Teach-In

I wanted to start with a point that Rosa Luxemburg made in a speech she gave on the Spartacus
Program in December 1918:
“Even in the opposite camp, even where the counter-revolution still seems to rule, we have
adherents and future comrades-in-arms.” (On the Spartacus Program)
This may seem strange today. Here Rosa Luxemburg, someone who was murdered by the
counter-revolutionary Freikorps, is claiming that people in that camp might themselves be
future members of the Spartacus League. Indeed, her murder was sanctioned by Friedrich
Ebert, member of the SPD and former comrade of Rosa Luxemburg. How could this happen?

1793, 1848 and 1918

In the 17th and 18th centuries, democratic revolutions were carried through like a lion pouncing
on top the nation. An arbitrary power, corrupted by bureaucracy and special interests, by a
people who united would never be divided. Political organization was late or almost completely
absent for the mass of people. But why would that even be necessary? After all, the ills of the
nation were concentrated in a very particular group of people. Furthermore, the revolution was
basically complete. The political act was just one of removing barriers to a consistent society.
“A people may give itself to a king” says Grotius. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the radical of the 18th
century responded “Therefore, according to Grotius a people is a people even before the gift to
the king is made. The gift itself is a civil act; it presupposes public deliberation…if there were no
earlier agreement, how, unless the election were unanimous, could there be any obligation on
the minority to accept the decision of the majority? What right have the hundred who want to
have a master to vote on behalf of the ten who do not? The law of majority-voting itself rests on
an agreement, and implies that there has been on at least on occasion uananimity.” [ Social
Contract]
The Bourgeois Revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries justified themselves in a radical way.
Rather than humanity being the product of the benevolence of a king/emperor – the result of a
“divine chain of being,” a “natural order,” - the king presupposed a people that granted them
power. “…government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The ability of the King to
break the law was only justified on the ground that they preserved the people.

“For since many accidents may happen wherein a strict and rigid observation of the
laws may do harm – writes John Locke - as not to pull down an innocent man's
house to stop the fire when the next to it is burning…it is fit the ruler should have a
power in many cases to mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some
offenders, since the end of government being the preservation of all as much as
may be, even the guilty are to be spared where it can prove no prejudice to the
innocent. (160). This power to act according to discretion for the public good,
without the prescription of the law and sometimes even against it, is that which is
called prerogative…The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, "But
who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of?" I answer: Between an
executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends
upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth. As there can be
none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive or the
legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to
enslave or destroy them, the people have no other remedy in this, as in all other
cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to Heaven….”
Behind the necessary myth of an original covenant– what Kant called a “category of Reason” -
was a radical idea of emancipation.
Revolution is illegal and anyone who does it can be justly put to the death. There is no “right to
rebel” (Mao). So on what basis did the Bourgeois revolutions understand their acts? That the
Kings had infringed upon the contract of the people. They had made war on the people and the
lion that pounced on them did so out of self-defense (cf. Abbe Sieyes saying the real villains are
the 1st and 2nd estates who hold themselves outside of the law), which is not a right in the sense
that we use it but rather a fact of nature. The “appeal to Heaven” that Locke spoke about was the
outcome . The judgement was the outcome
[Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787 on the Shay’s Rebellion]: “I hold it that a little
rebellion now and then is a good thing…as necessary in the political world as storms in
the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on
the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should
render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to
discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

The spring of nations in 1848 started out the usual way – the National Guard “was disarmed,”
the people chased the king out and established a provisional government. But something new
had emerged since the 18th century. When the workers demanded a Labor Ministry be set up to
guarantee the right to a job, others raised an objection – isn’t the Ministry of Finance and
Commerce just as much a condition for labor? The workers demanded their political rights – but
that would mean using force to decide the outcome of something done voluntarily.
Democracy had become contradictory – the people, could be validly represented by two
contradictory poles that Marx called “wage-labor and capital.” The interest of the masses was in
both. Not antagonistic groups but a contradiction in right – the same person could have
contradictory views As a result, no one unique group could represent the whole of society –
rather, Democracy could be constituted in two contradictory ways. Hence, the class struggle.
Both the proletariat and the capitalists seemed like – “Between equal rights force decides.” (Das
Kapital, Vol 1, Chapter 10).
“For the majority in the state to really decide, definite conditions are required, one of which
is the firm establishment of a political system, a form of state power, making it possible to
decide matters by a majority and guaranteeing the translation of this possibility into reality.
That is one thing. Another is that the class composition of this majority and the interrelation of
classes inside (and outside) it should enable it to draw the chariot of state concertedly and
effectively.”
Rather than waiting for a vote to decide, one had to constitute the executive prerogative first
and then have a vote – this is true from Rousseau to Lenin and Luxemburg. Literally, this is why
the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is not the end but the “the special (higher) severity of the
class struggle” (Lenin, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1919).
This fact, to be blunt, is something I think almost the entire Left, especially the Marxist Left, has
forgotten. Even when they critique the current constitution of Democracy – which they will call
“Bourgeois Democracy – they nonetheless, substitute out the old powers (a vested aristocracy
and landlords) with the capitalists and financiers. As a result, they repeat an anachronistic goal
of politics (for example, the 99% vs the 1%, the billionaire class) – “The tradition of all dead
generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” (18th Brumaire).
Everything I talk about today is going to return to this point. What set Luxemburg apart from
basically every socialist in Germany at the time – from Karl Kautsky to Friedrich Ebert to the
“Left” Communists like Otto Ruhle and Herman Gorter who consider themselves completely
opposed to Kautsky and Ebert – was precisely that she pursued the contradictory character
of a proletarian revolution. The reason why counter-revolutionaries may be “future comrades-
in-arms” or adherents of the Luxemburg’s program was because of this characteristic of modern
revolutions.
As a young 28 year old Rosa Luxemburg said at a congress in Hanover, October 1899:
“What does it mean to say that previous classes, namely the Third Estate, took economic power
before their political emancipation? Nothing else but the historical fact that all previous class
struggles can be traced to the economic fact that every new ascendant class also created a new
form of property on which it finally based its class dominance. The artisans’ struggle against the
city nobility in the first part of the Middle Ages depended on the fact that, as opposed to the
property of the nobility which consisted in land, they created a new form of property which
depended on labor. That was a new economic creation which finally burst the political chains
and reshaped in its own image the remnants of feudal property, which had become meaningless.
The same thing was repeated at the end of the Middle Ages when the middle classes led their
fight against feudalism, when new capitalist property, which depended on the exploitation of
outside labor, was created and finally brought the Third Estate into political as well as economic
power.
Now I ask: can this model be applied to our situation? No. Precisely those people who prattle on
about the economic power of the proletariat overlook the huge difference between our struggle
and all previous class struggles. The assertion that the proletariat, in contrast to all previous
classes, leads a class struggle not in order to institute the rule of one class, but to do away with
the rule of any class, is no empty phrase. It has its basis in the fact that the proletariat creates no
new form of property, but only extends the form of property created by the capitalist economy
by turning it over to the possession of society. Thus, it is an illusion to believe that the
proletariat could create economic power for itself within current bourgeois society; it can only
take political power and then replace capitalist forms of property. Bernstein criticizes Marx and
Engels for applying the schema of the great French Revolution to our situation. Yet he and other
adherents of “economic power” apply the economic schema of the great French Revolution to
the struggle of the proletariat.”
[SAY SOMETHING HERE ABOUT FROM MARX TO MARXISM TO AUGUST 4TH]
SPD
It is important to point out that the SPD was not against socialism per se. While Ebert and
Scheidemann were part of the conservative side of the SPD, they did not want Fascism or
something like that – they rather thought they could utilize conservative elements and since
politics is a game, it is an “art of the deal,” that is not in principle wrong.
There issue with pushing the revolution forward lay on a few things
1) They were dependent upon the existing military apparatus. Any attempt at radical
socialism would mean directly threatening their support
2) Any revolutionary socialist government would likely cut off negotiations for peace
with the Entente powers. Not only the SPD but the soldiers and workers wanted
peace
3) Finally, the SPD had this idea that you could turn the military into a loyal guard for
the republic.
For example – and this was a sentiment shared in part of the USPD – the socialists had a
democratic majority in Germany. Why demand more street fighting and strikes?? Now was the
time to put the reforms, to socialize the economy, to put forward the steps towards socialism.
Any rash action could jeopardize the whole opportunity that fell into their lap.
For Ebert and Scheidemann’s, the political could never outpace the economic. This was a
Marxist explanation – after all, isn’t the political sphere the “superstructure” of the “base?”
Germany had just lost a war. How are we to make a revolution if we cannot feed ourselves?
Furthermore, if we socialize our economy, what will the English, the French or the Americans
think? Will we have to fight them?

