at the head of the revolutionary proletarian flotilla. The Zubatovian unions gave the signal for the great general strike in Odessa in the spring of 1904, as for the general strike in St. Petersburg in January 1905. The workers of Odessa, who were not to be deceived by the appearance of friendliness on the part of the government for the workers, and of its sympathy with purely economic strikes, suddenly demanded proof by example, and compelled the Zubatovian “workers union” in a factory to declare a strike for very moderate demands. They were immediately thrown on the streets, and when they demanded the protection of the authorities which was promised them by their leader, the gentleman vanished and left the workers in the wildest excitement.

The social democrats at once placed themselves at the head of affairs, and the strike movement extended to other factories. On the first day of July 2,500 dockers struck work for an increase of wages from eighty kopecks to two rubles, and the shortening of the work day by half-an-hour. On the sixteenth day of July the seamen joined the movement. On the thirteenth day the tramway staff began a strike. Then a meeting took place of all the strikers, seven or eight thousand men ; they formed a procession which went from factory to factory, growing like an avalanche, and presently a crowd of forty to fifty thousand betook themselves to the docks in order to bring all work there to a standstill. A general strike soon reigned throughout the whole city.

In Kiev, a strike began in the railway workshops on July 21st. Here, also, the immediate cause was miserable conditions of labour, and wage demands were presented. On the following day the foundry men followed the example. On July 23rd, an incident occurred which gave the signal for the general strike. During the night two delegates of the railwaymen were arrested. The strikers immediately demanded their release, and as this was not conceded, they decided not to allow trains to leave the town. At the station all the strikers with their wives and families sat down on the railway track – a sea of human beings. They were threatened with rifle salvoes. The workers bared their breasts and cried, “Shoot !” A salvo was fired into the defenceless seated crowd, and thirty to forty corpses, amongst them women and children, remained on the ground. On this becoming known the whole town of Kiev went on strike on the same day. The corpses of the murdered workers were raised on high by the crowd and carried round in a mass demonstration. Meetings, speeches, arrests, isolated street fights – Kiev was in the midst of the revolution. The movement was soon at an end. But the printers had won a shortening of the working day by one hour and a wage increase of one rouble ; in a yeast factory the eight-hour day was introduced ; the railway workshops were closed by order of the ministry ; other departments continued partial strikes for their demands.

In Nikolaev, the general strike broke out under the immediate influence of news from Odessa, Baku, Batum and Tiflis, in spite of the opposition of the social democratic committee who wanted to postpone the outbreak of the movement till the time came when the military should have left the town for manoeuvres. The masses refused to hold back ; one factory made a beginning, the strikes went from one workshop to another, the resistance of the military only poured oil on the fire. Mass processions with revolutionary songs were formed in which all workers, employees, tramways officials, men and women took part. The cessation of work was complete. In Ekaterinoslav, the bakers came out on strike on August 5, on the seventh the men in the railway workshops, and then all the other factories on August 8. Tramway traffic stopped, and the newspapers did not appear.

Thus, the colossal general strike in south Russia came into being in the summer of 1903. By many small channels of partial economic struggles and little “accidental” occurrences it flowed rapidly to a raging sea, and changed the entire south of the czarist empire for some weeks into a bizarre revolutionary workers' republic. “Brotherly embraces, cries of delight and of enthusiasm, songs of freedom, merry laughter, humour and joy were seen and heard in the crowd of many thousands of persons which surged through the town from morning till evening. The mood was exalted ; one could almost believe that a new, better life was beginning on the earth. A most solemn and at the same time an idyllic, moving spectacle.” ... So wrote at the time the correspondent of the Liberal Osvoboshdenye of Peter Struve.

The year 1904 brought with it war, and for a time, an interval of quiet in the mass strike movement. At first a troubled wave of “patriotic” demonstrations arranged by the police authorities spread over the country. The “liberal” bourgeois society was for the time being struck to the ground by the czarist official chauvinism. But soon the social democrats took possession of the arena ; revolutionary workers' demonstrations were opposed to the demonstrations of the patriotic lumpenproletariat, which were organised under police patronage. At last, the shameful defeats of the czarist army woke the liberal society from its lethargy ; then began the era of democratic congresses, banquets, speeches, addresses and manifestos. Absolutism, temporarily suppressed through the disgrace of the war, gave full scope to these gentlemen, and by and by they saw everything in rosy colours. For six months bourgeois liberalism occupied the centre of the stage and the proletariat remained in the shadows. But after a long depression, absolutism again roused itself, the camarilla gathered all its strength and by a single, powerful movement of the Cossack's heel the whole liberal movement was driven into a corner. Banquets, speeches, and congresses were prohibited out of hand as “intolerable presumption,” and liberalism suddenly found itself at the end of its tether.

But exactly at the point where liberalism was exhausted, the action of the proletariat began. In December 1904 the great general strike due to unemployment broke out in Baku ; the working-class was again on the field of battle. As speech was forbidden and rendered impossible, action began. In Baku for some weeks in the midst of the general strike the social democrats ruled as absolute masters of the situation ; and the peculiar events of December in the Caucasus would have caused an immediate sensation if they had not been so quickly put in the shade by the rising tide of the revolution. The fantastic confused news of the general strike in Baku had not reached all parts of the czarist empire when in January 1905 ; the mass strike in St. Petersburg broke out.

Here also, as is well known, the immediate cause was trivial. Two men employed at the Putilov works were discharged on account of their membership in the legal Zubatovian union. This measure called forth a solidarity strike on January 16 of the whole of the 12,000 employed in this works. The social democrats seized the occasion of the strike to begin a lively agitation for the extension of the demands and set forth demands for the eight-hour day, the right of combination, freedom of speech and of the press, etc. The unrest among the Putilov workers communicated itself quickly to the remainder of the proletariat, and in a few days 140,000 workers were on strike. Joint conferences and stormy discussions led to the working out of that proletarian charter of bourgeois freedom with the eight-hour day at its head with which, on January 22nd, 200,000 workers led by Father Gapon, marched to the czar's palace. The conflict of the two Putilov workers who had been subjected to disciplinary punishment had changed within a week into the prologue of the most violent revolution in modern times.

The events that followed upon this are well known, the bloodbath in St. Petersburg called forth gigantic mass strikes and general strike in the month of January, and February in all the industrial centres and towns in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic Provinces, the Caucasus, Siberia, from north to south and east to west. On closer inspection, however, it can be seen that the mass strike was appearing in other forms than those of the previous period. Everywhere at that time the social democratic organisations went before with appeals ; everywhere was revolutionary solidarity with the St. Petersburg proletariat expressly stated as the cause and aim of the general strike ; everywhere, at the same time, there were demonstrations, speeches, conflicts with the military.

But even here there was no predetermined plan, no organised action, because the appeals of the parties could scarcely keep pace with the spontaneous risings of the masses ; the leaders had scarcely time to formulate the watchwords of the onrushing crowd of the proletariat. Further, the earlier mass and general strikes had originated from individual coalescing wage struggles which, in the general temper of the revolutionary situation and under the influence of the social democratic agitation, rapidly became political demonstrations ; the economic factor and the scattered condition of trade unionism were the starting point ; all-embracing class action and political direction the result. The movement was now reversed.

The general strikes of January and February broke out as unified revolutionary actions to begin with under the direction of the social democrats ; but this action soon fell into an unending series of local, partial, economic strikes in separate districts, towns, departments and factories. Throughout the whole of the spring of 1905 and into the middle of the summer there fermented throughout the whole of the immense empire an uninterrupted economic strike of almost the entire proletariat against capital – a struggle which caught, on the one hand, all the petty bourgeois and liberal professions, commercial employees, technicians, actors and members of artistic professions – and on the other hand, penetrated to the domestic servants, the minor police officials and even to the stratum of the lumpenproletariat, and simultaneously surged from the towns to the country districts and even knocked at the iron gates of the military barracks.

This is a gigantic, many-coloured picture of a general arrangement of labour and capital which reflects all the complexity of social organisation and of the political consciousness of every section and of every district ; and the whole long scale runs from the regular trade-union struggle of a picked and tested troop of the proletariat drawn from large-scale industry, to the formless protest of a handful of rural proletarians, and to the first slight stirrings of an agitated military garrison, from the well-educated and elegant revolt in cuffs and white collars in the counting house of a bank to the shy-bold murmurings of a clumsy meeting of dissatisfied policemen in a smoke-grimed dark and dirty guardroom.

According to the theory of the lovers of “orderly and well-disciplined” struggles, according to plan and scheme, according to those especially who always ought to know better from afar “how it should have been done,” the decay of the great political general strike of January 1905 into a number of economic struggles was probably “a great mistake” which crippled that action and changed it into a “straw fire.” But social democracy in Russia, which had taken part in the revolution but had not “made” it, and which had even to learn its law from its course itself, was at the first glance put out of countenance for a time by the apparently fruitless ebb of the storm-flood of the general strike. History, however, which had made that “great mistake,” thereby accomplished, heedless of the reasonings of its officious schoolmaster, a gigantic work for the revolution which was as inevitable as it was, in its consequences, incalculable.

The sudden general rising of the proletariat in January under the powerful impetus of the St. Petersburg events was outwardly a political act of the revolutionary declaration of war on absolutism. But this first general direct action reacted inwardly all the more powerfully as it for the first time awoke class feeling and class-consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock. And this awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstances that the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realise how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon, there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains. All the innumerable sufferings of the modern proletariat reminded them of the old bleeding wounds. Here was the eight-hour day fought for, there piece-work was resisted, here were brutal foremen “driven off” in a sack on a handcar, at another place infamous systems of fines were fought against, everywhere better wages were striven for and here and there the abolition of homework. Backward, degraded occupations in large towns, small provincial towns, which had hitherto dreamed in an idyllic sleep, the village with its legacy from feudalism – all these, suddenly awakened by the January lightning, bethought themselves of their rights and now sought feverishly to make up for their previous neglect.

Here, the economic struggle was not really a decay, a dissipation of action, but merely change of front, a sudden and natural alteration of the first general engagement with absolutism, in a general reckoning with capital, which in keeping with its character assumed the form of individual, scattered wage struggles. Political class action was not broken in January by the decay of the general strike into economic strikes, but the reverse, after the possible content of political action in the given situation and at the given stage of the revolution was exhausted, it broke, or rather changed, into economic action.

In point of fact, what more could the general strike in January have achieved ? Only complete thoughtlessness could expect that absolutism could be destroyed at one blow by a single “long-drawn” general strike after the anarchist plan. Absolutism in Russia must be overthrown by the proletariat. But in order to be able to overthrow it, the proletariat requires a high degree of political education, of class-consciousness and organisation. All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution. Further, absolutism cannot be overthrown at any desired moment in which only adequate “exertion” and “endurance” is necessary. The fall of absolutism is merely the outer expression of the inner social and class development of Russian society.

Before absolutism can, and so far that it may, be overthrown, the bourgeois Russia in its interior, in its modern class divisions, must be formed. That requires the drawing together of the various social layers and interests, besides the education of the proletarian revolutionary parties, and not less of the liberal, radical petty bourgeois, conservative and reactionary parties ; it requires self-consciousness, self-knowledge and the class-consciousness not merely of the layers of the people, but also of the layers of the bourgeoisie. But this also can be achieved and come to fruition in no way but in the struggle, in the process of revolution itself, through the actual school of experience, in collision with the proletariat as well as with one another, in incessant mutual friction. This class division and class maturity of bourgeois society, as well as its action in the struggle against absolutism, is on the one hand, hampered and made difficult by the peculiar leading role of the proletariat and, on the other hand, is spurred on and accelerated. The various undercurrents of the social process of the revolution cross one another, check one another, and increase the internal contradictions of the revolution, but in the end accelerate and thereby render still more violent its eruptions.

This apparently simple and purely mechanical problem may therefore be stated thus : the overthrow of absolutism is a long, continuous social process, and its solution demands a complete undermining of the soil of society ; the uppermost part be placed lowest and the lowermost part highest, the apparent “order” must be changed to a chaos, and the apparently “anarchistic” chaos must be changed into a new order. Now in this process of the social transformation of old Russia, not only the January lightning of the first general strike, but also the spring and summer thunderstorms that followed it, played an indispensable part. The embittered general relations of wage labour and capital contributed in equal measure to the drawing together of the various layers of the people and those of the bourgeoisie, to the class-consciousness of the revolutionary proletariat and to that of the liberal and conservative bourgeoisie. And just as the urban wage struggle contributed to the formation of a strong monarchist industrial party in Moscow, so the conflagration of the violent rural rising in Livonia led to the rapid liquidation of the famous aristocratic-agrarian zemstvo liberalism.

But at the same time, the period of the economic struggles of the spring and summer of 1905 made it possible for the urban proletariat, by means of active social democratic agitation and direction, to assimilate later all the lessons of the January prologue and to grasp clearly all the further tasks of the revolution. There was connected with this too, another circumstance of an enduring social character : a general raising of the standard of life of the proletariat, economic, social and intellectual.

The January strikes of 1905 ended victoriously almost throughout. As proof of this some data from the enormous, and still for the most part, inaccessible mass of material may be cited here relating to a few of the most important strikes carried through in Warsaw alone by the social democrats of Poland and Lithuania. In the great factories of the metal industry of Warsaw : Lilpos Ltd. ; Ran and Lowenstein ; Rudzki and Co. ; Borman, Schwede and Co. ; Handtke, Gerlach and Pulst ; Geisler Bros. ; Eberherd, Wolski and Co. ; Konrad and Yanruszkiewicz Ltd. ; Weber and Daehu ; Ewizdzinski and Co. ; Wolonski Wire Works ; Gostynski and Co., Ltd. ; Rrun and Son ; Frage Norblin ; Werner ; Buch ; Kenneberg Bros. ; Labour ; Dittunar Lamp Factory ; Serkowski ; Weszk – twenty-two factories in all, the workers won after a strike of four to five weeks (from January 24–26) a nine-hour day, a 25 per cent increase of wages and obtained various smaller concessions. In the large workshops of the timber industry of Warsaw, namely Karmanski, Damieki, Gromel, Szerbinskik, Twemerowski, Horn, Devensee, Tworkowski, Daab and Martens – twelve workshops in all – the strikes had won by the twenty-third of February the nine-hour day, which they also won, together with an increase in wages, after a further strike of a week.

The entire bricklaying industry began a strike on February 27 and demanded, in conformity with the watchword of social democracy, the eight-hour day ; they won the ten-hour day on March 11 together with an increase of wages for all categories, regular weekly payment of wages, etc. The painters, the cartwrights, the saddlers and the smiths all won the eight-hour day without decrease of wages.

The telephone workshops struck for ten days and won the eight-hour day and an increase of wages of 10 to 15 per cent. The large linen-weaving establishment of Hielle and Dietrich (10,000 workers) after a strike lasting nine weeks, obtained a decrease of the working day by one hour and a wage increase of 5 to 10 per cent. And similar results in endless variation were to be seen in the older branches of industry in Warsaw, Lodz, and Sosnovitz.

In Russia proper the eight-hour day was won in December 1904 by a few categories of oil workers in Baku ; in May 1905 by the sugar workers of the Kiev district ; in January 1905 all the printing works in Samara (where at the same time an increase of piecework rates was obtained and fines were abolished) ; in February in the factory in which medical instruments for the army are manufactured, in a furniture factory and in the cartridge factory in St. Petersburg. Further, the eight-hour day was introduced in the mines at Vladiviostock, in March in the government mechanical workshops dealing with government stock and in May among the employees of the Tiflis electric town railway. In the same month a working day of eight-and-a-half hours was introduced in the large cotton-weaving factory of Marosov (and at the same time the abolition of night work and a wage increase of 8 per cent were won) ; in June an eight-hour day in a few oil works in St. Petersburg and Moscow ; in July a working day of eight-and-a-half hours among the smiths at the St. Petersburg docks ; and in November in all the private printing establishments of the town of Orel (and at the same time an increase of time rates of 20 per cent and piecework rates of 100 per cent, as well as the setting up of a conciliation board on which workers and employers were equally represented.)

The nine-hour day in all the railway workshops (in February), in many government, military and naval workshops, in most of the factories of the town of Berdiansk, in all the printing works of the towns of Poltava and Munsk ; nine-and-a-half hours in the shipyards, mechanical workshops and foundries in the town of Nikolaev, in June, after a general strike of waiters in Warsaw, in many restaurants and cafes (and at the same time a wage increase of 20 to 40 per cent, with a two-week holiday in the year).

The ten-hour day in almost all the factories of the towns of Lodz, Sosnovitz, Riga, Kovno, Oval, Dorfat, Minsk, Kharkov, in the bakeries of Odessa, among the mechanics in Kishinev, at a few smelting works in St. Petersburg, in the match factories of Kovno (with an increase of wages of 10 per cent), in all the government marine workshops, and amongst all the dockers.

The wage increases were, in general, smaller than the shortening of hours but always more significant : in Warsaw in the middle of March 1905 a general increase of wages of 15 per cent was fixed by the municipal factories department ; in the centre of the textile industry, Ivanovo Vosnesensk, the wage increase amounted to 7 to 15 per cent, in Kovno the increase affected 73 per cent of the workers. A fixed minimum wage was introduced in some of the bakeries in Odessa, in the Neva shipbuilding yards in St. Petersburg, etc.

It goes without saying that these concessions were withdrawn again, now here and now there. This however was only the cause of renewed strife and led to still more bitter struggles for revenge, and thus the strike period of the spring of 1905 has of itself become the prologue to an endless series of ever-spreading and interlacing economic struggles which have lasted to the present day. In the period of the outward stagnation of the revolution, when the telegraph carried no sensational news from the Russian theatre of war to the outside world, and when the west European laid aside his newspaper in disappointment with the remark there “was nothing doing” in Russia, the great underground work of the revolution was in reality being carried on without cessation, day-by-day and hour-by-hour, in the very heart of the empire. The incessant intensive economic struggle effected, by rapid and abbreviated methods, the transition of capitalism from the stage of primitive accumulation, of patriarchal unmethodical methods of working, to a highly modern, civilised one.

At the present time the actual working day in Russian industry leaves behind, not only the Russian factory legislation (that is the legal working day of eleven hours) but even the actual conditions of Germany. In most departments of large-scale industry in Russia the ten-hour day prevails, which in Germany is declared in social legislation to be an unattainable goal. And what is more, that longed-for “industrial constitutionalism,” for which there is so much enthusiasm in Germany, and for the sake of which the advocates of opportunist tactics would keep ever keen wind from the stagnant waters of their all-suffering parliamentarism, has already been born, together with political “constitutionalism,” in the midst of the revolutionary storm, from the revolution itself ! In actual fact it is not merely a general raising of the standard of life, or the cultural level of the working-class that has taken place. The material standard of life as a permanent stage of well-being has no place in the revolution. Full of contradictions and contrasts it brings simultaneously surprising economic victories and the most brutal acts of revenge on the part of the capitalists ; today the eight-hour day and tomorrow wholesale lockouts and actual starvation for the millions.

The most precious, lasting, thing in the rapid ebb and flow of the wave is its mental sediment : the intellectual, cultural growth of the proletariat, which proceeds by fits and starts, and which offers an inviolable guarantee of their further irresistible progress in the economic as in the political struggle. And not only that. Even the relations of the worker to the employer are turned round ; since the January general strike and the strikes of 1905 which followed upon it, the principle of the capitalist “mastery of the house” is de facto abolished. In the larger factories of all important industrial centres the establishment of workers' committees has, as if by itself, taken place, with which alone the employer negotiates and which decide all disputes.

And finally another thing, the apparently “chaotic” strikes and the “disorganised” revolutionary action after the January general strike are becoming the starting point of a feverish work of organisation. Dame History, from afar, smilingly hoaxes the bureaucratic lay figures who keep grim watch at the gate over the fate of the German trade unions. The firm organisations which, as the indispensable hypothesis for an eventual German mass strike, should be fortified like an impregnable citadel – these organisations are in Russia, on the contrary, already born from the mass strike. And while the guardians of the German trade unions for the most part fear that the organisations will fall in pieces in a revolutionary whirlwind like rare porcelain, the Russian revolution shows us the exact opposite picture ; from the whirlwind and the storm, out of the fire and glow of the mass strike and the street fighting rise again, like Venus from the foam, fresh, young, powerful, buoyant trade unions.

Here again a little example, which, however, is typical of the whole empire. At the second conference of the Russian trade unions which took place at the end of February 1906 in St. Petersburg, the representative of the Petersburg trade unions, in his report on the development of trade-union organisations, of the czarist capital said :

“January 22, 1905, which washed away the Gapon union, was a turning point. The workers in large numbers have learned by experience to appreciate and understand the importance of organisation, and that only they themselves can create these organisations. The first trade union – that of the printers – originated in direct connection with the January movement. The commission appointed to work out the tariffs framed the statutes, and on July 19 the union began its existence. Just about this time the union of office-workers and bookkeepers was called into existence.”

“In addition to those organisations, which extend almost openly, there arose from January to October 1905 semi-legal and illegal trade unions. To the former belonged, for example, the union of chemists' assistants and commercial employees. Amongst the illegal unions special attention must be drawn to the watchmakers' union, whose first secret session was held on April 24th. All attempts to convene a general open meeting were shattered on the obstinate resistance of the police and the employers in the form of the Chamber of Commerce. This mischance has not prevented the existence of the union. The tailors and tailoresses union was founded in 1905 at a meeting in a wood at which seventy tailors were present. After the question of forming the union was discussed a commission was appointed which was entrusted with the task of working out the statutes. All attempts of the commission to obtain a legal existence for the union were unsuccessful. Its activities were confined to agitation and the enrolling of new members in the individual workshops. A similar fate was in store for the shoemakers' union. In July, a secret night meeting was convened in a wood near the city. Over 100 shoemakers attended ; a report was read on the importance of trade unionism, on its history in Western Europe and its tasks in Russia. It was then decided to form a trade union ; a commission of twelve was appointed to work out the statutes and call a general meeting of shoemakers. The statutes were drawn up, but in the meantime it had not been found possible to print them nor had the general meeting been convened.”

These were the first difficult beginnings. Then came the October days, the second general strike, the czar's manifesto of October 30 and the brief “constitution period.” The workers threw themselves with fiery zeal into the waves of political freedom in order to use it forthwith for the purpose of the work of organisation. Besides daily political meetings, debates and the formation of clubs, the development of trade unionism was immediately taken in hand. In October and November forty new trade unions appeared in St. Petersburg. Presently a “central bureau,” that is, a trade-union council, was established, various trade-union papers appeared, and since November a central organ has also been published, The Trade Union.

What was reported above concerning Petersburg was also true on the whole of Moscow and Odessa, Kiev and Nikolaev, Saratov and Voronezh, Samara and Nizhni Novgorod, and all the larger towns of Russia, and to a still higher degree in Poland. The trade unions of different towns seek contact with one another and conferences are held. The end of the “constitution period,” and the return to reaction in December 1905 put a stop for the time being to the open widespread activity of the trade unions, but did not, however, altogether extinguish them. They operate as organisations in secret and occasionally carry on quite open wage struggles. A peculiar mixture of the legal and illegal condition of trade-union life is being built up, corresponding to the highly contradictory revolutionary situation.

But in the midst of the struggle the work of organisation is being more widely extended, in a thoroughgoing, not to say pedantic fashion. The trade-unions of the social democracy of Poland and Lithuania, for example, which at the last congress (in July 1906) were represented by five delegates from a membership of 10,000 are furnished with the usual statutes, printed membership cards, adhesive stamps, etc. And the same bankers and shoemakers, engineers and printers of Warsaw and Lodz who in June 1905 stood on the barricades and in December only awaited the word from Petersburg to begin street fighting, find time and are eager, between one mass strike and another, between prison and lockout, and under the conditions of a siege, to go into their trade-union statutes and discuss them earnestly. These barricade fighters of yesterday and tomorrow have indeed more than once at meetings severely reprimanded their leaders and threatened them with withdrawal from the party because the unlucky trade-union membership cards could not be printed quickly enough – in secret printing works under incessant police persecution. This zeal and this earnestness continue to this day. For example, in the first two weeks of July 1906 fifteen new trade unions appeared in Ekaterinoslav, six in Kostroma, several in Kiev, Poltava, Smolensk, Cherkassy, Proskurvo, down to the most insignificant provincial towns.

In the session of the Moscow trade-union council of June 4 this year, after the acceptance of the reports of individual trade-union delegates, it was decided “that the trade-unions should discipline their members and restrain from street rioting because the time is not considered opportune for the mass strike. In the face of possible provocation on the part of the government, care should be taken that the masses do not stream out in the streets.” Finally, the council decided that if at any time one trade-union began a strike the others should hold back from any wages movement. Most of the economic struggles are now directed by the trade-unions.

Thus the great economic struggle which proceeded from the January general strike, and which has not ceased to the present day, has formed a broad background of the revolution from which, in ceaseless reciprocal action with the political agitation and the external events of the revolution, there ever arise here and there now isolated explosions, and now great sections of the proletariat. Thus there flame up against this background the following events one after the other ; at the May Day demonstration there was an unprecedented, absolute general strike in Warsaw which ended in a bloody encounter between the defenceless crowd and the soldiers. At Lodz in June a mass outing, which was scattered by the soldiers, led to a demonstration of 100,000 workers at the funeral of some of the victims of the brutal soldiery and to a renewed encounter with the military, and finally, on June 23, 24 and 25, passed into the first barricade fight in the czarist empire. Similarly in June the first great revolt of the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet exploded in the harbour of Odessa from a trifling incident on board the armoured vessel Potemkin which reacted immediately on Odessa and Nikolaev in the form of a violent mass strike. As a further echo followed the mass strike and the sailors' revolts in Kronstadt, Libau and Vladivostok.

In the month of October the grandiose experiment of St. Petersburg was made with the introduction of the eight-hour day. The general council of workers delegates decided to achieve the eight-hour day in a revolutionary manner. That means that on the appointed day all the workers of Petersburg should inform their employers that they are not willing to work more than eight hours a day, and should leave their places of work at the end of eight hours. The idea was the occasion of lively agitation, was accepted by the proletariat with enthusiasm and carried out, but very great sacrifices were not thereby avoided. Thus for example, the eight-hour day meant an enormous fall in wages for the textile workers who had hitherto worked eleven hours and that on a system of piecework. This, however, they willingly accepted. Within a week the eight-hour day prevailed in every factory and workshop in Petersburg, and the joy of the workers knew no bounds. Soon, however, the employers, stupefied at first, prepared their defences ; everywhere they threatened to close their factories. Some of the workers consented to negotiate and obtained here a working day of ten hours and there one of nine hours. The elite of the Petersburg proletariat, however, the workers in the large government engineering establishments, remained unshaken, and a lockout ensued which threw from forty-five to fifty thousand men on the streets for a month. At the settlement the eight-hour day movement was carried into the general strike of December which the great lockout had hampered to a great extent.

Meanwhile, however, the second tremendous general strike throughout the whole empire follows in October as a reply to the project of the Bulygin Duma – the strike to which the railwaymen gave the summons. This second great action of the proletariat already bears a character essentially different from that of the first one in January. The element of political consciousness already plays a much bigger role. Here also, to be sure, the immediate occasion for the outbreak of the mass strike was a subordinate and apparently accidental thing : the conflict of the railwaymen with the management over the pension fund. But the general rising of the industrial proletariat which followed upon it was conducted in accordance with clear political ideas. The prologue of the January strike was a procession to the czar to ask for political freedom : the watchword of the October strike ran away with the constitutional comedy of czarism !

And thanks to the immediate success of the general strike, to the czar's manifesto of October 30, the movement does not flow back on itself, as in January but rushes over outwardly in the eager activity of newly acquired political freedom. Demonstrations, meetings, a young press, public discussions and bloody massacres as the end of the story, and thereupon new mass strikes and demonstrations – such is the stormy picture of the November and December days. In November, at the instance of the social democrats in Petersburg the first demonstrative mass strike is arranged as a protest demonstration against the bloody deeds and proclamation of a state of siege in Poland and Livonia.

The fermentation after the brief constitutional period and the gruesome awakening finally leads in December to the outbreak of the third general mass strike throughout the empire. This time its course and its outcome are altogether different from those in the two earlier cases. Political action does not change into economic action as in January, but it no longer achieves a rapid victory as in October. The attempts of the czarist camarilla with real political freedom are no longer made, and revolutionary action therewith, for the first time, and along its whole length, knocked against the strong wall of the physical violence of absolutism. By the logical internal development of progressive experience the mass strike this time changes into an open insurrection, to armed barricades, and street fighting in Moscow. The December days in Moscow close the first eventful year of the revolution as the highest point in the ascending line of political action and of the mass strike movement.

The Moscow events show a typical picture of the logical development and at the same time of the future of the revolutionary movement on the whole : their inevitable close in a general open insurrection, which again on its part cannot come in any other way than through the school of a series of preparatory partial insurrections, which end in partial outward “defeats” and, considered individually, may appear to be “premature.”

The year 1906 brings the elections to the Duma and the Duma incidents. The proletariat, from a strong revolutionary instinct and clear knowledge of the situation, boycotts the whole czarist constitutional farce, and liberalism again occupies the centre stage for a few months. The situation of 1904 appears to have come again, a period of speeches instead of acts, and the proletariat for a time walk in the shadow in order to devote themselves the more diligently to the trade-union struggle and the work of the organisation. The mass strikes are no longer spoken of, while the clattering rockets of liberal rhetoric are fired off day after day. At last, the iron curtain is torn down, the actors are dispersed, and nothing remains of the liberal rockets but smoke and vapour. An attempt of the Central Committee of the Russian social democracy to call forth a mass strike, as a demonstration for the Duma and the reopening of the period of liberal speechmaking, falls absolutely flat. The role of the political mass strike alone is exhausted, but, at the same time, the transition of the mass strike into a general popular rising is not yet accomplished. The liberal episode is past, the proletarian episode is not yet begun. The stage remains empty for the time being.

IV. The Interaction of the Political and the Economic Struggle

We have attempted in the foregoing to sketch the history of the mass strike in Russia in a few strokes. Even a fleeting glance at this history shows us a picture which in no way resembles that usually formed by discussions in Germany on the mass strike. Instead of the rigid and hollow scheme of an arid political action carried out by the decision of the highest committees and furnished with a plan and panorama, we see a bit of pulsating life of flesh and blood, which cannot be cut out of the large frame of the revolution but is connected with all parts of the revolution by a thousand veins.

The mass strike, as the Russian Revolution shows it to us, is such a changeable phenomenon that it reflects all the phases of the political and economic struggle, all stages and factors of the revolution. Its adaptability, its efficiency, the factors of its origin are constantly changing. It suddenly opens new and wide perspectives of the revolution when it appears to have already arrived in a narrow pass and where it is impossible for anyone to reckon upon it with any degree of certainty. It flows now like a broad billow over the whole kingdom, and now divides into a gigantic network of narrow streams ; now it bubbles forth from under the ground like a fresh spring and now is completely lost under the earth. Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting – all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another – it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena. And the law of motion of these phenomena is clear : it does not lie in the mass strike itself nor in its technical details, but in the political and social proportions of the forces of the revolution.

The mass strike is merely the form of the revolutionary struggle and every disarrangement of the relations of the contending powers, in party development and in class division, in the position of counter-revolution – all this immediately influences the action of the strike in a thousand invisible and scarcely controllable ways. But strike action itself does not cease for a single moment. It merely alters its forms, its dimensions, its effect. It is the living pulse-beat of the revolution and at the same time its most powerful driving wheel. In a word, the mass strike, as shown to us in the Russian Revolution, is not a crafty method discovered by subtle reasoning for the purpose of making the proletarian struggle more effective, but the method of motion of the proletarian mass, the phenomenal form of the proletarian struggle in the revolution.

