Witness to the German Revolution (31 page)

True executive power is concentrated in the hands of the social democrat Ebert and General von Seeckt, but there is no question of them having equal amounts of power. For, in the opinion of social democratic minister Severing himself, it is the attitude of the cautious general—who is doubtless no republican, but who rejects adventurism—which is decisive.

The likes of Ebert and von Seeckt, like Marx, merely carry out orders. Behind them act, or dictate their will, the men of money, of trade and industry, for whom Germany, looted, ravaged, starved and battered by their own hands, is nothing but a sick hunted animal that must be kept out of the hands of the revolution—and cured: for a slave who is too sick cannot work.

These true masters of the hour have got rid of the costly weapon of fascism, since social democratic treachery enabled them
to fulfill their task without civil war. Their politics has two faces: high treason and repression.

High treason, the capitulation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr—which consumed the last resources of the Reich—in the face of French imperialism. High treason, the “legal” separation of the Rhineland destined to form immediately an autonomous state “within the framework of the Reich” (they're not asking much!) High treason, the alliance of heavy industry with French imperialism against the workers of Rhineland-Westphalia. High treason, all the shady plots whose threads stretch between Berlin, Cologne, London, New York and Paris, constantly tightening the links of the international capitalist plot against world peace and the elementary rights of labor!

Repression, the closure of mines and factories in order to starve workers into submission. Repression, the closing down of the Communist press and the dissolution of the KPD. Repression, the outrages of the soldiery in Saxony and Thuringia, the thousands of arrests, the murders of poor people by the troops. Repression, the scandalous measures taken by the military authorities against strikers. Repression, the brutal campaign against the eight-hour day, backed up by shootings and sackings.

In the face of this cruel German reality we are left disconcerted. How was it possible? They have dissolved a revolutionary party of at least 400,000 members, followed by two million vigorous proletarians! They have closed down a working-class press that had nearly 40 daily papers! They have rescinded the eight-hour day, which was the result of a revolution, the collapse of an empire and four insurrections! Starved, trampled under foot, this proletariat, the best organized, the most educated in the world, which has fourteen million trade unionists!

We must begin by saying that all is not over. The revolutionary struggle in Germany may be only just beginning. Stinnes and his
menials Ebert and von Seeckt are well aware of it. If you want proof, just ask them to put a—genuine—end to martial law!

But this enigma of a proletarian giant laid low by gnomes whose spines he could break with the back of his hand does have an explanation:

The “formidable powerlessness of German social democracy.” The phrase is an old one; it comes from Jaurès, and I got it from a friend of Jaurès. Formidable powerlessness, there is no better way of putting it. This great party has been deadened and bureaucratized, piling up cowardice on top of disloyalty, and disloyalty on treachery so that it may be kindly allowed to keep up an appearance as a loyally passive opposition under an ultra-reactionary regime. This great emasculated party is now almost the sole obstacle to the German revolution, the only bulwark of a bourgeoisie which for years, in order to stupidly enrich itself to the detriment of the nation, has been pursuing a suicidal policy…

…This great powerless Socialist party is so contemptible that even the bourgeoisie that it is rescuing doesn't show it the least gratitude!

German capitalism has survived the fearsome November deadline. Granted. But is it saved? It would be naïve to think so.

In its calamitous present situation, nothing is more serious within the country than the problem of unemployment. In many German cities the unemployed have taken on the role of revolutionaries or of insurgents. If the number keeps on growing, while all the other causes contributing to the disintegration of bourgeois society in Germany continue to act in parallel, then will not German capitalism soon find itself in even more critical situations than those it has just extricated itself from in a rather botched fashion?

Take Berlin. We have precise figures concerning unemployment in Berlin, from October 15 to November 17. Here they are:

No. of unemployed Unemployed receiving assistance

Note that Berlin is not in a more critical situation than the majority of industrial centers in non-occupied Germany. What is striking in these (official) statistics is the regular growth of unemployment, from week to week. Must it go on?

The financial problem is not resolved. Germany enjoys no credit abroad and has no currency quoted on foreign exchanges. The cost of living—and hence of production, despite low wages—is higher than anywhere else. Its international political situation is that of a country with which its enemies can't even do a deal because the government is so blatantly powerless. So there is no plausible reason for thinking that unemployment is likely to fall during the coming weeks. On the contrary, everything combines to lead us to predict its indefinite extension from the present point. Now today, in Berlin alone, 66,000 unemployed are receiving no assistance. How do they survive? The combined efforts of International Workers Aid, Austrian Aid, the Salvation Army and various charitable organizations don't reach such a large number of the poor. Workers who have been derisorily paid and undernourished for years have been unemployed in Berlin for months. On the days of demonstrations called by the dissolved KPD they appear, with their threadbare grey military tunics—and no underwear beneath, on these cold December days—haggard, with eyes deep in their
sockets and jerky movements. They appear and the green police chase them with coshes through the crowds of well-dressed passers-by on the main thoroughfares. Is that a solution? How many million unemployed will there be in Germany before the end of the winter? When they demand bread, when the red flags of the banned Communist party show them the way, what will Ebert, von Seeckt and their master Stinnes be able to do? For after all, if it is sometimes possible to replace bread with lead, this time far too much would be needed!