USPD
The USPD was made up of expelled dissidents of the SPD. They emerged in opposition to the
voting war credits on pacifist grounds in late 1915 into 1916. Karl Kautsky would be part of the
USPD. They grew especially in 1917 due to opposition against the war. So it was the USPD rather than
Luxemburg or Liebknecht (although he was more well-known) that was the socialist opposition.
Eventually, they would fuse with the SPD in 1922.

On the day that the SPD took power, the USPD proposed conditions for entering into a government with
the SPD. These included recognizing the German State as a Socialist Republic and that a coalition
government would only be formed for three days (to make an armistice) and then all power transferred
to the councils (this was Liebknecht’s proposal). The SPD rejected this, the USPD changed its proposals
and entered into a coalition government.

From the SPD’s view, they had already accomplished much in just a few days – a “people’s republic,”
equal suffrage (including for women), a “socialist national government, an eight-hour day and militarism
smashed (Riddell, “Reform program enacted.” What was needed was “Unity!” The USPD put the story
slightly different. The SPD for them was “dazed” by the revolution and required the USPD to help it form
a coalition government – hence, for them, they held “Decisive influence.” The existing government, for
the USPD, could only exist based of the affirmation by the Councils. In fact, just a day before the USPD’s
announcement about “decisive influence,” the International Group renamed itself the Spartacusbund
and published an article calling on the workers to take power into their own hands and “Organize the
power anew from below.”

This raises the first question – what was the role of the councils?

This situation almost mirrors what Lenin and Trotsky experienced in 1917 – it is a dual-power.

The Councils (as will be discussed later), almost entirely supported the SPD at this time. Similarly, when
the Soviets emerge again in Russia in 1917, they are supportive of the Octoberist Guchkov (Octoberists
were landlords) and this is likely why they received praise in the English Imperialist press. What was the
reason for this?

“The reason is insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletarians and

peasants. The “mistake” of the leaders I have named lies in their petty-bourgeois position, in the
fact that instead of clarifying the minds of the workers, they are befogging them; instead of
dispelling petty-bourgeois illusions,they are instilling them; instead of freeing the people from
bourgeois influence, they are strengthening that influence.
It should be clear from this why our comrades, too, make so many mistakes when putting the
question “simply”: Should the Provisional Government be overthrown immediately?
My answer is: (1) it should be overthrown, for it is an oligarchic, bourgeois, and not a people’s
government, and is unable to provide peace, bread, or full freedom; (2) It cannot be overthrown
just now, for it is being kept in power by a direct and indirect, a formal and actual agreement
with the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and primarily with the chief Soviet, the Petrograd Soviet;
(3) generally, it can not be “overthrown” in the ordinary way, for it rests on the “support” given to
the bourgeoisie by the second government—the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, and that
government is the only possible revolutionary government, which directly expresses the mind
and will of the majority of the workers and peasants. Humanity has not yet evolved and we do
not as yet know a type of government superior to and better than the Soviets of Workers’,
Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Deputies.
To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side. As long as
no violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blancists, we
do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority. We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian
class struggle against petty-bourgeois intoxication, against chauvinism-defencism, phrase-
mongering and dependence on the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin, Dual Power)”
The value of the Soviets and councils were rather the initiative taken by the masses of people – “the
source of power is not a law previously discussed and enacted by parliament, but the direct
initiative of the people from below…the replacement of the police and the army, which are
institutions divorced from the people and set against the people, by the direct arming of the
whole people; order in the state under such a power is maintained by the armed workers and
peasants themselves, by the armed people themselves…officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either
similarly replaced by the direct rule of the people themselves or at least placed under special
control; they not only become elected officials” (Lenin Dual Power)
The important point is that the dual power is not an intermediate step but rather reflects the
contradictory character of the democratic revolution. It is not that one government reflects the laborers
and the other capital – no (and this is what gives the impression of it being an intermediate step). More
democracy does not mean more proletarian – it also means more capital.

The dual power has been mystified today. For example, just last year, the “Marxist Center” (which a
multi-tendency initiative of many millennial Marxist tendencies) published a document (All about that
base) with a FAQ on the Dual Power. The first questions reads “What does Dual Power mean?”:

“[Answer]: Dual Power is both a type of institution and a strategy to change the world. Dual Power
means new, independent institutions for people to meet their own needs in ways capitalism and the
government can’t or won’t. Unlike nonprofits, where a board of directors (and usually wealthy donors!)
makes the decisions, Dual Power institutions are created and controlled by the people they benefit. By
developing them, people create a second kind of social, economic, and even political power, separate
from government and capitalism. (That’s what the “dual” means, in duality with the current system.)
These new community institutions then govern themselves using participatory democracy, which means
that everyone plays an active part in decision-making.” (Dual Power, FAQ)

The dual power is not community control and it does not exist outside capitalism. In fact, its very
existence is because of capitalism. The executive can uphold two different rights (labor and capitals).
These two rights arise from the same substance