Some general aspects may now be examined which may assist us in forming a correct estimate of the problem of the mass strike :

1. It is absurd to think of the mass strike as one act, one isolated action. The mass strike is rather the indication, the rallying idea, of a whole period of the class struggle lasting for years, perhaps for decades. Of the innumerable and highly varied mass strikes which have taken place in Russia during the last four years, the scheme of the mass strike was a purely political movement, begun and ended after a cut and dried plan, a short single act of one variety only and, at that, a subordinate variety – pure demonstration strike. In the whole course of the five-year period we see in Russia only a few demonstration strikes, which be it noted, were generally confined to single towns. Thus the annual May Day general strike in Warsaw and Lodz in Russia proper on the first of May has not yet been celebrated to any appreciable extent by abstention from work ; the mass strike in Warsaw on September 11, 1905, as a memorial service in honour of the executed Martin Kasprzak ; that of November 1905 in Petersburg as protest demonstrations against the declaration of the state of siege in Poland and Livonia ; that of January 22, 1906 in Warsaw, Lodz, Czentochon and in Dombrowa coal basin, as well as, in part, those in a few Russian towns as anniversary celebrations of the Petersburg bloodbath ; in addition, in July 1906 a general strike in Tiflis as demonstration of sympathy with soldiers sentenced by court-martial on account of the military revolt ; and finally from the same cause, in September 1906, during the deliberations of the court-martial in Reval. All the above great and partial mass strikes and general strikes were not demonstration strikes but fighting strikes, and as such they originated, for the most part, spontaneously, in every case from specific local accidental causes, without plan or design, and grew with elemental power into great movements, and then they did not begin an “orderly retreat,” but turned now into economic struggles, now into street fighting, and now collapsed of themselves.

In this general picture the purely political demonstration strike plays quite a subordinate role – isolated small points in the midst of a mighty expanse. Thereby, temporarily considered, the following characteristic discloses itself : the demonstration strikes which, in contradistinction to the fighting strikes, exhibit the greatest mass of party discipline, conscious direction and political thought, and therefore must appear as the highest and most mature form of the mass strike, play in reality the greatest part in the beginnings of the movement. Thus, for example, the absolute cessation of work on May 1, 1905, in Warsaw, as the first instance of a decision of the social democrats carried throughout in such an astonishing fashion, was an experience of great importance for the proletarian movement in Poland. In the same way the sympathetic strike of the same year in Petersburg made a great impression as the first experiment of conscious systematic mass action in Russia. Similarly the “trial mass strike” of the Hamburg comrades on January 17, 1906, will play a prominent part in the history of the future German mass strike as the first vigorous attempt with the much disputed weapon, and also a very successful and convincingly striking test of the fighting temper and the lust for battle of the Hamburg working class. And just as surely will the period of the mass strike in Germany, when it has once begun in real earnest, lead of itself to a real, general cessation of work on May first. The May Day festival may naturally be raised to a position of honour as the first great demonstration under the aegis of the mass struggle. In this sense the “lame horse,” as the May Day festival was termed at the trade-union congress at Cologne, has still a great future before it and an important part to play, in the proletarian class struggle in Germany.

But with the development of the earnest revolutionary struggle the importance of such demonstrations diminishes rapidly. It is precisely those factors which objectively facilitate the realisation of the demonstration strike after a preconceived plan and at the party's word of command – namely, the growth of political consciousness and the training of the proletariat – make this kind of mass strike impossible ; today the proletariat in Russia, the most capable vanguard of the masses, does not want to know about mass strikes ; the workers are no longer in a mood for jesting and will now think only of a serious struggle with all its consequences. And when, in the first great mass strike in January 1905, the demonstrative element, not indeed in an intentional, but more in an instinctive, spontaneous form, still played a great part, on the other hand, the attempt of the Central Committee of the Russian social democrats to call a mass strike in August as a demonstration for the dissolved Duma was shattered by, among other things, the positive disinclination of the educated proletariat to engage in weak half-actions and mere demonstrations.

2. When, however, we have in view the less important strike of the demonstrative kind, instead of the fighting strike as it represents in Russia today the actual vehicle of proletarian action, we see still more clearly that it is impossible to separate the economic factors from one another. Here also the reality deviates from the theoretical scheme, and the pedantic representation in which the pure political mass strike is logically derived from the trade-union general strike as the ripest and highest stage, but at the same time is kept distinct from it, is shown to be absolutely false. This is expressed not merely in the fact that the mass strike from that first great wage struggle of the Petersburg textile workers in 1896–97 to the last great mass strike in December 1905, passed imperceptibly from the economic field to the political, so that it is almost impossible to draw a dividing line between them.

Again, every one of the great mass strikes repeats, so to speak, on a small scale, the entire history of the Russian mass strike, and begins with a pure economic, or at all events, a partial trade-union conflict, and runs through all the stages to the political demonstration. The great thunderstorm of mass strikes in South Russia in 1902 and 1903 originated, as we have seen, in Baku from a conflict arising from the disciplinary punishment of the unemployed, in Rostov from disputes about wages in the railway workshops, in Tiflis from a struggle of the commercial employees for reduction of working hours, in Odessa from a wage dispute in a single small factory. The January mass strike of 1905 developed from an internal conflict in the Putilov works, the October strike from the struggle of the railway workers for a pension fund, and finally the December strike from the struggle of the postal and telegraph employees for the right of combination. The progress of the movement on the whole is not expressed in the circumstances that the economic initial stage is omitted, but much more in the rapidity with which all the stages to the political demonstration are run through and in the extremity of the point to which the strike moves forward.

But the movement on the whole does not proceed from the economic to the political struggle, nor even the reverse. Every great political mass action, after it has attained its political highest point, breaks up into a mass of economic strikes. And that applies not only to each of the great mass strikes, but also to the revolution as a whole. With the spreading, clarifying and involution of the political struggle, the economic struggle not only does not recede, but extends, organises and becomes involved in equal measure. Between the two there is the most complete reciprocal action.

Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle, extending at the same time its external possibilities and intensifying the inner urge of the workers to better their position and their desire to struggle. After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth. And conversely. The workers' condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval ; it forms, so to speak, the permanent fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian classes, from which the political fight ever renews its strength, and at the same time leads the indefatigable economic sappers of the proletariat at all times, now here and now there, to isolated sharp conflicts, out of which public conflicts on a large scale unexpectedly explode.

In a word : the economic struggle is the transmitter from one political centre to another ; the political struggle is the periodic fertilisation of the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continually change places ; and thus the economic and the political factor in the period of the mass strike, now widely removed, completely separated or even mutually exclusive, as the theoretical plan would have them, merely form the two interlacing sides of the proletarian class struggle in Russia. And their unity is precisely the mass strike. If the sophisticated theory proposes to make a clever logical dissection of the mass strike for the purpose of getting at the “purely political mass strike,” it will by this dissection, as with any other, not perceive the phenomenon in its living essence, but will kill it altogether.

3. Finally, the events in Russia show us that the mass strike is inseparable from the revolution. The history of the Russian mass strike is the history of the Russian Revolution. When, to be sure, the representatives of our German opportunism hear of “revolution,” they immediately think of bloodshed, street fighting or powder and shot, and the logical conclusion thereof is : the mass strike leads inevitably to the revolution, therefore we dare not have it. In actual fact we see in Russia that almost every mass strike in the long run leads to an encounter with the armed guardians of czarist order, and therein the so-called political strikes exactly resemble the larger economic struggle. The revolution, however, is something other and something more than bloodshed. In contradiction to the police interpretation, which views the revolution exclusively from the standpoint of street disturbances and rioting, that is, from the standpoint of “disorder,” the interpretation of scientific socialism sees in the revolution above all a thorough-going internal reversal of social class relations. And from this standpoint an altogether different connection exists between revolution and mass strike in Russia from that contained in the commonplace conception that the mass strike generally ends in bloodshed.

We have seen above the inner mechanism of the Russian mass strike which depends upon the ceaseless reciprocal action of the political and economic struggles. But this reciprocal action is conditioned during the revolutionary period. Only in the sultry air of the period of revolution can any partial little conflict between labour and capital grow into a general explosion. In Germany the most violent, most brutal collisions between the workers and employers take place every year and every day without the struggle overleaping the bounds of the individual departments or individual towns concerned, or even those of the individual factories. Punishment of organised workers in Petersburg and unemployment as in Baku, wage struggles as in Odessa, struggles for the right of combination as in Moscow are the order of the day in Germany. No single one of these cases however changes suddenly into a common class action. And when they grow into isolated mass strikes, which have without question a political colouring, they do not bring about a general storm. The general strike of Dutch railwaymen, which died away in spite of the warmest sympathy, in the midst of the complete impassivity of the proletariat of the country, affords a striking proof of this.

And conversely, only in the period of revolution, when the social foundations and the walls of the class society are shaken and subjected to a constant process of disarrangement, any political class action of the proletariat can arouse from their passive condition in a few hours whole sections of the working class who have hitherto remained unaffected, and this is immediately and naturally expressed in a stormy economic struggle. The worker, suddenly aroused to activity by the electric shock of political action, immediately seizes the weapon lying nearest his hand for the fight against his condition of economic slavery : the stormy gesture of the political struggle causes him to feel with unexpected intensity the weight and the pressure of his economic chains. And while, for example, the most violent political struggle in Germany – the electoral struggle or the parliamentary struggle on the customs tariff – exercised a scarcely perceptible direct influence upon the course and the intensity of the wage struggles being conducted at the same time in Germany, every political action of the proletariat in Russia immediately expresses itself in the extension of the area and the deepening of the intensity of the economic struggle.

The revolution thus first creates the social conditions in which this sudden change of the economic struggle into the political and of the political struggle into the economic is possible, a change which finds its expression in the mass strike. And if the vulgar scheme sees the connection between mass strike and revolution only in bloody street encounters with which the mass strikes conclude, a somewhat deeper look into the Russian events shows an exactly opposite connection : in reality the mass strike does not produce the revolution but the revolution produces the mass strike.

4. It is sufficient in order to comprehend the foregoing to obtain an explanation of the question of the conscious direction and initiative in the mass strike. If the mass strike is not an isolated act but a whole period of the class struggle, and if this period is identical with a period of revolution, it is clear that the mass strike cannot be called at will, even when the decision to do so may come from the highest committee of the strongest social democratic party. As long as the social democracy has not the power to stage and countermand revolutions according to its fancy, even the greatest enthusiasm and impatience of the social democratic troops will not suffice to call into being a real period of mass strike as a living, powerful movement of the people. On the basis of a decision of the party leadership and of party discipline, a single short demonstration may well be arranged similar to the Swedish mass strike, or to the latest Austrian strike, or even to the Hamburg mass strike of January 17. These demonstrations, however, differ from an actual period of revolutionary mass strikes in exactly the same way that the well-known demonstrations in foreign ports during a period of strained diplomatic relations differ from a naval war. A mass strike born of pure discipline and enthusiasm will, at best, merely play the role of an episode, of a symptom of the fighting mood of the working class upon which, however, the conditions of a peaceful period are reflected.

Of course, even during the revolution, mass strikes do not exactly fall from heaven. They must be brought about in some way or another by the workers. The resolution and determination of the workers also play a part and indeed the initiative and the wider direction naturally fall to the share of the organised and most enlightened kernel of the proletariat. But the scope of this initiative and this direction, for the most part, is confined to application to individual acts, to individual strikes, when the revolutionary period is already begun, and indeed, in most cases, is confined within the boundaries of a single town. Thus, for example, as we have seen, the social democrats have already, on several occasions, successfully issued a direct summons for a mass strike in Baku, in Warsaw, in Lodz, and in Petersburg. But this succeeds much less frequently when applied to general movements of the whole proletariat.

Further, there are quite definite limits set to initiative and conscious direction. During the revolution it is extremely difficult for any directing organ of the proletarian movement to foresee and to calculate which occasions and factors can lead to explosions and which cannot. Here also initiative and direction do not consist in issuing commands according to one's inclinations, but in the most adroit adaptability to the given situation, and the closest possible contact with the mood of the masses. The element of spontaneity, as we have seen, plays a great part in all Russian mass strikes without exception, be it as a driving force or as a restraining influence. This does not occur in Russia, however, because social democracy is still young or weak, but because in every individual act of the struggle so very many important economic, political and social, general and local, material and psychical, factors react upon one another in such a way that no single act can be arranged and resolved as if it were a mathematical problem. The revolution, even when the proletariat, with the social democrats at their head, appear in the leading role, is not a manoeuvre of the proletariat in the open field, but a fight in the midst of the incessant crashing, displacing and crumbling of the social foundation. In short, in the mass strikes in Russia the element of spontaneity plays such a predominant part, not because the Russian proletariat are “uneducated,” but because revolutions do not allow anyone to play the schoolmaster with them.

On the other hand, we see in Russia that the same revolution which rendered the social democrats' command of the mass strike so difficult, and which struck the conductor's baton from, or pressed into, their hand at all times in such a comical fashion – we see that it resolved of itself all those difficulties of the mass strike which, in the theoretical scheme of German discussion are regarded as the chief concern of the “directing body” : the question of “provisioning,” “discovery of cost,” and “sacrifice.” It goes without saying that it does not resolve them in the way that they would be resolved in a quiet confidential discussion between the higher directing committees of the labour movement, the members sitting pencil in hand. The “regulation” of all these questions consists in the circumstance that the revolution brings such an enormous mass of people upon the stage that any computation or regulation of the cost of the movement such as can be effected in a civil process, appears to be an altogether hopeless undertaking.

The leading organisations in Russia certainly attempt to support the direct victims to the best of their ability. Thus, for example, the brave victims of the gigantic lockout in St. Petersburg, which followed upon the eight-hour day campaign, were supported for weeks. But all these measures are, in the enormous balance of the revolution, but as a drop in the ocean. At the moment that a real, earnest period of mass strikes begins, all these “calculations” of “cost” become merely projects for exhausting the ocean with a tumbler. And it is a veritable ocean of frightful privations and sufferings which is brought by every revolution to the proletarian masses. And the solution which a revolutionary period makes of this apparently invincible difficulty consists in the circumstances that such an immense volume of mass idealism is simultaneously released that the masses are insensible to the bitterest sufferings. With the psychology of a trade unionist who will not stay off his work on May Day unless he is assured in advance of a definite amount of support in the event of his being victimised, neither revolution nor mass strike can be made. But in the storm of the revolutionary period even the proletarian is transformed from a provident pater familas demanding support, into a “revolutionary romanticist,” for whom even the highest good, life itself, to say nothing of material well-being, possesses but little in comparison with the ideals of the struggle.

If, however, the direction of the mass strike in the sense of command over its origin, and in the sense of the calculating and reckoning of the cost, is a matter of the revolutionary period itself, the directing of the mass strike becomes, in an altogether different sense, the duty of social democracy and its leading organs. Instead of puzzling their heads with the technical side, with the mechanism, of the mass strike, the social democrats are called upon to assume political leadership in the midst of the revolutionary period.

To give the cue for, and the direction to, the fight ; to so regulate the tactics of the political struggle in its every phase and at its every moment that the entire sum of the available power of the proletariat which is already released and active, will find expression in the battle array of the party ; to see that the tactics of the social democrats are decided according to their resoluteness and acuteness and that they never fall below the level demanded by the actual relations of forces, but rather rise above it – that is the most important task of the directing body in a period of mass strikes. And this direction changes of itself, to a certain extent, into technical direction. A consistent, resolute, progressive tactic on the part of the social democrats produces in the masses a feeling of security, self-confidence and desire for struggle ; a vacillating weak tactic, based on an underestimation of the proletariat, has a crippling and confusing effect upon the masses. In the first case mass strikes break out “of themselves” and “opportunely” ; in the second case they remain ineffective amidst direct summonses of the directing body to mass strikes. And of both the Russian Revolution affords striking examples.

V. Lessons of the Working-Class Movement in Russia Applicable to Germany

Let us now see how far all these lessons which can be learned from the Russian mass strikes are applicable to Germany. The social and political conditions, the history and status of the labour movement are widely different in Germany and Russia. At first sight the inner law of the Russian mass strikes as sketched above may appear to be solely the product of specifically Russian conditions which need not be taken into account by the German proletariat. Between the political and economic struggle in the Russian Revolution there is a very close internal connection ; their unity becomes an actual fact in the period of mass strikes. But is not that simply a result of Russian absolutism ? In a state in which every form and expression of the labour movement is forbidden, in which the simplest strike is a political crime, it must logically follow that every economic struggle will become a political one.

Further, when, contrariwise, the first outbreak of the political revolution has drawn after it a general reckoning of the Russian working class with the employers, that is likewise a simple result of the circumstances that the Russian worker has hitherto had a very low standard of life, and has never yet engaged in a single economic struggle for an improvement of his condition. The proletariat in Russia has first, to a certain extent, to work their way out of these miserable conditions, and what wonder that they eagerly availed themselves, with the eagerness of youth, of the first means to that end as soon as the revolution brought the first fresh breeze into the heavy air of absolutism ?

And finally, the stormy revolutionary course of the Russian mass strike as well as their preponderant spontaneous, elementary character is explained on the one hand by the political backwardness of Russia, by the necessity of first overthrowing the oriental despotism, and on the other hand, by the want of organisation and of discipline of the Russian proletariat. In a country in which the working-class has had thirty years experience of political life, a strong social democratic party of three million members and a quarter of a million picked troops organised in trade unions, neither the political struggle nor the mass strike can possibly assume the same stormy and elemental character as in a semi-barbarous state which has just made the leap from the Middle Ages into the modern bourgeois order. This is the current conception amongst those who would read the stage of maturity of the social conditions of a country from the text of the written laws.

Let us examine the questions in their order. To begin with it is going the wrong way about the matter to date the beginning of the economic struggle in Russia only from the outbreak of the revolution. As a matter of fact, the strikes and wage disputes in Russia proper were increasingly the order of the day since the nineties of the last century, and in Russian Poland even since the eighties, and had eventually won civic rights for the workers. Of course, they were frequently followed by brutal police measures, but nevertheless they were daily phenomena. For example, in both Warsaw and Lodz as early as 1891, there was a considerable strike fund, and the enthusiasm for trade unionism in these years had even created that “economic” illusion in Poland for a short time which a few years later prevailed in Petersburg and the rest of Russia.

In the same way there is a great deal of exaggeration in the notion that the proletarian in the czarist empire had the standard of life of a pauper before the revolution. The layer of the workers in large industries in the great towns who had been the most active and zealous in the economic as in the political struggle are, as regards the material conditions of life, on a scarcely lower plane than the corresponding layer of the German proletariat, and in some occupations as high wages are to be met with in Russia as in Germany, and here and there, even higher. And as regards the length of the working day, the difference in the large-scale industries in the two countries is here and there, insignificant. The notion of the presumed material and cultural condition of helotry of the Russian working-class is similarly without justification in fact. This notion is contradicted, as a little reflection will show, by the facts of the revolution itself and the prominent part that was played therein by the proletariat. With paupers no revolution of this political maturity and cleverness of thought can be made, and the industrial workers of St. Petersburg and Warsaw, Moscow and Odessa, who stand in the forefront of the struggle, are culturally and mentally much nearer to the west European type than is imagined by those who regard bourgeois parliamentarism and methodical trade-union practice as the indispensable, or even the only, school of culture for the proletariat. The modern large capitalist development of Russia and the intellectual influence of social democracy exerted for a decade-and-a-half, which has encouraged and directed the economic struggle, have accomplished an important piece of cultural work without the outward guarantees of the bourgeois legal order.

The contrast, however, grows less when, on the other hand, we look a little further into the actual standard of life in the German working-class. The great political mass strikes in Russia have, from the first, aroused the widest layers of the proletariat and thrown them into a feverish economic struggle. But are there not in Germany whole unenlightened sections amongst the workers to which the warm light of the trade unions has hitherto scarcely penetrated, whole layers which up to the present have never attempted, or vainly attempted, to raise themselves out of their social helotry by means of daily wage struggles ?

Let us consider the poverty of the miners. Already in the quiet working day, in the cold atmosphere of the parliamentary monotony of Germany – as also in other countries, and even in the El Dorado of trade unionism, Great Britain – the wage struggle of the mine workers hardly ever expresses itself in any other way than by violent eruptions from time-to-time in mass strikes of typical, elemental character. This only shows that the antagonism between labour and capital is too sharp and violent to allow of its crumbling away in the form of quiet systematic, partial trade-union struggles. The misery of the miners, with its eruptive soil which even in “normal” times is a storm centre of the greatest violence, must immediately explode, in a violent economic socialist struggle, with every great political mass action of the working class, with every violent sudden jerk which disturbs the momentary equilibrium of everyday social life.

Let us take further, the case of the poverty of the textile workers. Here also the bitter, and for the most part fruitless, outbreaks of the wage struggle which raged through Vogtland every few years, give but a faint idea of the vehemence with which the great agglomerate mass of helots of trustified textile capital must explode during a political convulsion, during a powerful, daring mass action of the German proletariat. Again, let us take the poverty of the home-workers, of the ready-made clothing workers, of the electricity workers, veritable storm centres in which violent struggles will be the more certain to break out with every political atmospheric disturbance in Germany, the less frequently the proletariat take up the struggle in tranquil times ; and the more unsuccessfully they fight at any time, the more brutally will capital comply them to return, gnashing their teeth to the yoke of slavery.

Now, however, whole great categories of the proletariat have to be taken into account which, in the “normal” course of things in Germany, cannot possibly take part in a peaceful economic struggle for the improvement of their condition and cannot possibly avail themselves of the right of combination. First and foremost we give the example of the glaring poverty of the railway and the postal employees. For these government workers there exist Russian conditions in the midst of the parliamentary constitutional state of Germany, that is to say, Russian conditions as they existed only before the revolution, during the untroubled splendour of absolutism. Already in the great October strike of 1905 the Russian railwaymen in the then formally absolutist Russia, were, as regards the economic and social freedom of their movement, head and shoulders above the Germans. The Russian railway and postal employees won the de facto right of combination in the storm, and if momentarily trial upon trial and victimisation were the rule, they were powerless to affect the inner unity of workers.

However, it would be an altogether false psychological reckoning if one were to assume, with the German reaction, that the slavish obedience of the German railway and postal employees will last forever, that it is a rock which nothing can wear away. When even the German trade-union leaders have become accustomed to the existing conditions to such an extent that they, untroubled by an indifference almost without parallel in the whole of Europe, can survey with complete satisfaction the results of the trade-union struggle in Germany, then the deep-seated, long-suppressed resentment of the uniformed state slaves will inevitably find vent with a general rising of the industrial workers And when the industrial vanguard of the proletariat, by means of mass strikes, grasp at new political rights or attempt to defend existing ones, the great army of railway of railway and postal employees must of necessity bethink themselves of their own special disgrace, and at last rouse themselves for their liberation from the extra share of Russian absolutism which is specially reserved for them in Germany.

The pedantic conception which would unfold great popular movements according to plan and recipe regards the acquisition of the right of combination for the railway workers as necessary before anyone will “dare to think” of a mass strike in Germany. The actual and natural course of events can only be the opposite of this : only from a spontaneous powerful mass strike action can the right of combination from the German railway workers, as well as for the postal employees, actually be born. And the problems which in the existing conditions of Germany are insoluble will suddenly find their solution under the influence and the pressure of a universal political mass action of the proletariat.

And finally, the greatest and most important : the poverty of the land workers. If the British trade-unions are composed exclusively of industrial workers, that is quite understandable in view of the special character of the British national economy, and of the unimportant part that agriculture plays, on the whole, in the economic life of Britain. In Germany, a trade-union organisation, be it ever so well constructed, if it comprises only industrial workers, and is inaccessible to the great army of land workers, will give only a weak, partial picture of the conditions of the proletariat. But again it would be a fatal illusion to think that conditions in the country are unalterable and immovable and that the indefatigable educational work of the social democracy, and still more, the whole internal class politics of Germany, does not continually undermine the outward passivity of the agricultural workers and that any great general class action of the German proletariat, for whatever object undertaken, may not also draw the rural proletariat into the conflict.

Similarly, the picture of the alleged economic superiority of the German over the Russian proletariat is considerably altered when we look away from the tables of the industries and departments organised in trade-unions and bestow a look upon those great groups of the proletariat who are altogether outside the trade-union struggle, or whose special economic condition does not allow of their being forced into the narrow framework of the daily guerrilla warfare of the trade-unions. We see there one important sphere after another, in which the sharpening of antagonisms has reached the extreme point, in which inflammable material in abundance is heaped up, in which there is a great deal of “Russian absolutism” in its most naked form, and in which economically the most elementary reckonings with capital have first to be made.

In a general political mass strike of the proletariat, then, all these outstanding accounts would inevitably be presented to the prevailing system. An artificially arranged demonstration of the urban proletariat, taking place once, a mere mass strike action arising out of discipline, and directed by the conductor's baton of a party executive, could therefore leave the broad masses of the people cold and indifferent. But a powerful and reckless fighting action of the industrial proletariat, born of a revolutionary situation, must surely react upon the deeper-lying layers, and ultimately draw all those into a stormy general economic struggle who, in normal times, stand aside from the daily trade-union fight.

But when we come back to the organised vanguard of the German industrial proletariat, on the other hand, and keep before our eyes the objects of the economic struggle which have been striven for by the Russian working class, we do not at all find that there is any tendency to look down upon the things of youth, as the oldest German trade-unions had reason to do. Thus the most important general demand of the Russian strikes since January 22 – the eight-hour day – is certainly not an unattainable platform for the German proletariat, but rather in most cases, a beautiful, remote ideal. This applies also to the struggle for the “mastery of the household” platform, to the struggle for the introduction of workers' committees into all the factories, for the abolition of piece-work, for the abolition of homework in handicraft, for the complete observance of Sunday rest, and for the recognition of the right of combination. Yes, on closer inspection all the economic objects of struggle of the Russian proletariat are also for the German proletariat very real, and touch a very sore spot in the life of the workers.

It therefore inevitably follows that the pure political mass strike, which is operated with for preference, is, in Germany, a mere lifeless theoretical plan. If the mass strikes result, in a natural way from a strong revolutionary ferment, they will equally naturally, exactly as in Russia, change into a whole period of elementary, economic struggles. The fears of the trade-union leaders, therefore, that the struggle for economic interests in a period of stormy political strife, in a period of mass strikes, can simply be pushed aside and suppressed rest upon an utterly baseless, schoolboy conception of the course of events. A revolutionary period in Germany would also so alter the character of the trade-union struggle and develop its potentialities to such an extent that the present guerrilla warfare of the trade-unions would be child's play in comparison. And on the other hand, from this elementary economic tempest of mass strikes, the political struggle would always derive new impetus and fresh strength. The reciprocal action of economic and political struggle, which is the main-spring of present-day strikes in Russia, and at the same time the regulating mechanism of the revolutionary action of the proletariat, would also naturally result in Germany from the conditions themselves.

VI. Co-operation of Organised and Unorganised Workers Necessary for Victory

In connection with this, the question of organisation in relation to the problem of the mass strike in Germany assumes an essentially different aspect.

The attitude of many trade-union leaders to this question is generally summed up in the assertion : “We are not yet strong enough to risk such a hazardous trial of strength as a mass strike.” Now this position is so far untenable that it is an insoluble problem to determine the time, in a peaceful fashion by counting heads, when the proletariat are “strong enough” for any struggle. Thirty years ago the German trade-unions had 50,000 members. That was obviously a number with which a mass strike on the above scale was not to be thought of. Fifteen years later the trade-unions were four times as strong, and counted 237,000 members. If, however, the present trade-union leaders had been asked at the time if the organisation of the proletariat was then sufficiently ripe for a mass strike, they would assuredly have replied that it was still far from it and that the number of those organised in trade-unions would first have to be counted by millions.

Today the number of trade-unionists already runs into the second million, but the views of the leaders are still exactly the same, and may very well be the same to the end. The tacit assumption is that the entire working class of Germany, down to the last man and the last woman, must be included in the organisation before it “is strong enough” to risk a mass action, which then, according to the old formula, would probably be represented as “superfluous.” This theory is nevertheless absolutely utopian, for the simple reason that it suffers from an internal contradiction, that it goes in a vicious circle. Before the workers can engage in any direct class struggle they must all be organised. The circumstances, the conditions, of capitalist development and of the bourgeois state make it impossible that, in the normal course of things, without stormy class struggles, certain sections – and these the greatest, the most important, the lowest and the most oppressed by capital, and by the state – can be organised at all. We see even in Britain, which has had a whole century of indefatigable trade-union effort without any “disturbances” – except at the beginning in the period of the Chartist movement – without any “romantic revolutionary” errors or temptations, it has not been possible to do more than organise a minority of the better-paid sections of the proletariat.

On the other hand the trade-unions, like all fighting organisations of the proletariat, cannot permanently maintain themselves in any other way than by struggle, and that not struggles of the same kind as the war between the frogs and the mice in the stagnant waters of the bourgeois parliamentary period, but struggle in the troubled revolutionary periods of the mass strike. The rigid, mechanical-bureaucratic conception cannot conceive of the struggle save as the product of organisation at a certain stage of its strength. On the contrary, the living, dialectical explanation makes the organisation arise as a product of the struggle. We have already seen a grandiose example of this phenomenon in Russia, where a proletariat almost wholly unorganised created a comprehensive network of organisational appendages in a year-and-a-half of stormy revolutionary struggle.

Another example of this kind is furnished by the history of the German unions. In the year 1878 the number of trade-union members amounted to 50,000. According to the theory of the present-day trade-union leaders this organisation, as stated above, was not nearly “strong enough” to enter upon a violent political struggle. The German trade-unions however, weak as they were at the time, did take up the struggle – namely the struggle against the anti-socialist law – and showed that they were “strong enough,” not only to emerge victorious from the struggle, but to increase their strength five-fold : in 1891, after the repeal of the anti-socialist laws, their membership was 277,659. It is true that the methods by which the trade-unions conquered in the struggle against the anti-socialist laws do not correspond to the ideal of a peaceful, bee-like, uninterrupted process : they went first into the fight absolutely in ruins, to rise again on the next wave and to be born anew. But this is precisely the specific method of growth corresponding to the proletarian class organisations : to be tested in the struggle and to go forth from the struggle with increased strength.

On a closer examination of German conditions and of the condition of the different sections of the working class, it is clear that the coming period of stormy political mass struggles will not bring the dreaded, threatening downfall of the German trade-unions, but on the contrary, will open up hitherto unsuspected prospects of the extension of their sphere of power – an extension that will proceed rapidly by leaps and bounds. But the question has still another aspect. The plan of undertaking mass strikes as a serious political class action with organised workers only is absolutely hopeless. If the mass strike, or rather, mass strikes, and the mass struggle are to be successful they must become a real people's movement, that is, the widest sections of the proletariat must be drawn into the fight. Already in the parliamentary form the might of the proletarian class struggle rests not on the small, organised group but on the surrounding periphery of the revolutionary-minded proletariat. If the social democrats were to enter the electoral battle with their few hundred thousand organised members alone, they would condemn themselves to futility. And although it is the tendency of social democracy wherever possible to draw the whole great army of its voters into the party organisation, its mass of voters after thirty years experience of social democracy is not increased through the growth of the party organisation, but on the contrary, the new sections of the proletariat, won for the time being through the electoral struggle, are the fertile soil for the subsequent seed of organisation. Here the organisation does not supply the troops of the struggle, but the struggle, in an ever growing degree, supplies recruits for the organisation.

In a much greater degree does this obviously apply to direct political mass action than to the parliamentary struggle. If the social democrats, as the organised nucleus of the working class, are the most important vanguard of the entire body of the workers and if the political clarity, the strength, and the unity of the labour movement flow from this organisation, then it is not permissible to visualise the class movement of the proletariat as a movement of the organised minority. Every real, great class struggle must rest upon the support and co-operation of the widest masses, and a strategy of class struggle which does not reckon with this co-operation, which is based upon the idea of the finely stage-managed march out of the small, well-trained part of the proletariat is foredoomed to be a miserable fiasco.

