Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 13:07:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Invention of Marxism-Leninism, part 5


THE FIASCO OF THE 1923 "GERMAN OCTOBER"

The other day I was talking with Scott McLemee over the phone about the
fairly unimpressive performance of the Comintern with respect to the
German revolution. He speculated that if Lenin had not made it back to
Russia in 1917, there probably would not have been a Bolshevik revolution.
Which got me to thinking. The best way to understand the October 1923
fiasco in Germany is an attempt at a Bolshevik revolution without the
consummate leadership of Lenin. It is a sad story.

The decision to launch a revolution in Germany in the Fall of 1923 was
made in Moscow, not in Germany. Germany had definitely entered a
pre-revolutionary situation. French occupation of the Ruhr, unemployment,
declining wages, hyperinflation and fascist provocations all added up to
an explosive situation.

The crisis was deepest in the heavily industrialized state of Saxony where
a left-wing Socialist named Erich Zeigner headed the government. He was
friendly with the Communists and made common cause with them. He called
for expropriation of the capitalist class, arming of the workers and a
proletarian dictatorship. This man, like thousands of others in the German
workers movement, had a revolutionary socialist outlook but was regarded
as a "Menshevik" despite this. The united front overtures to Zeigner
mostly consisted of escalating pressure to force him to accommodate to the
maximum Communist program. 

The Bolshevik leaders were monitoring the situation carefully. Lenin at
this point was bed-ridden with a stroke and virtually incommunicado. Any
decisions that were to be made about an "intervention" in Germany would
rest on Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev, Bukharin, Radek and Trotsky who were
the key leaders in Lenin's absence.

At a Politburo meeting on August 23, 1923 Germany's prospects were
discussed. Trotsky was optimistic about victory and predicted that a
showdown would occur in a matter of weeks. Zinvoiev was also optimistic,
but was reluctant to commit to a timetable. Only Stalin voiced skepticism
about an immanent uprising. Later on, he became convinced and wrote an
open letter to the German Communist paper urging them on. A subcommittee
was established to supervise the German revolution. Radek, who had only a
year earlier made a batty proposal for an alliance with the ultraright,
became the head of this group. 

The German revolution became the dominant theme of Russian politics from
that moment on. Workers agreed to a wage freeze in order to help subsidize
the German uprising. Women were asked at public meetings to donate their
wedding rings and other valuables for the German cause. Revolutionary
slogans were coined, like "German Steam Hammer and Soviet Bread will
Conquer the World!"

There was only slight problem. The head of the German Communist Party was
simply not up to the task of leading a revolution and was the first to
admit it. This cautious, phlegmatic functionary was a former trade union
official and bore all the characteristics of this breed. He had been
implicated in the failed ultraleft uprising of 1921 and was not eager to
go out on a limb again.

When Brandler got to Moscow, the Bolshevik leaders cornered him and
pressured him into accepting their call for a revolutionary showdown. What
was key in their calculations was the likelihood that a bold action by the
Communist Party would inevitably galvanize the rest of the working class
into action. Once again, an element of Blanquism had colored the thinking
of the Bolshevik leaders. They assumed that the scenario that had occurred
in Russia in 1917 would also occur in Germany. This was an unwarranted
assumption that was fed by a combination of romanticism and despair.
Romanticism about the prospects of a quick victory and despair over the
USSR's deepening isolation.

It was Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, who was most self-deluded by
the strength of the German Communist Party. He wrote in October 1923, "in
the cities the workers are definitely numerically superior and" and "the
forthcoming German revolution will be a proletarian class revolution. The
22 million German workers who make up its army represent the cornerstone
of the international proletariat." What Zinoviev didn't take into account
was that while the working class may be united socially and economically,
it was not necessarily united politically. This turned out to be a fatal
miscalculation. Brandler was so swept up by the enthusiasm of the
Bolshevik leaders that he joined with them in pumping up the numbers. In
the end he went so far as to claim that the Communists could count on the
active support of 50,000 to 60,000 proletarians in Saxony.