Spartacist League
The Spartacist League was in fact hyped more by its enemies than by its support among the
masses. The League was made – for example, Karl Liebknecht was expelled from the SPD in
1916 for his opposition to the war.
At the end of the day, Rosa Luxemburg’s point was the contradictory character of the
revolution. It wasn’t that Rosa Luxemburg was more humanist than Ebert but rather that she
knew the dialectical relationship between the political and economic spheres.
“The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery.”
(Marx, Paris Commune).
“To flee before the organized opposition of capital would be a greater betrayal of the revolution
than a refusal to take power in the first instance…The very fact of the proletariat’s
representatives entering the government, not as powerless hostages, but as leading force,
destroys the border-line between maximum and minimum program: that is to say, it places
collectivism on the order of the day.” (Trotsky, Results and Prospects)
Ebert and Scheidemann live on only in complete infamy among the Left – the “hard-left”
routinely shouts that Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxemburg – but this apparent loyalty to the
martyr actually betrays her lesson. Hugo Haase, leader in the Independent Socialists, believed
that Ebert and Scheidemann were “compromised leaders.” But Luxemburg found this to be an
expression of Haase’s “underhand policy of drowning all inner contradictions of the revolution
in an indiscriminate mélange.”
From this it would follow that a Luxemburg-Liebknecht movement for socialism looked like a
“counter-revolutionary putsch” (‘Up with Social Democracy!’ Vorwarts, 8 December 1918). As a
result, Ebert and Scheidemann sought to preserve the old imperial military clique in order
While the Ebert-Scheidemann government claimed things like “…the liberation of the people is
completed” (November 9, 1918), Luxemburg said was The Beginning.
[Luxmburg]: “What we need not rejoicing over the accomplishments, not celebrations of victory
over the prostrate foe, but rigorous self-criticism and self-marshaling of our strength so the
work now begun can go forward.” [The Beginning, November 18]
The war had increased the discontent of the masses, not just for cabinet change but also for
social change. The economic character set-off by the political revolution was expected by Rosa
Luxemburg – she had already made this point in her famous Mass Strike Pamphlet. Rosa
Luxemburg understood the contradictory character of the Democratic Revolution – such change
would reverberate into the economic sphere – this would pose a question to the government –
whose side are you on.

“The ice is breaking up – he strikes have begun…A revolution has taken place. It was made by
workers, proletarians in and out of uniform. Socialists, workers’ representatives, sit in the
government. And what has changed for the masses of workers in their daily wages and living
standards? Nothing at all or very little.” [The Acheron in Motion]

The SPD tried to use the German High Command to quell the strikes that emerged – this was a
fatal flaw.
“Today it is obvious that Ebert and Scheidemann can rule only by the bayonet. If this is the case,
however, then the bayonet will also rule without Ebert and Scheidemann” (Luxemburg, House of
Cards)

The Influence of Russia

A year before November 9, 1918, was the Russian Revolution. In fact, the November Revolution
began on the anniversary of the October Revolution.
The tocsin for world revolution had sounded in Russia and had already spread (albeit slowly)
into Hungary and Finland. The specter of “Bolshevism” – Wolff telegram reported blood in the
streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
For the rest of the 20th century and up until today, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin have been pitted
in popular history on opposite sides. Luxemburg is the humane, democratic socialist, who
believes in the creativity and spontaneity of ordinary people to overcome the oppressions that
face them. Lenin on the other hand, is the ends-justify-the-means authoritarian hierarchial
socialist, willing to hijack any popular revolution and sign any hanging order for his lust for
power and control (that, according to overthrown “socialist” Kerensky, was apparent in his
childhood!)
In a letter written to Adolf Warski at the end of the following year, when she had received better
information, Luxemburg wrote:
“The use of terror indicates great weakness, certainly, but it is directed against internal enemies
who base their hopes on the existence of capitalism outside of Russia, receiving support and
encouragement from it. With the coming of the European revolution, the Russian counter-
revolutionaries will lose not only support [from abroad[ but also – what’s more important –
their courage. Thus the Bolshevik use of terror is above all an expression of the weakness of the
European proletariat.”
For Luxemburg, in her revised critique, “The Russian Tragedy,” the difficulty with the Russian
Revolution was the “insolubility of the problem posed to them by the international, above all the
German proletariat.” It followed that the honor of the Russian Revolution was “identical with
vindicating that of the German proletariat and international socialists.”
Even in her prison writings, Luxemburg never lost sight of international character of the
October revolution. The opportunists in Germany treated the October revolution as a Russian
Revolution.
“Theoretically – Luxemburg says – this doctrine…follows from the original ‘Marxist’ discovery
that the Socialist revolution is a national and, so to speak, a domestic affair in each modern
country takne by itself. Of course, in the blue mists of abstract formulae, a Kautsky knows very
well how to trace the world-wide economic connections of capital which make of all modern
countries a single integrated organism. The problems of the Russian revolution…cannot possibl
be solved within the limits of bourgeois society.
Practically – Luxemburg continues – this same doctrine represents an attempt to get rid of
any responsibility for the course of the Russian Revolution, so far as that responsibility
concerns the international, and especially the German, proletariat, and to deny the international
connections of this revolution. It is not Russia’s unripeness which has been proved by the events
of the war and the Russian Revolution, but the unripeness of the German proletariat for the
fulfillment of its historic tasks.”
But the influence wasn’t just one of responsibility but also an insight into the future. As Lenin
remarks at the beginning of his pamphlet “Left-Wing Communism” from 1920, the international
significance of Russian Revolution at the time was the “international validity or historical
inevitability of a repetition on an international scale of what has taken place in our country….”
One of Rosa Luxemburg’s most impressive feats was the extent by which she learned from the
experience of Russia and was already pursuing the problems raised in her very brief period. The
title’s of her articles in the brief period that she was out of jail (just over two months), shows the
thought pattern – “The Beginning” (November 9th), to “The Acheron in Motion” (a few weeks
later – “the ice is breaking up”) to “What does the Spartacus League Want?” (December – when
Lenin was making preparations for the first congress of the Third International, he told one of
his comrades to write some basic theses on Bolshevism and combine them with “What does the
Spartacus League Want?”) to “Order Reigns in Berlin” (where she says now the task of the
overthrow of Ebert and Scheidemann has been posed). This almost exactly mirrors
But this influence was also negative.
The SPD, for example, said that Bolshevism was the “Militarism of Loafers.” From the
perspective of the Left Communists (such as Herman Gorter, Pannekoek and Otto Ruhle), the
Bolsheviks incorrectly generalized their experiences.
Karl Kautsky’s view was that the USPD and the SPD only differed in tempo – the SPD was more
“cautious” (“Driving the Revolution Forward”). He rather thought that the Spartacist League were
reified. Writing in December of 1918, Kautsky writes:

“The previous revolutions of the nineteenth century were all bourgeois in origin. However, since
the bourgeoisie only has a limited ability to fight by itself, all these revolutions were brought
about by the energetic intervention of the classes beneath them – the petty bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. Initially, the bourgeoisie took possession of state power and used it for its own ends.
This could not assuage the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat, who had become acquainted
with their own power in the revolutionary struggles. They used this power to drive the
bourgeoisie forward in order to eventually set up a government devoted to the poorer classes of
the people. In this way the struggles between the classes inevitably drove the revolution forward
and radicalised it. Thus 1789 was followed by the victory of the ‘Mountain’. In France, 4
September 1870 was followed by 18 March 1871. In Russia, the March Revolution was followed
by the November Revolution. Therefore, the Spartacus people and their friends assume that the
current revolution will not stop in its first phase, but that it must enter a second phase, a phase
that can represent nothing but a victory for the most radical party, the Spartacus League.
The ‘Spartacides’ should be rather more careful in their method of indiscriminately applying
templates drawn from the past, and from other countries, to the Germany of today. Just recently
they tremendously failed with the call they blunderingly took from Russia: “All power to the
workers’ and soldiers’ councils”. The current revolution in Germany has its own laws.
It differs from all previous revolutions in that it is a proletarian and socialist revolution from the
outset. However, there is no other more oppressed class, a more exploited class supporting the
proletariat, which could have an interest in toppling the new regime… Any further attempt to
drive the revolution forward by violently overthrowing the revolutionary government of the
[revolution’s] first phase in fact means a struggle within the revolutionary class itself… Driving
the revolution forward, therefore, it now not a matter of a struggle of an oppressed class against
an oppressing class, but merely of a struggle between different methods and viewpoints amongst
the same class. This is by no means to say that the most superior class must always force back
the inferior class, nor is it so say that the more radical class must necessarily prevail. Historical
experience says nothing about the present case, which has no precedents.”
Two things to note: One, from his standpoint, the Spartacists were beholden to antiquated ideology.
They were incorrectly applying a Bourgeois Revolution to the era of proletarian revolutions. But second
of all, Kautsky was still beholden to his original view of the Party of the Class (so opportunism comes
from without, from the shells of former classes). To have a proletariat fight a proletariat was nothing but
wrongheadness. But the Left-Communists take the same standpoint. Bourgeois and Proletariat have a
“chinese wall” between them – both are bourgeois. Bourgeois “The only question is which class, of
the “urban” classes, will succeed in leading the country, will cope with this task, and what forms
will leadership by the town assume” [Constitutent Assembly and the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat].
Lessons

