War and the Second International
Thus the so called 'betrayal' of the mass Social Democratic Party in
Germany at the outbreak of the 1914 - 18 war and the role played by the
trade union bureaucracy, were nothing if not an object lesson in the
relationship of 'politics' to 'economics' in this new period.
The political party, the SPD, voted funds to finance the economic expansion
of German capital on the world market in the form of imperialist warfare,
while the economic activity of the trade unions took the form of signing an
agreement [the Arbeitsgemeinschaft] with the Army so that this Army ran
wartime industrial production in Germany. Under this agreement the
political 'rights' of the mobility of labour and the 'right' to strike
were signed away by the economic organisations of the working class in
favour of the militarisation of labour. The socialist scruples of any
individual members of the political organisation, the 'jewel in the crown'
of the Second International, were overcome by the threat of the trade union
leaders to withdraw financial support from the SPD if it did not
collaborate in the war effort.
The gap revealed in 1914 between the words and deeds of Social Democracy in
Germany, reflected in turn the gap which these events opened up between the
'official' socialist movement, revealed in its political and economic
organisations alike to be the 'left flank' of German capitalist interests,
and the interests of the German working class.
End of the 'Old Movement' - Beginning of the New ?
This split gave rise to two important socialist opposition currents to the
war. One within the official movement itself and the other from within
layers of the working class who no longer accepted the 'official' movement
as the authentic expression of their political interests and aspirations.
These two currents were to converge and briefly join forces in the German
Communist Party [KPD] immediately after the war.
But in origin, development and self-conception they were to prove very
different. One, the Spartakusbund, was a proletarian current trying to
express itself through the outdated means of pre war Social Democratic
politics. As such it was destined either to join the counter-revolution or
to negate and frustrate its own socialist intentions because it never
developed an understanding of the new thinking necessary to realise its
intentions. This tendency fully illustrates the truth of the saying 'if
you're not part of the solution, then you must be part of the problem'.
The other current, with which we are more concerned in this essay and which
chose to call itself 'Left Communist', was to achieve its most effective
organisational expression in the formation of the German Communist Workers
Party, the KAPD, in 1920.
Spartakism
The first of these currents was that which formed within the SPD around the
figures of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring - the
Spartakus group [Spartakusbund].
This group also included among others Paul Levi, Leo Jogisches and Wilhelm
Pieck. In so far as the two currents we have identified here delineated
themselves as on the one hand social democratic and on the other
revolutionary, particularly after the war, the Spartakus group does not so
much belong to the first current as straddle the gap between the two. Its
surviving leadership after the German revolution, rejoined the social
democratic tendency in the VKPD, while many of its working class membership
joined the Left Communists in the KAPD. The likely direction of Luxemburg
and Liebknecht had they lived is speculation, but their closest associates
rejoined the right-wing of the KPD, and in the case of Levi after his
expulsion from the latter, the SPD. So also did some of the KAPD leaders
join the SPD after 1923.
The Spartakus group were the core of the 'revolutionary tendency' within
the SPD, which in the decade before the war, had prepared the ground for
their opposition to the war through ceaseless internal party polemics with
both the right wing faction of Ebert and Scheidemann and the 'proletarian
kernel' centre faction of Bebel and Kautsky. In Rosa Luxemburg they had the
outstanding revolutionary theorist of the pre war international socialist
movement. It was above all in her theoretical writings, born in sharp
conflict with Bernstein's 'evolutionary socialism' inside Social Democracy,
that laid the theoretical basis for the political perspectives not only of
her own tendency during and after the war, but for the entire German
socialist movement from Left Social Democrats to Left Communists.
Contribution of Rosa Luxemburg
Vilified and patronised after her death and the decline of the German
movement, any attempt to recognise and value the enormity of her
contribution to the world communist movement, must at the same time make
necessary and relevant criticisms of her political weaknesses. Luxemburg
above all was responsible for working out the implications FOR CAPITAL of
the new period opened up by the decadence of the capitalist system. Whilst
it is not our purpose here to enter into the debate between Lenin and
Luxemburg within the Second International before the war, it is important
to note why Luxemburg should be re-assessed.
Situated at the heart of the German imperialist machine, she had in her
polemics against the centre and right of the SPD a clear understanding of
the deep seated changes in the economy pushing the advanced capitalist
nations into a global war. She also clearly understood that the
'evolutionary Marxism' of these tendencies would only disarm the German
workers in this event. Lenin, however, up until the outbreak of the war,
still supported the Bebel-Kautsky centre faction of the SPD, and when he
received newspaper reports of their vote in the Reichstag for war credits,
he refused for some days to believe the truth of them.
At this point Lenin radically altered his political position on a number of
questions raised by the war, whilst still remaining under the illusion that
Kautsky was a 'renegade' rather than a conscious spokesman for the left
wing of capitalism throughout the period.