I should like to set before the eyes of the reader a recent issue of
Simplicissimus,
one of the old humorous journals of Berlin. In these few pages normally filled with puns, rather innocent political satires and smutty jokes, there is now expressed a deep bitterness and a profound despair.—The humor of a people reveals a lot about its mentality, and, above all since the war, humorous publications, exploiting a very understandable need to forget, expressing the irony, spite, incredulity and sarcasm of the crowds, have sometimes been an easy way to get rich.—But today German humor is no more than an embittered grin.

In this one issue of
Simplicissimus
I was struck by five tragic cartoons:

Two pictures. The mother at home without bread, surrounded by anxious children: “Relax, kids, Dad's coming home with some spuds!” But Dad will never come home: he is writhing on the cold
ground, in a potato field, with a bullet in his body. It's true: some such “thieves” have been killed…

On another page: coming back from market two fat peasants are commenting on the decision of the doctor who has become a vet. “He says a pig is worth more than man!” Good God! Much more. The skin of an unemployed person is worth nothing. But pigskin is expensive. Very expensive.

Two final cartoons: one is mocking the bureaucracy of the sickness insurance fund (where the doctors, who have been on strike once, are threatening to do it again); the other shows the spectre of civil war looming over the starving town.

…It's important to be acquainted with this underlying bitterness and despair which in Germany poisons even the mercenary laughter of “comic” papers, in order to understand that social peace has not been established in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, despite the exploits of the Reichswehr of the socialist Ebert…

The transfer of the editorial offices of
Correspondance internationale
to Vienna makes it impossible for me to continue the publication of these Reports from Germany, which have appeared regularly for the last three months, and in which I have tried to follow current events in Germany as closely as possible. This column will therefore cease to appear.
Correspondance internationale
will continue to provide extensive and reliable documentation on events in Germany from other sources. RA.

By way of conclusion to this collection, there are three articles written by Serge
for the French journal
Clarté
, which was close to, but not formally controlled
by, the French Communist Party, and to which he contributed regularly. These
are more analytic than the news reports for Correspondance internationale,
and also offer a broader picture of life in Germany. In the following article
Serge examines the question of nationalism, which posed major problems for
the KPD in 1923. Germany, as defeated power in World War I, was the
victim of rival imperialisms. Yet, as Serge shows, the real enemy of the German
proletariat was its own bourgeoisie.

Berlin, October 1923
Clarté,
November 1923

The present crisis in Germany, it seems to us, has finally made clear, to any careful observer who is not dominated by outdated terminology and the interests of a servile bourgeois existence, the inexorable decline of the capitalist order. It is the final proof, perhaps more convincing than the first: for between the two, there could be room for a return to reason (if reason had anything at all in common with the underlying laws which govern the capitalist order).

In 1914, European civilization had reached the peak of its prosperity. A century of remarkable scientific, technological and industrial development was ending with Europe's conquest of the globe. The planet was explored in all directions, carved up and colonized; for the great industrial nations it was no more than a magnificent estate inhabited by hundreds of millions of slaves with black, brown, copper-colored, sallow and yellow skins… A whole intellectual aristocracy could nourish the soothing dream of
a prudent evolution towards socialism on the part of the great democracies—towards a pink socialism summed up in the fully and harmoniously balanced clauses of the orators. The average inhabitants of the big cities, even if poor, enjoyed a degree of comfort that was more real than that of the average French lord at the end of the reign of Louis XIV.
¹⁹¹
This peak of civilization came to an end on August 2, 1914. A whole age of human history died along with the first soldiers slaughtered on the frontiers of France and Germany.

The causes of the cataclysm were the same as those of the prosperity of the old European world. Capitalist production—anarchic at first, even in its details, subsequently monopolized by oligarchies of financiers—created powerful rival coalitions which confronted each other; they were armed by science and technology; the division of the world, once completed, obliged them to fight for a new carve-up… The law of exploitation which is the essence of capitalist “order” ended up with war for colonial markets, in other words for the exploitation of the defeated peoples…

The war cost Europe (according to statistics accepted by German experts) and the world 10,200,000 soldiers killed; an increase in civilian deaths of 6,000,000; a reduction in births estimated at 20,850,000. In total,
37 million human lives
… More—for blood and money are added together under capitalism—760 billion gold marks… 16,600,000 tons of ships, naval or commercial, were sunk, 8,850 airplanes brought down. Amid this entire massacred population how many people of genius, how many talents, how many intelligent producers were there, who could have led humanity to new conquests which have now become unthinkable? The huge amount of wealth squandered in gunpowder and smoke, crushed
brains and crippled flesh, could have served as the basis for a new society and a new culture. This effective suicide of a universe proves to what extent the system of which it was the logical conclusion has pronounced its own death sentence…