What Lenin meant by the generalizability of Russia’s experiences was not tactics per se but
rather experiences. As Lenin puts it in a Letter to German Communists, August 1921, the Left
Communists should remain in the International because they must be allowed to develop, both in their
own learning but also as an object for “inexperienced” communists. The West had not experienced a
major revolution like the East and thus, there was still something to learn from Russia. This is because,
as he put it in Left-Wing Communism, the Bolsheviks had gone through the experience of defeat and
therefore, retreat before – post 1905. This was an experience that needed to be generalized. This is
different than what Herman Gorter, the Dutch Communists, criticized Lenin of doing. He felt Lenin was
exporting “leader-tactics” to the West and was wrongly generalizing the experience of the Russian
Experience.

For Gorter, in West Europe, the influence of the party leaders would be less because of the
development of capitalist production. There, the proletariat stood alone, were more numerous
and as a result of this, had to take up more responsibility than in Russia, where the peasants
were coincidentally on the side of the Bolsheviks. Furthermore, the importance of leaders, a
party dictatorship was less relevant since the class would be pressured more. This was the result
of imperialism. In the West, Imperialism and Monopolies had concentrated the classes
against the proletariat to a greater degree than they did in Russia. The petty bourgeois and
peasants were not waiting for an agricultural revolution (overthrowing feudal lords), they did
not care about having their rent dismissed but rather, were “united” with Big capital to a degree
not seen in Russia.

While it is true that different countries will face different concrete conditions, these conditions are
interconnected. As Cliff Slaughter put it “The connection between the struggles of the working class for
Socialism in, say, Britain, Russia and Vietnam, is not at all in the greater or lesser degree of similarity of
social structure of those countries, but in the organic interdependence of their struggles. Capitalism is
an international phenomenon, and the working class is an international force….” What would have been
necessary to demonstrate is not that Germany faced a different set of conditions but how the difference
was function of the activity of the proletarian class.

For example, that the peasants in Russia could be a reliable source of democratic discontents for the
Bolsheviks was the result of the growth of the proletariat in West Europe, which led to investment in
Russia and their “combined and uneven development.” On the other hand, the revolution of 1905 put
pressure on the German SPD and helped spurn the “secret agreement” of the Trade Unions with SPD, as
a result of their resistance to the growing pressure to become political.

Whether or not the tactics suggested were correct is not only hard to judge but almost impossible to
make sense of today, since such concrete situations do not repeat. Tactics are one’s judgment – all the
training of Bolshevism for Leon Trotsky was the selection of individuals to make the correct judgment at
the right time. What could be generalized, however, is the party’s experience, meaning the questions
that will be presented inevitably in the development of the party.

The problem with the “Lefts” – and this is very consciously in quotes – was that they had as Lenin put it,
an exaggerated . As Gorter puts in a footnote in his Letter to Lenin

“If, in a country so diseased with opportunism… the danger should arise of a young Communist
Party falling back into the course of opportunism, through parliamentarism, it is a tactical
necessity to defend anti-parliamentarism”
Both Gorter and Kautsky fell back on reformism in two different but related fashions.
The National Assembly
So as an example, what would it mean to :
[Luxemburg, The National Assembly]: “Just as we exploited the infamous Prussian three-class
franchise to fight against the three-class parliament in the three-class parliament, so we will
utilize the elections to the National Assembly to fight against the National Assembly.”
Lenin a year later, commenting on the Constitutent Assembly in Russia, wrote:

“The party of the revolutionary proletariat must take part in bourgeois

parliaments in order to enlighten the masses; this can be done during elections
and in the struggle between parties in parliament. But limiting the class struggle to the
parliamentary struggle, or regarding the latter as the highest and decisive form, to which all the
other forms of struggle are subordinate, is actually desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie
against the proletariat

Some “Lefts” believed that the split was over parliamentarianism – Otto Ruhle, for example,
believe that Parliaments were for the Bourgeois era. The betrayal of the leaders of the Second
International, their capitulation to the opportunism in the party represented by trade-unionism
and Parliamentarianism (two sides of the same coin),
Rosa Luxemburg, in here Junius Pamphlet wrote:
“…the parliamentary stage, for instance, the only far reaching and internationally conspicuous platform,
could have become a mighty motive power for the awakening of the people, had it been used by the
social democratic representatives to proclaim loudly and distinctly the interests, the problems and the
demands of the working class

Would the masses have supported the social democracy in its attitude against the war?” That is a
question that no one can answer. But neither is it an important one. Did our parliamentarians demand
an absolute assurance of victory from the generals of the Prussian army before voting in favour of war
credits? What is true of military armies is equally true of revolutionary armies. They go into the fight,
wherever necessity demands it, without previous assurance of success. At the worst, the party would
have been doomed, in the first few months of the war, to political ineffectuality.”

Lenin agreed:

[Lenin, Left-Wing Communism]: “If Karl Liebknecht in Germany and Z. Höglund in Sweden were able,
even without mass support from below, to set examples of the truly revolutionary utilisation of
reactionary parliaments, why should a rapidly growing revolutionary mass party, in the midst of the
post-war disillusionment and embitterment of the masses, be unable to forge a communist group in the
worst of parliaments? It is because, in Western Europe, the backward masses of the workers and—to an
even greater degree—of the small peasants are much more imbued with bourgeois-democratic and
parliamentary prejudices than they were in Russia because of that, it is only from within such
institutions as bourgeois parliaments that Communists can (and must) wage a long and persistent
struggle, undaunted by any difficulties, to expose, dispel and overcome these prejudices.”

Commenting on the British Socialist movement, Lenin said that the difference between the
Communists and the liberals was that the Communists weren’t after seats. This is because they
know the nature of power – the law is not control over state power but rather based on rights
that are upheld by the State. Even if Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels co-wrote a bill in favor of
the proletariat, the interpretation of the bill was to subject to interpretation on potentially
opposite grounds. This is because rights, which are antecedent to legislation, are contradictory:
[Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution] “Legislative reform and revolution are not different
methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of
history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different
factors in the development of class society… Every legal constitution is the product of a
revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is
the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform
does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work
for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and
continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt… That is
why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place and
in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose
a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal.”

