Revolutionaries (8 page)

The German ‘October' did not take place. On the contrary, the old regime, minus the emperor but plus a passionately and viscerally anti-revolutionary and governmental Social Democracy, reestablished itself. What became the mass
KPD
, after the 1920 merger with the left wing of the Independent Socialists, expressed essentially the profound disappointment of large strata of the German working class with the failure of the social revolution and their embittered economic discontent. It represented all those forces – proletarian and intellectual – which rejected and hated a republic which had few republicans, but plenty of generals, policemen, bureaucrats, tycoons and judges whose reactionary bias was flagrant and incendiary, and which had installed a restoration of economic, social, political and legal injustice.

In social terms, the new
KPD
attracted the young – in 1926 80 per cent of its leading functionaries were below forty, 30 percent below thirty and its average age was thirty-four;
²
the unskilled – an unusually high percentage of 13.5 among the top functionaries were drawn from them; the unemployed – in 1927, at the peak of economic stabilization, 27 per cent of the Berlin membership were jobless. Like all working-class organizations, however, its cadre rested largely on the basic rock of skilled proletarians, especially – as so often – the metal-workers. Three-quarters of its leading functionaries had only elementary school education, though at the other extreme 10 per cent were university graduates; among the membership 95 per cent had only been to primary school, 1 per cent to universities. Historically, half its leaders but 70 per cent of its members had entered politics since 1917. The relatively large number of pre–1917
Social Democrats among the functionaries came into it at the time of the merger with the Independent Socialists. Only about 20 per cent of the functionaries in the 1920s had belonged to the Spartacus League or the radical left during the war, so that the direct Rosa Luxemburg traditions were distinctly weak; on the other hand only thirty-six out of the almost four thousand full-time employees of the Social Democratic Party bureaucracy in 1914 were to be found as
KPD
full timers in the 1920s.

The
KPD
was new, young, underprivileged, radically hostile to the system and ready for revolution, which seemed to be possible if not probable until its great defeat in the autumn of 1923. This explains the strength within it of the uncompromising, offensive-minded, activist and often sectarian left. There is no doubt that among the various factions and currents of opinions within it, which fought out their differences in the early years with the usual pre-stalinist freedom and vigour (those were the days when it did not need a communiqué to state that discussions had been ‘full and frank'), the left enjoyed by far the greatest support – in 1924 perhaps 75 per cent. The right, mostly ex-Spartacists who provided the basic leadership until 1923, was weak, except among the skilled workers – though not the intellectuals. The middle group or ‘conciliators' which split away from the right after 1923, as the left took over, represented mainly party professionals, though they could count on about a quarter of the membership.

The
KPD'S
problem up to 1923 was how to make the revolution, which seemed within reach, and which was essential not merely for the triumph of world socialism, but for the Soviet Republic itself. The German soviet revolution was the necessary complement to the Russian revolution, and even Lenin was quite prepared in theory to envisage a situation when the home of Marx, Engels, technological progress and economic efficiency would take over as the centre of the socialist world. In 1919 the Comintern regarded Berlin as the logical place for its head-quarters,
its location in Moscow as temporary. The German
CP
was treated as an equal – according to Weber even at the end of 1922 – though we may suspect that the wily Radek, whose long experience of the German socialist movement made him the man chiefly responsible for German affairs in Moscow, held distinctly more modest expectations about its chances. The major problem for the
KPD
in this period was posed by its deep involvement with Moscow; an involvement arising both from the relative age, strength and tradition of the
KPD
and from the crucial importance of German prospects for Soviet Russia and the whole international revolution. The
KPD
might not wish to be mixed up in Russian affairs, but it could hardly help being so, especially since Zinoviev was in charge of the Comintern and Radek, a supporter of Trotsky at a crucial stage, was its German expert. Beside this, the internal confusion of the party seemed a minor problem. In the first place the years 1919–23 clarified it somewhat by eliminating both the bulk of the utopian-syndicalist ultra-left and an ex-social-democratic right. In the second place, the prospect of revolution makes differences which might otherwise bulk large, comparatively manageable: in 1917, after all, such fundamental distinctions as those between Marx and Bakunin had not caused much trouble in Russia.

After the defeat of 1923 the problem was essentially what to do in a period of stabilization. ‘Bolshevization', which is the main subject of Weber's book, was the answer. This systematic assimilation of other party organizations to the Russian model, and their subordination to Moscow, is generally seen by non-communist historians as a by-product of inner-Soviet developments, which it clearly was to some extent. However, it is Weber's merit to see that this is not the whole, or even the major part, of the truth. He distinguishes several elements in it.

In the first place, as he notes correctly, any effective and lasting organization in modern industrial society tends to be
bureaucratized in some degree, including revolutionary parties. Democratic movements and organizations operate somewhere between the two extremes of unlimited internal freedom, bought at the cost of practical effectiveness, and ossified bureaucracy. Weber comments:

In a labour movement, the democratic tendency always retains some force, since its entire tradition requires an anti-authoritarian, egalitarian and libertarian spirit. Moreover, the leadership is always obliged to support such tendencies from time to time, in order to stimulate the membership to activity and prevent a total paralysis of the party.

The formation of a structured and disciplined
KPD
out of the merger of men, movements and sects in 1918–20 was itself normal, and unacceptable only to utopians or anarchists. It is the systematic atrophy of internal democracy and over-bureaucratization after 1924 which provide the problem.