Mass strikes and political mass struggles cannot, therefore, possibly be carried through in Germany by the organised workers alone, nor can they be appraised by regular “direction” from the central committee of a party. In this case, again – exactly as in Russia – they depend not so much upon “discipline” and “training” and upon the most careful possible regulation beforehand of the questions of support and cost, as upon a real revolutionary, determined class action, which will be able to win and draw into the struggle the widest circles of the unorganised workers, according to their mood and their conditions.

The overestimate and the false estimate of the role of organisations in the class struggle of the proletariat is generally reinforced by the underestimate of the unorganised proletarian mass and of their political maturity. In a revolutionary period, in the storm of great unsettling class struggles, the whole educational effect of the rapid capitalist development and of social democratic influences first shows itself upon the widest sections of the people, of which, in peaceful times the tables of the organised, and even election statistics, give only a faint idea.

We have seen that in Russia, in about two years a great general action of the proletariat can forthwith arise from the smallest partial conflict of the workers with the employers, from the most insignificant act of brutality of the government organs. Everyone, of course, sees and believes that, because in Russia “the revolution” is there. But what does that mean ? It means that class feeling, the class instinct, is alive and very active in the Russian proletariat, so that immediately they regard every partial question of any small group of workers as a general question, as a class affair, and quick as lightening they react to its influence as a unity. While in Germany, France, Italy and Holland the most violent trade-union conflicts call forth hardly any general action of the working class – and when they do, only the organised part of the workers move – in Russia the smallest dispute raises a storm. That means nothing else however, than that at present – paradoxical as it may sound – the class instinct of the youngest, least trained, badly educated and still worse organised Russian proletariat is immeasurably stronger than that of the organised, trained and enlightened working class of Germany or of any other west European country. And that is not to be reckoned a special virtue of the “young, unexhausted East” as compared with the “sluggish West,” but is simply a result of direct revolutionary mass action.

In the case of the enlightened German worker the class consciousness implanted by the social democrats is theoretical and latent : in the period ruled by bourgeois parliamentarism it cannot, as a rule, actively participate in a direct mass action ; it is the ideal sum of the four hundred parallel actions of the electoral sphere during the election struggle, of the many partial economic strikes and the like. In the revolution when the masses themselves appear upon the political battlefield this class-consciousness becomes practical and active. A year of revolution has therefore given the Russian proletariat that “training” which thirty years of parliamentary and trade-union struggle cannot artificially give to the German proletariat. Of course, this living, active class feeling of the proletariat will considerably diminish in intensity, or rather change into a concealed and latent condition, after the close of the period of revolution and the erection of a bourgeois-parliamentary constitutional state.

And just as surely, on the other hand, will the living revolutionary class feeling, capable of action, affect the widest and deepest layers of the proletariat in Germany in a period of strong political engagement, and that the more rapidly and more deeply, more energetically the educational work of social democracy is carried on amongst them. This educational work and the provocative and revolutionising effect of the whole present policy of Germany will express itself in the circumstances that all those groups which at present in their apparent political stupidity remain insensitive to all the organising attempts of the social democrats and of the trade unions will suddenly follow the flag of social democracy in a serious revolutionary period. Six months of a revolutionary period will complete the work of the training of these as yet unorganised masses which ten years of public demonstrations and distribution of leaflets would be unable to do. And when conditions in Germany have reached the critical stage for such a period, the sections which are today unorganised and backward will, in the struggle, prove themselves the most radical, the most impetuous element, and not one that will have to be dragged along. If it should come to mass strikes in Germany it will almost certainly not be the best organised workers – and most certainly not the printers – who will develop the greatest capacity for action, but the worst organised or totally unorganised – the miners, the textile workers, and perhaps even the land workers.

In this way we arrive at the same conclusions in Germany in relation to the peculiar tasks of direction in relation to the role of social democracy in mass strikes, as in our analysis of events in Russia. If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples' movement arising with elementary energy, from the culmination of class antagonisms and the political situation – a movement which passes, politically as well as economically, into mass struggles and mass strikes – it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but, first and foremost, in the political leadership of the whole movement.

The social democrats are the most enlightened, most class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat. They cannot and dare not wait, in a fatalist fashion, with folded arms for the advent of the “revolutionary situation,” to wait for that which in every spontaneous peoples' movement, falls from the clouds. On the contrary, they must now, as always, hasten the development of things and endeavour to accelerate events. This they cannot do, however, by suddenly issuing the “slogan” for a mass strike at random at any odd moment, but first and foremost, by making clear to the widest layers of the proletariat the inevitable advent of this revolutionary period, the inner social factors making for it and the political consequences of it. If the widest proletarian layer should be won for a political mass action of the social democrats, and if, vice versa, the social democrats should seize and maintain the real leadership of a mass movement – should they become, in a political sense, the rulers of the whole movement, then they must, with the utmost clearness, consistency and resoluteness, inform the German proletariat of their tactics and aims in the period of coming struggle.

VII. The Role of the Mass Strike in the Revolution

We have seen that the mass strike in Russia does not represent an artificial product of premeditated tactics on the part of the social democrats, but a natural historical phenomenon on the basis of the present revolution. Now what are the factors which in Russia have brought forth this new phenomenal form of the revolution ?

The Russian revolution has for first task the abolition of absolutism and the establishment of a modern bourgeois-parliamentary constitutional state. It is exactly the same in form as that which confronted Germany in the March 1848 Revolution, and the Great French Revolution of the end of the eighteenth century. But the condition, the historical milieu, in which these formally analogous revolutions took place, are fundamentally different from those of present-day Russia. The essential difference is that between those bourgeois revolutions in the West, and the current bourgeois revolution in the East, the whole cycle of capitalist development has run its course. And this development had seized not only the West European countries, but also absolutist Russia. Large-scale industry with all its consequences – modern class divisions, acute social contrasts, modern life in large cities and the modern proletariat – has become in Russia the prevailing form, that is, in social development the decisive form of production.

The remarkable, contradictory, historical situation results from this that the bourgeois revolution, in accordance with its formal tasks will, in the first place, be carried out by a modern class-conscious proletariat, and in an international milieu whose distinguishing characteristic is the ruin of bourgeois democracy. It is not the bourgeoisie that is now the driving force of revolution as in the earlier revolutions of the West, while the proletarian masses, swamped amidst a petty-bourgeois mass, simply furnish cannon-fodder for the bourgeoisie, but on the contrary, it is the class-conscious proletariat that is the active and leading element, while the big bourgeois turns out to be either openly against the revolution or liberal moderates, and only the rural petit-bourgeoisie and the urban petit-bourgeois intelligentsia are definitively oppositional and even revolutionary minded.

The Russian proletariat, however, who are destined to play the leading part in the bourgeois revolution, enter the fight free from all illusions of bourgeois democracy, with a strongly developed consciousness of their own specific class interests, and at a time when the antagonism between capital and labour has reached its height. This contradictory situation finds expression in the fact that in this formally bourgeois revolution, the antagonism of bourgeois society to absolutism is governed by the antagonism of the proletariat to bourgeois society, that the struggle of the proletariat to bourgeois society is directed simultaneously and with equal energy against both absolutism and capitalist exploitation, and that the programme of the revolutionary struggle concentrates with equal emphasis on political freedom, the winning of the eight-hour day, and a human standard of material existence for the proletariat. This two-fold character of the Russian Revolution is expressed in that close union of the economic with the political struggle and in their mutual interaction which we have seen is a feature of the Russian events and which finds its appropriate expression in the mass strike.

In the earlier bourgeois revolution where, on the one hand, the political training and the leadership of the revolutionary masses were undertaken by the bourgeois parties, and where, on the other hand, it was merely a question of overthrowing the old government, the brief battle at the barricades was the appropriate form of the revolutionary struggle. Today the working class must educate itself, marshal its forces, and direct itself in the course of the revolutionary struggle and thus the revolution is directed as much against capitalist exploitation as against the ancien regime ; so much so that the mass strike appears as the natural means to recruit, organize and prepare the widest proletarian layers for revolutionary struggle, as the means to undermine and overthrow the old state power, as well as to contain the capitalist exploitation. The urban industrial proletariat is now the soul of the revolution in Russia. But in order to carry through a direct political struggle as a mass, the proletariat must first be assembled as a mass, and for this purpose they must come out of the factory and workshop, mine and foundry, must overcome the atomisation and decay to which they are condemned under the daily yoke of capitalism.

The mass strike is the first natural, impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become. The chief form of previous bourgeois revolutions, the fight at the barricades, the open conflict with the armed power of the state, is in the revolution today only the culminating point, only a moment on the process of the proletarian mass struggle. And therewith in the new form of the revolution there is reached that civilising and mitigating of the class struggle which was prophesied by the opportunists of German social democracy – the Bernsteins, Davids, etc. It is true that these men saw the desired civilising and mitigating of the class struggle in the light of petty bourgeois democratic illusions – they believed that the class struggle would shrink to an exclusively parliamentary contest and that street fighting would simply be done away with. History has found the solution in a deeper and finer fashion : in the advent of revolutionary mass strikes, which, of course, in no way replaces brutal street fights or renders them unnecessary, but which reduces them to a moment in the long period of political struggle, and which at the same time unites with the revolutionary period and enormous cultural work in the most exact sense of the words : the material and intellectual elevation of the whole working class through the “civilising” of the barbaric forms of capitalist exploitation.

The mass strike is thus shown to be not a specifically Russian product, springing from absolutism, but a universal form of the proletarian class struggle resulting from the present stage of capitalist development and class relations. From this standpoint the three bourgeois revolutions – the Great French Revolution, the German Revolution of March, and the present Russian Revolution – form a continuous chain of development in which the fortunes and the end of the capitalist century are to be seen. In the Great French Revolution the still wholly underdeveloped internal contradictions of bourgeois society gave scope for a long period of violent struggles, in which all the antagonisms which first germinated and ripened in the heat of the revolution raged unhindered and unrestrained in a spirit of reckless radicalism. A century later the revolution of the German bourgeoisie, which broke out midway in the development of capitalism, was already hampered on both sides by the antagonism of interests and the equilibrium of strength between capital and labour, and was smothered in a bourgeois-feudal compromise, and shortened to a miserable episode ending in words.

Another half century, and the present Russian Revolution stands at a point of the historical path which is already over the summit, which is on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society, at which the bourgeois revolutions cannot again be smothered by the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, but, will, on the contrary, expand into a new lengthy period of violent social struggles, at which the balancing of the account with absolutism appears a trifle in comparison with the many new accounts which the revolution itself opens up. The present revolution realises in the particular affairs of absolutist Russia the general results of international capitalist development, and appears not so much as the last successor of the old bourgeois revolutions as the forerunner of the new series of proletarian revolutions of the West. The most backward country of all, just because it has been so unpardonably late with its bourgeois revolution, shows ways and methods of further class struggle to the proletariat of Germany and the most advanced capitalist countries.

Accordingly it appears, when looked at in this way, to be entirely wrong to regard the Russian Revolution as a grandiose spectacle, as something specifically “Russian,” and at best to admire the heroism of the fighting men, that is, as outside onlookers of the struggle. It is much more important that the German workers should learn to look upon the Russian Revolution as their own affair, not merely as a matter of international solidarity with the Russian proletariat, but first and foremost, as a chapter of their own social and political history. Those trade-union leaders and parliamentarians who regard the German proletariat as “too weak” and German conditions “as not ripe enough” for revolutionary mass struggles, have obviously not the least idea that the measure of the degree of ripeness of class relations in Germany and of the power of the proletariat does not lie in the statistics of German trade unionism or in election figures, but – in the events of the Russian Revolution. Exactly as the ripeness of French class antagonisms under the July monarchy and the June battle of Paris was reflected in the German March Revolution, in its course and its fiasco, so today the ripeness of German class antagonisms is reflected in the events and in the power of the Russian Revolution. And while the bureaucrats of the German labour movement rummage in their office drawers for information as to their strength and maturity, they do not see that that for which they seek is lying before their eyes in a great historical revolution, because, historically considered, the Russian Revolution is a reflex of the power and the maturity of the international, and therefore in the first place, of the German labour movement.

It would therefore be a too pitiable and grotesquely insignificant result of the Russian Revolution if the German proletariat should merely draw from it the lesson – as is desired by Comrades Frohme, Elm, and others – of using the extreme form of the struggle, the mass strike, and so weaken themselves as to be merely a reserve force in the event of the withdrawal of the parliamentary vote, and therefore a passive means of parliamentary defensive. When the parliamentary vote is taken from us there we will resist. That is a self-evident decision. But for this it is not necessary to adopt the heroic pose of a Danton as was done, for example, by Comrade Elm in Jena ; because the defence of the modest measure of parliamentary right already possessed is less a Heaven-storming innovation, for which the frightful hecatombs of the Russian Revolution were first necessary as a means of encouragement, than the simplest and first duty of every opposition party. But the mere defensive can never exhaust the policy of the proletariat, in a period of revolution. And if it is, on the one hand, difficult to predict with any degree of certainty whether the destruction of universal suffrage would cause a situation in Germany which would call forth an immediate mass strike action, so on the other hand, it is absolutely certain that when we in Germany enter upon the period of stormy mass actions, it will be impossible for the social democrats to base their tactics upon a mere parliamentary defensive.

To fix beforehand the cause and the moment from and in which the mass strikes in Germany will break out is not in the power of social democracy, because it is not in its power to bring about historical situations by resolutions at party congresses. But what it can and must do is to make clear the political tendencies, when they once appear, and to formulate them as resolute and consistent tactics. Man cannot keep historical events in check while making recipes for them, but he can see in advance their apparent calculable consequences and arrange his mode of action accordingly.

The first threatening political danger with which the German proletariat have concerned themselves for a number of years is a coup d'état of the reaction which will wrest from the wide masses of the people of the most important political right – universal suffrage. In spite of the immense importance of this possible event, it is, as we have already said, impossible to assert with certainty that an open popular movement would immediately break out after the coup d'état, because today innumerable circumstances and factors have to be taken into account. But when we consider the present extreme acuteness of conditions in Germany, and on the other hand, the manifold international reactions of the Russian Revolution and of the future rejuvenated Russia, it is clear that the collapse of German politics which would ensue from the repeal of universal suffrage could not alone call a halt to the struggle for this right. This coup d'état would rather draw after it, in a longer or shorter period and with elementary power, a great general political reckoning of the insurgent and awakened mass of the people – a reckoning with bread usury, with artificially caused dearness of meat, with expenditure on a boundless militarism and “navalism,” with the corruption of colonial policy, with the national disgrace of the Konigsberg trial, with the cessation of social reform, with the discharging of railway workers, the postal officials and the land workers, with the tricking and mocking of the miners, with the judgement of Lobtau and the whole system of class justice, with the brutal lockout system – in short, with the whole thirty-year-old oppression of the combined dominion of Junkerdom and large trustified capital.

But if once the ball is set rolling then social democracy, whether it wills it or not, can never again bring it to a standstill. The opponents of the mass strike are in the habit of denying that the lessons and examples of the Russian Revolution can be a criterion for Germany because, in the first place, in Russia the great step must first be taken from an Oriental despotism to a modern bourgeois legal order. The formal distance between the old and the new political order is said to be a sufficient explanation of the vehemence and the violence of the revolution in Russia. In Germany we have long had the most necessary forms and guarantees of a constitutional state, from which it follows that such an elementary raging of social antagonisms is impossible here.

Those who speculate thus forget that in Germany when it once comes to the outbreak of open political struggles, even the historically determined goal will be quite different from that in Russia today. Precisely because the bourgeois legal order in Germany has existed for a long time, because therefore it has had time to completely exhaust itself and to draw to an end, because bourgeois democracy and liberalism have had time to die out – because of this there can no longer be any talk of a bourgeois revolution in Germany. And therefore in a period of open political popular struggles in Germany, the last historically necessary goal can only be the dictatorship of the proletariat. The distance, however, of this task from the present conditions of Germany is still greater than that of the bourgeois legal order from Oriental despotism, and therefore, the task cannot be completed at one stroke, but must similarly be accomplished during a long period of gigantic social struggles.

But is there not a gross contradiction in the picture we have drawn ? On the one hand it means that in an eventual future period of political mass action the most backward layers of the German proletariat – the land workers, the railwaymen, and the postal slaves – will first of all win the right of combination, and that the worst excrescences of exploitation must first be removed and on the other hand, the political task of this period is said to be the conquest of power by the proletariat ! On the one hand, economic, trade-union struggles for the most immediate interests, for the material elevation of the working class ; on the other hand the ultimate goal of social democracy ! Certainly these are great contradictions, but they are not contradictions due to our reasoning, but contradictions due to capitalist development. It does not proceed in a beautiful straight line but in a lightning-like zig-zag. Just as the various capitalist countries represent the most varied stages of development, so within each country the different layers of the same working class are represented. But history does not wait patiently till the backward countries, and the most advanced layers have joined together so that the whole mass can move symmetrically forward like a compact column. It brings the best prepared parts to explosion as soon as conditions there are ripe for it, and then in the storm of the revolutionary period, lost ground is recovered, unequal things are equalised, and the whole pace of social progress changed at one stroke to the double-quick.

Just as in the Russian Revolution all the grades of development and all the interests of the different layers of workers are united in the social democratic programme of the revolution, and the innumerable partial struggles united in the great common class action of the proletariat, so will it also be in Germany when the conditions are ripe for it. And the task of social democracy will then be to regulate its tactics, not by the most backward phases of development but by the most advanced.

VIII. Need for United Action of Trade Unions and Social Democracy

The most important desideratum which is to be hoped for from the German working class in the period of great struggles which will come sooner or later is, after complete resoluteness and consistency of tactics, the utmost capacity for action, and therefore the utmost possible unity of the leading social democratic part of the proletarian masses. Meanwhile the first weak attempts at the preparation of great mass actions have discovered a serious drawback in this connection : the total separation and independence of the two organisations of the labour movement, the social democracy and the trade unions.

It is clear on a closer consideration of the mass strikes in Russia as well as of the conditions in Germany itself, that any great mass action, if it is not confined to a mere one-day demonstration, but is intended to be a real fighting action, cannot possibly be thought of as a so-called political mass strike. In such an action in Germany the trade-unions would be implicated as much as the social democrats. Not because the trade-union leaders imagine that the social democrats, in view of their smaller organisation, would have no other resources than the co-operation of one and a quarter million trade-unionists and without them would be unable to do anything, but because of a much more deep-lying motive : because every direct mass action of the period of open class struggles would be at the same time both political and economic. If in Germany, from any cause and at any time, it should come to great political struggles, to mass strikes, then at that time an era of violent trade-union struggles would begin in Germany, and events would not stop to inquire whether the trade-union leaders had given their consent to the movement or not. Whether they stand aside or endeavour to resist the movement, the result of their attitude will only be that the trade-union leaders, like the party leaders in the analogous case, will simply be swept aside by the rush of events, and the economic and the political struggles of the masses will be fought out without them.

As a matter-of-fact the separation of the political, and the economic struggle and the independence of each, is nothing but an artificial product of the parliamentarian period, even if historically determined. On the one hand in the peaceful, “normal” course of bourgeois society, the economic struggle is split into a multitude of individual struggles in every undertaking and dissolved in every branch of production. On the other hand the political struggle is not directed by the masses themselves in a direct action, but in correspondence with the form of the bourgeois state, in a representative fashion, by the presence of legislative representation. As soon as a period of revolutionary struggle commences, that is, as soon as the masses appear on the scene of conflict, the breaking up the economic struggle into many parts, as well as the indirect parliamentary form of the political struggle ceases ; in a revolutionary mass action the political struggle ceases ; in a revolutionary mass action the political and economic struggle are one, and the artificial boundary between trade union and social democracy as two separate, wholly independent forms of the labour movement, is simply swept away. But what finds concrete expression in the revolutionary mass movement finds expression also in the parliamentary period as an actual state of affairs. There are not two different class struggles of the working class, an economic and a political one, but only one class struggle, which aims at one and the same time at the limitation of capitalist exploitation within bourgeois society, and at the abolition of exploitation together with bourgeois society itself.

When these two sides of the class struggle are separated from one another for technical reasons in the parliamentary period, they do not form two parallel concurrent actions, but merely two phases, two stages of the struggle for emancipation of the working class. The trade-union struggle embraces the immediate interests, and the social democratic struggle the future interests, of the labour movement. The communists, says the Communist Manifesto, represent, as against various group interests of the proletariat as a whole, and in the various stages of development of the class struggle, they represent the interests of the whole movement, that is, the ultimate goal – the liberation of the proletariat. The trade unions represent only the group interests and only one stage of development of the labour movement. Social democracy represents the working class and the cause of its liberation as a whole. The relation of the trade unions to social democracy is therefore a part of the whole, and when, amongst the trade-union leaders, the theory of “equal authority” of trade-unions and social democracy finds so much favour, it rests upon a fundamental misconception of the essence of trade-unionism itself and of its role in the general struggle for freedom of the working class.

This theory of the parallel action of social democracy and the trade-unions and of their “equal authority” is nevertheless not altogether without foundation, but has its historical roots. It rests upon the illusion of the peaceful, “normal” period of bourgeois society, in which the political struggle of social democracy appears to be consumed in the parliamentary struggle. The parliamentary struggle, however, the counterpart of the trade-union struggle, is equally with it, a fight conducted exclusively on the on the basis of the bourgeois social order. It is by its very nature, political reform work, as that of the trade-unions is economic reform work. It represents political work for the present, as trade-unions represent economic work for the present. It is, like them, merely a phase, a stage of development in the complete process of the proletarian class struggle whose ultimate goal is as far beyond the parliamentary struggle as it is beyond the trade-union struggle. The parliamentary struggle is, in relation to social democratic policy, also a part of the whole, exactly as trade-union work is. Social democracy today comprises the parliamentary and the trade-union struggle in one class struggle aiming at the abolition of the bourgeois social order.

The theory of the “equal authority” of trade-unions and social democracy is likewise not a mere theoretical misunderstanding, not a mere case of confusion but an expression of the well-known tendency of that opportunist wing of social democracy which reduced the political struggle of the working class to the parliamentary contest, and desires to change social democracy from a revolutionary proletarian party into a petty-bourgeois reform one.[1] If social democracy should accept the theory of the “equal authority” of the trade-unions, it would thereby accept, indirectly and tacitly, that transformation which has long been striven for by the representatives of the opportunist tendency.

In Germany, however, there is such a shifting of relations within the labour movement as is impossible in any other country. The theoretical conception, according to which the trade-unions are merely a part of social democracy, finds its classic expression in Germany in fact, in actual practice, and that in three directions. First, the German trade-unions are a direct product of social democracy ; it was social democracy which created the beginnings of the present trade-union movement in Germany and which enabled it to attain such great dimensions, and it is social democracy which supplies it to this day with its leaders and the most active promoters of its organisation.

Second, the German trade-unions are a product of social democracy also in the sense that social democratic teaching in the soul of trade-union practice, as the trade-unions owe their superiority over all bourgeois and denominational trade-unions to the idea of the class struggle ; their practical success, their power, is a result of the circumstance that their practice is illuminated by the theory of scientific socialism and they are thereby raised above the level of a narrow-minded socialism. The strength of the “practical policy” of the German trade-unions lies in their insight into the deeper social and economic connections of the capitalist system ; but they owe this insight entirely to the theory of scientific socialism upon which their practice is based. Viewed in this way, any attempt to emancipate the trade-unions from the social democratic theory in favour of some other “trade-union theory” opposed to social democracy, is, from the standpoint of the trade-unions themselves and of their future, nothing but an attempt to commit suicide. The separation of trade-union practice from the theory of scientific socialism would mean to the German trade-unions the immediate loss of all their superiority over all kinds of bourgeois trade-unions, and their fall from their present height to the level of unsteady groping and mere dull empiricism.

Thirdly and finally, the trade-unions are, although their leaders have gradually lost sight of the fact, even as regards their numerical strength, a direct product of the social democratic movement and the social democratic agitation. It is true that in many districts trade-union agitation precedes social democratic agitation, and that everywhere trade-union work prepares the way for party work. From the point of view of effect, party and trade-unions assist each other to the fullest extent. But when the picture of the class struggle in Germany is looked at as a whole and its more deep-seated associations, the proportions are considerably altered. Many trade-union leaders are in the habit of looking down triumphantly from the proud height of their membership of one and a quarter million on the miserable organised members of the Social Democratic Party, not yet half a million strong, and of recalling the time, ten or twelve years ago, when those in the ranks of social democracy were pessimistic as to the prospects of trade-union development.

They do see that between these two things – the large number of organised trade unionists and the small number of organised Social Democrats – there exists in a certain degree a direct causal connection. Thousands and thousands of workers do not join the party organisations precisely because they join the trade-unions. According to the theory, all the workers must be doubly organised, must attend two kinds of meetings, pay double contributions, read two kinds of workers' papers, etc. But for this it is necessary to have a higher standard of intelligence and of that idealism which, from a pure feeling of duty to the labour movement, is prepared for the daily sacrifice of time and money, and finally, a higher standard of that passionate interest in the actual life of the party which can only be engendered by membership of the party organisation. All this is true of the most enlightened and intelligent minority of social democratic workers in the large towns, where party life is full and attractive and where the workers' standard of living is high. Amongst the wider sections of the working masses in the large towns, however, as well as in the provinces, in the smaller and the smallest towns where political life is not an independent thing but a mere reflex of the course of events in the capital, where consequently, party life is poor and monotonous, and where, finally, the economic standard of life of the workers is, for the most part, miserable, it is very difficult to secure the double form of organisation.

For the social democratically-minded worker from the masses the question will be solved by his joining his trade-union. The immediate interests of his economic struggle which are conditioned by the nature of the struggle itself cannot be advanced in any other way than by membership of a trade-union organisation. The contribution which he pays, often amidst considerable sacrifice of his standard of living, bring him immediate, visible results. His social democratic inclinations, however, enable him to participate in various kinds of work without belonging to a special party organisation ; by voting at parliamentary elections, by attendance at social democratic public meetings, by following the reports of social democratic speeches in representatives bodies, and by reading the party press. Compare in this connection the number of social democratic electors or the number of subscribers to Vorwärts with the number of organised party members in Berlin !

And what is most decisive, the social democratically-minded average worker who, as a simple man, can have no understanding of the intricate and fine so-called two-soul theory, feels that he is, even in the trade union, social democratically organised. Although the central committees of the unions have no official party label, the workman from the masses in every city and town sees the head of his trade-union as the most active leader, those colleagues whom he knows also as comrades and social democrats in public life, now as Reichstag, Landstag or local representatives, now as trusted men of the social democracy, members of election committees, party editors and secretaries, or merely as speakers and agitators. Further, he hears expressed in the agitational work of his trade-union much the same ideas, pleasing and intelligible to him, of capitalist exploitation, class relations, etc., as those that have come to him from social democratic agitation. Indeed, the most and best loved of the speakers at trade-union meetings are those same social democrats.

Thus everything combines to give the average class-conscious worker the feeling that he, in being organised in his trade-union, is also a member of his labour party and is social democratically organised, and therein lies the peculiar recruiting strength of the German trade-unions. Not because of the appearance of neutrality, but because of the social democratic reality of their being, have the central unions being enabled to attain their present strength. This is simply through the co-existence of the various unions – Catholic, Hirsch-Dunker, etc. – founded by bourgeois parties by which it was sought to establish the necessity for that political “neutrality.” When the German worker who has full freedom of choice to attach himself to a Christian, Catholic, Evangelical or Free-thinking trade-union, chooses none of these but the “free trade-union” instead, or leaves one of the former to join the latter, he does so only because he considers that the central unions are the avowed organisations of the modern class struggle, or, what is the same thing in Germany, that they are social democratic trade-unions.

In a word the appearance of “neutrality,” which exists in the minds of many trade-union leaders, does not exist for the mass of organised trade-unionists. And that is the good fortune of the trade-union movement. If the appearance of “neutrality” that alienation and separation of the trade-unions from social democracy, really and truly becomes a reality in the eyes of the proletarian masses, then the trade-unions would immediately lose all their advantages over competing bourgeois unions, and therewith their recruiting power, their living fire. This is conclusively proved by the facts which are generally known. The appearance of party-political “neutrality” of the trade-unions could, as a means of attraction, render inestimable service in a country in which social democracy itself has no credit among the masses, in which its odium as a workers' organisation injures it in the eyes of the masses rather than advantages it – where, in a word, the trade-unions must first of all recruit their troops from a wholly unenlightened, bourgeois-minded mass.

The best example of such a country was, throughout the whole of the last century, and is to a certain extent today, Great Britain. In Germany, however, party relations are altogether different. In a country, in which social democracy is the most powerful political party, in which its recruiting power is represented by an army of over three million proletarians, it is ridiculous to speak of the deterrent effect of social democracy and of the necessity for a fighting organisation of the workers to ensure political neutrality. The mere comparison of the figures of social democratic voters with the figures of the trade-union organisations in Germany is sufficient to prove to the most simple-minded that the trade-unions in Germany do not, as in England, draw their troops from the unenlightened bourgeois-minded mass, but from the mass of proletarians already aroused by the social democracy and won by it to the idea of the class struggle. Many trade-union leaders indignantly reject the idea – a requisite of the “theory of neutrality” – and regard the trade-unions as a recruiting school for social democracy. This apparently insulting, but in reality, highly flattering presumption is in Germany reduced to mere fancy by the circumstance that the positions are reversed ; it is the social democracy which is the recruiting school for the trade-unions.

Moreover, if the organisational work of the trade-unions is for the most part of a very difficult and troublesome kind, it is, with the exception of a few cases and some districts, not merely because on the whole, the soil has not been prepared by the social democratic plough, but also because the trade-union seed itself, and the sower as well, must also be “red,” social democratic before the harvest can prosper. But when we compare in this way the figures of trade-union strength, not with those of the social democratic organisations, but – which is the only correct way – with those of the mass of social democratic voters, we come to a conclusion which differs considerably from the current view of the matter. The fact then comes to light that the “free trade-unions” actually represent today but a minority of the class-conscious workers of Germany, that even with their one and a quarter million organised members they have not yet been able to draw into their ranks one-half of those already aroused by social democracy.

The most important conclusion to be drawn from the facts above cited is that the complete unity of the trade-union and the social democratic movements, which is absolutely necessary for the coming mass struggles in Germany, is actually here, and that it is incorporated in the wide mass which forms the basis at once of social democracy and trade-unionism, and in whole consciousness both parts of the movement are mingled in a mental unity. The alleged antagonism between Social Democracy and trade unions shrinks to an antagonism between Social Democracy and a certain part of the trade-union officials, which is, however, at the same time an antagonism within the trade unions between this part of the trade-union leaders and the proletarian mass organized in trade unions.

The rapid growth of trade-union movement in Germany in the course of the last fifteen years, especially in the period of great economic prosperity from 1895 to 1900 has brought with it a great independence of the trade-unions, a specialising of their methods of struggle, and finally the introduction of a regular trade-union officialdom. All these phenomena are quite understandable and natural historical products of the growth of the trade-unions in this fifteen-year period, and of the economic prosperity and political calm of Germany. They are, although inseparable from certain drawbacks, without doubt a historically necessary evil. But the dialectics of development also brings with it the circumstance that these necessary means of promoting trade-union growth become, on the contrary, obstacles to this further development at a certain stage of organisation and at a certain degree of ripeness of conditions.

The specialisation of professional activity as trade-union leaders, as well as the naturally restricted horizon which is bound up with disconnected economic struggles in a peaceful period, leads only too easily, amongst trade-union officials, to bureaucratism and a certain narrowness of outlook. Both, however, express themselves in a whole series of tendencies which may be fateful in the highest degree for the future of the trade-union movement. There is first of all the overvaluation of the organisation, which from a means has gradually been changed into an end in itself, a precious thing, to which the interests of the struggles should be subordinated. From this also comes that openly admitted need for peace which shrinks from great risks and presumed dangers to the stability of the trade-unions, and further, the overvaluation of the trade-union method of struggle itself, its prospects and its successes.