November 9
The first wars were likely only carried out by volunteers. Before one tribe went and attacked
another tribe, a war-chief would gather forces by inspiring volunteers (the example usually given
in anthropology is like a war-dance). There wasn’t conscription and there wasn’t a standing
army.
Thus, at the end of the day, the head of the military, is the head warlord/war-chief. At the end of
the day, they have people who are willing to fight and die for them because they believe in the
cause, in defending their nation, in the honor bestowed on them. This is the kind of problem
that General Erich Ludendorff faced leading up to November 9th – the German military had
suffered a defeat but the honor of the military needed to be preserved, so as to prevent mutiny.
Some sort of political change was needed in order to cover for the military mismanagement.
This was known as the “Kaiser-Problem.”
How was this to be done? The SPD, the center of the 2nd International, had betrayed its origin on
August 4, 1914. A party has one goal – to make a revolution. On that day, it became an interest
group, a sect however large it was. They voted for the war because they thought it would
preserve their interests.
Ebert and Scheidemann, who originally were reluctant to have any change of government,
including a Kaiser abdication. Scheidemann had even claim just 8 days prior that he wouldn’t
want to step into a “bankrupt enterprise.” Ebert would later be quick to accept the help of
General Groener the following day. It was Ludendorff’s idea, which he had been planning since
at least September but now that Social Democracy was in power, he started promoting the “stab-
in-the-back” myth or the idea that Germany lost the war because of Socialist uprisings at home
(as well as Jewish profiteering – just to follow up on Ludendorff. He would become interested in
paganism as well as anti-semetic conspiracy theories and eventually partook in the Beer Hall
Putsch with Adolph Hitler. However, he had a falling out with Hitler by the time the latter was
elected Chancellor).
The revolution truly began with a sailor mutiny. The Navy was ordered to have a decisive fight
with the British Navy but the German sailors refuse . On the morning of November 4th, the
soldiers formed Soldier’s Councils (e.g. Soviets) and disarmed the
While eating lunch that, Frederick Ebert and Philip Scheidemann overhead a crowd gathering
outside. Philip Scheidemann, to the dismay of Ebert, went out and proclaimed on the balcony
that Germany was now a Republic. Just two hours later, Karl Liebknecht – son of SPD founded
William Liebknecht – announced a “Socialist Republic.”
November 10
The next day elections were held around Germany in factories and the Soldier’s barracks. The
SPD came out with a stunning victory even surprised the heads who were not excited about the
election. Not only did the SPD now have a revolutionary endorsement for his counter-revolution
from the Councils,
Luxemburg did not have any illusions about the councils. Writing on Nov 30, she wrote “If the
Revolution were going on in those of its organs which were the creation of its early days, the
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, it would be in dire straits…The Revolution will live without the
Councils, the Councils without the Revolution are dead.” Lenin too, during the course of 1917,
also considered other paths in the face of the conservative nature of the Soviets.
The Soviets and the Councils only “[gave the] opportunity” – writes Hungarian Revolutionary
George Lukacs – “to substitute its own positive contents for the emptied and bursting husks. But
also it is exposed to the danger that for a time at least it might adapt itself ideologically to
conform to these, the emptiest and most decadent forms of bourgeois culture. As mentioned
before, they are only democratic forms. Their “higher character” also creates the possibility for a
higher, deeper and more obscure form of capitalism.

Christmas Uprising
Indeed, the councils were chaotic and the people that came the leadership of them were not
favorable to either Ebert or Luxemburg. By December, there was a plan on the part of Ebert and
Groener (that’s the old general) to March several regiments into Berlin to restore order but the
regiments went home on December 10, for Christmas Break. Ebert accused the Spartacist league
of taking over the military and withheld pay. This led to a mutiny in the navy and Ebert calls the
German High Command for reinforcements to put down the sailors. The Sailors actually win the
first military battle but because they lacked any political leadership, it inevitably led to a defeat
in the longrun. Out of this military defeat came the “Freikorps,” a proto-fascist paramilitary
group. Gustav Noske, who had originally been part of the plan to subdue the Kiehl Mutiny
became the commander-in-chief.
Sebastian Haffner, in his history of the revolution put it that : “If the Revolution had not lacked
leadership – there would have been nothing, that Christmas Even, to stop it from taking control
of the capital. But the Revolution had no leadership….”
Indeed, only a few days later, on December 30, would the Spartacist League finally broke with
the USPD. It may have been too late. Just 16 days later, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
would be dead.
January 5-12 has become known as the “Spartacus League Week,” even though the Spartacus
League was not as influential. What sparked was actually the dismissal of a USPD police officer,
Emil Eichhorn. This leads to a protest – hundreds of thousands gather armed. They soon occupy
big newspaper houses. The KPD had not forseen or desired the January rising and apparently,
Luxemburg shouted at Liebknecht “Karl, what has happened to our program?” But the role of a
communist is that you have to go in with proletariat so that they can at least learn. This is what
was experienced in the July Days in Russia, which also was an uprising that was considered
premature by the Bolsheviks and almost got everyone killed.
The rest of 1919 is a pretty open civil war. The councils, despite being strong supporters of the
SPD, are all of a sudden at odds with Ebert. He considered them superfluous but they thought of
themselves as permanent organs. Indeed, this was experienced in Russia in 1905 – Leon Trotsky
that the role of the Soviets was that “created conditions for disorganizing the government.” They
infringed on the sovereignty – in practice, they posed a mere question. If they were not going to
assume State power, then they were potentially harmful. Soldiers ranks were reintroduced. The
Freikorps carried What plays out over the civil in Germany in 1919 to 1920, is basically more
proto-fascism. The spirit of the future SS is here.