Attitude to the War
Although the Spartakus group early on constituted themselves as a political
pole of socialist opposition to the war, as shown by Liebknecht's vote
against war credits in the Reichstag, in defiance of the SPD Zentrale, they
failed to work out the full implications for their political practice of
their recognition of the new role the SPD was playing in the capitalist
economy. Even though they took up an heroic opposition to the war, they
proved like most of their contemporaries, such as for example John Maclean
in Britain, unable to go beyond their role as RADICAL COCIAL DEMOCRATS. The
clearest expression of this failure in Germany was the fact that the
Spartakus group formed an alliance with the non revolutionary, 'class in
itself', anti war position of the Independent Socialists, the USPD. This
faction was based on the prewar centre faction, so the Spartakus group
actually diluted their own opposition to the war, in effect making them an
opposition within social democracy rather than making a clean break with
the principles and practices of this movement. Such a clean break was
absolutely necessary for any revolutionary activity as the events of the
'November Revolution were quickly to show. [In this regard the split inside
the Italian Socialist Party was much clearer - but the Italian
socialists/communists had at least a year to decide this question while the
Italian ruling class made up its mind whether to come into the war or not.]
November 1918 - A 'Peoples Revolution' ?
In addition to the Spartakists refusal to break with the political form of
Social Democracy, there was also a contradictory refusal to accept the
political content of working within these institutions. For example,
Liebknecht spent the best part of the war in jail for his principled
opposition to it, and then refused the seat offered to him by the SPD and
USPD members of the six man 'Council of People's Commissioners' which had
been set up to ensure Social Democratic control over the November
Revolution of 1918.
It was leading members of this body which had proclaimed the Republic at
the uprising in Berlin. The basis for Liebknecht's refusal, as was the same
for all Spartakist leaders, was loyalty to the principle of 'workers
democracy', as expressed by the now obsolete Social Democratic Party. It
was this same 'workers democracy' which allowed these self appointed
'peoples commissioners' to dictate the course of the 'revolution'. [In many
areas the 'majority' Social Democrats simply assumed leadership of the
Workers Councils 'as of right' and without the formality of a vote]
Liebknecht had not been 'democratically elected' but selected by a group of
political schemers in order to give the Spartakists 'representation'. Quite
obviously this was a way of drawing in the their supporters and keeping
them off the streets. At the same time, the Spartakists programme drawn up
by Luxemburg also expressed this confusion of bourgeois means and
proletarian ends by saying the Spartakists would not form a Government in
Germany unless and until they had the majority support of the working class
behind them. In effect they had a 'democratic substitutionist' position, a
principled bourgeois democratism.
So by refusing to take part in the historically impossible 'completion of
the bourgeois revolution' [of 1848 !] in Germany at the end of the war, the
Spartakists leaders became some of the first victims of the inevitable
counter-revolution against the German working class. The 'completion' of
the bourgeois revolution in the twentieth century always means the
suppression of the proletarian revolution.
The working class is no longer allied with a radical middle class - instead
it stands independently for its own interests and those of humanity as a
whole, while the formerly radical middle class runs for cover and
protection within the state. Thus the 'right of people to self
determination' is now utterly reactionary from a working class point of
view.
The murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Jogisches by a counter
revolutionary political alliance between the Army and the SPD, coupled with
the murder of many hundreds of working class activists in the same period,
should have served as a warning to the Spartakists and their supporters of
the insufficiency of their political conceptions and practice. There is
some reason to believe that at least some of their number drew the lessons
of the events before the final outturn. At the founding conference of the
KPD held in Berlin on 30 December 1918, a few days before her murder,
Luxemburg had faced considerable opposition when speaking for the Spartakus
leadership, in favour of participation in the parliamentary process.
This was at a moment when no parliament of any sort existed in Germany and
when the country was effectively being run by the Workers Councils that had
sprung up everywhere in the weeks following the final defeat of the German
war effort and the overthrow of the Kaiser.
Formation of the KPD
In this debate, at which were present many members of the second working
class political current to which we already referred and who form the main
subject of this essay, the Spartakist leadership was defeated on this
question, by a large majority.
The spokesman opposing the leadership was Otto Ruhle, a leading member of
this second current. In support of his anti parliamentary position during
this debate, Ruhle observed that:
'Participation will be interpreted as approbation of the National Assembly.
We will only help in this way to take the struggle from the streets in
parliament. For us the only task is to reinforce the power of the workers
and soldiers councils.'
[Quoted in 'Spartacus et la Commune de Berlin' - Editions Prudhommeaux p 47]
Ever the exponent of parliamentary 'tactics', the Spartakus leadership
avoided a parallel defeat on the question of whether to work within the
trade unions or to abandon them as organs of proletarian class struggle, by
referring this question to a commission [sound familiar to anyone ?] set up
at the conference, rather than engage in open debate and following vote,
and certain defeat.
Part 3
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