The trade-union leaders, constantly absorbed in the economic guerrilla war whose plausible task it is to make the workers place the highest value on the smallest economic achievement, every increase in wages and shortening of the working day, gradually lose the power of seeing the larger connections and of taking a survey of the whole position. Only in this way can one explain why many trade-union leaders refer with the greatest satisfaction to the achievements of the last fifteen years, instead of, on the contrary, emphasising the other side of the medal ; the simultaneous and immense reduction of the proletarian standard of life by land usury, by the whole tax and customs policy, by landlord rapacity which has increased house rents to such an exorbitant extent, in short, by all the objective tendencies of bourgeois policy which have largely neutralised the advantages of the fifteen years of trade-union struggle. From the whole social democratic truth which, while emphasising the importance of the present work and its absolute necessity, attaches the chief importance to the criticism and the limits to this work, the half trade-union truth is taken which emphasises only the positive side of the daily struggle.

And finally, from the concealment of the objective limits drawn by the bourgeois social order to the trade-union struggle, there arises a hostility to every theoretical criticism which refers to these limits in connection with the ultimate aims of the labour movement. Fulsome flattery and boundless optimism are considered to be the duty of every “friend of the trade-union movement.” But as the social democratic standpoint consists precisely in fighting against uncritical parliamentary optimism, a front is at last made against the social democratic theory : men grope for a “new trade-union theory,” that is, a theory which would open an illimitable vista of economic progress to the trade-union struggle within the capitalist system, in opposition to the social democratic doctrine. Such a theory has indeed existed for some time – the theory of Professor Sombart which was promulgated with the express intention of driving a wedge between the trade-unions and the social democracy in Germany, and of enticing the trade-unions over to the bourgeois position.

In close connection with these theoretical tendencies is a revolution of leaders and rank-and-file. In place of the direction by colleagues through local committees, with their admitted inadequacy, there appears the business-like direction of the trade-union officials. The initiative and the power of making decisions thereby devolve upon trade-union specialists, so to speak, and the more passive virtue of discipline upon the mass of members. This dark side of officialdom also assuredly conceals considerable dangers for the party, as from the latest innovation, the institution of local party secretaries, it can quite easily result, if the social democratic mass is not careful that these secretariats may remain mere organs for carrying out decisions and not be regarded in any way the appointed bearers of the initiative and of the direction of local party life. But by the nature of the case, by the character of the political struggle, there are narrow bounds drawn to bureaucratism in social democracy as in trade-union life.

But here the technical specialising of wage struggles as, for example, the conclusion of intricate tariff agreements and for the like, frequently means that the mass of organised workers are prohibited from taking a “survey of the whole industrial life,” and their incapacity for taking decisions is thereby established. A consequence of this conception is the argument with which every theoretical criticism of the prospects and possibilities of trade-union practice is tabooed and which alleges that it represents a danger to the pious trade-union sentiment of the masses. From this, a point of view has been developed, that it is only by blind, child-like faith in the efficacy of the trade-union struggle that the working masses can be won and held for the organisation. In contradistinction to social democracy which bases its influence on the unity of the masses amidst the contradictions of the existing order and in the complicated character of its development, and on the critical attitude of the masses to all factors and stages of their own class struggle, the influence and the power of the trade-unions are founded upon the upside-down theory of the incapacity of the masses for criticism and decision. “The faith of the people must be maintained” – that is the fundamental principle, acting upon which many trade-union officials stamp as attempts on the life of this movement, all criticisms of the objective inadequacy of trade-unionism.

And finally, a result of all this specialisation and this bureaucratism amongst trade-union officials is the great independence and the “neutrality” of the trade-unions in relation to social democracy. The extreme independence of the trade-union organisation is a natural result of its growth, as a relation which has grown out of the technical division of work between the political and the trade-union forms of struggle. The “neutrality” of the German trade-unions, on its part, arose as a product of the reactionary trade-union legislation of the Prusso-German police state. With time, both aspects of their nature have altered. From the condition of political “neutrality” of the trade-unions imposed by the police, a theory of their voluntary neutrality has been evolved as a necessity founded upon the alleged nature of the trade-union struggle itself. And the technical independence of the trade-unions which should rest upon the division of work in the unified social democratic class struggle, the separation of the trade-unions from social democracy, from its views and its leadership, has been changed into the so-called equal authority of trade-unions and social democracy.

The appearance of separation and equality of trade-unions and social democracy is, however, incorporated chiefly in the trade-union officials, and strengthened through the managing apparatus of the trade-unions. Outwardly, by the co-existence of a complete staff of trade-union officials, of a wholly independent central committee, of numerous professional press, and finally of a trade-union congress, the illusion is created of an exact parallel with the managing apparatus of the social democracy, the party executive, the party press and the party conference. This illusion of equality between social democracy and the trade-union had led to, amongst other things, the monstrous spectacle that, in part, quite analogous agendas are discussed at social democratic conferences and trade-union congresses, and that on the same questions different, and even diametrically opposite, decisions are taken. From the natural division of work between the party conference (which represents the general interests ans tasks of the labour movement), and the trade-union congress (which deals with the much narrower sphere of social questions and interests) the artificial division has been made of a pretended trade-union and a social democratic outlook in relation to the same general questions and interests of the labour movement.

Thus the peculiar position has arisen that this same trade-union movement which below, in the wide proletarian masses, is absolutely one with social democracy, parts abruptly from it above, in the super-structure of management, and sets itself up as an independent great power. The German labour movement therefore assumes the peculiar form of a double pyramid whose base and body consist of one solid mass but whose apexes are wide apart.

It is clear from this presentation of the case in what way alone in a natural and successful manner that compact unity of the German labour movement can be attained which, in view of the coming political class struggles and of the peculiar interests of the further development of the trade-unions, is indispensably necessary. Nothing could be more perverse or more hopeless than to desire to attain the unity desired by means of sporadic and periodical negotiations on individual questions affecting the labour movement between the Social Democratic Party leadership the trade-union central committees. It is just the highest circles of both forms of the labour movement, which as we have seen, incorporate their separation and self-sufficiency, which are themselves, therefore, the promoters of the illusion of the “equal authority” and of the parallel existence of social democracy and trade-unionism.

To desire the unity of these through the union of the party executive and the general commission is to desire to build a bridge at the very spot where the distance is greater and the crossing more difficult. Not above, amongst the heads of the leading directing organisations and in their federative alliance, but below, amongst the organised proletarian masses, lies the guarantee of the real unity of the labour movement. In the consciousness of the million trade-unionists, the party and the trade unions are actually one, they represent in different forms the social democratic struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. And the necessity automatically arises therefrom of removing any causes of friction which have arisen between the social democracy and a part of the trade unions, of adapting their mutual relation to the consciousness of the proletarian masses, that is, of re-joining the trade-unions to social democracy. The synthesis of the real development which led from the original incorporation of the trade-unions to their separation from social democracy will thereby be expressed, and the way will be peppered for the coming period of great proletarian mass struggles during the period of vigorous growth, of both trade-unions and social democracy and their reunion, in the interests of both, will become a necessity.

It is not, of course, a question of the merging of the trade-union organisation in the party, but of the restoration of the unity of social democracy and the trade-unions which corresponds to the actual relation between the labour movement as a whole and its partial trade-union expression. Such a revolution will inevitably call forth a vigorous opposition from a part of the trade-union leadership. But it is high time for the working masses of social democracy to learn how to express their capacity for decision and action, and therewith to demonstrate their ripeness for that time of great struggles and great tasks in which they, the masses, will be the actual chorus and the directing bodies will merely act the “speaking parts,” that is, will only be the interpreters of the will of the masses.

The trade-union movement is not that which is reflected in the quite understandable but irrational illusion of a minority of the trade-union leaders, but that which lives in the consciousness of the mass of proletarians who have been won for the class struggle. In this consciousness the trade-union movement is part of social democracy. “And what it is, that should it dare to appear.”
Footnote

[1] As the existence of such a tendency within German social democracy is generally denied, one must be grateful for the candour with which the opportunist trend has recently formulated its real aims and wishes. At a party meeting in Mayence on September 10, 1909, the following revolution, proposed by Dr. David, was carried.

“Whereas the Social Democratic Party interprets the term ‘revolution' not in the sense of violent overthrow, but in the peaceful sense of development, that is, the gradual realisation of a new economic principle, the public party meeting at Mayence repudiates every kind of revolutionary romance.”

“The meeting sees in the conquest of political power nothing but the winning over of the majority of the people to the ideas and demands of the social democracy ; a conquest which cannot be achieved by means of violence, but only by the revolutionising of the mind by means of intellectual propaganda and practical reform work in all spheres of political, economic and social life.”

“In the conviction that social democracy flourishes far better when it employs legal means that when it relies on illegal means and revolution, the meeting repudiates ‘direct mass action' as a tactical principle, and holds fast to the principle of ‘parliamentary reform action,' that is, it desires that the party in the future as in the past, shall earnestly endeavour to achieve its aims by legislation and gradual organisational development.”

“The indispensable condition for this reformist method of struggle is that the possibility of participation of the dispossessed masses of the people in the legislation of the empire and of the individual states shall not be lessened but increased to the fullest possible extent. For this reason, the meeting declares it to be an incontestable right of the working class to withhold its labour for a longer or shorter period to ward off attacks on its legal rights and to gain further rights, when all other means fail.”

“But as the political mass strike can only be victoriously carried through when kept within strictly legal limits and when the strikers give no reasonable excuse to the authorities to resort to armed force, the meeting perceives the only necessary and real preparation for the exercise of this method of struggle in the further extension of the political, trade-union and co-operative organisations. Because only in this way can the conditions be created amongst the wide masses of the people which can guarantee the successful prosecution of a mass strike : conscious discipline and adequate economic support.”

Les camps d'extermination du nazisme

Robert Paris — 2025-07-08T22:52:00Z

Les camps d'extermination du nazisme

Les puissances occidentales soi-disant anti-nazies savaient et n'ont rien fait…

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9bat_sur_le_bombardement_d%27Auschwitz

Quand l'Allemagne nazie a ouvert les camps de concentration et pourquoi ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3011

L'extermination des Juifs d'Europe. Pour quelle raison ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article85

Treblinka, Sobibor et autres camps de la mort

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article827

Les camps d'extermination nazis

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centres_d%27extermination_nazis

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camps_de_concentration_nazis

À l'automne 1941, Heinrich Himmler chargea le général SS Odilo Globocnik (commandant des SS et de la police dans le district de Lublin) de mettre en place un plan d'extermination systématique des Juifs du Generalgouvernement. Plus tard, on lui donna comme nom de code « Action Reinhard », en souvenir de Reinhard Heydrich, assassiné par des partisans tchèques en mai 1942. Elle consista, entre autres, à la création de trois centres de mise à mort en Pologne — Belzec, Sobibor et Treblinka — qui avait pour seul objectif le meurtre de masse de Juifs.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/fr/article/final-solution-overview

Heydrich et Himmler, les planificateurs de l'horreur nazie

https://www.geo.fr/histoire/heydrich-et-himmler-les-planificateurs-de-lhorreur-nazie-200470

Qui était Friedrich Flick ?

Industriel allemand, magnat de l'acier. Bénéficie de l'expropriation des Juifs, et de l'exploitation des déportés dans les camps de concentration. Condamné à 7 ans de prison lors des procès de Nuremberg, il en fait 3, puis redevient l'une des plus grandes fortunes mondiales.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/bios/flick.htm

Vers la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, à la veille de la défaite allemande, Flick céda la majorité des actions à ses fils Otto-Ernst et Friedrich Karl. Il a déplacé le siège social vers l'ouest, à Düsseldorf, et a ordonné de détruire des documents à charge. Le 13 juin 1945, il fut arrêté par les forces occupantes américaines dans son manoir à Wackersberg en Bavière. Accusé de crimes de guerre au procès Flick, il a osé se défendre en déclarant qu'il aurait été victime du nazisme. Le 22 décembre 1947, il est condamné tardivement à seulement sept ans de prison à Landsberg. Mais il est relâché de façon scandaleuse par le haut commissaire allié John McCloy, après seulement trois ans de prison confortable, rien à voir avec ses camps de travail, où sont morts 40.000 déportés.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Flick

En tant qu'assistant du Secrétaire d'État de la Guerre pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, John McCloy eut un rôle important dans la gestion des priorités de l'armée américaine. Le Département de la Guerre fut supplié, jusqu'à la fin de 1944, d'aider à sauver les prisonniers des nazis en ordonnant le bombardement des lignes de chemin de fer qui menaient à Auschwitz et à ses chambres à gaz. McCloy répondit que seules de grosses bombes seraient capables d'atteindre ces sites à partir de l'Angleterre, que les bombardiers seraient trop vulnérables et qu'elles étaient nécessaires ailleurs. Pourtant, quelques mois plus tard, les Alliés bombardaient les centres industriels à quelques kilomètres des camps d'extermination, et causèrent apparemment régulièrement des dégâts aux infrastructures d'Auschwitz, sans avoir à déplorer trop de pertes humaines. À une autre occasion, toujours pour répondre à une demande de bombardement des chambres à gaz, McCloy déclara que la décision finale sur la sélection des cibles à détruire, y compris par les avions américains, incombait aux seuls Britanniques. Dans une interview de 1986 (trois ans avant sa mort) avec Henry Morgenthau, McCloy déclara que la décision de ne pas bombarder Auschwitz émanait du président Franklin Delano Roosevelt, et qu'il (McCloy) n'avait servi que de façade. De mars 1947 à juin 1949, McCloy fut président de la Banque mondiale. Sous sa direction, une vaste campagne de réconciliation et de commutation des peines de criminels nazis eut lieu, incluant celles d'importants industriels comme Friedrich Flick et Alfried Krupp. Quelques-unes des personnalités mineures furent rejugées et condamnées dans la nouvelle Allemagne de l'Ouest. Son successeur comme Haut Commissaire fut James Bryant Conant.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCloy

Osant faire appel contre une sentence déjà clémente, la direction nazie de FLICK est intervenue auprès du gouvernement Adenauer et a obtenu le droit de récupérer, sans aucune pénalité, la majeure partie des installations sidérurgiques et des aciéries.

Pire, des demandes de remboursement, présentées par des entrepreneurs juifs spoliés par les nazis, ne seront dédommagées que sur la base d'actions délivrées à titre compensatoire. La société FLICK a osé souligner qu'il ne s'agissait pas d'un aveu de culpabilité. À l'époque du Wirtschaftswunder, Flick redevint l'un des hommes les plus riches de l'Allemagne, multi-milliardaire, actionnaire majoritaire de Daimler-Benz, possédant entre autres, des participations dans Dynamit Nobel, Buderus et Krauss-Maffei.

Scandale absolu : Il obtient en 1963 croix fédérale du Mérite.

À son décès en 1972, c'est une série de 330 entreprises employant 300 000 personnes, avec un chiffre d'affaires annuel de 18 milliards de DM qu'il laisse à ses descendants. La famille Flick est une richissime dynastie politique et industrielle allemande, héritière d'un empire industriel englobant la houille, l'acier et la société Daimler.

Elle s'est ensuite étendue aux États-Unis, à Philadelphie. Le Dr Lawrence Flick, qui développa la première cure contre la tuberculose, est un descendant direct d'un des frères de Friedrich Flick.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Flick

« Le national-socialisme est indissolublement lié à l'antisémitisme et à ses pogroms. »

Léon Trotsky en 1933

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1933/11/ldt19331113.htm

« L'humanité se trouve devant deux possibilités : soit elle en sort avec un ordre social meilleur, soit elle périt dans la barbarie et le cannibalisme. »

Souvenirs des camps d'extermination d'Auschwitz et Birkenau, par Roman Rosdolsky

https://www.marxists.org/francais/rosdolsky/works/1956/00/auschwitz1956.pdf

La révolution des Juifs en 1943 dans les camps de la mort

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5647

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2805

Engels et la guerre de 1870-1871

Robert Paris — 2025-05-09T22:05:00Z

Léon TROTSKY
Les notes de Friedrich ENGELS sur la guerre de 1870-1871

19 mars 1924

Le livre de Frédéric Engels est constitué dans sa majeure partie, par une chronique analytique de la guerre franco-allemande de 1870-1871. Ce sont des articles qui furent publiés dans le journal anglais "Pall Mall Gazette" pendant le déroulement de la guerre. Il s'ensuit déjà que le lecteur ne doit pas s'attendre à trouver dans ces notes une sorte de monographie sur la guerre ou un quelconque exposé systématique de la théorie de l'art militaire. Non, la tâche d'Engels consistait à partir de l'estimation générale des forces et des moyens des deux adversaires et à suivre au jour le jour le mode d'emploi de ces forces et moyens, afin d'aider le lecteur à s'orienter dans le déroulement des opérations militaires et même de soulever un peu, de temps à autre, ce qu'on appelle le voile de l'avenir. Les articles militaires de cette sorte emplissent au moins les deux tiers du livre. Le dernier tiers consiste en notes consacrées aux divers domaines spécialisés du métier de la guerre, toujours en rapport étroit avec le déroulement de la guerre franco-allemande : "Comment combattre les Prussiens", "Analyse raisonnée du système de l'armée prussienne", " Saragosse-Paris ", "L'apologie de l'Empereur ", entre autres. Il est évident que l'on ne peut lire et étudier un livre de ce genre comme les autres œuvres purement théoriques d'Engels. Pour comprendre entièrement les idées et estimations de caractère concret, positif, contenues dans ce livre, il faut suivre pas à pas toutes les opérations de la guerre franco-allemande sur la carte et avec cela, tenir compte aussi des considérations de la littérature d'histoire militaire la plus récente. Un tel travail de critique scientifique ne peut évidemment être la tâche du lecteur moyen : il exige des notions militaires préliminaires, beaucoup de temps et un intérêt particulier pour ce domaine. Mais un tel intérêt serait-il justifié ? Nous sommes d'avis que si. Il se justifie avant tout du point de vue de l'appréciation correcte du niveau militaire et de la perspicacité militaire d'Engels lui-même. Une étude approfondie du texte extrêmement mince d'Engels, la comparaison de ses jugements et pronostics avec les jugements et pronostics contemporains des auteurs militaires de l'époque serait certainement très intéressante. Ce serait non seulement une contribution importante à la biographie d'Engels – encore que sa biographie soit un chapitre important dans l'histoire du socialisme – mais aussi une illustration particulièrement frappante du problème des rapports réciproques entre le marxisme et le métier de la guerre.

De marxisme ou de dialectique, Engels ne souffle mot dans tous ces articles : cela n'a rien d'étonnant, vu qu'il écrivait anonymement pour un journal archi-bourgeois et cela à une époque où le nom de Marx était encore peu connu. Mais ces causes extérieures n'amenèrent pas seules Engels à s'abstenir de toute argumentation de théorie générale. Nous pouvons être persuadés que même si Engels avait eu alors la possibilité de traiter des péripéties de la guerre dans un journal marxiste-révolutionnaire – avec une liberté largement plus grande dans l'expression de ses sympathies et antipathies politiques – il aurait cependant abordé à peine différemment l'analyse et l'appréciation du déroulement de la guerre qu'il ne l'a fait dans la " Pall Mall Gazette ". Engels n'introduisit pas de l'extérieur une doctrine abstraite dans le domaine de la science militaire et n'érigea point des recettes tactiques par lui découvertes en critères universels. En dépit de toute la brièveté de l'exposé nous voyons tout de même avec quel soin l'auteur examine tous les éléments du métier militaire, depuis l'étendue du territoire et le chiffre de population des pays concernés jusqu'à des recherches biographiques sur le passé du général Trochu dans le but de mieux connaître les méthodes et les habitudes de celui-ci. On sent derrière ces notes un travail énorme, passé et en cours. Engels, qui était non seulement un profond penseur mais aussi un excellent écrivain, ne servait pas au lecteur des matériaux bruts. Cela pourrait donner l'impression de superficiel pour certaines de ses remarques et généralisations. En réalité, il n'en est rien. L'élaboration critique à laquelle il a soumis les matériaux empiriques est extrêmement poussée. Cela ressort déjà du fait que le développement ultérieur des péripéties de la guerre a confirmé de façon répétée les pronostics d'Engels. Il n'y a pas lieu de douter qu'une étude approfondie dans le sens indiqué de ce travail d'Engels de la part de nos jeunes théoriciens de la guerre montrerait encore davantage avec quel sérieux Engels traitait la conduite de la guerre en tant que telle.

Mais aussi chez ceux qui précisément liront et n'étudieront pas le livre – et ce sera la majorité, y compris chez les militaires – l'œuvre d'Engels suscitera un grand intérêt, non pas à cause de son exposé analytique des diverses opérations militaires, mais par l'appréciation générale du déroulement de la guerre et par les jugements dans divers domaines militaires, abordés de façon éparse en beaucoup d'endroits de sa chronique de guerre et en partie, comme nous l'avons déjà dit, aussi dans des articles entiers. La vieille idée des Pythagoriciens, que le monde serait régi par le nombre – au sens réaliste et non mystique de ce terme –, peut être particulièrement bien appliquée à la guerre. Avant tout – le nombre des bataillons. Ensuite le nombre de fusils, le nombre de canons s'exprime quantitativement par la portée des armes à feu, par leur précision. Les qualités morales des soldats s'expriment dans la capacité d'endurer de longues marches, de tenir un temps prolongé sous le feu ennemi, etc. Cependant, plus on va dans ce domaine, plus le problème se complique. Le nombre et le caractère de l'équipement dépendent de l'état des forces productives du pays. La composition de l'armée et de son commandement est conditionnée par la structure sociale de la société. Le service administratif d'intendance dépend de l'appareil étatique général qui est déterminé par la nature de la classe dominante. Le moral de l'armée dépend du rapport réciproque des classes, de la capacité de la classe dirigeante de faire des tâches de la guerre des buts subjectifs de l'armée. Le degré de capacité et de talent du commandement dépend, pour sa part, du rôle historique de la classe dirigeante, de sa capacité de concentrer sur ses objectifs les meilleures forces créatrices du pays, ce qui, à nouveau, différera, selon que la classe dominante joue un rôle historique progressif ou qu'elle se survit et lutte simplement pour son existence. Seuls les rapports fondamentaux ont été évoqués ici, et encore schématiquement. En réalité, la dépendance des différents domaines de la conduite de la guerre entre eux et de tous ces domaines dans leur ensemble à l'égard des divers aspects de l'ordre social est bien plus complexe et plus ramifiée. Sur le champ de bataille tout cela se résume, en fin de compte, dans le nombre des simples soldats, des commandants, des morts et blessés, prisonniers et déserteurs, dans les dimensions du territoire conquis et dans le nombre des trophées. Mais comment peut-on prévoir le résultat final ? S'il était possible de relever et de déterminer à l'avance tous les éléments d'une bataille et d'une guerre avec précision, alors il n'y aurait même pas de guerre, car personne n'aurait l'idée d'aller au-devant d'une défaite établie d'avance. Mais il ne peut être question d'une telle prévision exacte de tous les facteurs. Seuls les éléments matériels les plus immédiats de la guerre sont susceptibles d'une expression chiffrée. Pour autant qu'il s'agit, cependant, de la dépendance des éléments matériels de l'armée à l'égard de l'économie du pays dans son ensemble, une évaluation et, par conséquent, les prévisions également, auront une valeur déjà bien plus limitée. Cela s'applique particulièrement à ce que l'on appelle les facteurs moraux : de l'équilibre politique dans le pays, de l'endurance de l'armée, de l'attitude des arrières, du travail coordonné de l'appareil d'Etat, du talent des commandants, etc. Laplace dit qu'un cerveau qui serait en état d'embrasser tous les processus se déroulant dans l'univers, pourrait infailliblement prédire tout ce qui se produira à l'avenir. Cela découle incontestablement, du principe du déterminisme : point de phénomène sans cause. Mais, comme l'on sait, il n'y a pas de pareil cerveau, ni individuel ni collectif. C'est pourquoi il est possible que même les hommes les mieux informés et les plus géniaux se trompent très souvent dans leurs prévisions. Mais il est clair que l'on approche d'autant plus la prévision juste, que l'on connaît mieux les éléments du processus, que la capacité est plus grande de les articuler, de les évaluer et de les combiner, que l'expérience scientifique créatrice est plus grande, l'horizon plus vaste.

Dans sa chronique militaire, si modeste dans son objet, Engels reste toujours lui-même : il apporte dans son travail le regard pénétrant d'un homme capable de combiner analyse et synthèse dans l'art militaire et qui a passé par la grande école de théorie sociale de Marx-Engels et l'école pratique de la Révolution de 1848 et de la Première Internationale.

" Comparons les forces, dit Engels, que les deux parties peuvent mettre en ligne pour leur extermination réciproque et, pour simplifier les choses, ne nous occupons que de l'infanterie, car c'est elle qui décide de l'issue de la bataille ; des différences sans importance dans la force numérique de la cavalerie et de l'artillerie, y compris les mitrailleuses et tous autres engins faisant des merveilles, ne compteront pas beaucoup. "

Ceci, qui était grosso modo juste pour la France et l'Allemagne en 1870, ne le serait incontestablement plus pour notre époque. A présent, il est impossible de ne déterminer le rapport des forces militaires que d'après le nombre des bataillons. Sans doute, aujourd'hui encore l'infanterie reste le facteur principal dans les batailles. Mais le rôle du coefficient technique dans l'infanterie a crû considérablement, et cela dans une mesure inégale suivant les armées : nous n'avons pas seulement en vue les mitrailleuses, qui étaient encore des "miracle working" en 1870 ; pas seulement l'artillerie, fortement accrue en nombre et en importance, mais aussi des ressources tout à fait nouvelles : l'automobile, tant pour des fins militaires que pour les transports en général, l'aviation et la chimie de guerre. Sans tenir compte de ces " coefficients ", une statistique qui ne concernerait que le nombre des bataillons, serait aujourd'hui complètement irréelle.

Sur la base de ses calculs, Engels aboutit à la conclusion : l'Allemagne dispose d'un nombre de loin plus grand de soldats formés que la France, et la supériorité des Allemands apparaîtra de plus en plus avec le temps – à moins que dès le début Louis Napoléon ne devance l'ennemi et ne lui inflige des coups décisifs, avant que ce dernier ne puisse utiliser sa supériorité potentielle.

Ainsi Engels aboutit déjà à la stratégie, à ce domaine indépendant le plus élevé de l'art militaire, qui est cependant en rapport, à travers un système compliqué de leviers et de courroies de transmission, avec la politique, l'économie, la culture et l'administration. Concernant la stratégie, Engels tient pour indispensable de faire dès le début les réserves réalistes inévitables.

" Il faut garder à l'esprit qu'on ne peut attendre un succès décisif d'un plan stratégique à lui seul. Tels ou tels empêchements inattendus peuvent toujours intervenir : un contingent de troupes n'arrive pas à temps, au moment où l'on en a le plus besoin ; ou bien l'adversaire fait une manœuvre imprévue, ou encore il prend des mesures de sécurité imprévues ; et enfin inversement : une résistance tenace des troupes ou l'initiative heureuse d'un général peuvent, le cas échéant, préserver une armée vaincue des pires conséquences de sa défaite – c'est-à-dire de la perte de la liaison avec sa base. "

Cela est indubitablement exact. Contre une telle conception réaliste de la stratégie, tout au plus feu Pfuel ou l'un de ses admirateurs attardés pourraient trouver des objections prise en considération de l'essentiel dans tout le plan de guerre, et cela de la façon la plus complète que les circonstances permettent ; considération des éléments qui ne peuvent être déterminés à l'avance ; formulation des ordres d'une façon suffisamment souple pour qu'ils puissent s'adapter à chaque situation et à ses variantes imprévues ; et le principal – détermination à temps de toute modification fondamentale dans la situation et modification correspondante du plan, voire sa refonte totale – c'est précisément en cela que réside le véritable art de la conduite de la guerre. Si l'on pouvait conférer au plan stratégique un caractère définitif, tenir compte à l'avance de l'état du temps, des estomacs et des jambes des soldats et des intentions de l'adversaire, alors un automate connaissant les quatre opérations pourrait être un capitaine victorieux. Par bonheur ou par malheur, il n'en est rien. Le plan de guerre n'a nullement un caractère absolu, et l'existence du plan le meilleur est encore loin, comme Engels l'indique à juste titre, de garantir la victoire. Par contre, toute faillite du plan rend la perte inéluctable. Tout commandant méritant passablement d'être pris au sérieux, qui pour cette raison rejetterait tout plan, devrait être interné dans une maison d'aliénés.

Qu'en est-il donc du plan stratégique de Napoléon III ? Nous savons déjà que l'énorme supériorité potentielle de l'Allemagne résidait dans sa prépondérance en quantité de matériel humain formé. Comme le relève Engels, la tâche de Bonaparte consistait à rendre impossible à l'ennemi, grâce à des opérations rapides et décidées, de tirer profit de cette supériorité. On pourrait croire que la tradition napoléonienne aurait dû précisément jouer en faveur d'une telle démarche. Mais malheureusement, la réalisation de plans de guerre aussi audacieux dépend aussi, toutes choses égales par ailleurs, du travail exact de l'intendance ; or, tout le régime du Second Empire, avec sa bureaucratie effrénée et incapable, n'était en aucune manière apte à assurer les soins et l'entretien des troupes. D'où les frictions et les perte de temps dès les tout premiers jours de la guerre, l'abandon général, l'impossibilité d'appliquer un plan quelconque et, en conséquence de cela, l'effondrement.

En certains endroits, Engels évoque en passant l'effet néfaste que peut avoir l'irruption de la " politique " dans le déroulement des opérations militaires. A première vue, cette remarque semble en opposition avec la conception selon laquelle la guerre n'est tout compte fait rien d'autre qu'une continuation de la politique. En réalité, il n'y a pas ici de contradiction. La guerre prolonge la politique, mais avec des moyens et des méthodes propres. Lorsque la politique, pour la solution de ses taches fondamentales, est contrainte de recourir à l'aide de la guerre, cette même politique ne doit pas déranger le déroulement des opérations de guerre pour ses tâches secondaires. Si Bonaparte effectua des actions manifestement inopportunes du point de vue militaire pour, selon l'avis d'Engels, influencer favorablement l' " opinion publique " avec des succès éphémères, il fallait voir là incontestablement une irruption inadmissible de la politique dans la conduite de la guerre, rendant celle-ci incapable de dominer les tâches fondamentales posées par la politique. Dans la mesure où dans la lutte pour la conservation de son régime, Bonaparte se vit obligé d'admettre une telle intervention de la politique, la condamnation manifeste du régime par lui-même était déjà impliquée, qui devait rendre inéluctable le prochain effondrement.