In Bavaria that Fall, Kurt Eisner leads a revolution. He does everything – get soliders to convert,
proclaim Republic, election of councils. They didn’t want a council dictatorship nor a
parliamentary dictatorship but rather a constitutional councils’ democracy. It is crushed bya
counter-revolutionary army. Adolph Hitler was an obscure liason in the Bavarina Army at this
time. His experience and hatred of the communist was dominant in that army
“Left Communism”
As a consequence of this situation, a tendency emerged in the Communist International. It is not
a homogenous tendency but rather reflects a “youthful” position.
The group that would later become the “Left Communists” were in fact originally on the side of
the Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky in the split of the 2nd International. In a letter on October 27,
1914, Lenin wrote:
“How that Troelstra manoeuvred in order to drive honest men and Marxists out of the Dutch
Party (Gorter, Pannekoek, Wijnkoop)… The only one who has told the workers the
truth—although not loudly enough, and sometimes not quite skilfully—is
Pannekoek, whose article we have sent to you…[Panneokoek’s] words, that if now the
“ leaders” of the International that was murdered by the opportunists and Kautsky come
together and begin “papering over” the cracks, this “will be of no significance whatever”— these
are the only socialist words. They are the truth. Bitter, but the truth. And now the workers need
the truth, the whole truth, more than at any other time.”
Lenin’s contribution to history was the split in the 2nd International.
Indeed, this lesson was difficult to fully cognize. As Herman Gorter, a “Left” communist, put it in
his open Letter to Lenin:
“An innumerable stream of opportunists is approaching – especially since your brochure [Left-
Wing Communism].
[Gorter]: In Halle, in one day alone, 500,000 new members came under leaders which only a
short while before they themselves had recognised to be worse than the Scheidemann lot. And in
Tours, three quarters of the French Socialist Party joined, which until quite recently were for the
most part social patriots.”
Furthermore, Gorter writes:
“Then the revolution broke out. The Trade Unions were used by the leaders and the masses of
members as a weapon against the revolution. It was through their help, through their
cooperation, through their leaders, nay, partly even through their members that the revolution
was murdered. The Communists saw their own brothers being shot with the cooperation of the
Trade Unions. Strikes in favour of the revolution were prevented, rendered impossible. Do you
hold it possible, Comrade, that under such conditions revolutionary workers should remain in
these unions?-
You will reply: this was a political party, it is different in the case of a Trade Union. I believe you
are mistaken. In the revolution, during the revolution, every Trade Union, every workers’ union
even, is a political party – either pro- or counterrevolutionary.”
Not only that, but Gorter even thought Lenin was betraying himself. Again
“You do not wish them then: the splitting up, the new formations, the higher stage of
development! And why not? Because you want to have the big parties, and the big Trade Unions,
in the Third International. To us this looks like opportunism, opportunism of the very worst
kind. Today, in the International, your actions differ widely from what they were in the
Maximalist party. This was kept very “pure” (and is so to this day, perhaps). In the International,
all elements are to be accepted right away, no matter how poorly communistic they are…It is the
curse of the Labour movement that, as soon as it has acquired a certain “power,” it seeks to
enlarge this power by unprincipled means. Social-Democracy also was originally “pure” in
almost all countries. Most social-patriots of today were real Marxists. By Marxist propaganda
the masses were won, and as soon as the party gained “power” they were abandoned. Just as the
Social-Democrats acted at that time, you and the Third International are acting now. Not on a
national scale, of course, but internationally. The Russian Revolution has triumphed through
“purity,” through firmness of principle”
Writing in 1978, Richard Seymour of the Spartacist League put it that: “The establishment of a
revolutionary vanguard party splits the working class politically. However, a vanguard party
seeks to lead the mass of the proletariat through united economic organizations of class
struggle, the trade unions. In a revolutionary situation, a vanguard party seeks to lead a
united working class to power through soviets, the organizational basis of a workers
government.” [Lenin and the Vanguard Party]
It is the dialectic of continuity and change. The split in the international was to create a
continuity in the revolutionary movement. This is why formerly counter-revolutionary groups
could become revolutionary. This is why the question is one of political leadership.
In this case, the problem was avoiding opportunism at all costs. But Lenin had learned, through
the experience of the 2nd International, that opportunism developed internally. In fact,
Gorter’s position was more similar to that of Hugo Haase than Luxemburg. The leaders, for
Gorter, were the problem and while he was not against the idea of leaders eventually growing in
the socialist movement, he felt for the time being that the movement could and should do
without them. The masses had been sufficiently radicalized by the situation and could at least
temporarily do without.
One of the “lessons” that the `Lefts’ had learned was one of the betrayal of the leaders. “We want
a dictatorship of the class, not the leaders” was a common slogan. The dictatorship of the
proletariat would be exercised directly through the factory organizations and trade unions. The
political party, as Otto Ruhle put in his 1920 article “The Revolution is not a Party affair.” But a
party’s value is not that it is good but rather that is symptomatic of the contradiction.
The question raised by Lenin in the crisis of the 2nd International was so deep that the lesson
had created its own problem. The problem of centrism created the problem of the
exaggeration of centrism, of turning it into “sport.”
As Gregory Zinoviev put it in 1916 [War and Socialism]:
“Objectively, the labor bureaucracy – the so-called leaders – betrayed the cause of the workers in
Germany on August 4th. And not only in Germany. But that must not be taken to mean that
every one of these leaders said to himself at the decisive moment: I had better go over to the side
of the bourgeoisie, else I am going to lose my bread and butter, my position in public life, etc.
Not at all! Subjectively, many members of this caste are still convinced to this day that they have
been acting exclusively in the interests of the working class, that their conduct was dictated by
their better understanding of the proletarian interests. When we speak of the “treachery of the
leaders” we do not mean to say by this that it was all a deep-laid plot, that it was a consciously
perpetrated sell-out of the workers’ interests. Far from it. But consciousness is conditioned by
existence, not vice versa. The entire social essence of this caste of labor bureaucrats led
inevitably, through the outmoded pace set for the movement in the “peaceful” pre-war period, to
complete bourgeoisiefication of their “consciousness.” The entire position into which this
numerically strong caste of leaders had climbed over the backs of the working class made of
them a social group which objectively must be regarded as an agency of the imperialist
bourgeoisie.”

Rosa Luxemburg, in her 1904 polemic with Lenin, wrote:

“…the influx of bourgeois elements into the party is far from being the only cause of the
opportunist trends that are now raising their heads in the Social Democracy. Another cause is
the very nature of socialist activity and the contradictions inherent in it.
The international movement of the proletariat toward its complete emancipation is a process
peculiar in the following respect. For the first time in the history of civilization, the
people are expressing their will consciously and in opposition to all ruling classes.
But this will can only be satisfied beyond the limits of the existing system…On the one hand,
we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society.
On one had, we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. Such are the
terms of the dialectic contradiction through which the socialist movement makes
its way…That is why it is illusory, and contrary to historic experience, to hope to fix, once and
for always, the direction of the revolutionary socialist struggle with the aid of formal means,
which are expected to secure the labor movement against all possibilities of opportunist
digression.”

It's existence even was a necessary learning opportunity. In the same year Lenin wrote [In
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism]
“As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and the particularly revolting character of the
development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be durable: the
rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body can only cause it to burst more quickly and
thus relieve the body of it.”

Party of the Class vs Many Communist Parties

As late as 1917, Rosa Luxemburg was still skeptical of splitting”