In the second place, a revolutionary party needs an unusually strong ‘skeleton' of this kind, if only because it is a voluntary organization which must be capable of holding its own against the power structure of state, economy and the mass media, whose resources, influence and strength are far superior. An hierarchical and disciplined ‘apparat' of professional revolutionaries (or, in peacetime, professional functionaries) forms easily the most effective cadre of this sort. Its absolute size is secondary: the
KPD'S
corps of full-timers probably remained far smaller than the
SPD'S
in the Weimar Republic. Though this inevitably produced tensions between leaders and rank and file, not to mention a hypertrophy of centralism and atrophy of initiative from below, it was acceptable to German communists for political as well as operational reasons. Just because the
KPD
emerged in Germany – whose political traditions notably
differed from those of Russia – somewhere in an undefined space between social democracy and the libertarian-democratic (not to say utopian-radical) revolutionism which seems to be its natural antithesis in industrial countries, it had above all to define its political location. ‘Bolshevization' did so. This was not only because bolshevism had, after all, shown itself to be the
only
successful form of revolution – the others had failed or not even started – but because the ‘Party' itself as a disciplined revolutionary army, ready for battle, provided unity and answers to confusing questions. Loyalty bypasses many uncertainties, especially in proletarian movements, which are built on the instinct of unity and solidarity.

These forces would have been operative even without the intervention of Moscow, which Weber only mentions in the third place. It stands to reason that, given the deliberately centralized structure of the Comintern, of which the local parties were merely disciplined ‘sections', and the obvious and inevitable dependence of both on the Soviet party, ‘bolshevization' would mean stalinization. In other words a process which had no intrinsic connection with the
USSR
, except inasmuch as it reflected the natural prestige of the organizational and strategic ‘model' associated with the party and revolution of Lenin, would be transformed into an extension of Soviet politics. The distinction between the two is evident in the case of the Italian
CP
, because there it took the form of Togliatti's conscious subordination to the Russian party of a leading cadre formed earlier and independently from it; a cadre which, though purged and modified by the Russians remained essentially intact and with its own ideas (which it admittedly kept to itself). It is reasonably clear in the British
CP
, where once again the solidification of the party took place earlier and the nucleus of the party leadership remained unchanged after 1922–3. It is not so clear in Germany, because the turnover of the leading cadre continued to be much greater and was visibly dominated by Moscow.

This was due partly to the heavy Russian involvement of the
KPD
which we have already noted. What happened in Germany
mattered more
in Moscow than what happened anywhere else in Europe. The triumph of the left within the
CP
after the failure of 1923 intensified this involvement. It was not imposed by Moscow. Indeed, if anything it marked a (last) assertion of the anti-Russian autonomy of the German party,
³
a suspicion which the leadership of Ruth Fischer and Maslow tried to allay – fatally – by turning itself into the German faction of Zinoviev. It was thus not merely opposed to the general and rather moderate course which Stalin and the bulk of the
CPSU
were now following, but in addition involved the
KPD
in the Russian inner-party struggle – on the wrong side. (No faction of any significance in Germany favoured Trotsky.) Moreover, the sectarianism of the left was plainly senseless, though it appealed to the rank and file. In a period of stabilization – basically from 1921, unquestionably after 1923 – some form of political realism was necessary: united action with the majority of the organized workers who were in the
SPD
, work in trade unions, and in Parliament. Direct Comintern intervention in 1925 deposed the left leaders.
Nothing else could have done
, and this established a sinister precedent. For not merely did it transfer the centre of gravity of German inner-party discussion to Moscow, but to a Comintern which was now playing Soviet politics, and which intervened not so much to change policies as to choose loyal followers.

But which followers? The vulgar historiography of the Comintern neglects this question, assuming merely that they were blind executants of Moscow's policy. But two tragic peculiarities of
KPD
history cannot be so easily written out of the scenario. These were (
a
) the zeal with which it carried out the suicidal line of 1919–33 and (
b
) the remarkable instability of its top leadership.
Neither were inevitable. For instance, an automatic reflex of discipline led the British
CP
in 1939 to reverse its line on the war, to drop the most important leaders associated with it – Pollitt and Campbell – and to carry out the new line with unhesitating loyalty. But everyone who had experience of this episode in its history knows that, but for outside intervention the party would not have altered its line at this time (though a minority might have hankered after such a change), that it reverted with almost audible relief to its old line in 1941, and that Pollitt and Campbell in no sense suffered in the long run for their association with the ‘incorrect' policy of 1939.

The truth was that, although increasing numbers of
KPD
functionaries – especially the young and the unskilled, and those without previous experience in Spartacus or the
USPD
– were prepared to support
any
party line unconditionally, the basic orientation of the
KPD
activists was towards the sectarian left. It had begun as a party of revolution, it stabilized itself as one of militant and systematic negative ‘confrontation'. Its consistent failure to gain strength in the trade unions reflects this. The Comintern had deposed the ultra-left leadership of 1924–5 only at the cost of taking some account of this mood. Thus, as Weber points out, the ultra-left course was never genuinely disavowed by the
KPD
and a return to a similar course under Comintern auspices in 1928–9 was welcomed. It meant doing what came naturally. It is perhaps significant – though this is one of the few aspects on which Weber is silent – that the Young Communists seem to have played an altogether subordinate part in the Comintern's German policy. Elsewhere, one of the commonest methods by which Moscow filled the party leaderships with loyal cadres uncommitted to any pre-Comintern ideology, was by the promotion of recruits from the various
YCLS.
Whether for this or other reasons, youth organizations supplied a significant number of Communist leaders: Rust in Britain, Longo and Secchia in Italy, a very substantial group in France. Togliatti, indeed, is reported to
have observed during the great left turn of 1929: ‘If we don't give in, Moscow won't hesitate to fix up a left leadership with some kid out of the Lenin School.'
⁴
So far as one can see, in Weimar Germany the Young Communists produced no leaders of any great significance. They were not required to: there were enough left sectarians to choose from.