Quand le pays vaincu, après la défaite et la capture totales de ses forces armées, tente sous la direction de Gambetta de construire une nouvelle armée, Engels suit ce travail avec une compréhension étonnante pour les affaires de l'organisation militaire. Il caractérise parfaitement les jeunes troupes indisciplinées qui se constituent de manière improvisée. " De telles troupes, dit-il, sont très rapidement disposées à crier à la trahison si l'on ne les mène pas immédiatement contre l'ennemi, et sont aussi rapidement disposées à prendre une fuite éperdue, lorsque la présence de ce dernier se fait sentir sérieusement. " Il est impossible ici de ne pas penser à nos premiers contingents et régiments dans les années 1917-1918. Engels sait parfaitement où résident, une fois toutes les autres conditions remplies, les principales difficultés de la transformation d'un amas humain en une compagnie ou un bataillon. " Qui a jamais eu l'occasion, dit-il, de voir des armées populaires improvisées sur un terrain d'entraînement ou au feu – qu'il s'agisse de corps francs badois, de " Bull-Rum Yankees ", de " mobiles " français, ou de volontaires anglais – aura immédiatement noté que la cause principale du manque de savoir-faire et de résistance de ces troupes réside dans le fait que leurs officiers ne connaissent pas leur devoir. "

Il est instructif au plus haut point de voir avec quel sérieux Engels traite des troupes de carrière d'une armée. Combien ce grand révolutionnaire est éloigné de tout bavardage pseudo-révolutionnaire, qui précisément à l'époque en France était très populaire – sur la vertu salvatrice d'une levée en masse, d'une nation armée (en toute hâte), etc. Engels sait très bien quelle importance les officiers et les sous-officiers ont dans un bataillon. Il procède à des calculs rigoureux sur les ressources en officiers qui sont restées à la République après la défaite des forces régulières de l'Empire. Il suit avec une attention extrême la naissance dans la nouvelle armée, dite de la Loire, de tels traits qui la distinguent d'une foule armée. Ainsi, par exemple, il constate avec satisfaction que la nouvelle armée non seulement s'applique à marcher avec unité et à obéir aux ordres, mais qu'encore elle " a compris une chose très importante, que l'armée de Louis Napoléon avait totalement oubliée : les services de sécurité, l'art de garantir les ailes et les arrières contre des attaque subites, de détecter l'ennemi, d'attaquer par surprise certaines de ses sections, pour obtenir des informations et des prisonniers. "

Ainsi Engels apparaît-il partout dans ces articles " de journal " : audacieux dans sa largesse d'esprit, réaliste dans la méthode, perspicace dans les grandes et les petites choses et toujours consciencieux dans l'élaboration des matériaux. Il compte la quantité de canons de fusils rayés et lisses chez les Français, examine de façon répétée l'artillerie allemande, pense aux propriétés du cheval de la cavalerie prussienne et ne perd jamais de vue les qualités du sous-officier prussien. Placé par la marche des événements devant le problème du siège et de la défense de Paris, il explore la qualité clé ses fortifications, la puissance de l'artillerie chez les Allemands et les Français et examine de façon très critique la question de savoir s'il y a dans l'enceinte de Paris des troupes régulières que l'on pourrait qualifier d'aptes au combat. Quel dommage que nous n'eussions pas ce travail d'Engels en 1918 : Il nous eût certes aidé à surmonter plus rapidement et plus facilement le préjugé alors largement répandu, avec lequel on tentait d'opposer l' "enthousiasme révolutionnaire" et l' "esprit prolétarien" à une organisation établie par des professionnels, à la discipline impeccable et au commandement de formation.

La méthode de critique militaire d'Engels s'exprime très clairement, par exemple, dans la 13ème lettre, qui s'occupe de la rumeur lancée de Berlin concernant "une marche résolue sur Paris". L'article sur le camp retranché de Paris (lettre 16) suscite l'approbation enthousiaste de Marx. Un bon exemple de la manière d'Engels de traiter les problèmes militaires nous est offert par la 24ème lettre, traitant du siège de Paris. D'emblée, Engels pose deux données : " La première est que Paris ne peut pas espérer être secouru, en cas de nécessité, par une armée française venant de dehors... Le second point est que la garnison de Paris est inapte à des opérations offensives de grand style ". Tous les autres éléments de son analyse s'appuient sur ces deux points. Fort intéressants sont deux jugements sur la guerre de francs-tireurs et ses possibilités d'application, une question qui même à l'avenir ne perdra pas de son importance pour nous. Le ton d'Engels gagne en assurance à chaque lettre. Cette assurance est justifiée dans la mesure où elle est confirmée par d'une part par la comparaison réelle avec ce que de "véritables" militaires ont écrit sur ces questions et d'autre part par une épreuve encore plus effective par les événements eux-mêmes.

Proscrivant sans scrupule de son analyse toute abstraction, considérant la guerre comme une chaîne matérielle d'opérations, considérant chaque opération du point de vue des forces et moyens réellement existants et de leurs possibilités de combinaison, ce grand révolutionnaire procède comme... un spécialiste de la guerre, c'est-à-dire comme un homme qui, ne serait-ce qu'en vertu de sa profession ou de sa vocation, raisonne avec les facteurs internes de la conduite de la guerre. Il n'est pas étonnant que les articles d'Engels aient été attribués aux célébrités militaires de l'époque, ce qui fit que dans le cercle de ses amis on donnait à Engels le surnom de " général ". Oui, c'est comme un " général " qu'il traitait les questions militaires, peut-être non sans d'importantes faiblesses dans certains domaines militaires ni sans l'indispensable expérience pratique, mais en revanche à l'aide d'une tête, comme il n'est pas donné à n'importe quel général d'en porter une sur ses épaules.

Mais, pourrait-on demander, que devient finalement là-dedans le marxisme ? A cela, il y aurait lieu de répondre que, jusqu'à un certain degré, c'est précisément ici qu'il trouve son expression. L'une des prémisses philosophiques fondamentales du marxisme veut que la vérité soit toujours concrète. Cela signifie que l'on ne doit pas dissoudre le métier de la guerre et ses problèmes en catégories sociales et politiques. La guerre est la guerre, et le marxiste qui veut porter des jugements dans ce domaine, doit se souvenir que la vérité de la guerre aussi est concrète. C'est ce que le livre d'Engels enseigne au premier chef. Mais pas seulement cela.

Si l'on n'a pas le droit de dissoudre des problèmes militaires dans des problèmes politiques généraux, il est tout aussi inadmissible de séparer les premiers des derniers. Comme nous l'avons déjà mentionné, la guerre est une continuation de la politique par des moyens particuliers. Cette pensée dialectique profonde a été formulée par Clausewitz. La guerre est une continuation de la politique : qui veut saisir le " prolongement ", doit connaître ce qui le précède. Mais la continuation " par d'autres moyens " signifie : il ne suffit d'être bien orienté politiquement, pour pouvoir aussi par là-même apprécier correctement les " autres moyens " de la guerre. Le plus grand et incomparable avantage d'Engels résidait en ceci, qu'en même temps qu'il saisissait profondément le caractère propre de la guerre – avec sa technique interne, ses méthodes, traditions et préjugés – il était aussi le plus grand connaisseur de cette politique à laquelle, en dernière instance, la guerre est subordonnée.

Inutile de dire que cet avantage énorme ne pouvait pas épargner à Engels des erreurs dans ses jugements et pronostics militaires concrets. Durant la guerre civile des Etats-Unis, Engels avait surestimé les avantages purement militaires manifestés par les Sudistes dans la première période et inclinait, pour cela, à croire en leur victoire. Pendant la guerre austro-allemand de 1866, peu de temps avant la bataille décisive de Kœniggratz, qui posa la première pierre de la prépondérance prussienne, Engels escomptait une mutinerie dans le Landwehr (armée territoriale) prussienne. De même dans la chronique de la guerre franco-allemande on pourra sans doute trouver des erreurs dans des questions de détail, quoique le pronostic d'ensemble d'Engels était incomparablement plus juste dans ce cas que dans les deux exemples cités. Seuls des gens très naïfs peuvent penser que la grandeur d'un Marx, Engels ou Lénine réside dans une infaillibilité automatique. Non, eux aussi se sont trompés. Mais dans les jugements qu'ils portent sur les questions les plus importantes et les plus compliquées ils commettent habituellement moins d'erreurs que tous les autres. Et c'est en cela que se manifeste la grandeur de leur pensée. Et aussi en ceci, que leurs erreurs, quand on en examine sérieusement les motifs, s'avèrent souvent bien plus profondes et instructives que l'opinion de ceux qui, fortuitement ou non, ont eu raison contre eux dans tel ou tel cas.

Des abstractions dans le genre de celle que chaque classe doit posséder une tactique et une stratégie propres, ne trouvent pas de soutien chez Engels. Il sait trop bien que le fondement de tous les fondements d'une organisation militaire et d'une guerre est déterminée par le niveau de développement des forces productives et non par la volonté de classe toute nue. Naturellement, on peut dire que l'époque féodale avait sa tactique propre et même une série de tactiques connexes, que l'époque bourgeoise de même connaît non pas une, mais plusieurs tactiques, et le socialisme lui aussi conduira certainement à l'élaboration d'une nouvelle tactique de guerre, s'il connaît le sort pénible de devoir exister pendant une période prolongée à côté du capitalisme. Dans cette formulation générale, cela est exact, dans la mesure où le niveau des forces productives de la société capitaliste est supérieur à celui de la société féodale et où celui de la société socialiste sera encore plus élevé. Mais rien de plus. Car il n'en découle nullement que le prolétariat, arrivé au pouvoir, ne disposant que d'un niveau de production très bas, puisse forger immédiatement une nouvelle tactique qui – par principe – ne peut résulter que du développement accru des forces productives de la future société socialiste.

Autrefois, nous avons très souvent comparé des processus et des phénomènes économiques avec des processus et phénomènes militaires. A présent, peut-être ne sera-t-il pas sans profit pour nous d'opposer quelques problèmes militaires aux problèmes économiques, car nous avons déjà acquis dans ce dernier domaine une assez grande expérience. La part la plus importante de l'industrie travaille chez nous dans les conditions de l'économie socialiste, en étant la propriété de l'Etat ouvrier et en travaillant pour le compte, et sous la direction de ce dernier. En vertu de cette circonstance, la structure socio-juridique de notre industrie se distingue profondément de celle de l'industrie capitaliste. Ceci se manifeste dans le système de gestion de l'industrie, dans l'élection du personnel de direction, dans les rapports entre l'administration de l'entreprise et les ouvriers, etc. Mais dans le processus de production lui-même ? Aurions-nous donc créé nos propres méthodes de production socialistes, opposées aux méthodes capitalistes ? Nous en sommes encore très loin. Les méthodes de production dépendent de la technique matérielle et du niveau culturel et productif des ouvriers. Avec l'usure de l'équipement et l'insuffisante occupation de nos entreprises, le processus de production se trouve maintenant à un niveau incomparablement plus bas qu'avant la guerre. Dans ce domaine non seulement nous n'avons créé rien de nouveau, mais nous n'avons qu'à espérer nous assimiler au bout d'une série d'années les méthodes actuellement introduites dans les pays capitalistes les plus avancés et qui leur assurent une productivité du travail bien plus élevée. Mais s'il en est ainsi dans le domaine de l'économie, comment saurait-il, par principe, en être autrement dans celui de l'armée ? La tactique dépend de la technique de guerre existante et du niveau militaire et culturel du soldat. Bien sûr, la structure politique et socio-juridique de notre armée est radicalement différente de celle des armées bourgeoises. Cela se manifeste dans la composition du commandement, dans les rapports entre celui-ci et la masse des soldats et avant tout dans les objectifs politiques qui enthousiasment notre armée. Mais de là il ne découle nullement que nous puissions créer dès à présent, dans notre bas niveau technique et culturel, une tactique nouvelle dans ses principes et plus parfaite que celle qu'ont atteinte les bêtes de proie les plus civilisées de l'Occident. Il ne faut pas confondre – comme l'enseigne le même Engels – les premiers pas du prolétariat qui a conquis le pouvoir – et ces premiers pas se mesurent après des années – avec la société socialiste, qui se trouve déjà à un degré élevé de développement. Dans la mesure de la croissance des forces productives sur la base de la propriété socialiste notre processus de production lui-même prendra forcément un autre caractère que sous le capitalisme. Pour transformer qualitativement le caractère de la production, nous n'avons pas besoin d'un renversement de la propriété, etc. : il nous faut seulement un développement des forces productives sur la base déjà établie. La même chose s'applique à l'armée. Dans l'Etat soviétique sur la base d'une communauté de travail entre ouvriers et paysans, sous la conduite d'ouvriers avancés, nous créerons certainement une tactique nouvelle. Mais quand ? Lorsque nos forces productives dépasseront ou au moins atteindront approximativement celles du capitalisme.

Il va de soi que pour le cas de collisions militaires avec des Etats capitalistes nous disposons d'un avantage, tout petit il est vrai, mais un avantage tout de même, qu'il peut en coûter la tête à nos éventuels ennemis. Cet avantage réside en ceci que nous n'avons pas d'antagonisme entre la classe qui gouverne et celle dont se compose la masse des soldats. Nous sommes l'Etat des ouvriers et des paysans, et l'armée des ouvriers et des paysans tout à la fois. Mais ceci est une supériorité non pas militaire, mais politique. Il serait parfaitement injustifié de tirer de cet avantage politique des conclusions menant à l'orgueil et à la présomption militaires. Au contraire, mieux nous reconnaîtrons notre retard, plus nous nous abstiendrons de toute fanfaronnade, plus assidûment nous apprendrons de la technique et de la tactique des pays capitalistes avancés, d'autant plus fondé sera notre espoir dans le cas d'un conflit militaire, de nous enfoncer, pareils à un coin tranchant, de nature pas simplement militaire mais aussi révolutionnaire, entre la bourgeoisie et les masses de soldats de ses armées.

Je me demande s'il est à propos d'évoquer ici la fameuse découverte du non moins fameux Tchernov sur le " nationalisme " de Marx et d'Engels. Le présent livre donne une réponse claire à cette question aussi, ne modifiant nullement notre jugement antérieur, mais le renforçant au contraire de façon tout à fait concluante. Les intérêts de la Révolution étaient pour Engels le critère suprême. Il soutenait les intérêts nationaux de l'Allemagne contre l'Empire de Bonaparte, parce que les intérêts de l'unification de la nation allemande dans les conditions historiques concrètes d'alors représentaient une force progressive, potentiellement révolutionnaire. Nous sommes guidés par la même méthode, lorsque aujourd'hui nous soutenons les intérêts nationaux des peuples coloniaux contre l'impérialisme. Cette prise de position d'Engels a trouvé son expression, d'ailleurs très réservée, dans les notes de la première période de la guerre. Et comment aurait-il pu en être autrement : il était tout de même impossible à Engels, pour faire plaisir à Louis Napoléon et à Tchernov, d'apprécier la guerre franco-allemande autrement, en contradiction avec son sens historique, uniquement parce qu'il était lui-même allemand. Mais sitôt atteinte la tâche historique progressive de la guerre, l'unité nationale allemande assurée et, encore, de surcroît, le Second Empire renversé – Engels modifie radicalement ses " sympathies " – si nous voulons exprimer ses penchants politiques à l'aide de ce mot sentimental. Pourquoi cela ? Du fait qu'au-delà de l'acquis il s'agissait déjà de garantir la prépondérance des Junkers prussiens en Allemagne et de l'Allemagne prussifiée en Europe. Dans ces circonstances la défense de la France démembrée devint ou pouvait devenir un facteur révolutionnaire. Engels se place ici entièrement du côté de la guerre de défense française. Mais de même que dans la première moitié de la guerre, il ne permet pas à ses " sympathies " – ou du moins il s'efforce de ne pas le leur permettre – d'influencer l'appréciation objective de la situation militaire. Dans les deux périodes de la guerre il part de l'examen des facteurs matériels et moraux de la guerre et recherche une base objective solide pour ses prévisions.

Il ne sera pas superflu de signaler au moins rapidement, comment, dans son article sur la fortification et le renforcement de la capitale française, le " patriote " et " nationaliste " Engels pèse avec sympathie les chances d'une intervention anglaise, italienne, autrichienne et scandinave en faveur de la France. Ses spéculations développées dans les colonnes d'un journal anglais ne sont rien d'autre qu'une tentative de provoquer l'immixtion d'une puissance étrangère dans la guerre contre la patrie chérie des Hohenzollern. Ceci pèse assurément plus lourd qu'un wagon plombé même !

L'intérêt d'Engels pour les questions militaires avait des sources non pas nationales, mais purement révolutionnaires. Sorti des événements de 1848 en révolutionnaire mûri, ayant derrière lui le " Manifeste Communiste " et des combats révolutionnaires, Engels considérait la question de la conquête du pouvoir par le prolétariat comme une question tout à fait pratique, dont la solution ne dépend pas en dernier lieu des problèmes militaires. Dans les mouvements nationaux et les événements militaires des années 1859, 1864, 1866, 1870-1871, Engels est à la recherche des leviers immédiats pour une action révolutionnaire. Il examine chaque nouvelle guerre, découvre ses rapports possibles avec la Révolution et cherche des voies pour assurer par la force des armes la Révolution à venir. C'est là que se trouve l'explication de la façon vivante et active, nullement académique et pas seulement agitative de traiter les problèmes de l'armée et de la guerre, que nous trouvons chez Engels. Chez Marx la position de principe était la même. Mais Marx ne s'occupait pas spécialement des questions militaires ; pour cela, il faisait entièrement confiance à son " deuxième violon ".

A l'époque de la Deuxième Internationale, cet intérêt révolutionnaire pour les questions militaires, comme du reste pour bien d'autres questions, se perdit presque entièrement. Mais l'opportunisme trouvait peut-être son expression la plus nette dans l'attitude superficielle et hautaine à l'égard du militarisme, comme d'une institution barbare, indigne de l'attention social-démocrate éclairée. La guerre impérialiste de 1914-1918 remit en mémoire – et avec un manque d'égards combien inexorable – que le militarisme n'est pas qu'un objet d'agitation et de discours parlementaires routiniers. La guerre surprit les partis socialistes et transforma leur attitude d'opposition toute formelle à l'égard du militarisme en attitude d'humble agenouillement. C'est seulement à la Révolution d'Octobre qu'il échut, non seulement de rétablir l'attitude révolutionnaire active à l'égard des problèmes de la guerre, dans les principes, mais aussi de retourner dans les faits la pointe du militarisme contre les classes dirigeantes. La Révolution mondiale mènera cette tâche à son terme.

19 mars 1924.

La révolution de 1918 en Bavière

Robert Paris — 2025-02-21T23:24:00Z

La révolution de 1918 en Bavière

La révolution en Bavière

Kurt Eisner

https://funambule.org/lectures/social-%C3%A9conomie-politique/litterature-marxiste/La%20r%C3%A9volution%20en%20Bavi%C3%A8re%20-%20novembre%201918%20-%20(Kurt%20Eisner).pdf

Garap

https://garap.org/pdf/bibliotheque/E.Muhsam.Republique.Conseils.Baviere.pdf

Robert Paris

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3808

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2185

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5777

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article216

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3488

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article204

René Fugler

https://plusloin.org/plusloin/spip.php?article125

Canne-Mieier

https://plusloin.org/plusloin/spip.php?article40

Wikirouge

https://wikirouge.net/R%C3%A9volution_bavaroise

Rebellyon

https://rebellyon.info/Le-3-avril-1919-a-Augsbourg-et-Munich-le-303

Partage noir

https://www.partage-noir.fr/-la-republique-des-conseils-de-baviere-1919-

Gauchehebdo

https://www.gauchebdo.ch/2019/10/04/la-baviere-et-les-communistes-en-revolution/

Sur internet

http://eurojournalist.eu/revolution-en-baviere-1918/

Chris Harman

https://www.marxists.org/francais/harman/1982/lrp/lrp07.htm

Allan Mitchell

https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1967_num_45_1_2674_t1_0197_0000_1

Wikipedia

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9publique_des_conseils_de_Bavi%C3%A8re

René Furth

http://kropot.free.fr/Furth-conseilsbaviere.htm

Les « démocraties » victorieuses en 1918 imposent leur paix à Versailles...

Robert Paris — 2024-11-28T23:20:00Z

Les « démocraties » victorieuses en 1918 imposent leur paix à Versailles en juin 1919 et la conséquence : le nazisme et un nouveau bain de sang généralisé

L'armistice de 1918 n'est pas la paix

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JprEX7iSGRE

Un traité de paix de Versailles seulement en 1919 et qui se fait entièrement contre le vaincu et sans lui…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQI7USz2BE

Qu'est-ce que le traité de Versailles ?

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_de_Versailles#:~:text=Le%20trait%C3%A9%20de%20Versailles%20est,de%20la%20Premi%C3%A8re%20Guerre%20mondiale.

Le texte intégral

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_de_Versailles_1919

La signature du traité

https://enseignants.lumni.fr/fiche-media/00000006048/episode-4-versailles-28-juin-1919-la-signature-du-traite.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAHwcZHvnlc

« La guerre mondiale s'est terminée par l'écroulement de trois puissances impérialistes : l'Allemagne, l'Autriche-Hongrie et la Russie. Quatre grands rapaces sont sortis victorieux de la lutte : les États-Unis, l'Angleterre, la France et le Japon. Les traités de paix, dont celui de Versailles constitue le noyau central, sont une tentative de stabiliser la domination mondiale de ces quatre puissances victorieuses. » affirme le 4e congrès de l'Internationale communiste, tenu en novembre 1922.

Versailles : du traité de paix à… la guerre…

La guerre se termina par la victoire totale des démocraties, bien que la Russie Soviétique, dirigée par les bolcheviks, ait quitté leur camp sacré. Le résultat de cette victoire fut la Paix de Versailles qui avait bien sûr coûté des millions de vies, mais qui devait établir une fois pour toutes sur cette terre le règne de la démocratie, le libre développement des nations et la coopération pacifique des peuples sur la base du désarmement général. La Société des Nations couronna cette guerre qui aurait dû être "la dernière des guerres" : c'est ce que promettaient Wilson et la Seconde Internationale.
Le Paradis sur terre ne s'est cependant pas matérialisé mais à sa place quelque chose qui ressemblerait plus à l'Enfer. La Paix de Versailles étrangla l'Europe. Le protectionnisme étrangla l'économie. La guerre "pour la démocratie" ouvrit l'ère de la dégénérescence finale de la démocratie. Le monde s'appauvrit et se referma sur lui-même. L'un après l'autre, les États prirent le chemin du fascisme ou de la dictature militaire. Les relations internationales devinrent de plus en plus menaçantes. Le désarmement fut remplacé par des programmes militaristes qui eussent été des cauchemars à la veille de la guerre précédente. Les premières escarmouches des futurs conflits sanglants sont apparues en divers endroits du monde. C'est précisément le moment que choisit le Komintern pour abandonner ses derniers restes d'internationalisme et proclamer que la tâche de cette ère nouvelle est l'alliance entre le prolétariat et les démocraties impérialistes en décomposition, "contre le fascisme". Le premier foyer d'infection est le tas de détritus, rebut de ce qui fut jadis l'internationale Communiste.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1938/10/381010.htm

Le traité de Versailles a mis fin à la Première Guerre mondiale et préparé la seconde…

https://www.marxists.org/francais/inter_com/1922/ic4_06.htm

https://www.nationalgeographic.fr/histoire/culture-generale-comment-le-traite-de-versailles-mis-fin-la-premiere-guerre-mondiale-et-prepare-la-deuxieme?utm_source=pocket-newtab-fr-fr

…et le fascisme…

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1932/00/320000a.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1933/06/330610.htm

Qu'en disaient les travailleurs communistes révolutionnaires :

https://www.marxists.org/francais/lenin/works/1920/07/vil19200719.htm

Aux Travailleurs de France et d'Allemagne !

https://www.marxists.org/francais/pcf/works/1922/02/pcfkpd.htm

La croissance rapide du sentiment fasciste était donc due à l'impasse économique, dans laquelle l'Allemagne avait été conduite par l'état du capitalisme d'après-guerre, la crise économique profonde et le système de Versailles, avec en toile de fond la faiblesse de l'avant-garde prolétarienne.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/urss/1933/04/bolchevikn2.htm

Le traité de Versailles avait fait endosser la responsabilité de la guerre de 14-18 à l'Allemagne et au nom de cette responsabilité réelle de la bourgeoisie allemande (qui a contribué à la guerre d'une façon identique à la bourgeoisie française, anglaise, etc...), on a infligé les pires maux aux peuples de l'Europe Centrale et de tous les Etats vaincus.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/barta/1943/03/ldc11_032743.htm

Le Traité de Versailles, l'occupation de la Ruhr par Poincaré et le slogan « Le Boche payera ! » se trouvent au moins autant à la base de la victoire nazie que les crimes de Noske et d'Ebert, et que l'imbécile théorie du « social-fascisme » de Staline.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/mandel/works/1953/07/vingt.pdf

En fait, les grands impérialismes ont refait les cartes du monde…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdC7kyq1WOs

La conférence de paix de la première guerre mondiale a accouché de… la deuxième guerre mondiale…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYds014hK-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMUrSSOty4w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDbtL-RsWw

Le traité de Versailles n'a donné ni la sécurité, ni la paix, ni le bien-être des peuples, et surtout pas ceux des peuples colonisés !

https://www.lhistoire.fr/le-vrai-%C3%A9chec-du-trait%C3%A9-de-versailles

Le fascisme en Allemagne, c'est de nouveau possible ?

Robert Paris — 2024-10-10T22:51:00Z

Une Allemagne prospère, stable fondée sur une industrie solide, efficace, une économie dominante de l'Europe, en lien avec les USA et en affaires avec les pays de l'Est, c'est fini, d'où le retour du fascisme et de la marche à la guerre…

La France n'est pas la seule à pousser à l'extrême droite après la Hongrie, l'Italie, la Suède, la Finlande et aussi l'Autriche. Il y a maintenant l'Allemagne, le pays qui avait juré qu'on ne l'y reprendrait pas…

Une fois encore, la crise du capitalisme porte les mêmes fruits pourris, une fois encore les prétendus démocrates ne sont rien d'autre que les fourriers du fascisme, une fois encore l'appareil d'Etat bourgeois peut passer sans transition de la démocratie au fascisme… Cela n'a rien de spécifique à l'Allemagne.

https://www.rtl.fr/actu/international/allemagne-l-afd-continue-de-gagner-du-terrain-grace-au-sulfureux-bjorn-hocke-7900412698

https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/le-monde-d-apres/le-monde-d-apres-de-jean-marc-four-du-lundi-26-juin-2023-2582036

https://www.liberation.fr/international/europe/en-allemagne-lextreme-droite-de-plus-en-plus-radicalisee-et-toujours-en-embuscade-20230617_JUAXD5MPGZC3VKUMJ56FFBMZDU/

En Allemagne comme ailleurs, lorsque la bourgeoisie capitaliste est aux abois du fait de l'effondrement économique, l'effondrement politique suit de près et les partis politiques, les syndicats, comme les institutions d'Etat convergent toutes vers une politique fasciste, même s'ils se confrontent entre eux, rendent le pouvoir politique à la fois plus dictatorial et plus faible. Ces gouvernements pré-fascistes font mine de combattre le risque fasciste alors qu'ils ne font que le préparer. Le fascisme écrasera toute démocratie, et y compris le réformisme, mais cela n'empêche pas les réformistes de tout faire pour empêcher le prolétariat d'en découdre avec la classe capitaliste et son Etat, et ainsi d'aider de la pire manière l'avènement du fascisme. Le réformisme propose des promenades dans les rues pour éradiquer le fascisme qui monte et ne propose surtout pas un programme révolutionnaire au prolétariat pour entrainer la petite bourgeoisie paupérisée, les jeunes et les femmes vers la lutte sociale radicale…

Il n'est donc pas question de compter sur les partis, syndicats et associations réformistes pour combattre le fascisme, le capitalisme et la guerre, que ce soit en Allemagne ou ailleurs… Et il n'y a pas d'autre lutte contre le fascisme que le combat révolutionnaire pour le socialisme, c'est-à-dire pour abattre l'Etat capitaliste, s'attaquer à la propriété capitaliste et bâtir le pouvoir aux travailleurs.

https://reporterre.net/Contre-l-extreme-droite-ecologistes-et-antifascistes-s-unissent-en-Allemagne

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2024/01/22/l-allemagne-se-mobilise-dans-la-rue-contre-la-montee-de-l-extreme-droite_6212235_3210.html

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2024/02/09/en-allemagne-les-manifestations-inedites-contre-l-extreme-droite-pourraient-remobiliser-l-electorat_6215638_3210.html

Le prétendu combat des institutions contre l'extrême droite est complètement pipeau d'autant que cette extrême droite gangrène déjà de l'intérieur l'appareil d'Etat.

https://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/comment-berlin-entend-combattre-les-reseaux-dextreme-droite-2076134

https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/allemagne-le-gouvernement-s-attaque-au-financement-de-l-extreme-droite-20240213

Le retour du fascisme et de la guerre en Allemagne et la lutte pour le socialisme

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/05/15/oaub-m15.html

Ce qu'avait été le tournant fasciste en Allemagne

https://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/urss/1933/04/bolchevikn2.htm

Que proposaient le réformisme, le stalinisme et le trotskysme face à la montée fasciste en Allemagne ?
https://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/urss/1933/04/bolchevikn2.htm

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article468

La social-démocratie allemande a refusé de combattre le fascisme

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5884

Le fascisme en Allemagne était un choix des capitalistes

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3101

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article931

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3483

La révolution sociale, seule voie pour battre le fascisme, cela reste vrai…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5125

Plus jamais 1933 en Allemagne ? Pas si sûr !

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7614

En 2017 déjà…

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve877

Solide, fiable, prospère, ce que l'on ne peut plus dire de l'Allemagne capitaliste…

https://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de/fr/allemagne-en-un-coup-doeil/une-economie-innovante

L'économie allemande se porte très mal

https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2024/07/31/l-economie-allemande-s-enfonce-dans-la-crise_6262839_3234.html

https://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/lallemagne-senlise-dans-la-crise-et-se-dirige-vers-une-croissance-zero-en-2024-2117412

Voici pourquoi l'économie allemande reste la plus en difficulté en Europe

https://fr.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/04/17/voici-pourquoi-leconomie-allemande-reste-la-plus-en-difficulte-en-europe

La crise économique allemande fragilise ses voisins d'Europe centrale

https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/le-journal-de-l-eco/la-crise-economique-allemande-fragilise-ses-voisins-d-europe-centrale-5651671

La voie vers l'effondrement…

https://fr.euronews.com/business/2024/09/20/le-climat-economique-de-lallemagne-seffondre-et-les-perspectives-se-degradent

https://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/lallemagne-senlise-dans-la-crise-et-se-dirige-vers-une-croissance-zero-en-2024-2117412

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkWpqyXM1PE

Dans ces conditions l'Allemagne la montée de l'extrême droite a une signification de marche au fascisme…

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2024/09/01/allemagne-l-extreme-droite-remporte-pour-la-premiere-fois-un-scrutin-regional-en-thuringe_6301336_3210.html

https://www.ouest-france.fr/europe/allemagne/allemagne-lextreme-droite-remporte-pour-la-premiere-fois-un-scrutin-regional-d5d3d222-687b-11ef-9827-8f066c8ca511

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/09/02/allemagne-l-inquietante-montee-de-l-extreme-droite_6302056_3232.html

https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/l-invite-d-un-jour-dans-le-monde/l-invite-d-un-jour-dans-le-monde-du-mardi-03-septembre-2024-3396260

A nouveau l'homme malade de l'Europe ?

https://www.lepoint.fr/economie/allemagne-pourquoi-la-premiere-economie-europeenne-est-en-crise-23-02-2024-2553257_28.php#11

La guerre contre la Russie plonge l'Allemagne dans une immense crise de l'énergie

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2022/07/22/alle-j22.html

Le gouvernement allemand intensifie sa campagne de militarisme et de guerre

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/07/26/exdw-j26.html

La politique du gouvernement crédite l'extrême droite

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/09/14/ydqs-s14.html

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/09/12/djuz-s12.html

Le gouvernement dirigé par le Parti de gauche promeut l'agitation anti-réfugiés et les mesures policières à l'approche des élections régionales en Thuringe

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/08/31/clkc-a31.html

Les leçons du succès électoral du parti d'extrême droite Alternative pour l'Allemagne

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/09/05/pers-s05.html

L'AfD d'extrême droite et le BSW, parti anti-immigrés, remportent la moitié des sièges aux élections régionales du Brandebourg

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/09/26/bvbu-s26.html

Le parti d'extrême droite Alternative pour l'Allemagne obtient plus de 30 pour cent aux élections des Lands en Saxe et en Thuringe

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/09/02/jucf-s02.html

Le fascisme progresse-t-il en Allemagne ? Et pas seulement à cause de l'extrême droite ni des élections ! Quelle réponse seul le prolétariat est capable de donner ?