The Bolshevik leaders finally wore Brandler down and he agreed to their
plans, which involved the following:

1) The Communists would join Zeigner's government in Saxony as coalition
partners and arm the workers. The state of Saxony would then provide a
base for a military and political offensive in the rest of Germany.

2) A date would be set for the seizure of power. Trotsky was the main
advocate of setting a date. Over the objections of Brandler, Trotsky
insisted that the date be November 9th. This was meant to coincide closely
with the Bolshevik revolution of November 7th, 1917. Trotsky said, "Let us
take our own October Revolution as an example...From the moment that the
Bolsheviks were in the majority in the Petrograd Soviet...our party was
faced with the question--not of the struggle for power in general, but of
preparing for the seizure of power according to a definite plan, and at a
fixed date. The chosen day, as it is well known, was the day upon which
the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets was to convene..." Trotsky simply
could not perceive that Russian revolutionaries setting a date for
themselves is much different than setting a date for revolutionaries in
another country. This distinction would have been lost on Trotsky who had
gotten in the habit of laying down tactics for other Communist Parties in
his capacity as Comintern official. He had the audacity to tell the French
Communist Party, for example, what should go on the front page of their
newspaper L'Humanite.

The next few weeks witnessed escalating confrontations between the
left-wing government in Saxony and the German capitalist class. The
Communist newspaper "Red Flag" printed daily calls for arming the workers
and preparation for an offensive against the bourgeoisie. A telegram from
Zinoviev arrived on September 31 who confirmed that the date for seizure
of power would come in the first half of November. The problem, however,
is that an enormous gap existed between the feverish proclamations of
their newspaper, Zinoviev's green light and the actual preparations for an
armed offensive. In fact, the problem was that very little attention was
paid to technical and organizational details up to this point. While the
Comintern had stressed the need for an underground apparatus, there was
little evidence that the German party had paid any attention to such
matters. The dichotomy between ultraleft braggadocio and painstaking
preparation proved to be the party's undoing.

Specifically, their military plan required a 3 to 1 numerical superiority
over the army and police. However, the Communists could not rely on such
numbers. There were 250,000 well-trained cops and soldiers while the
Communist Party membership was only about 300,000, including many people
either too young or too old to be effective fighters.

The bigger problem turned out to be political, however. The German
Communist Party had simply overestimated its ability to command the
allegiance of the rest of the working class and its parties. While this
mass party had some claim to be the "vanguard" of the German working class
as compared to the Maoist and Trotskyist sects of today, it still had not
won over the masses completely as the Bolsheviks of 1917 had.

The German central government had reacted to the insurrectionary
developments in Saxony as one would expect. They assembled a fighting
force under the command of General Muller in order to restore order. As
soon as the Communists heard about this white guard's pending attack, they
assembled a conference of left-wing and labor leaders in Chemnitz, Saxony
on October 21 to put together a united defense against the
counter-revolution.

Aside from 66 Communist delegates, there were 140 delegates from factory
councils, 122 representatives of labor unions, 79 delegates from control
commissions, 15 delegates from action committees, 16 from unemployed
committees and 7 from the Socialist Party. Brandler took the floor and
called for a general strike. His call was met by stony silence. What he
had not counted on was the hostility of the rest of the workers movement.
As much as they feared the consequences of General Muller's offensive,
they were not ready to follow the lead of a sectarian Communist Party that
had unilaterally made decisions for the mass movement.

On the day of the conference, the German army marched into Saxony and the
Communist Party was forced to call off its revolution. Or, to be more
accurate, the Communist Party was forced to call off the revolution of
Zinoviev, Radek, Stalin and Trotsky.

The consequences of this defeat were enormous. They had an effect on
internal Russian politics which in turn had an effect on the Comintern.
The net result was to increase to an even greater degree the control over
the Communist Parties of the world and to foist upon them an
ultra-centralized model that was called "Bolshevism" but had little to do
with Lenin's party. This was accomplished at the Fifth Congress of the
Comintern which is the topic of my next post.

Louis Proyect






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