“However commendable and comprehensible the impatience and bitterness which leads so
many of the best elements to leave the party today, a flight remains a flight. It is a betrayal of the
masses, who, sold to the bourgeoisie, writhe and choke from the stranglehold of Scheidemann
and Legien. One may withdraw from small sects when they do not suit one any longer in order to
found new sects… The discarding of membership cards as an illusion of liberation is nothing but
the illusion, stood on its head, that power is inherent in a membership card. Both are different
poles of organisational cretinism, the constitutional sickness of old German Social Democracy.
The collapse of German Social Democracy is an historical process of immense dimensions, a
general struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and one should not run from
this battlefield in order to breathe purer air behind a protective bush. This battle of giants
should be fought to the end. The fight against the deadly stranglehold of official Social
Democracy, and the official Free Trade Unions, which was imposed by the ruling class upon the
neck of the misled and betrayed working class, should be fought with all force to the end. We
should stand by the masses to the end, even in the most terrible struggle. The liquidation of this
“heap of organised corruption”, which today calls itself Social Democracy, is not the private
affair of the few, or of a few groups ....”
[Quoted in Rosa Luxemburg, Tony Cliff]
Lenin had sensed this earlier in Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet.
“There is no doubt that Junius is decidedly opposed to the imperialist war and is decidedly in
favor of revolutionary tactics… But, firstly, Junius has not completely rid himself of the
“environment” of the German Social-Democrats, even the Lefts, who are afraid of a split, who
are afraid to follow revolutionary slogans to their logical conclusions. This is a mistaken fear,
and the Left Social-Democrats of Germany must and will rid themselves of it. They will do so in
the course of the struggle against the social-chauvinists.”
Luxemburg would eventually split, at the founding of the KPD. As she put it in her speech What
does the SpartacusBund Want?, the Erfurt program, the program of Marxist hegemony in the
2nd International, had become obsolete. They were now back at the Communist Manifesto. What
did she mean by this?
The opening phrase of the Communist Manifesto is “There is a specter haunting Europe….” But
the experience of 1848 had shocked the socialist movement – it was a disaster. The strategy of –
1848 was the farce of 1793. Not only was nothing won but a terrible weight arose – the State –
that was propped up by popular, universal suffrage.
“"This is the complete and final triumph of socialism!” Thus Guizot characterized December 2.
But if the overthrow of the parliamentary republic contains within itself the germ of the triumph
of the proletarian revolution, its immediate and obvious result was Bonaparte’s victory over
parliament, of the executive power over the legislative power…
But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through purgatory. It does its work
methodically. By December 2, 1851, it had completed half of its preparatory work; now it is
completing the other half. It first completed the parliamentary power in order to be able to
overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its
purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all
its forces of destruction against it. And when it has accomplished this second half of its
preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exult: Well burrowed, old mole!”
The task of the Socialist Party is to raise the task given by society to the feverish pitch that it was
placed in 1848. The inertia of capitalist society is to always try to suppress this lesson – and this
suppression happens most of all by the Socialists.
As Luxemburg wrote, less than 24 hours before she was murdered, “As soon as the fundamental
problem of the revolution has been clearly posed – and in this revolution it is the overthrow of
the Ebert-Scheidemann government, the primary obstacle to the victory of socialism – then this
basic problem will rise again and again in its entirety…Because of the contradiction in the early
stages of the revolutionary process between the task being sharply posed and the absence of any
preconditions to resolve it, individual battles of the revolution end in formal defeat. But
revolution is the only form of “war” – and this is another peculiar law of history – in which the
ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of “defeats.”” (Order Reigns in Berlin”)
This would predict the next two decades of Germany.
Bourgeois Or Proletarian Revolution?
What Luxemburg wanted was proletarian leadership. So the Spartacist League demanded not
just the release of political prisoners but the reform of prison system itself (and really, tending
towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, meaning the abolition of prisons).

This is what Lenin would have called an “imperialist peace,” meaning a peace that preserves the
conditions of capitalism. For Luxemburg, anything else was an attack on the “honor” of the
revolution and justified taking up arms against it. For if the German Revolution didn’t bring
socialism, then it apologized for the Imperialist War – and the International’s betrayal of the
socialist movement – through the substitute of the Kaiser Chancellorship for the SPD.

If Bolshevism is linked to Fascism and Stalinism, then so must Kautsky and Left-Communism.
They must explain why the masses did not follow them.

For example, Gorter’s argument against Lenin in “Lessons on the March Action” is that Lenin
preached a sort of reconciliation with Parliamentarianism and Trade Unions.

As pointed out by Trotsky in Lessons of October:

“Most highly instructive from this standpoint is the struggle which Lenin launched after the July
days against the fetishism of the organizational form of soviets. In proportion as the SRs and
Menshivik soviets became, in July, organizations openly driving the soldiers into an offensive
and crushing the Bolsheviks, to that extent the revolutionary movement of the proletarian
masses was obliged and compelled to seek new paths and channels. Lenin indicated the factory
committees as the organizations of the struggle for power… It is very likely that the movement
would have proceeded on those lines if it had not been for the Kornilov uprising, which forced
the conciliationist soviets to defend themselves and made it possible for the Bolsheviks to imbue
them with a new revolutionary vigor, binding them closely to the masses through the left, i.e.,
Bolshevik wing.
This question is of enormous international importance, as was shown by the recent German
experience. It was in Germany that soviets were several times created as organs of insurrection
without an insurrection taking place – and as organs of state power – without any power. This
led to the following: in 1923, the movement of broad proletarian and semi-proletarian masses
began to crystallize around the factory committees, which in the main fulfilled all the functions
assumed by our own soviets in the period preceding the direct struggle for power. Yet, during
August and September 1923, several comrades advanced the proposal that we should proceed to
the immediate creation of soviets in Germany. After a long and heated discussion this proposal
was rejected, and rightly so. In view of the fact that the factory committees had already become
in action the rallying centers of the revolutionary masses, soviets would only have been a
parallel form of organization, without any real content, during the preparatory stage.”
So the issue is sort of besides the point. It is not one form vs another, nor a mere aggregate of
them. Rather, the question is why these forms exist at all -what demand they meet, however
ideologically?
Lassalle & Bakunin & Marx
In the history of Socialism, there was an antinomy that saddled the workers movement
expressed by Ferdinand Lassalle and Mikhail Bakunin (a somewhat related earlier phenomenon
can be found with Auguste Blanqui and Pierre-Jean Proudhon).
For Lassalle, the role of “this movement,” the socialist workers movement, was to “raise the
status of the class in the nation, redeeming it from the degradation of its present level.” The
State’s “duty…[was] to come to [the proletariat’s] rescue….” Credit and consumer associations
could not better the worker’s conditions. In other words, Lassalle believed in political action to
the neglect of social action.
Bakunin, on the other hand, found that all theories of the State, even the honest ones, were
based on a principle of authority. No matter the intentions, they played into the State, because
they were opportunistic in practice. Revolutionary Socialists were supposed to be about liberty.
Activity out of the State – social action, was preferred.
Marx tried to overcome this antinomy. Both Bakunin and Lassalle had something in common –
they treated the State as separate from society, for good or for ill.

Whereas Left Communists take certain forms as precedent over others, the opportunistic
reading of Lenin has abused his critique of the ‘Left’ communists as the authority that allows
them carte blanche. In the last US presidential election, for example, it was not uncommon to
hear that to not vote was to be “ultra-Left!”
Lenin, in Left-Wing Communism, was trying to recover the Marxist point about these civil
society forms. It is not merely that it was a period of retreat – the forms are symptoms, they
express contradictory attempts to change society.
For both Lassalle and Bakunin are right – and therefore, one-sided. Individuals find
representation in the State, against their oppressed positions in civil society – the State does
regulate the capitalists and will do so in favor of the workers- but they also find they
also find their interests not represented. The state redistributes the effects of a contradiction,
wage-labor and capital, but it also subjects workers to this contradiction. They find themselves
in a society estranged to them, so that “direct action” really appears to be rational.
This question had been forgotten in the era of the Second International – or rather, it had
become obscured.
For the SPD, they in fact were using the State – “The Social Democratic government is taking
pains to work in cooperation with the officials of the old regime, and an obvious prerequisite for
this is naturally those officials’ obedience to superior authority” (‘Up with Social Democracy’
Vorwarts 8 December 1918). Didn’t the State come to the SPD in order to govern? Perhaps it
wasn’t full socialism but the power was in their hands, was it not? Karl Kautsky, of the rival
USPD party, gave a similar but more cautious view:
“The military autocracy, which has hitherto stood in the way of all social progress, has been
overthrown, but the old administrative and governmental apparatus continues to function in the
state and in the army. We were given the choice of either destroying the apparatus with one
blow, and with this rendering the country’s administrative functions and the whole of public life
impossible, or to maintain this apparatus, and at the same time to allow it, and the basis of the
old regime, which had thrown us into the abyss, to continue to exist. In this way we would
restrict the revolution to a temporary change of roles. The workers’ and soldiers’ councils helped
us out of this desperate alternative. Their monitoring (‘Kontrolle’) made it possible for the old
state apparatus to continue to function without bringing about the counter-revolution.”
(“Driving the Revolution Forward, 18 December 1918)

General Ludendorff was quoted by his Wife as saying “The Revolutionaries greatest piece of
stupidity was to leave us all alive…if I ever I come to power again, there will be pardons.”