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/09/02/allemagne-l-inquietante-montee-de-l-extreme-droite_6302056_3232.html

https://reporterre.net/En-Allemagne-des-colons-ethniques-veulent-blanchir-les-campagnes

https://www.france24.com/fr/europe/20240901-allemagne-victoire-in%C3%A9dite-de-l-extr%C3%AAme-droite-%C3%A0-une-%C3%A9lection-r%C3%A9gionale

Ce n'est pas un phénomène propre à l'Allemagne

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5792

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3960

L'armée allemande se déclare ancrée dans les « traditions » de la Wehrmacht d'Hitler

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/08/05/pers-a05.html

Le retour du fascisme et de la guerre en Allemagne et la lutte pour le socialisme

https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2024/05/15/oaub-m15.html

Franz Mehring Absolutisme et révolution en Allemagne 1525–1848

Robert Paris — 2024-06-26T22:05:00Z

Les luttes de classe de la Révolution allemande
Le 18 mars

Le romantisme allemand avait complètement dégénéré au cours des années 1840. Incapable de créer, elle était impuissante face aux nouvelles forces en développement de l'industrie et du commerce. Ses derniers rites furent administrés dans le long discours royal par lequel le roi de Prusse salua le Landtag uni en 1847. Le mécontentement croissant des classes éduquées et commerçantes et, bien plus important, cet importun persuasif, le manque d'argent, l'avaient contraint pour unir le Landtage des huit provinces ensemble en un seul corps. Avec cela, il était convaincu d'avoir tenu les anciennes promesses de constitution de son père.

Le Landtag uni n'était pas destiné à être un parlement moderne mais une assemblée féodale des États, et c'est ce qu'il était. Les membres des huit Landtage provinciaux étaient divisés en deux chambres, une Chambre des Lords qui se composait de 72 membres de la grande aristocratie, et une Chambre des Trois États dans laquelle les chevaliers avaient 231 sièges, les villes 182 et les paysans 120. Les pouvoirs du Landtagse limitaient à l'approbation d'emprunts en temps de paix et à l'approbation d'impôts nouveaux ou augmentés, ainsi qu'à l'examen de projets de nouvelles lois, si la Couronne daignait leur soumettre de telles propositions. Dans son discours royal, le roi jura qu'aucune puissance sur terre ne parviendrait jamais à faire de lui un monarque constitutionnel ; il ne permettrait absolument pas, disait-il, qu'une feuille de papier écrite s'interpose comme une seconde Providence entre son Seigneur Dieu du Ciel et sa patrie, pour régner sur ses paragraphes et y remplacer l'ancienne loyauté. Il a expliqué « le sens très bref du très long discours » de manière non pas aussi romantique mais beaucoup plus succincte et claire dans une lettre confidentielle à son ami Bunsen dans les termes suivants : il faudrait être un bœuf septuple (1) pour exiger une constitution et (2) un bœuf encore plus gros pour donner une constitution s'il y en avait déjà une. Le prince héritier de Prusse, en tant qu'héritier présomptif, a adopté la même attitude aimable, mais plus logiquement. Il pensait que les États-UnisLandtag lui-même a marqué la chute de l'ancienne Prusse.

Néanmoins, malgré toute son étroitesse d'esprit réactionnaire, il avait un instinct plus sain que son frère doué et un instinct plus sain que les idéologues de la bourgeoisie, qui se contentaient de hausser les épaules avec mépris devant cet accomplissement de leurs anciens idéaux, et déconseillaient en partie la l'acceptation de ce type de constitution. En cela, ils n'ont trouvé aucun auditeur prêt dans leur classe, qui avait aussi leur instinct sain. Ronds d'épaules et apprivoisés, terrifiés de surcroît par les premiers signes de vie confus du prolétariat, ils se contentaient à la fois de ce que le Roi offrait et de la façon dont il l'offrait. Avec des éléments bourgeoisifiés de la noblesse qui, par leur implication dans la production marchande agraire-industrielle, avaient été forcés dans la sphère d'intérêt de la grande bourgeoisie,Landtag . Avec sa phrase inspirée, "Les questions d'argent ne sont pas une blague", Hansemann a simplement jeté par la fenêtre le romantisme bienveillant du discours du roi. Le Landtag tenait les cordons de la bourse. Il ne voulait pas simplement être ce qu'ils appelaient une "station de pompage" pour l'absolutisme en faillite et s'est déclaré incompétent pour approuver le prêt demandé de quelque vingt millions de talers pour la construction du chemin de fer de l'Est jusqu'à ce qu'il ait obtenu un rappel périodique et prolongé ses droits. A ce sujet, le Landtag se brouille avec le roi, sans s'en soucier particulièrement. Ils savaient qu'il devrait revenir vers eux.

La tempête de l'histoire mondiale, cependant, éclata bientôt sur cette idylle prussienne. Une série de mauvaises récoltes et la grande crise commerciale de 1847 secouent l'Europe. Tout ce qui était pourri dans la structure s'est effondré. Les ouvriers parisiens brisèrent le trône de Louis Hilippe [88] et dans la métropole du marché mondial, le chartisme dressa la tête haute. [89]Pour la première fois, la classe ouvrière moderne est apparue dans une révolution bourgeoise avec des revendications indépendantes. Un prolétariat de chair et de sang siège au gouvernement provisoire de la République française. "Ce n'était pas qu'un éclair comme en 1830. C'était l'orage de quarante-huit." Ainsi le poète allemand Freiligrath a célébré l'avancée de la révolution de février sur la révolution de juillet. La tempête a fait rage à travers l'Europe jusqu'aux frontières mêmes de la Russie. Au soulèvement du prolétariat d'Europe occidentale répondirent les luttes héroïques pour l'indépendance des nations opprimées, les Irlandais, les Polonais, les Italiens et les Hongrois. [90]

En Allemagne, le premier souffle de ce vent révolutionnaire venu d'Occident a balayé un amas de vieux rebuts. Dans tous les États petits et moyens, les trônes vacillaient. Leurs occupants se sont précipités pour trouver des cariatides d'appui sous la forme des ministres libéraux de March. Dans le processus, ils ont été agréablement surpris de constater qu'il était plus facile de gouverner par l'intermédiaire de ces braves gens que par l'intermédiaire de bureaucrates aux oreilles en tissu et de Junkers au cou raide. Leur geôlier commun, la Diète fédérale (Bundestag), avait déjà capitulé au début du mois de mars et hissé le drapeau noir-rouge-or comme bannière officielle de l'Allemagne, ce même drapeau qu'elle avait si souvent exécré et méprisé, pour qui il avait anéanti des centaines et des milliers d'hommes dans la force de l'âge. Mais il n'en coula que plus vite sous le poids du mépris général. Le 5 mars, cinquante et un libéraux,

Tout cela n'avait de valeur politique que dans le domaine aérien des rêves. La vraie décision était à Vienne et plus encore à Berlin. Tant que la monarchie autrichienne était immobilisée par les révolutions nationales en son sein et par les querelles générales de ses diverses composantes nationales, l'État prussien - avec toutes ses institutions et traditions, son absolutisme et sa féodalité, son armée et sa bureaucratie - était le seul adversaire intérieur sérieux de la révolution allemande. De plus, la Prusse était l'État dirigeant du Zollverein allemand (union douanière), et aussi détestée que soit la camisole de force prussienne en Allemagne, la classe ouvrière commençait à s'agiter et la bourgeoisie allemande s'était habituée à voir le Zollverein comme le moyen de parvenir à l'unité allemande, dont ils avaient de plus en plus besoin au fil du temps.[91] à coups de poing, les méthodes lentes mais sûres du Landtag uni devinrent impossibles. D'autre part, si une révolution victorieuse en Prusse offrait un processus beaucoup plus rapide, elle pouvait bien balayer d'un coup toute la gloire libérale de mars dans les petits et moyens États.

Pour l'instant, la Prusse du Vormärz (la période de réaction entre le congrès de Vienne et la révolution de mars 1848) n'entend pas faire les concessions même modestes qui auraient satisfait les revendications de la bourgeoisie. Elle s'appuyait sur son armée et d'autres ressources despotiques, et la classe bourgeoise du capital - une bourgeoisie encore très jeune et une petite bourgeoisie avancée en paroles mais arriérée en actes - ne s'opposait à elle sous aucune forme terrifiante. Ses premières déclarations en mars ont été dictées moins par l'amour de la liberté que par la peur du prolétariat : un article apaisant dans le Vossische Zeitungdu 7 mars exhortant les ouvriers à ne pas se laisser séduire par la révolution en France par la conviction qu'ils étaient toujours mieux dans le giron du capitalisme, et une décision des édiles du 9 mars de faire un peu plus pour les classes laborieuses qu'elles ne l'avaient fait précédemment. Ils ont proposé de collecter de l'argent auprès des citoyens les plus aisés pour financer des travaux publics. Le même jour, après d'interminables préparatifs, une bourse du travail municipale est ouverte, où six à sept mille chômeurs s'inscrivent immédiatement, sans que plus d'un d'entre eux soit orienté vers un emploi.

En toutes autres choses, la Couronne a cru pouvoir faire taire l'opposition bourgeoise en accordant le rappel périodique du Landtag uni , en le convoquant pour le 27 avril, et en promettant en outre de faire des représentations à la Diète fédérale en faveur de la liberté de la presse et à Metternich [ 92] en faveur de l'unité allemande. Ces merveilleuses promesses soulevèrent en effet le plus grand enthousiasme des philistins berlinois, dont le journal ordinaire, la Vossische Zeitunget dont les représentants élus, les conseillers municipaux, tremblaient d'une « heureuse reconnaissance » d'« amis du progrès prudent » devant de si merveilleuses concessions. Naturellement, le prolétariat berlinois ne se contentait pas d'une si maigre nourriture. Sous-développée et immature, cette classe n'en est pas moins le moteur des grands meetings populaires qui se tiennent aux portes de la ville. Ces meetings réclamaient déjà non seulement la liberté de la presse et d'association mais aussi toutes les autres libertés civiles, la garantie du travail et un ministère de l'Emploi.

La Couronne s'est imaginée – ce fut sa perte – qu'elle pourrait aussi faire table rase de cette opposition. Il a toléré les premières réunions populaires, mais les a ensuite dispersées par la force des armes, a fait battre et fusiller les masses sur le chemin du retour et a généralement inondé les rues de la ville de militaires. La Garde avait déjà été haranguée dans sa caserne par le prince de Prusse, et sa soif de sang fanatique grandissait si rapidement qu'elle finissait par abattre même des personnes totalement inoffensives qui s'aventuraient dans les rues. Ce carnage se renouvela les 13, 14 et 15 mars. Au début, la classe bourgeoise regarda sans s'émouvoir et ferma même ses portes aux fuyards victimes de la fureur des soldats. Mais quand même « les citoyens les plus silencieux » étaient passés au fil de l'épée sans discernement, ils devenaient rebelles.

La nouvelle que, le 13 mars, la population de Vienne avait renversé le système de Metternich et expulsé son chef tomba comme une étincelle sur ce carburant accumulé. Maintenant, le gouvernement sentit enfin les flammes lui brûler les doigts. Leur prise de conscience a été facilitée par une délégation arrivée sous la conduite de l'Oberpräsident rhénan de Cologne et a indiqué assez crûment qu'à moins qu'ils n'introduisent des réformes immédiates, ils pouvaient compter sur la sécession de la Rhénanie. Deux lettres patentes furent donc hâtivement décrétées, dont l'une datée du 17 mars et l'autre du 18 mars. La première promettait la liberté de la presse conditionnelle, la seconde la convocation du Landtag uni.le 2 avril avec un programme général qui prévoyait un État fédéral allemand sous domination prussienne et une constitution pour la Prusse. Les deux lettres patentes ont été signées par les ministres détestés du gouvernement Vormärz .

Entre-temps, la révolution de Vienne avait suscité un sentiment de profonde honte dans la population berlinoise. Que la « cité de l'Intellect », habile à dérouler des phrases retentissantes comme des étoffes de soie, soit inférieure en perspicacité et en énergie politiques à la cité méprisée des charognards sur le Danube, était une pilule trop amère. Ce sont précisément les éléments les plus pacifiques, la Garde civique – que les autorités municipales avaient mise en place quelques jours auparavant pour apaiser les « fauteurs de troubles » – qui ont décidé d'organiser un rassemblement de masse pacifique le 18 mars à midi devant le palais royal, le Schloss, à exiger du Roi : retrait des forces militaires, organisation d'une Garde civile armée, octroi de la liberté de la presse inconditionnelle et convocation rapide du Landtag uni. Le quatrième de ces points a été entièrement concédé dans les lettres patentes, et le troisième partiellement. Le deuxième point, du moins de l'avis de la grande majorité de ses initiateurs, n'était nullement destiné à armer le peuple contre l'armée, mais à former une gendarmerie volontaire contre les rebelles parmi les citoyens, afin de faire permet de répondre à la première demande, tant par son importance que par sa position dans la liste - le retrait des militaires. C'était le point principal de la réunion prévue. Heureusement c'est le despotisme du Vormärz lui-même qui a épuisé la patience sans fin de ses sujets du Vormärz , avec les massacres militaires, avec le sentiment qu'ils se laissaient égorger comme un troupeau de moutons au gré d'un despote oriental.

La révolution éclata sur ces points. A midi, le 18 mars, des masses de personnes ont rempli la place devant le Schloss. Il est vrai qu'ils ont applaudi à l'annonce des Lettres patentes, mais ils ont trop souvent été trompés par les phrases pompeuses du Roi romantique et de son ministère féodal et bureaucratique pour se tromper sur le point décisif de toute la situation. Quand, aux portes du Schloss, le ministre de la Justice, Savigny, argumenta avec la foule qui se bousculait que le Roi avait accordé plus qu'on ne lui avait jamais demandé, un ouvrier lui dit : « Vieil homme, tu ne comprends pas, il n'a rien donné. ' - une remarque qui contient plus de sens historique que l'ensemble de l'École historique réunie. Les appels au retrait des militaires sont devenus de plus en plus forts, malgré les tentatives du roi de les faire taire depuis le balcon, et ils se sont enflés en tempête lorsqu'un escadron de dragons s'est déplacé du Tiltyard, et une compagnie d'infanterie du Schloss lui-même, pour nettoyer la place des gens. Deux coups de feu des rangs de l'infanterie donnèrent alors le signal du début des combats de rue.

L'ennuyeux débat de savoir si ces coups ont été tirés accidentellement, si le prince de Prusse a donné ou non l'ordre d'intervenir à l'armée, et tout le reste, est tout à fait accessoire. Il est possible que la coïncidence ait joué un rôle dans la décharge des deux mousquets. Il est même possible que le prince de Prusse, qui est généralement tenu pour l'instigateur de l'intervention de l'armée et suffisamment méfiant par ses discours incendiaires aux troupes dans leurs casernes, ne tisse pas à ce moment ses intrigues réactionnaires. La puissante collision était inévitable dès que le retrait des militaires est devenu une question d'une importance pratique brûlante sur laquelle aucun des deux camps opposés ne pouvait ou ne voulait céder.

Il est tout aussi inutile de se disputer pour savoir qui a gagné dans les treize heures de combat qui ont suivi. La victoire à la guerre signifie imposer sa volonté à un adversaire qui résiste et nous ne voyons pas pourquoi cette simple logique, qui est présentée à chaque écolier prussien dans les batailles du vieux Blucher et du « Vieux Fritz », ne devrait pas s'appliquer dans la lutte entre la Couronne et les personnes. Le 19 mars au matin, le roi retire les troupes de la ville, ce qu'il s'était obstinément refusé, au risque de provoquer des combats de rue, le 18 après-midi. Il a été dit à maintes reprises par des historiens bien pensants que l'ordre de retirer les troupes a été donné sans raison urgente et d'une manière qui n'a jamais été expliquée. Mais une direction militaire dont les ordres décisifs viennent, Dieu sait pourquoi et de Dieu sait qui, est battu non pas une mais trois fois. En effet, dans la nuit du 18 au 19 mars 1848, la vieille Prusse s'effondre impuissante sous le poids de ses péchés ramenés sur sa tête par le coup puissant de la révolution.

Les soldats avaient été fouettés au point qu'ils menaient des combats de rue avec une grande cruauté. Même les vétérans patriotes des guerres de libération disaient que cela faisait honte à l'armée prussienne. Les jeunes et les hommes des barricades se battaient en revanche avec un courage gai et persistant avec une humanité de bonne humeur, fait confirmé par tous les témoins impartiaux et involontairement concédé ici et là dans les rapports militaires. Malgré leur armement tout à fait insuffisant, ils ont pu faire tellement chauffer les 14 000 soldats et 36 canons auxquels ils ont fait face qu'à 5 heures du matin, le commandant militaire a ordonné à ses troupes épuisées d'arrêter le combat. Les combattants sur les barricades puisaient une force toujours renouvelée dans la sympathie de la population.

Mais le fardeau principal des combats reposait sur le prolétariat. Parmi les 183 civils morts qui ont été enterrés en procession solennelle le 22 mars, il y avait un jeune avocat et deux étudiants, dont l'un n'avait même pas pris part aux combats mais avait été assassiné par les soldats assoiffés de sang. La masse des morts se composait d'artisans, dont quelques-uns étaient décrits dans les listes comme des maîtres, mais un très grand nombre comme des compagnons, des ouvriers, des mécaniciens, des commis et des apprentis. Que les 33 cadavres non réclamés appartenaient exclusivement à la classe ouvrière est évident. C'est sur ces victimes inconnues que la réaction a ensuite épinglé la calomnie infâme selon laquelle les combattants du 18 mars étaient des agents étrangers, des voyous et des criminels. Ils n'en ont rien prouvé, et n'ont pas réussi, malgré tous leurs efforts, à trouver parmi les cadavres reconnus ou parmi les 700 prisonniers un seul agent, voyou ou criminel, ou même toute personne ayant un casier judiciaire, bien que dans le Berlin du Vörmarz, même fumer dans la rue puisse entraîner une inculpation pénale. « On prétend souvent que, parmi les morts, il y avait plusieurs dizaines de voleurs connus. Il n'y aurait évidemment pas de conseillers d'Etat dans leur nombre ! Si cette affirmation était vraie, alors ces hommes ont été honorés par une telle mort. Ainsi Gneist[93] , lui-même un Geiheimrat, traite de cette allégation impudente.

Le prince de Prusse quitta la ville avec les troupes et s'enfuit déguisé à Londres, après ce que l'on ne peut que qualifier d'aventures héroïques. Les plus détestés des anciens ministres et une masse d'hésitants parmi les dix mille premiers ont également quitté Berlin. Le roi confia au comte Arnim la formation d'un nouveau ministère, un grand propriétaire terrien aux tendances libérales occasionnelles. Cependant, personne ne tenait à saisir les rênes du gouvernement. Une confusion sans bornes régnait dans le Schloss et une foule grandissante se bousculait et se bousculait dans sa cour. De tous les coins de la ville, poussés par un instinct commun, les combattants des barricades affluaient par les portails. Avec leurs armes victorieuses dans leurs mains et leurs visages encore brillants du combat, ils portaient sur leurs épaules les bières avec les cadavres de leurs frères tombés, leurs blessures mises à nu, leurs fronts sanglants ornés de mains de femmes de lauriers et d'immortelles. En silence, la foule les reçut, les lèvres tremblantes et les larmes coulantes ; seul le pas ferme des porteurs résonnait dans la cour, et de temps en temps le nom d'un des morts était crié à haute voix par les porteurs : « Père de cinq petits enfants » ; 'Hit par mitraille sur la barricade du Köllner Rathaus' ; « Abattu sans pitié après qu'il se soit rendu » ; "Quinze ans, abattu à mes côtés, mon fils unique". Et alors éclata sur les Hohenzollern un jugement tel qu'aucun Stuart et aucun Capet ne souffrit même sur les marches de l'échafaud, un jugement dont la puissance fracassante s'est conservée à jamais dans les vers immortels de Freiligrath, décrivant comment le roi fut contraint de rendre hommage à les martyrs du soulèvement.

Alors c'est la guerre ! Die Kugel in der Brust, die Stirne breit gespalten,
So habt ihr uns auf schwankem Brett auf zum Altan gehalten !
'Herunter !' – under er kam gewankt – gewankt an unser Bette ;
'Cabane ab !' – er zog – er neigte sich ! (alors coulé zur Marionette,
Der erst ein Komödiant war !) – bleich stand er und beklommen !
Das Heer indes verliess die Stadt, die sterbend wir genommen !
Dann 'Jésus, meine Zuversicht !', wie ihr's im Buch konnt lesen ;
Ein 'Eisen, meine Zuversicht !' guerre pässlicher gewesen !

[Donc c'était ça ! Tiré dans le cœur, nos têtes se sont ouvertes, !
tu nous as portés sur des planches, tu nous as tenus jusqu'au balcon.
'Descendre !' – il chancela – chancela jusqu'à nos bières ;
'Enlève ton chapeau !' - Il a fait ; il s'est incliné ! (Cet ancien acteur s'est donc
laissé tomber dans une marionnette.) Pâlissant, mal à l'aise, il se tenait là.
« Jésus, sois ma foi ! – ainsi dit le livre.
Fer, sois ma foi ! aurait été plus approprié.]

La réprimande silencieuse que les morts dans ce poème adressent aux vivants a souvent été adressée aux combattants victorieux sur les barricades. Pourquoi tordre le couteau d'une humiliation inoubliable dans son cœur au lieu de briser le trône avec une détermination de sang-froid ? Le reproche est aussi justifié ou aussi injustifié que de critiquer ceux qui ont pris la Bastille pour ne pas avoir immédiatement déclaré la république. Dans un soulèvement au grand cœur, le prolétariat avait brisé un joug humiliant, en un jour de sang il avait lavé la honte des siècles et tracé une frontière historique, sur laquelle aucune puissance sur terre ne pouvait revenir. Certes, elle pouvait renverser un instant le trône, mais elle ne pouvait pas entrer dans un règne pour lequel elle était trop sous-développée et de loin immature ; elle ne pouvait remplir une tâche dont elle commençait à peine à poser les premières bases. Elle n'oublie pas le « fer soit ma foi », car le cortège funèbre au Schloss n'est pas seulement une expiation prise à un prince coupable par la justice populaire ; c'était bien plutôt couronner l'œuvre du 18 mars en lui ôtant son droit d'approuver l'armement du peuple. Le prolétariat ne pouvait rien faire de plus que débarrasser la bourgeoisie, la classe qui, dans les conditions du développement historique, était désormais appelée à prendre le pouvoir. Le devoir de régler leurs comptes avec l'absolutisme et le féodalisme leur incombait, ainsi que le devoir de décider si l'œuvre audacieuse du 18 mars devait être couronnée ou trahie. c'était bien plutôt couronner l'œuvre du 18 mars en lui ôtant son droit d'approuver l'armement du peuple. Le prolétariat ne pouvait rien faire de plus que débarrasser la bourgeoisie, la classe qui, dans les conditions du développement historique, était désormais appelée à prendre le pouvoir. Le devoir de régler leurs comptes avec l'absolutisme et le féodalisme leur incombait, ainsi que le devoir de décider si l'œuvre audacieuse du 18 mars devait être couronnée ou trahie. c'était bien plutôt couronner l'œuvre du 18 mars en lui ôtant son droit d'approuver l'armement du peuple. Le prolétariat ne pouvait rien faire de plus que débarrasser la bourgeoisie, la classe qui, dans les conditions du développement historique, était désormais appelée à prendre le pouvoir. Le devoir de régler leurs comptes avec l'absolutisme et le féodalisme leur incombait, ainsi que le devoir de décider si l'œuvre audacieuse du 18 mars devait être couronnée ou trahie.

Ils l'ont trahi, et leur mauvaise conscience a laissé s'envenimer le cimetière où reposaient les pionniers tombés. La rouille rongeait les lettres et les chiffres des croix, et l'herbe ondulait sur les tumulus incultes. Mais vint alors le jour où la conscience de classe éveillée du prolétariat saisit la signification historique de la révolution de mars et reconsacra le cimetière sur le Friedrichshain. Ce que Marx a dit plus tard d'un autre 18 mars est vrai de ces martyrs : ils sont inscrits dans le grand cœur de la classe ouvrière. Le 18 mars 1871, la Commune de Paris, le gouvernement des ouvriers révolutionnaires de Paris, est proclamée. Elle se termina, cruellement et sanglante, le 28 mai 1871. Marx commémora ses martyrs par ces mots : « Paris ouvrier, avec sa Commune, sera à jamais célébré comme le glorieux annonciateur d'une société nouvelle. Ses martyrs sont inscrits dans le grand cœur de la classe ouvrière. L'histoire de ses exterminateurs les a déjà cloués à cet éternel pilori dont toutes les prières de leurs prêtres ne pourront les racheter.[94]

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La trahison de la bourgeoisie

Sur les barricades de Berlin, la révolution allemande s'était solidement implantée sous ses pieds. Il a voyagé orageusement à travers le pays et a détruit les racines de la société féodale. La classe paysanne se leva pour se venger d'innombrables torts. En Allemagne du Sud, dans l'Odenwald, en Forêt-Noire, de nouvelles flammes éclatent sur l'ancien sol de la guerre paysanne. Les receveurs de la noblesse et des seigneurs des États sont pourchassés, les registres des terres et des dîmes sont détruits, ainsi que les châteaux des grands seigneurs. Dans le royaume de Saxe, l'incendie a consumé des châteaux féodaux individuels. Le mouvement paysan était le plus fort en Prusse à l'est de l'Elbe, et ici il était particulièrement fort en Silésie. Les paysans sont allés dans les domaines de leurs propriétaires et ont forcé des documents à leurs bourreaux renonçant à tous les frais et services du servage. Le parti féodal,État de Vormärz .

Entre-temps, à Berlin même, la contradiction entre la classe bourgeoise et la classe prolétarienne est clairement apparue. A peine l'ivresse de cette excitante nuit de mars s'est-elle apaisée que la bourgeoisie se met à réclamer la « fin de la révolution », la paix à tout prix. La classe bourgeoise détient les offices municipaux et s'en sert pour s'emparer des 25 000 fusils livrés des arsenaux de l'armée pour la Bürgerwehr (force de défense des citoyens). Ils sont entrés dans la Bürgerwehrconditionnel à la citoyenneté d'une localité particulière, à la garantie personnelle de la restitution en toute sécurité de l'arme délivrée et au statut d'indépendant - conditions largement utilisées pour exclure la classe ouvrière de l'armement du peuple. Le lendemain de la victoire, les vainqueurs ont été escroqués du prix.

La nouvelle Bürgerwehr a immédiatement commencé à se comporter comme une force de police, d'une manière qui a même suscité une certaine nostalgie pour le Vormärzgendarmerie. Il agit contre les « agitateurs » avec une fureur animale. Et cela malgré le fait que les prétendus « excès » des combats de mars ne se résumaient qu'à la démolition d'une maison d'officier à la retraite et d'une ganterie parce qu'ils avaient livré aux troupes des combattants sur les barricades. (Le palais du prince de Prusse était menacé d'un sort semblable, mais il fut évité parce qu'un des chefs des masses eut la présence d'esprit de déclarer qu'il était devenu la propriété de la nation.) De plus, la révolution exerça son rôle habituel. ennoblissant le pouvoir en cette semaine de mars : les délits de droit commun, et notamment les délits contre la propriété, se sont réduits. De manière caractéristique, dans les jours qui ont précédé le 18 mars, le ministre de la police, von Bodelschwingh, tout en « niant le danger politique des grandes masses, vu un signe menaçant dans la baisse des crimes contre la propriété. Un mois exactement après le 18 mars, le président de la police de Berlin déclarait : « En général, le comportement jusqu'à présent des compagnons et des ouvriers mérite à juste titre la reconnaissance publique ». Trois semaines après l'instauration de la liberté de la presse, le procureur du tribunal correctionnel de Berlin a dû dire aux bons citoyens, à la suite de leurs innombrables dénonciations d'"atteintes à la presse" : "Si vous voulez la liberté de la presse, vous avez supporter ses abus ; en tout cas, la nouveauté de la chose conduit probablement à une surestimation du danger. Néanmoins le Trois semaines après l'instauration de la liberté de la presse, le procureur du tribunal correctionnel de Berlin a dû dire aux bons citoyens, à la suite de leurs innombrables dénonciations d'"atteintes à la presse" : "Si vous voulez la liberté de la presse, vous avez supporter ses abus ; en tout cas, la nouveauté de la chose conduit probablement à une surestimation du danger. Néanmoins le Trois semaines après l'instauration de la liberté de la presse, le procureur du tribunal correctionnel de Berlin a dû dire aux bons citoyens, à la suite de leurs innombrables dénonciations d'"atteintes à la presse" : "Si vous voulez la liberté de la presse, vous avez supporter ses abus ; en tout cas, la nouveauté de la chose conduit probablement à une surestimation du danger. Néanmoins leBürgerwehr a continué à faire un grand tumulte sur la menace à la propriété ; "tout est calme dans la ville sauf la Bürgerwehr ", rapporte un soir un chef de patrouille, lassé des pitreries de ses camarades. Rien ne caractérise mieux l'esprit de ces braves troupes que le rôle de leurs commandants auto-élus : le premier fut le président de la police, von Minutoli, puis le commandant de la ville, von Aschoff, puis l'ultra-réactionnaire major Blesson et enfin, lorsque ces les héros bourgeois sont bouleversés par leur propre divinité, le philistin Rimpler, chair de leur chair et sang de leur sang, cœur de lapin apeuré face à la réaction armée, et lion rugissant face au prolétariat sans défense.

Le scandale devint si grand que le seul journal politique de Berlin, le Zeitungshalle , fondé un an auparavant, publia un article contre les prédicateurs de la paix. Il disait, très justement, que si la bourgeoisie avait reculé de toutes ses forces au premier jour après la révolution, c'était la peur des ouvriers qui les poussait à cette conduite suicidaire ; qu'il y avait, il est vrai, une brèche entre la bourgeoisie et la classe ouvrière, mais que pour la combler, la bourgeoisie devait avancer non pas en arrière mais en avant. Le rédacteur en chef du Zeitungshalle a failli être lynché par des membres indignés de la Bürgerwehrpour cet article aussi calme que sensé. Ses amis démocrates ont pris d'assaut sa maison pour rompre leur amitié, et la Bourse a juré solennellement que quiconque ne se joignait pas au boycott de la Zeitungshalle était un « voyou ».

Les autorités municipales étaient naturellement dignes de la Bürgerwehr. Dans leurs déclarations, ils persistaient, bien qu'ils savaient le contraire, à affirmer que le mouvement politique des masses était dirigé contre la propriété de la classe bourgeoise et, dès le 21 mars, ils s'étaient, par des intrigues secrètes, d'accord avec la Couronne. que les régiments de gardes qui venaient d'être chassés de la ville devaient revenir. Afin de jeter la poussière nécessaire dans les yeux des gens, la proclamation imprimée du conseil municipal disait : « Sa Majesté a ordonné qu'avant qu'ils n'entrent dans la ville , les soldats doivent jurer fidélité à la constitution allemande », c'est-à-dire à une constitution qui n'existe pas. Au dernier moment, cependant, ils ont perdu leur sang-froid et la proclamation est allée à la corbeille à papier. D'autre part, une adresse à la Couronne a été rédigée, avec 14 000 signatures, demandant l'entrée – non certes des troupes chassées – mais des « régiments amis des citoyens ». Un démagogue très douteux, le vétérinaire Urban, y fut d'une grande aide, et la majorité desLa Bürgerwehr s'est également déclarée favorable. Malgré tous leurs jeux de passepoils et d'épaulettes de couleur, dans lesquels ils surpassaient même les officiers moustachus de la Garde, il valait mieux prévenir que guérir ; il valait mieux faire garder leur sainte propriété par de vrais soldats que par leur héroïsme volontaire. Ainsi, le 30 mars, un régiment d'infanterie et un de cavalerie, avec deux autres bataillons et un escadron, rentrèrent dans la capitale.

Il ne pouvait y avoir d'augure plus favorable pour la bourgeoisie, qui rejoignit promptement le gouvernement. Désormais appelée à régner, la bourgeoisie rhénane en est redevenue l'élément le plus développé et le plus mûr. Camphausen et Hansemann, présidents des chambres de commerce de Cologne et d'Aix-la-Chapelle, furent immédiatement invités par le comte Arnim à entrer au ministère, mais prudemment refusèrent de servir de figures de proue sous un grand propriétaire qui pouvait revêtir de temps à autre un masque libéral. temps mais qui, pour l'essentiel, a conservé sa vision féodale de la caste. Le comte Arnim tomba à la suite de cette résistance. Le 29 mars, Camphausen est nommé ministre-président et ministre des Finances Hansemann. Comte Schwerin et Auerswald, deux figures de proue de l'opposition au Landtag uni, sont restés du cabinet sortant respectivement ministres de la Culture et de l'Intérieur, et Arnim-Heinrichsdorff, ancien ambassadeur à Paris, est devenu ministre des Affaires étrangères.

Ces gens méritaient une place dans le premier ministère bourgeois, qu'ils avaient travaillé dur pour préparer même sous le comte Arnim. Le 21 mars, ils avaient organisé la procession théâtrale du roi dans les rues principales de Berlin. Précédé d'une avant-garde de généraux et de ministres portant des brassards Noir-Rouge-Or, devant lui une Bürgerwehrhomme au drapeau tricolore, à côté de lui le gendarme Stieber et derrière lui le vétérinaire Urban à la couronne impériale peinte, le roi avait annoncé à la mairie et à l'université, comme un colporteur forain, que la Prusse allait être dissoute dans l'Allemagne , et qu'il souhaitait diriger une Allemagne constitutionnelle. Malgré tout le plaisir innocent qu'elle procurait aux habitants des rues de Berlin, cette pitrerie chargeait un nouveau mépris sur la tête d'un roi qui, humilié depuis peu jusqu'à la poussière, se livrait une fois de plus à des processions pompeuses. De toute l'Allemagne, un écho méprisant accueillit ses promesses solennelles.

Mais ceux qui ont mis en scène cette virée théâtrale savaient très bien ce qu'ils faisaient. Ce que le roi en retire, c'est l'invitation, dans une lettre au duc d'Augustenbourg, à s'impliquer dans la lutte des duchés de Schleswig-Holstein contre le Danemark. [95]Publiquement, cela a eu lieu sous l'égide de la Confédération allemande pour le salut des personnes d'origine allemande de la domination étrangère par les Danois. Les objectifs secrets étaient, d'une part, de donner aux gardes humiliés - qui avaient été chassés de Berlin - une certaine satisfaction militaire, et d'autre part d'éradiquer un foyer de révolution dans le Schleswig-Holstein, dont la cause était très populaire. en Allemagne. Avant que les troupes prussiennes ne franchissent la frontière, l'ambassadeur prussien von Wildenbruch a écrit une note secrète au cabinet danois leur disant de ne pas prendre la guerre trop au sérieux. Ce que le gouvernement prussien voulait avant tout, disait-il, c'était de conserver les duchés au roi de Danemark, et la seule raison pour laquelle il avait entrepris la campagne était d'empêcher une intervention dangereuse d'éléments radicaux et républicains en Allemagne.

Alors que le ministère Arnim avait déjà commencé à tisser la toile de la contre-révolution, son cabinet s'est avéré bien trop faible pour résister aux coups durs de la révolution sans l'aide de la bourgeoisie. Comme la députation de Cologne le 18 mars, une députation de Breslau intervint de manière décisive dans la politique de la Couronne le 22 mars, et avec les mêmes moyens. Ils ont menacé de faire sécession la Silésie à moins que la représentation populaire basée sur le suffrage direct ne remplace le Landtag uniet à moins qu'il n'y ait des garanties de sécurité complète de la personne, procès par jury, surtout pour les délits politiques, armement général du peuple avec élection libre des officiers, immunité de révocation pour les juges, abolition de tous les privilèges féodaux dans le système juridique et la loi- application et un serment de loyauté à la constitution de la part de l'armée. Le comte Arnim résista bec et ongles, mais la députation, dirigée par un ancien président de la police et composée principalement de fonctionnaires municipaux, était si pressante, et les nouvelles de Silésie si inquiétantes, que le roi dut céder bon gré mal gré.

Dans un décret adressé immédiatement à la délégation silésienne, le roi promet « un système constitutionnel sur les bases les plus larges » et une loi électorale populaire destinée à créer une représentation embrassant tous les intérêts du peuple et fondée sur le suffrage direct. Cette assemblée devait statuer sur les autres points soulevés par la députation silésienne, que l'ordre en conseil répéta. De plus, le Roi promettait de faire prêter à l'armée permanente un serment de fidélité à la future constitution, et sa seule réserve était que la nouvelle loi électorale soit déposée devant le Landtag uni.pour examen. Un tel programme était impossible sous le comte Arnim. Il s'est accroché quelques jours de plus, mais ses propres collègues, en particulier son homonyme, l'ont forcé à partir. Ces aristocrates bourgeoisifiés n'hésitent pas à se placer sous le commandement bourgeois.

Des deux nouveaux ministres, Camphausen était le plus cultivé et Hansemann le plus déterminé. Hansemann voulait imposer les intérêts matériels de la bourgeoisie sans crainte ni honte, tandis que Camphausen avait toujours la vision du préfet d'école de l'idéologue bourgeois. Mais tous deux étaient unis dans la conviction que la victoire du prolétariat devait être conjurée au profit de la bourgeoisie. Ils refusent donc de convoquer la nouvelle assemblée populaire sur la base du fait historique de la révolution, mais ne le feront que sur la « base de la loi ». Ils voulaient maintenir la « continuité d'un état de légalité » et tous les autres slogans retentissants. C'est pourquoi ils ont insisté pour que le Landtag unidevra discuter d'une loi électorale et rédiger les principes de la nouvelle constitution. La fameuse « base légale » consistait dans le calcul astucieux que, si elle était imposée au prolétariat par un fantôme féodal, la conjuration de la révolution par la bourgeoisie garderait une apparence de respectabilité.

Comme on pouvait s'y attendre, le United Landtag s'est avéré n'être qu'un fantôme. Le parti féodal est battu sur toute la ligne. Même ce tison féodal, Bismarck, avouait avec un franc chagrin qu'aucune puissance humaine ne pouvait ressusciter le passé enseveli et ajoutait, d'un air doux-amer, qu'il soutiendrait le ministère Camphausen, puisqu'il n'y avait pas d'autre espoir de "légalité". et conditions ordonnées ». Le Landtag uniétait comme un cadavre galvanisé, à peine capable d'écrire les ordres que lui dictait la bourgeoisie. Dans la loi du 6 avril furent posés les fondements de la nouvelle constitution : liberté absolue de la presse sans lien ; procès devant jury même pour les délits politiques ; l'indépendance du pouvoir judiciaire et la suppression de la loi disciplinaire qui lui était imposée ; la liberté d'association et de réunion et la libre jouissance de tous les droits civils, quelle que soit la croyance religieuse. Et enfin, tout cela était couronné par l'assurance que l'établissement du budget et la levée des impôts seraient subordonnés à l'approbation des futurs représentants du peuple. De plus, la loi du 8 avril accordait le suffrage universel, égal, secret mais indirect à une assemblée qui devait établir la nouvelle constitution en accord avec la Couronne.

La peur du prolétariat vainqueur se retrouve très clairement dans ces lois. Elles sont la concrétisation des promesses que le roi avait faites à la délégation silésienne. Surtout la loi sur les nouveaux droits populaires, qui devait entrer en vigueur immédiatement, est née de la peur. Il est caractéristique de la situation que Rodbertus [96] , vraisemblablement le seul membre du Landtag uniqui soutenait fondamentalement le suffrage universel, était certainement le seul à s'y opposer, car il ne pensait pas que les masses étaient encore mûres pour l'utiliser. Le ministère avait déjà comblé un énorme trou dans le suffrage universel en rendant les élections indirectes. Ils ont de toute façon traduit toute la législation des 6 et 8 avril dans des régions complètement floues en faisant dépendre la future constitution d'un accord mutuel entre la Couronne et les représentants du peuple.

Cet « accord » mutuel était un piège bourgeois au même titre que le concept de « légalité ». Comme le dira plus tard un porte-parole de la gauche à l'Assemblée de Berlin, c'était une tare oisivement plaquée sur le grand mouvement, un mot ni ancien ni nouveau et pas même allemand, un véritable avorton de mot, noué comme un cordon ombilical au neuf pour aspirer la substance de l'ancien. Avec cet « accord », l'état des choses était fondamentalement ramené à ce midi du 18 mars, la victoire du peuple était annulée, la Couronne rétablie dans toute sa force. C'est à nouveau Rodbertus qui a posé la question juste et carrée dans le United Landtag : que se passerait-il si la Couronne et l'Assemblée n'étaient pas d'accord ? Hansemann a répondu avec un mépris de sang-froid : ce point de vue prévaudrait qui avait la plus grande force, sur quoi Rodbertus a conclu avec un soupir que cela ne pourrait se produire que par une seconde révolution. Néanmoins, il s'appuyait toujours sur le principe de l'accord. Utopiste politique autant que social, il veut sauver « la virginité légale de la Prusse », cette même Prusse dont l'histoire officielle depuis le XVIe siècle est une suite ininterrompue d'illégalités. Pour pouvoir nier la « première révolution », la révolution du peuple, il prépare la « seconde révolution », la contre-révolution de la Couronne.

La bourgeoisie n'aurait pas été la bourgeoisie si elle n'avait pas, après cette trahison de la classe ouvrière, renforcé sa propre emprise sur le nerf des choses. Le ministère demanda au Landtag uni un crédit de quarante millions de talers, quinze millions pour équiper l'armée et vingt-cinq millions pour contrôler l'anarchie intérieure en dirigeant les capitaux liquides vers le commerce et l'industrie afin de noyer le prolétariat chômeur et insoumis dans ses flots. Comme non seulement la bonne humeur de la monarchie mais aussi la légalité de la bourgeoisie trouvent leurs limites en matière d'argent, Camphausen et Hansemann ont demandé ce crédit précisément au même Landtag .qui s'était déclaré un an plus tôt incompétent pour approuver de tels crédits, et ils ont reçu l'importante somme d'argent de poche sans grand discours.

Ils n'ont pas été aussi chanceux dans la troisième intrigue dans laquelle ils ont essayé d'abuser du United Landtag. Simultanément à ce corps, l'assemblée des notables qui avait été convoquée à Heidelberg se réunissait à Francfort-sur-le-Main, le soi-disant pré-parlement, qui était basé sur la révolution mais ne respirait nullement la perspective de la révolution. Si peu développée que fût encore l'éducation politique en Allemagne, il était néanmoins impossible de se débarrasser de la conviction que si l'on voulait créer une Allemagne libre et unifiée à partir de deux grandes puissances, une demi-douzaine d'États de taille moyenne et quelques dizaines de petits États - en autrement dit, un conglomérat confus d'États et de petits États presque exclusivement monarchistes – alors cela ne pouvait se faire que sous la forme d'une république. Si donc le pré-parlement voulait finir le travail, il n'aurait pas à « clore » la révolution mais à la déclarer en permanence. La bourgeoisie allemande manquait d'endurance pour cela. Une minorité, notamment recrutés dans la petite bourgeoisie sud-allemande, ont bien réclamé une République allemande, mais sous une forme historiquement longtemps dépassée – comme une fédération de cantons républicains sur le modèle suisse. La grande masse de la bourgeoisie et la majorité particulièrement de la petite bourgeoisie nord-allemande ont préféré renoncer à l'unité plutôt qu'à la monarchie. Leur idéal était une croupe de l'Allemagne. Renoncer à l'Autriche allemande, que la tristement célèbre politique de Metternich avait isolée du reste de l'Allemagne avec sa censure intellectuelle et ses barrières douanières matérielles La grande masse de la bourgeoisie et la majorité particulièrement de la petite bourgeoisie nord-allemande ont préféré renoncer à l'unité plutôt qu'à la monarchie. Leur idéal était une croupe de l'Allemagne. Renoncer à l'Autriche allemande, que la tristement célèbre politique de Metternich avait isolée du reste de l'Allemagne avec sa censure intellectuelle et ses barrières douanières matérielles La grande masse de la bourgeoisie et la majorité particulièrement de la petite bourgeoisie nord-allemande ont préféré renoncer à l'unité plutôt qu'à la monarchie. Leur idéal était une croupe de l'Allemagne. Renoncer à l'Autriche allemande, que la tristement célèbre politique de Metternich avait isolée du reste de l'Allemagne avec sa censure intellectuelle et ses barrières douanières matérielles[97] , ils voulaient un Empire prussien héréditaire, qui supprimerait les chaînes féodales et particularistes trop oppressives de la classe bourgeoise, mais garderait autrement le plus possible de l'ancien intact. Jamais en manque de belles phrases, ils s'inclinent avec respect devant une révolution « qui s'est respectueusement arrêtée aux marches du trône ». Ils n'ont fait que voiler quelque peu leur idéal parce que le roi de Prusse était, pour le moment, trop tombé dans le mépris général.

Ces contradictions se sont âprement heurtées dans le pré-parlement, mais la victoire de la faction monarchiste était décidée d'avance. Avec environ 370 voix, ils étaient bien plus forts que les 150 voix républicaines. Et même alors, les circonscriptions de ces républicains nains étaient fortement représentées de manière disproportionnée ; sur 52 Wurtembourgeois, 72 de Bade et 84 de Hesse, il n'y en avait que 2 d'Autriche et 141 de Prusse. Le pré-parlement a refusé de se déclarer ou de déclarer la révolution en permanence. Au lieu de cela, il nomma une Commission des Cinquante pour convoquer une assemblée populaire allemande avec la Diète fédérale purgée sur la base du suffrage universel, mais laissant aux États individuels la question de savoir si le suffrage devait être direct. L'Assemblée nationale devait, il est vrai, décider "seule et seule" de la future constitution allemande, mais sa souveraineté devait aussi s'étendre jusqu'à décider si elle voulait ou non rechercher un accord avec les gouvernements. La Diète fédérale a ajouté une autre ambiguïté à cette ambiguïté du pré-parlement en appelant une Assemblée nationale « constitutionnelle » mais en décrivant son but comme étant de faire la constitution « entre le peuple allemand et les gouvernements ». Une évasion mutuelle a eu lieu sur cette théorie de l'accord. Le pré-parlement ne l'a pas rejeté sans condition et la Diète fédérale ne l'a pas déclaré sans ambages. Tout dépendait de qui deviendrait finalement le plus fort. Pour l'instant, le préparlement était le plus fort, et son rejet de la proposition d'appuyer ses décisions par la force armée n'en était que plus insensé. Elle reléguait ainsi la souveraineté de la future Assemblée nationale à quelque pays coucou nuageux.

Le même rôle que les ministres prussiens de la Marche Camphausen et Hansemann ont joué dans le Landtag unia été incarné au pré-parlement par le ministre de la Marche de Hesse, von Gagern, un "Jupiter", comme l'appelait la bourgeoisie admirative à cause de sa voix tonitruante et de ses sourcils broussailleux, un "vraiment stupide" et un "sac à vent ' comme l'a correctement évalué le Junker pratique, Bismarck, après cinq minutes de conversation. La petite bourgeoisie nord-allemande était surtout représentée dans l'avant-parlement par Robert Blum. Il a tenu dans une certaine mesure la lourde assemblée avec son énergie et son habileté, et il l'a particulièrement sauvée de la honte de se disperser sur la simple rumeur de l'approche d'un corps armé du peuple, mais après la même résistance, il a finalement accepté les décisions de la majorité. Les petits bourgeois sud-allemands, Hecker et Struve, étaient à la fois plus confus et plus enragés et,

Aqueux comme le vin du pré-parlement était, il était encore trop ardent pour les goûts à Berlin. Le roi de Prusse s'était déjà placé à la tête d'une Allemagne constitutionnelle, et la bourgeoisie rhénane n'entendait certainement pas abdiquer au profit de personnalités locales badoises ou hessoises. Le ministère Camphausen, s'appuyant sur une décision de la Diète fédérale que celle-ci avait votée juste avant l'assemblée du préparlement, demanda donc au Landtag uni d'élire les délégués prussiens à l'Assemblée nationale allemande. Mais le courant révolutionnaire était encore trop fort pour accepter patiemment un tel défi, et Camphausen crut bon de céder à une protestation de la Commission des Cinquante. Le Landtag unidevait déclarer invalide l'élection qu'ils venaient d'effectuer, une autre croix qu'il devait porter jusqu'à ce qu'il finisse par disparaître.

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Les parlements

Ailleurs aussi, la trahison de la bourgeoisie ne s'est pas faite sans une violente résistance des éléments révolutionnaires. Le rappel du Landtag uni , les élections indirectes et la fameuse question d'accord avaient suscité des protestations houleuses, notamment à Berlin. Néanmoins la bourgeoisie réussit son attaque surprise parce qu'elle possédait le grand avantage d'avoir déjà conscience de ses intérêts de classe, tandis que dans les masses petites-bourgeoises et prolétariennes il n'y avait encore que des tendances assez vagues toutes mêlées.

Il ne pouvait en être autrement. Ils avaient été poussés d'une existence politiquement totalement morte dans un mouvement révolutionnaire. Ils jouissaient d'une liberté de presse et de réunion illimitée, alors que pendant des siècles ils n'avaient eu aucun levier d'intervention dans les affaires publiques. Il leur était tout à fait impossible de faire autre chose que de procéder très impuissants avec les nouvelles armes.

La petite bourgeoisie était de loin la classe la plus forte de la population urbaine, mais sa force était annulée par sa désunion. Elle était encore pleine de préjugés corporatistes, et dans les innombrables villes dont les principales occupations étaient l'administration, l'armée et la cour, elle était très dépendante de ses clients parmi les courtisans, Junkers, fonctionnaires et soldats. Une grande partie de cette classe était réactionnaire ou plutôt, dès qu'elle se révoltait, elle était facilement rattrapée par les premiers mots d'ordre réactionnaires qui lui tombaient sous la main. Mais même ses éléments les plus développés étaient difficiles à unir ; dans l'Allemagne désunie, encore si arriérée, leurs intérêts et donc leurs exigences changeaient d'État en État, voire de province en province, et parfois de ville en ville.

La classe ouvrière était à l'abri de telles surprises fatales ; mais ce n'est que là où la grande industrie avait aiguisé son regard qu'elle a vu la seule chose nécessaire : son organisation en classe de la société bourgeoise moderne. L'autre et la plus grande partie du prolétariat se tenait encore au niveau le plus primitif d'une conscience de classe qui venait juste de s'éveiller et était encore à moitié endormie ; ils voulaient, comme le manifeste communistedit, pour reconquérir la position disparue de l'ouvrier médiéval. C'était particulièrement vrai du prolétariat rural. Dans les villes, l'inévitable opacité des ouvriers, leur incapacité à s'y retrouver dans toutes les ruses et ruses de la bourgeoisie, les terribles déboires dans lesquels ils se trouvaient, laissaient la voie libre à toutes sortes de démagogues douteux comme le vétérinaire Urban, l'ancien lieutenant Held, le confiseur Karbe et des fantômes similaires. Berlin devait désormais payer cher cette frivole envie de « génie » que Marx avait déjà critiquée dans la Rheinische Zeitung [98] ; l'intelligentsia de la capitale avait tiré toutes ses munitions en vain, et maintenant que le vrai combat était à portée de main, il n'y avait plus de poudre à faire briller dans la casserole. Aussitôt après les journées de mars, commencèrent les tentatives de la réaction féodale absolutiste d'attiser le lumpen-prolétariat. Comment ne pas profiter de la glorieuse opportunité offerte par le cri de peur de la bourgeoisie pour sa propriété ?

De plus, les élections aux Assemblées allemande et prussienne monopolisent l'attention. Les parlements pouvaient et devaient réparer ce qui avait été manqué dans les premières semaines suivant la révolution. Bien sûr, le fait que deux grandes assemblées siégeaient côte à côte montrait à quel point la bourgeoisie avait égaré toute l'affaire. La Commission des Cinquante a exigé que les gouvernements ne convoquent pas les Landtage de leurs Étatsjusqu'à ce que le Parlement de Francfort ait déterminé la constitution allemande, et cette demande aurait eu un certain sens si les représentants du peuple allemand devaient jouer le rôle d'une convention révolutionnaire. Mais si, d'autre part, il devait suivre les traces aériennes du pré-parlement et de la Commission des Cinquante, alors le dernier espoir du peuple allemand était dans l'Assemblée prussienne, qui luttait au moins sur la terre ici-bas. avec la couronne la plus puissante d'Allemagne. Dans un appel aux représentants prussiens, Johann Jacoby [99] les enjoint de nommer des hommes en qui ils ont confiance comme ministres dès qu'ils seront réunis, et de leur donner carte blanche inconditionnelle, mais ensuite d'ajourner jusqu'à ce que le travail de préparation de la constitution allemande soit terminé. Pathétiquement, il déclara que plus jamais le sort de Germane ne dépendrait d' une seule ville, de l'arrogance téméraire des masses populaires de cette ville ; comme si ce n'était pas « l'arrogance » du prolétariat berlinois, plutôt que le pré-parlement et la Commission des Cinquante, où siégeait Jacoby, qui avaient arraché l'Allemagne du marécage du Vormärz ! A peine les échos de ses paroles tonitruantes s'étaient-ils éteints, que la logique des faits força cet honorable homme à siéger à l'Assemblée prussienne.

Aux élections des deux Parlements qui ont eu lieu début mai, le suffrage universel a montré ses instincts naturellement sains en emmenant tous les romantiques du temps de la Burschenschaft, y compris ces vieux fossiles des guerres d'indépendance, Arndt et Jahn, tous les célébrités du Landtage et du Vormärzuniversités, à l'Assemblée apparemment plus importante mais en fait impuissante de Francfort. A l'Assemblée prussienne on élit des gens nouveaux et en partie très pratiques. C'était la première mais aussi la dernière fois que le prolétariat rural était représenté au parlement, par une délégation d'une cinquantaine de membres. En revanche, il n'y avait presque pas de Junkers là-bas ; un seul a été élu dans le paradis Junker de Silésie. Même la Vendée de la Poméranie lointaine était devenue rebelle. De Lauenburg vint un maître d'école de village, de Schlawe un cottager, de Rügenwalde le greffier du tribunal, de Neustettin un demi-paysan, de Belgard un maître boucher et parmi eux, du fief Junker de Stolp, l'assesseur Lothar Bucher , qui, bien que juge des Junkers, avaient gagné l'amour et la confiance de leurs locataires.

Il serait faux de parler de lutte politique partisane lors des élections, simplement parce qu'il n'y avait pas de partis. Même à Berlin, deux hommes ont été élus par les mêmes électeurs dans le même scrutin, l'un à l'extrême gauche et l'autre à l'extrême droite de la nouvelle assemblée. La Nationalzeitung , le nouvel organe que la bourgeoisie berlinoise avait créé parce que la Zeitungshalleétait trop hérétique et les vieilles feuilles philistines étaient trop étroites d'esprit, tâtonnait encore tellement dans l'obscurité qu'elle déplorait l'élection de Waldeck à Berlin comme une victoire de la réaction. Le suffrage universel ne pouvait fonctionner qu'avec les matériaux à portée de main, et il n'y avait pas de grand choix. Si le nouvel organe de représentation populaire devait éliminer l'ancien État, il lui fallait des forces entraînées. Ce n'était vraiment pas aussi myope qu'il y paraissait lorsque les membres réels de la classe dirigeante, de l'administration, de l'église, du système scolaire et de l'État trouvaient une résonance particulière parmi les électeurs, surtout s'ils avaient été harcelés par une réaction romantique pour de vrai. ou soi-disant libre-pensée. Il y avait beaucoup de pasteurs, d'enseignants et de juges parmi les élus. De plus, l'isolement corporatiste de la profession d'avocat avait donné naissance à une sorte de prolétariat judiciaire, d'où arrivait à l'Assemblée toute une nuée d'assesseurs mécontents. La bourgeoisie des villes, consciente de son grand manque d'éducation, a également préféré élire des membres de la bureaucratie judiciaire de formation académique comme ses représentants parlementaires.

Aussi explicable – et même dans une certaine mesure inévitable – qu'était la prédominance des fonctionnaires à l'Assemblée de Berlin, elle entraînait de graves inconvénients. Le formalisme légaliste l'a induit en erreur plus d'une fois, les professeurs et pasteurs se sont révélés pour l'essentiel des clients extrêmement peu fiables, et surtout les bureaucrates prussiens restent toujours des bureaucrates prussiens - des gens qui, selon l'expression de l'un des meilleurs d'entre eux, ont eu toute leur vie. colonne vertébrale intellectuelle et morale brisée dans un processus de dressage élaboré. A l'heure décisive, cela devait être fatal.

Ce n'est que progressivement que quatre factions ont émergé dans l'Assemblée prussienne, avec des frontières très vagues et des programmes qui sonnaient plus ou moins les mêmes, mais qui trahissaient néanmoins leurs origines sociales. La droite très nombreuse, qui constituait près de la moitié de l'Assemblée, était purement ministérielle, rejetait en principe la féodalité et tout ce qui l'accompagnait, mais était en pratique prête à tout compromis possible avec le Roi et les Junkers. A sa tête se trouvaient l'avocat rhénan Reichensperger, l'armateur silésien Milde, le professeur poméranien Baumstark et Grabow, le maire de Prenzlau. Milde fut le premier président de l'Assemblée, Grabow le second.

A côté de la droite se tenait le centre droit, qui s'en différenciait à peu près autant que l'opposition dynastique en France différait de la majorité loyale de Guizot. Cette faction voulait manger dans le même plat que le King et les Junkers, mais elle voulait creuser sa cuillère un peu plus loin que la droite. Son chef était le conseiller pour la construction et l'administration, von Unruh, né Prussien oriental, fils d'un général et à l'origine un bureaucrate rigide, jusqu'à ce que la construction ferroviaire l'implique profondément dans les intérêts de la bourgeoisie, dont il trouva la table plus riche et plus appétissante. posée que celle de la bureaucratie. Prêt à tout moment à trahir les masses, il marchande toujours obstinément le prix de sa trahison. En proie à une vanité secrète, il a joué l'homme loyal et intègre, pour qui la cause commune était tout et sa propre personne rien.

Au centre gauche siégeaient les idéologues de la bourgeoisie. On pourrait comparer cette faction à l'opposition républicaine sous Louis Philippe, sauf qu'elle ne voulait rien avoir à faire avec une république. Ce qu'ils représentaient, c'étaient les intérêts de toute la classe bourgeoise, et ils les représentaient d'un point de vue de principe plus élevé que celui représenté dans les manœuvres de la droite et du centre droit. Bucher et Rodbertus étaient peut-être les meilleurs cerveaux de l'Assemblée, mais ils venaient de Poméranie, la province politiquement la plus arriérée, et ils manquaient de toute énergie révolutionnaire. Ils possédaient un certain degré de compréhension du développement politique, mais à la manière de l'universitaire dans son étude solitaire, pas comme le combattant dans le tumulte de la place du marché. Rodbertus ne s'est jamais prononcé sur les questions sociales et économiques qui se présentaient devant l'Assemblée et qu'il aurait pu aborder mieux que n'importe quel autre membre. Il a plutôt préféré s'impliquer dans la question allemande, où son penchant utopiste pouvait empiler un château en l'air sur un autre. La logique de Bucher était plus tranchante, mais d'un autre côté il lui manquait l'indépendance sociale dont jouissait Rodbertus. Rarement la « misère allemande » s'est vengée d'un aussi grand talent que Bucher. Depuis sa plus tendre enfance, il avait dû se frayer un chemin à travers des circonstances douloureusement limitées, jusqu'à ce que la teinte native de la résolution se soit estompée sur ses joues. Pas aussi bien informé et clairvoyant que Bucher et Rodbertus, un petit bourgeois de part en part, mais un homme de talent pratique, était le juge du tribunal seigneurial, Schulze, de Delitzsch, en Saxe. Dans les derniers jours de l'Assemblée, Ziegler, lord-maire de Brandebourg, a également rejoint le centre gauche à la suite d'une élection partielle. C'était le vrai et doué type du démocrate prussien, qui n'osait entrer dans la terre promise de la liberté bourgeoise que sous la crosse du « vieux Fritz ». C'était un homme qui était de loin le supérieur de Schulze en talent d'organisation, partageait la conception plus profonde de Rodbertus et Bucher des questions sociales, et pourtant, comme Rodbertus en particulier, était hypnotisé par le concept de l'État prussien.

La gauche formait la quatrième faction. Il n'avait aucune comparaison avec le parti républicain-socialiste sous Ledru-Rollin et Louis Blanc. [100]Son caractère petit-bourgeois borné n'est que plus accentué par la mentalité républicaine voire communiste de certains de ses membres. Dans sa masse, il représentait les éléments les plus radicaux de la petite bourgeoisie nord-allemande, et il était supérieur au centre gauche en détermination mais pas du tout en vision politique. Cela était également vrai de ses dirigeants, Johann Jacoby et le juge principal Waldeck. Jacoby comprenait très peu les luttes de classe de l'époque. C'était l'homme de principe strict, mais c'était un principe lié à la petite bourgeoisie, qui s'est pliée comme un jeune arbre élancé alors qu'elle aurait dû se mesurer aux convulsions révolutionnaires de la classe ouvrière, les faisant parfois passer pour des « revendications justifiées de la la classe ouvrière » et parfois « les activités anarchiques d'une foule timide au travail ». Si Jacoby s'accroche trop vite aux formules abstraites, Waldeck souffre en revanche d'un excès concret d'histoire. Ses admirateurs ont comparé ce Westphalien de naissance au paysan du récit d'Immermann, et non sans raison.[101] À sa manière, c'était un personnage très puissant, mais plein de caprices. Prussien fanatique et monarchiste rigide, il brandit « l'épée de Frédéric le Grand » comme le fermier du récit brandit celle de Charlemagne. En tant que « roi des paysans de Westphalie », il pouvait comprendre le paysan en tant que fermier dans l'histoire, mais il ne pouvait pas comprendre le paysan en tant que prolétaire. Il a nié le suffrage universel comme arme sociale de la classe ouvrière. C'était un catholique orthodoxe ; il était, en particulier, aussi un bureaucrate conscient de lui-même, qui se croyait trop « raffiné » pour parler dans les réunions populaires. Il traduit le mandat parlementaire en un sacerdoce qui se coupe de la vie pratique.

Ces quatre factions ne se sont cristallisées que progressivement hors de l'Assemblée, d'abord la gauche et la droite, la ligne de partage entre elles étant tracée par la lutte pour « l'accord » gouvernemental. Les deux groupes du centre ont longtemps hésité dans leur nombre et dans leur politique, avec une forte inclinaison vers la droite, jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient jetés à gauche par la croissance de la contre-révolution. Au début, la gauche comptait à peine quarante à cinquante membres, et les deux groupes du centre étaient chacun à peu près aussi forts.

Le mépris avec lequel le ministère Camphausen traitait les représentants du peuple contrastait fort étrangement avec sa tendre sollicitude pour la dynastie. Elle n'a rien fait pour faciliter leurs premiers pas, pour guider la confusion qui devait s'élever lorsqu'une Assemblée de quatre cents personnes doit se frayer un chemin dans le territoire inhabituel du Parlement. Le ministère n'a même pas ouvert les négociations nécessaires avec la droite, pour l'instant aux commandes. Elle s'est contentée de présenter le projet de constitution, une copie erronée de la constitution belge, avec laquelle finalement personne n'a été d'accord.