Social Democratic or Communist?

One of the other legacies that has been left us since the German Revolution has been the
question of “Communist” or “Social Democrat.”
Writing in the 1870’s, Engels himself had pondered the question
“…For Marx and me it was therefore quite impossible to choose such an elastic term to
characterize our special point of view. Today things are different, and the word (“Social-
Democrat”) may perhaps pass muster, however unsitable it still is for a party whose economic
programme is not merely Socialist in genral, but directly Communist, and whose political aim is
to overcome the whole state, and therefore democracy as well. The names of real
political parties, however, are never wholly appropriate; the party develops, while the name
persists.” [ Engels, introduction to his articles, quoted in State and Revolution].
Even in the lead up to the first congress of the Third International, Lenin wrote ““Perhaps we
should add that we do not suggest that the whole of the Third International immediately start
calling itself “communist”, but we do place on the order of the day (for discussion) the question
of resolutely rejecting the names of “Social-Democratic”and “socialist”parties, and adopting that
of “communist” parties.”” (To G.V. Chicherin, December 1918)
This has created some confusion because it given the appearance that Communist and Social
Democrat was just an apriori principle. People today make the same distinction. But – the truth
is concrete. In the period of multiple socialist – multiple Marxist parties – the need to
differentiate oneself from other Marxist parties required at least some sort of brand recognition.
But this split cannot be decided in advance – it is only posed to a party (GIVEN A PARTY)
once the conditions for revolution have been given. But this “lesson” has unfortunately been
turned into something else – Leftists talk as if they in the same situation today.

Kapp Putsch

Already from the middle of 1919 onwards, “a wave from the right” (Ernst Troeltsch) emerged on the
scene. The “stab-in-the back” myth perpetrated by the “November Criminals,” the “defeatist
politicians.” In the process emerged something called the National Union (which included Ludendorff),
which had a military wing called the Reichswehr (Ryke-sphere). The Freikorps (the volunteer army) had
vacillated between being a mere instrument (this was the goal of Hans Von Seeckt, the Chief of the
General Staff who wanted to depoliticize the Reichswehr) and a group that wanted to politicize this
paramilitary group. Already in 1919 this group started demanding a prohibition on strikes and abolishing
unemployment insurance. The Putsch comes as a result of the demands made in the Treaty of Versailles
– the government was ordered to reduce its size and this was not something the general wanted to do.
Interestingly, Gustav Noske, the most conservative of the existing state officials, turned down the offer
to become dictator (although he took no steps to stop the putsch). It actually starts before Wolfgang
Kapp of the National Union is brought in (that’s where the name comes from). Part of the National
Union marches with a regiment of the Reichswehr to occupy Berlin and at the same time, a regiment of
the Reichswehr is called by the Putschists. They Putsch ends up occupying the government and the
Social Democrats now called upon the workers to strike. This actually worked

Now this puts all the political opposition in confusion – both the USPD AND KPD had rejected the calls
for general. The KPD Zentrale, for example, claimed that the proletariat was both “not capable of action
at the moment” and that they were being deceived by the “heroes of 1914” (March 14, 1920, KPD
Zentrale). In fact, what the SPD had done was characteristic of a classic move in the history of Marxism –
they were Bonapartists. First, they had tried to used the Right to play against the Left – now they called
on the Left to play to against the Right.

The March Action

The year of 1921 led to a further splintering in the Communist International. Out of despair, the German
Communist Party (KPD) and the Communist Worker’s Party (KAPD) planned a March action. Long story
short, they sort of let their actions be known to soon and tried to act in substitute of

After the failure of this action, Paul Levi left the Third International and published Rosa Luxemburg’s
1917 critical piece “The Russian Revolution.” Rosa Luxemburg herself knew that – she had asked that
manuscript and in a letter to Julian Marchlewski in 1918, she wrote “For my part, I can communicate
only opinions and impressions because [information] reaches me only third-hand [about] the actual
state of affairs [in Soviet Russia]….” She would of course revise this when she got out of jail in our 1918
“The Russian Tragedy.” The Third International was in crisis.

Occupation of the Ruhr

In response to Germany’s failure to pay indemnities (they were partly inflating them), the French
Military invaded the Ruhr.

Of course, this was a kind of “anti-imperialism.” Meaning, from the German Worker’s prospective, the
French Imperialists had invaded the Ruhr. So they fought, to fight imperialism. But the revolution of
1918-1919, was also against German Militarism, to end the war. So the proletariat, in fighting French
Imperialism, fought for German Imperialism. By the end of 1923, yet another revolution

This anti-imperialism would end up inspiring much of the Nazi Party. For example, both the occupation
of the Ruhr valley but

Here as well the question of revolution was at least imagined, although the probability was much less.
The same year, the 2nd-and-half international as well as the remaining 2nd International

Conclusion

By the 10th anniversary of the betrayal of Revolutionary Social Democracy by the 2ND International,
Germany had been through an enormous struggle and set of disappointments.

Theodore Adorno, writing a retrospective in 1962, wrote that “…already in the twenties, as a consequence
of the events of 1919, the decision had fallen against that political potential that, had things gone otherwise,
with great possibility would have influenced developments in Russian and prevented Stalinism.”

“"It can be said with confidence: beginning with 1923, not a single tactical turn was made in time, under
the influence of correctly estimated changes in the objective conditions, by the Comintern…The petty
bourgeoisie does not wait, consequently, for new disappointments in the ability of the party to improve
its fate; it bases itself upon the experiences of the past, remembering the lesson of 1923, the capricious
leaps of the ultra-left course of Maslow-Thälmann, the opportunist impotence of the same Thälmann,
the clatter of the “third period,” etc. Finally – and this is the most important – its lack of faith in the
proletarian revolution is nourished by the lack of faith in the Communist Party on the part of millions
of Social Democratic workers” [ The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in
Germany]

The failure of political leadership by Marxism was not a mere missed opportunity – the workers were to
be penalized for this political failure. Adolph Hitler, who was a Lance Corporal at the time of the
November Revolution and had a psychological breakdown that day, later wrote,

“What would be given to the masses, if, just supposing, Social Democracy had been broken? There was
not one movement in existence which could have been expected to succeed in drawing into its sphere
of influence the great multitudes of workers grown more or less leaderless. It is senseless and more than
stupid to believe that the international fanatic who had left the class party would not at once joint a
bourgeois party, in other words, a new class organization…The ‘bourgeois’ parties, as they designated
themselves, will never be able to attach the ‘proletarian’ masses to their camp….” (Quoted in Wilhelm
Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism).

[Mussolini, Doctrine of Fascism 1932]: “From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic
doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as
"the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited
to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism,
democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism,
democracy”

While their conclusions were horrifying, their assessment was not wrong. Wilhelm Reich, a communist
in the Left opposition, pointed out that “the mass basis of fascism, the rebelling lower middle classes,
contained not only reactionary but also powerful progressive social forces.” To constitute these,
required political leadership.

Writing at the beginning of WW2, Leon Trotsky, the last remaining radical of the 2nd International, would
harken back to the problem that Luxemburg had stated in her finally 24 hours:
“The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of
the proletariat.” [Transitional program