On comprend que la masse de la population berlinoise ne montre pas grand intérêt pour l'Assemblée, dont elle attend peu. Elle devint une source de grande faiblesse pour le Parlement de Berlin et pour celui de Francfort qu'ils réunissaient dans des villes dépourvues de vie populaire vigoureuse. Il leur manquait le sol ardent que les révolutions anglaise et française avaient possédé à Londres et à Paris. Certes, les masses berlinoises tentèrent occasionnellement de faire bouger le Parlement de Berlin par des moyens violents, mais elles ne s'organisèrent pas, et chaque émeute ne fut que l'occasion de tromper la réaction et de fournir des prétextes pour dissoudre l'Assemblée.

La plus violente de ces émeutes, l'attaque de l'Arsenal, eut lieu le 19 juin. Après que l'Assemblée se fut péniblement mise à l'ordre, la gauche présenta la motion qu'en reconnaissance de la révolution, elle soit consignée dans le procès-verbal que les combattants des 18-19 mars avaient rendu de grands services à la Patrie. La motion n'a pas été défendue avec une énergie ou une clarté particulière. Dans une confusion de bonne humeur, Schulze-Delitzsche a même tenté de faire reconnaître non seulement ceux qui avaient combattu sur les barricades, mais aussi par la suite, ce qui a plus ou moins renversé le mouvement. Les masses comprirent beaucoup mieux la motion, et pendant les deux heures de débat, elles se précipitèrent dans la salle dans la plus grande agitation. La motion a été rejetée par 196 voix contre 177. L'Assemblée est passée aux travaux suivants au motif que si les événements de mars, qui (conjointement avec l'accord royal) constituaient leur base juridique actuelle, étaient indéniablement importants, l'Assemblée n'était pas compétente pour se prononcer à leur sujet, mais seulement pour élaborer une constitution en collaboration avec la Couronne. Ainsi, la nécessité d'un accord gouvernemental a été reconnue et la foule s'est mise en colère. Le ministre von Arnim qui se sentait poussé, en quittant la session, à les enrager encore plus avec quelques phrases méprisantes, a dû prendre la fuite, tout comme le prédicateur Sydow, qui, en tant que pasteur lors des funérailles des combattants morts sur le barricades, les avait vantées autant qu'il les avait maintenant vilipendées en tant que membre de l'Assemblée. l'Assemblée n'était pas compétente pour les prononcer, mais seulement pour élaborer une constitution en collaboration avec la Couronne. Ainsi, la nécessité d'un accord gouvernemental a été reconnue et la foule s'est mise en colère. Le ministre von Arnim qui se sentait poussé, en quittant la session, à les enrager encore plus avec quelques phrases méprisantes, a dû prendre la fuite, tout comme le prédicateur Sydow, qui, en tant que pasteur lors des funérailles des combattants morts sur le barricades, les avait vantées autant qu'il les avait maintenant vilipendées en tant que membre de l'Assemblée. l'Assemblée n'était pas compétente pour les prononcer, mais seulement pour élaborer une constitution en collaboration avec la Couronne. Ainsi, la nécessité d'un accord gouvernemental a été reconnue et la foule s'est mise en colère. Le ministre von Arnim qui se sentait poussé, en quittant la session, à les enrager encore plus avec quelques phrases méprisantes, a dû prendre la fuite, tout comme le prédicateur Sydow, qui, en tant que pasteur lors des funérailles des combattants morts sur le barricades, les avait vantées autant qu'il les avait maintenant vilipendées en tant que membre de l'Assemblée.

Cet acte de justice populaire très docile a été utilisé par la droite lors de la séance de l'Assemblée du 14 juin pour prétendre que la représentation populaire était menacée et exiger des mesures pour sa protection. La gauche a réussi à repousser cette attaque, mais l'excitation des masses a trouvé un soulagement dans l'attaque de l'Arsenal. Cela trahissait un manque de confiance dans la gauche qui s'avéra quelques jours plus tard pleinement justifié. Sans un mot de protestation, avec à peine plus qu'un léger sifflement, la gauche écoutait un commissaire du ministère de la Guerre rabâcher sur une bande de voleurs qui avaient pillé l'Arsenal. Il est possible qu'à ce moment-là la contre-révolution ait déjà réussi à infiltrer des agents provocateurs parmi les assaillants, et ces champions du trône et de l'autel ont peut-être aussi eu les doigts poisseux. Essentiellement, l'attaque de l'Arsenal était un contre-coup révolutionnaire instinctif à la trahison de la bourgeoisie qui avait scellé son rejet des combattants sur les barricades par un vote majoritaire à l'Assemblée. Au début, l'attaque réussit et la garnison militaire de l'Arsenal capitula. Mais avant que la foule rebelle ne puisse s'armer, de nouvelles troupes arrivent et les chassent. Comme d'habitude, leLa Bürgerwehr n'était pas non plus impressionnante à cette occasion.

Néanmoins, l'attaque de l'Arsenal a quelque peu raidi l'ossature du Parlement. La plupart des membres de la droite, qui projetaient déjà alors d'ajourner l'Assemblée dans une ville de province à bonne distance, se sont abstenus de la séance du 15 juin par peur. La gauche, cependant, a fait adopter une proposition visant à renoncer à toutes les mesures de sécurité pour l'Assemblée et à la placer sous la protection du peuple de Berlin, et a également réussi à faire en sorte que le projet de constitution du gouvernement soit traité comme un "matériel précieux" et qu'il doit être renvoyé à une commission pour révision ou reformulation. La gauche et le centre gauche pouvaient voir que n'importe quel vieux morceau de papier ne ferait pas l'affaire. Waldeck cria : « Nous devons commencer à construire par le bas ; il faut d'abord créer les communautés locales et démolir les tristes restes de l'État féodal. Si nous ne le faisons pas, nous n'avons rien fait ; comme labourer dans le sable, nous ne faisons que construire dans les airs. De même, Bucher pensait : « Nous ne devrions pas laisser passer un seul jour sans briser quelque vestige du passé vaincu ». Rodbertus avait déjà proposé une motion selon laquelle un statut des métiers, un système de gouvernement local et un système d'imposition, une loi sur l'éducation et une loi sur la défense, etc., devraient être décidés comme parties organiques de la constitution par l'Assemblée.

C'était un premier assaut puissant qui aurait pu aller beaucoup plus loin que ne le voulait la bourgeoisie. Ils se hâtèrent d'affronter le danger avec un degré de trahison encore plus élevé.

Rubrique suivante | Haut de page

Notes de fin

[88] La Révolution en France en février 1848 a forcé l'abdication de Louis Philippe, le « roi citoyen ». Ouvriers, étudiants et bourgeois de la Garde nationale proclament la République. La bourgeoisie vise « à sauver le drapeau tricolore du drapeau rouge du socialisme » et donne en novembre ses suffrages au neveu de Napoléon, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, qui en 1852 se déclare empereur.

[89] Chartisme – Mouvement politique basé sur la Charte du peuple (1838) qui exigeait le suffrage universel, des parlements annuels et l'abolition de la qualification de propriété pour les députés. En 1840, la National Charter Association comptait environ 40 000 membres. En 1848, les chartistes furent impliqués dans des « incidents » à Glasgow, où l'armée fut appelée, ainsi qu'à Édimbourg et à Manchester. À Londres, un rassemblement de masse de 50 000 personnes sur Kennington Common a menacé de marcher sur Westminster. Sa direction était partagée entre la faction de la « force physique » et les réformistes qui soutenaient la « force morale », et elle a ensuite décliné. Le mouvement représente néanmoins la tradition révolutionnaire de la classe ouvrière britannique.

[90] L'année 1848 a vu des soulèvements et des luttes pour l'indépendance en France, en Italie (contre l'Empire autrichien), en Allemagne, en Autriche et en Hongrie (également contre l'Empire autrichien) et dans le Schleswig-Holstein (contre le Danemark).

[91] Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans, connu sous le nom de Roi citoyen, monta sur le trône de France en juillet 1830 à la suite de la Révolution de juillet de cette année-là, dirigée par l'historien bourgeois Thiers contre le régime réactionnaire de Charles X. Le règne de Louis Philippe marque le début de l'âge d'or du capitalisme français avec l'essor de l'industrialisation et des chemins de fer. Le slogan était « Enrichissez-vous ! » (Devenir riche !) ; de Tocqueville, le théoricien politique français, a comparé la monarchie de juillet à une société par actions corrompue.

[92] Prince Metternich (1773-1859) - Homme d'État autrichien qui a dominé le Congrès de Vienne (1814-1815) au cours duquel les puissances victorieuses de l'Europe ont imposé un règlement réactionnaire à l'Europe à la fin des guerres napoléoniennes. Metternich considérait les idées libérales et nationalistes de l'époque comme un danger pour l'État.

[93] Heinrich Gneist (1816-1895) – Professeur de droit et député prussien. Décrit comme un représentant du "socialisme scientifique allemand visant à résoudre la question sociale sur des bases nationales, pacifiques et légales". Fortement anticlérical dans le Kulturkampf , campagne de Bismarck contre l'influence catholique dans la vie politique allemande.

[94] La guerre civile en France , Londres 1937, p.63.

[95] Le Schleswig-Holstein comprenait des duchés au Danemark du Sud et en Allemagne du Nord. En 1818, il y eut un soulèvement dans le Schleswig-Holstein, qui avait été annexé par le Danemark, visant à l'union avec l'Allemagne. La Prusse est intervenue du côté de la rébellion mais a été contrainte de se retirer par la Grande-Bretagne, la France et la Russie. La guerre a été renouvelée en 1849 ; une fois de plus la Prusse céda aux pressions de la France et de la Russie et dans le Protocole de Londres reconnut l'union personnelle du Schleswig avec le Danemark. Le Schleswig-Holstein est devenu allemand à la suite de la guerre entre la Prusse et le Danemark en 1864.

[96] Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805-1877) – Homme politique et économiste politique.

[97] Voir note 92.

[98] L'article dans lequel Marx et d'autres de la Ligue communiste ont écrit avant 1848.

[99] Johann Jacoby (1805-1877) – Homme politique et député prussien. Fervent anti-monarchiste, il remarqua après une députation auprès du roi de Prusse que « c'est le malheur des rois qu'ils ne veuillent pas entendre la vérité ». Considérait l'unité de l'Allemagne comme la mort de la liberté. Député en 1863. Emprisonné en 1871 pour avoir attaqué l'annexion de l'Alsace-Lorraine par l'Allemagne.

[100] Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807-1874) - homme politique bourgeois français qui, à un moment donné, était considéré comme le chef du mouvement ouvrier français ; mais en 1848, il se range du côté des modérés contre les ouvriers et considère le suffrage universel comme la solution aux maux sociaux. Banni en 1849 à Londres où il fut associé du révolutionnaire bourgeois italien Mazzini, et de Kossuth, le chef de la révolution de 1848 en Hongrie. Louis Blanc (1811-1881) - Homme politique et historien français. En 1839, a écrit un livre sur l'organisation du travail. Jugé que « les maux qui affligent la société sont dus à la pression de la concurrence par laquelle les plus faibles sont poussés au mur ». A vu la solution dans l'égalisation des salaires et a inventé la phrase : « De chacun selon ses capacités, à chacun selon ses besoins. En 1848, il est membre du gouvernement provisoire en France et crée des « ateliers nationaux » pour résoudre le problème social ; n'a pas réussi à inspirer confiance aux ouvriers et s'est exilé à Londres.

[101] Karl Immermann (1796-1840) – avocat, dramaturge et auteur allemand.

LIRE LE TEXTE ENTIER

Lire encore sur l'assassinat de Rosa Luxemburg et Karl Liebknecht

Robert Paris — 2024-06-09T22:22:00Z

Lire encore sur l'assassinat de Rosa Luxemburg et Karl Liebknecht et sur l'assassinat de la révolution prolétarienne par l'alliance de la social-démocratie et du fascisme

Paul Levi

En mémoire de R. Luxemburg

13 juin 1919

Discours de P. Levi en mémoire de R. Luxemburg
Le 15 janvier 1919, Rosa Luxemburg était tuée à Berlin par les corps francs, dans le cadre de la répression du soulèvement spartakiste. Son assassinat avait reçu l'accord tacite du gouvernement social-démocrate de Friedrich Ebert (président de la république de Weimar), de Philipp Scheidemann (chancelier) et de Gustav Noske (ministre de la Guerre). Ce discours a été prononcé lors de son enterrement, le 13 juin 1919, par Paul Levi, qui avait été son avocat lorsqu'elle était poursuivie pour “propagande antimilitariste” en 1914, son amant et avait milité avec elle au sein de la Ligue spartakiste.
Le texte de Paul Levi rend également hommage à Karl Liebknecht qui a dirigé la Ligue spartakiste avec Rosa Luxemburg et a été tué en même temps qu'elle ; à Leo Jogiches, qui avait fondé avec elle en Pologne un parti socialiste non nationaliste, puis contribué à la création de la Ligue spartakiste, et a été assassiné en prison le 10 mars 1919 ; et à Eugen Leviné, dirigeant de la République des conseils de Bavière (qui tenait notamment la ville de Munich en avril 1919 avant d'être réprimée d'une manière sanglante) qui est exécuté le 5 juin.

Chères camarades, chers camarades !

Après cinq mois, voici que nous enterrons ce qui, de Rosa Luxemburg, doit être enterré. Depuis cinq mois, son corps erre, dans la mort encore haï, dans la mort encore profané, dans la mort encore maudit par ceux qui l'ont assassinée.

Mais ce corps mort se lève, et avec lui s'élève une malédiction, une triple malédiction pour les coupables. Cette malédiction ne porte pas sur les bourreaux qu'on nous montre, mais, derrière eux, sur ceux qui sont responsables de l'assassinat et qui ont gardé leurs postes de ministres. La triple malédiction pèse sur ceux qui, à la honte d'une guerre de cinq ans, ont ajouté à la honte une honte encore mille fois plus grande.

Le corps mort se lève et juge les coupables. Le corps mort se vengera, car les esprit entendront son appel à la vengeance, et l'accompliront.

Ils ont tué le corps, mais l'esprit n'est pas mort !

L'esprit n'est pas mort avec ceux qui furent abattus à côté de Rosa Luxemburg. Il n'est pas mort avec l'assassinat de Karl Liebknecht, avec la mort de Leo Jogiches. L'esprit n'est pas tombé sous les balles qu'on tire à Munich aujourd'hui encore. Il n'est pas mort avec Leviné et ne le sera pas quand nous serons tous enterrés. L'esprit vit, il vit aujourd'hui plus que jamais.

Camarades !

Pensez seulement à l'Allemagne, pensez à cette Allemagne où la contre-révolution triomphe aujourd'hui. Dans cette Allemagne, ils ont abattu la révolution. Pensez à tout ce que les prolétaires ont appris dans ce pays ces cinq derniers mois. Comment, dans les épreuves matérielles, ils sont devenus grands et forts en esprit. Pensez au prolétariat allemand qui se dresse aujourd'hui, plus droit et plus déterminé que jamais. S'il avait été tel en janvier, la défunte serait encore en vie aujourd'hui.

Son esprit est désormais partout vivant. De l'Ouest nous vient un bruit sourd, les profondeurs se meuvent, on sent le volcan qui peut entrer en éruption aujourd'hui ou demain.

C'est l'esprit de Rosa Luxemburg, de la meilleure tête de l'Internationale, qui est là-bas de passage. C'est pourquoi, chers camarades, je vous le dis, le monde n'a pas encore vu d'enterrement, de funérailles comme celles-ci. Au repos de ce corps participent aujourd'hui partout les cœurs prolétaires. La moitié du monde interrompt son cours pour honorer la défunte. Nos frères, dans la puissante Russie, en Hongrie, la célèbrent aujourd'hui. Et nous le savons, en France, en Italie et en Angleterre, certains prolétaires interrompent déjà travail, d'autres n'en sont pas encore là, mais leurs pensées à tous se recueillent ici.

Le monde entier est ici aujourd'hui !

Camarades !

C'est de ce lieu que va partir le monde nouveau. La pensée de Rosa Luxemburg deviendra vivante et forte, et lorsque finalement le jour viendra où les peuples reconnaîtront dans le communisme leur salut, que nous soyons encore sur terre ou déjà enterrés, les peuples viendront ici en pèlerinage, et les pères diront à leurs enfants : Déchaussez-vous, car le sol que vous foulez est un sol sacré.

Les peuples, qui se sont déshonorés et souillés, retrouveront alors un visage humain, et c'est à Rosa Luxemburg qu'ils adresseront leur premier sourire.

Ainsi, son esprit ne reposera pas. Il créera et témoignera, et il donnera lumière au monde comme une colonne de feu dans la nuit.

Camarades !

Nous ne pouvons pas aujourd'hui exprimer nos émotions personnelles, nous ne pouvons pas, sur cette tombe, exprimer comme nous le souhaiterions l'amour et la fidélité que nous avons à lui donner, ni combien nous lui sommes attachés. Nous ne le pouvons pas, car c'est comme combattante qu'est morte Rosa Luxemburg.

Nous ne pouvons donc pas faire nos adieux selon notre cœur, nous n'avons pas le droit aux plaintes ni aux hésitations.

Nous ne pouvons pas mettre en terre la défunte au son étouffé des tambours. Lorsqu'on enterre un cavalier, on sonne la retraite comme dernier salut et de même, nous devons adresser aujourd'hui à la défunte le salut qui sera repris, nous le savons, par des millions et des millions d'hommes dans le monde entier.

Notre ultime salut à la défunte, aujourd'hui, sera le salut du monde prolétarien, le salut de l'Internationale, le salut de la vie, l'appel : « Vive la révolution mondiale. »

https://www.marxists.org/francais/levi/works/1919/06/levi.htm

« L'ordre règne à Berlin »

Rosa Luxemburg

« L'ordre règne à Varsovie », déclara le ministre Sébastiani, en 1831, à la Chambre fran¬çaise, lorsque, après avoir lancé son terrible assaut sur le faubourg de Praga, la soldatesque de Souvorov [1], eut pénétré dans la capitale polonaise et qu'elle eut commencé son office de bourreau.
« L'ordre règne à Berlin », proclame avec des cris de triomphe la presse bourgeoise, tout comme les Ebert et les Noske, tout comme les officiers des « troupes victorieuses » que la racaille petite-bourgeoise accueille dans les rues de Berlin en agitant des mouchoirs et en criant : « Hourrah ! » Devant l'histoire mondiale, la gloire et l'honneur des armes allemandes sont saufs. Les lamentables vaincus des Flandres et de l'Argonne ont rétabli leur renommée en remportant une victoire éclatante... sur les 300 « Spartakistes » du Vorwärts. Les exploits datant de la glorieuse invasion de la Belgique par des troupes allemandes, les exploits du général von Emmich, le vainqueur de Liège, pâlissent devant les exploits des Reinhardt [2] et Cie dans les rues de Berlin. Assassinat de parlementaires venus négocier la reddition du Vorwärts et que la soldatesque gouvernementale a frappés a coups de crosse, au point que l'identification des corps est impossible, prisonniers collés au mur, dont on a fait éclater les crânes et jaillir la cervelle : qui donc, en présence de faits aussi glorieux pourrait encore évoquer les défaites subies devant les Français, les Anglais et les Américains ? L'ennemi, c'est « Spartacus » et Berlin est le lieu où nos officiers s'entendent à remporter la victoire. Et le général qui s'entend à organiser ces victoires, là où Ludendorff a échoué, c'est Noske, l' « ouvrier » Noske.

Qui n'évoquerait l'ivresse de la meute des partisans de « l'ordre », la bacchanale de la bourgeoisie parisienne dansant sur les cadavres des combattants de la Commune, cette bourgeoisie qui venait de capituler lâchement devant les Prussiens et de livrer la capitale à l'ennemi extérieur après avoir levé le pied ? Mais quand il s'est agi d'affronter les prolétaires parisiens affamés et mal armés, d'affronter leurs femmes sans défense et leurs enfants, ah comme le courage viril des fils de bourgeois, de cette « jeunesse dorée », comme le courage des officiers a éclaté Comme la bravoure de ces fils de Mars qui avaient cané devant l'ennemi extérieur s'est donné libre cours dans ces atrocités bestiales, commises sur des hommes sans défense, des blessés et des prisonniers !

« L'ordre règne à Varsovie », « l'ordre règne à Paris », « l'ordre règne à Berlin ». Tous les demi-siècles, les gardiens de « l'ordre » lancent ainsi dans un des foyers de la lutte mondiale leurs bulletins de victoire. Et ces « vainqueurs » qui exultent ne s'aperçoivent pas qu'un « ordre », qui a besoin d'être maintenu périodiquement par de sanglantes hécatombes, va inéluctablement à sa perte.

Cette « Semaine Spartakiste » de Berlin, que nous a-t-elle apporté, que nous enseigne-t-elle ? Au cœur de la mêlée, au milieu des clameurs de triomphe de la contre-révolution, les prolétaires révolutionnaires doivent déjà faire le bilan des événements, les mesurer, eux et leurs résultats, au grand étalon de l'histoire. La révolution n'a pas de temps à perdre, elle poursuit sa marche en avant, - par-dessus les tombes encore ouvertes, par-delà les « victoires » et les « défaites » - vers ses objectifs grandioses. Et le premier devoir de ceux qui luttent pour le socialisme internationaliste, c'est d'étudier avec lucidité sa marche et ses lignes de force.

Pouvait-on s'attendre, dans le présent affrontement, à une victoire décisive du prolétariat révolutionnaire, pouvait-on escompter la chute des Ebert-Scheidemann et l'instauration de la dictature socialiste ? Certainement pas, si l'on fait entrer en ligne de compte tous les éléments qui décident de la réponse. Il suffit de mettre le doigt sur ce qui est à l'heure actuelle la plaie de la révolution : le manque de maturité politique de la masse des soldats qui continuent de se laisser abuser par leurs officiers et utiliser à des fins contre-révolutionnaires est à lui seul la preuve que, dans ce choc-ci, une victoire durable de la révolution n'était pas possible. D'autre part, ce manque de maturité n'est lui-même que le symptôme du manque général de maturité de la révolution allemande.

Les campagnes, d'où est issu un fort pourcentage de la masse des soldats, continuent de n'être à peu près pas touchées par la révolution. Jusqu'ici, Berlin est à peu près isolé du reste du Reich. Certes en province, les foyers révolutionnaires - en Rhénanie, sur la côte de la mer du Nord, dans le Brunswick, la Saxe, le Wurtemberg - sont corps et âme aux côtés du prolétariat berlinois. Mais ce qui fait défaut, c'est la coordination de la marche en avant, l'action commune qui donnerait aux coups de boutoir et aux ripostes de la classe ouvrière berlinoise une tout autre efficacité. Ensuite - et c'est de cette cause plus profonde que proviennent ces imperfections politiques - les luttes économiques, ce volcan qui alimente sans cesse la lutte de classe révolutionnaire, ces luttes économiques n'en sont encore qu'à leur stade initial.

Il en résulte que, dans la phase actuelle, on ne pouvait encore escompter de victoire définitive, de victoire durable. La lutte de la semaine écoulée constituait-elle pour autant une « faute » ? Oui, s'il s'agissait d'un « coup de boutoir » délibéré, de ce qu'on appelle un « putsch » ! Mais quel a été le point de départ des combats ? Comme dans tous les cas précé¬dents, le 6 décembre, le 24 décembre : une provocation brutale du gouvernement ! Naguère l'attentat contre les manifestants sans armes de la Chausséestrasse, le massacre des matelots, cette fois le coup tenté contre la Préfecture de Police, ont été la cause des événements ultérieurs. C'est que la révolution n'agit pas à sa guise, elle n'opère pas en rase campagne, selon un plan bien mis au point par d'habiles « stratèges ». Ses adversaires aussi font preuve d'initiative, et même en règle générale, bien plus que la Révolution.

Placés devant la provocation violente des Ebert-Scheidemann, les ouvriers révolution¬naires étaient contraints de prendre les armes. Pour la révolution, c'était une question d'honneur que de repousser l'attaque immédiatement, de toute son énergie, si l'on ne voulait pas que la contre-révolution se crût encouragée à un nouveau pas en avant ; si l'on ne voulait pas que fussent ébranlés les rangs du prolétariat révolutionnaire et le crédit dont jouit au sein de l'Internationale [3] la révolution allemande.

Du reste, des masses berlinoises jaillit spontanément, avec une énergie si naturelle, la volonté de résistance, que, dès le premier jour, la victoire morale fut du côté de la « rue ».
Or il existe pour la Révolution une règle absolue : ne jamais s'arrêter une fois le premier pas accompli, ne jamais tomber dans l'inaction, la passivité. La meilleure parade, c'est de porter à l'adversaire un coup énergique. Cette règle élémentaire qui s'applique à tout combat vaut surtout pour les premiers pas de la révolution. Il va de soi - et pareil comportement témoi¬gne de la justesse, de la fraîcheur de réaction du prolétariat, - qu'il ne pouvait se satis¬fai¬re d'avoir réinstallé Eichhorn à son poste. Spontanément, il occupa d'autres positions de la contre-révolution : les sièges de la presse bourgeoise, le bureau de l'agence d'informations officieuse, le Vorwärts. Ces démarches étaient inspirées à la masse par ce qu'elle comprenait d'instinct : la contre-révolution n'allait pas pour sa part se satisfaire de sa défaite, mais préparer une épreuve de force générale.

Là encore nous nous trouvons en présence d'une de ces grandes lois historiques de la révolution, sur laquelle viennent se briser toutes les habiletés, toute la « science » de ces petits révolutionnaires de l'U.S.P. [4], qui dans chaque lutte ne sont en quête que d'une chose ; de prétextes pour battre en retraite. Dès que le problème fondamental d'une révolution a été clairement posé - et dans celle-ci c'est le renversement du gouvernement Ebert-Scheidemann, premier obstacle à la victoire du socialisme - alors ce problème ne cesse de resurgir dans toute son actualité, et, avec la fatalité d'une loi naturelle, chaque épisode de la lutte le fait apparaître dans toute son ampleur, si peu préparée à le résoudre que soit la révolution, si peu propice que soit la situation.

« A bas Ebert-Scheidemann ! » Ce mot d'ordre jaillit immanquablement à chaque nouvelle crise révolutionnaire ; c'est la formule qui, seule, épuise tous les conflits partiels et qui, par sa logique interne, qu'on le veuille ou non, pousse n'importe quel épisode de la lutte jusqu'à ses conséquences extrêmes.

De cette contradiction entre la tâche qui s'impose et l'absence, à l'étape actuelle de la révolution, des conditions préalables permettant de la résoudre, il résulte que les luttes se terminent par une défaite formelle. Mais la révolution est la seule forme de « guerre » - c'est encore une des lois de son développement - où la victoire finale ne saurait être obtenue que par une série de « défaites ».

Que nous enseigne toute l'histoire des révolutions modernes et du socialisme ? La première flambée de la lutte de classe en Europe s'est achevé par une défaite. Le soulèvement des canuts de Lyon, en 1831, s'est soldé par un lourd échec. Défaite aussi pour le mouvement chartiste en Angleterre. Défaite écrasante pour la levée du prolétariat parisien au cours des journées de juin 1848. La Commune de Paris enfin a connu une terrible défaite. La route du socialisme - à considérer les luttes révolutionnaires - est pavée de défaites.

Et pourtant cette histoire mène irrésistiblement, pas à pas, à la victoire finale ! Où en serions-nous aujourd'hui sans toutes ces « défaites », où nous avons puisé notre expérience, nos connaissances, la force et l'idéalisme qui nous animent ? Aujourd'hui que nous sommes tout juste parvenus à la veille du combat final de la lutte prolétarienne, nous sommes campés sur ces défaites et nous ne pouvons renoncer à une seule d'entre elles, car de chacune nous tirons une portion de notre force, une partie de notre lucidité.

Les combats révolutionnaires sont à l'opposé des luttes parlementaires. En Allemagne, pendant quatre décennies, nous n'avons connu sur le plan parlementaire que des « victoires » ; nous volions littéralement de victoire en victoire. Et quel a été le résultat lors de la grande épreuve historique du 4 août 1914 : une défaite morale et politique écrasante, un effondre¬ment inouï, une banqueroute sans exemple. Les révolutions par contre ne nous ont jusqu'ici apporté que défaites, mais ces échecs inévitables sont précisément la caution réitérée de la victoire finale.

A une condition il est vrai ! Car il faut étudier dans quelles conditions la défaite s'est chaque fois produite. Résulte-t-elle du fait que l'énergie des masses est venue se briser contre la barrière des conditions historiques qui n'avaient pas atteint une maturité suffisante, ou bien est-elle imputable aux demi-mesures, à l'irrésolution, à la faiblesse interne qui ont paralysé l'action révolutionnaire ?

Pour chacune de ces deux éventualités, nous disposons d'exemples classiques : la révolution française de février, la révolution allemande de mars. L'action héroïque du prolétariat parisien, en 1848, est la source vive où tout le prolétariat international puise son énergie. Par contre, les navrantes petitesses de la révolution allemande de mars sont comme un boulet qui freine toute l'évolution de l'Allemagne moderne. Elles se sont répercutées - à travers l'histoire particulière de la social-démocratie allemande - jusque dans les événements les plus récents de la révolution allemande, jusque dans la crise que nous venons de vivre.

A la lumière de cette question historique, comment juger la défaite de ce qu'on appelle la « semaine spartakiste » ? Provient-elle de l'impétuosité de l'énergie révolutionnaire et de l'insuffisante maturité de la situation, ou de la faiblesse de l'action menée ?

De l'une et de l'autre ! Le double caractère de cette crise, la contradiction entre la manifes-tation vigoureuse, résolue, offensive des masses berlinoises et l'irrésolution, les hésitations, les atermoiements de la direction, telles sont les caractéristiques de ce dernier épisode.

La direction a été défaillante. Mais on peut et on doit instaurer une direction nouvelle, une direction qui émane des masses et que les masses choisissent. Les masses constituent l'élément décisif, le roc sur lequel on bâtira la victoire finale de la révolution.

Les masses ont été à la hauteur de leur tâche. Elles ont fait de cette « défaite » un maillon dans la série des défaites historiques, qui constituent la fierté et la force du socialisme international. Et voilà pourquoi la victoire fleurira sur le sol de cette défaite.

« L'ordre règne à Berlin ! » sbires stupides ! Votre « ordre » est bâti sur le sable. Dès demain la révolution « se dressera de nouveau avec fracas » proclamant à son de trompe pour votre plus grand effroi

J'étais, je suis, je serai ! [5]

Notes
[1] Erreur de Rosa Luxemburg : Souvorov est mort en 1800. Les troupes russes étaient commandées par Paskevitch. (Note de G.Badia).
[2] REINHARDT, Walther (1872-1930). Officier d'État Major pendant la première guerre mondiale, dernier ministre prussien de la guerre, il fut nommé en octobre 1919, chef de la direction de l'armée. Il démissionna en même temps que Noske, après le putsch de Kapp.
[3] Il s'agit encore à ce moment-là d'une Internationale toute théorique puisque le premier Congrès de la III° Internationale n'a pas encore eu lieu. (Note de G.Badia).
[4] L'U.S.P. était le parti social-démocrate indépendant au sein duquel militaient notamment Kautsky et Bernstein.
[5] Vers extrait du poème de F. Freiligrath « La Révolution ». (Note de G.Badia).

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3081

https://www.marxists.org/francais/zetkin/works/1919/01/jacob.htm

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article664

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2386

https://www.marxists.org/francais/luxembur/works/1919/01/recueil_1914_1919.pdf

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1919/01/190118.htm

https://www.marxists.org/francais/broue/works/1971/00/broue_all_12.htm

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7043

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6703

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2171

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article727

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article279