Witness to the German Revolution (22 page)

Strikes in the port of Bremen (October 23), where the workers' hundreds are occupying various public buildings. Food riots at Szczecin. The landowners in the area around this town are refusing paper money, and demanding that their potatoes be paid for in gold-based currency. Riot at Erfurt. The police open fire—one dead. Attempts at looting at Brunswick and Munich. Munich also is without bread (the same day).

On the single day of October 24: disturbances at Brunswick, Frankfurt-am-Main, Cologne, Kiel, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Oppeln, while bloody battles continue in the streets of Hamburg.

The Ruhr industrialists (Stinnes, Klöckner, Vögler) in their negotiations with the Franco-Belgian engineers' commission are refusing to pay the arrears of the tax on coal. “It's beyond their means.” They cannot even guarantee the payment of wages! There is a conflict: since the Franco-Belgian commission will not yield, work cannot resume in the mines and factories. German industrialists and French engineers are accusing each other “of full responsibility for possible complications…” Sickening hypocrisy. This clash of interests between German and Allied capitalists is causing unemployment for half a million workers whose hunger, despair, anger and blood ready to flow have become arguments for bargaining across the table of a boardroom…

The value of the dollar doubles almost every day; all prices likewise. What is left for a worker, three days later, of the wages he collected on Saturday? His paper billions have automatically undergone three consecutive reductions by half. I know workers who, on October 19, got five billion for their week's wages. Four days later it would no longer buy a loaf. All the groups who stay arguing in the streets until midnight come to the same conclusion: “It's time to put an end to it!”

The ADGB, the cumbersome machine of the reformist unions, has begun to move. It has demanded of the Great Coalition government—which the SPD entered months ago on condition that wages be stabilized—that wages be paid immediately in paper with a real value. Herr Stresemann “satisfied their demand” straightaway. An official statement to the press has announced that as of this week small denomination notes from the gold loan will be put in circulation. Eight million a day will be printed… moreover, the Rentenmark
¹⁶⁰
will be launched… What a lot of new paper in prospect. “Let us expect,” shrewdly writes the
Berliner Börsenzeitung
(the paper of the Berlin Stock Exchange), “a new inflation…” But where will its true value be?

This is so true that even before its use as current money has been generalized, the gold loan haZs already fallen in value. This false German dollar was quoted in Berlin, on the evening of October 24, at sixty-three billion while the dollar—pure and simple!—was worth ninety-five billion! The gold loan has already lost nearly 30 percent of its face value.

The gold loan has not produced results. Its failure is quite clear. Can you create real value by marking on a bit of colored paper that this is “the real one, the true one,” that it is worth gold?

The bonds issued by the big firms will enable them to engage in profitable financial schemes; but their value will correspond to traders' prices, which in turn are determined by the general level of inflation…

There remains the Rentenmark, resulting from the combined plans of Herr Hilferding, a social democrat, and the monarchist landowner Helfferich. The Rentenmark has been issued by a new bank to be managed by a board of directors comprising representatives of finance, commerce, industry, agriculture, in short of the oligarchy which is battening on Germany and exploiting it. The value of the Rentenmark is guaranteed by a 4 percent mortgage on the goods of the said oligarchy; a mortgage, that is a convention, a piece of paper; the goods remain in their possession. As from April 1, 1924, property owners commit themselves to pay to the state 6 percent on the part of their goods that is not mortgaged; and this 6 percent must be reimbursed to them out of the bank's profits. Quite a complex scheme from which it emerges that the oligarchy of property owners:

There is no example of currency being issued in this way since the memorable and sad experience of the territorial warrants of the Directory.
¹⁶¹

The creation of real values depends on two conditions—real backing, really at the disposal of the state; and the confidence of the community. The Reich's treasury is empty. The wealthy classes
do not give and do not want to give to the state. They have no confidence in it and they are afraid of the proletariat which may, soon, find itself the master of the state. The middle and lower classes no longer have any confidence in the word of the rich… No resources, no reserves, and no confidence. The government of capitalist Germany cannot relieve bankruptcy except by schemes which all more or less come down to reckless speculation on public credulity.

The legal exchange rate has been re-established; in Berlin there is a ban on publishing rates of exchange from foreign stock exchanges…

Correspondance internationale
, November 2, 1923

For a second time since the August general strike, the SPD has just saved the stakes of the German bourgeoisie. At the beginning of last week, a major proletarian offensive was possible, seemed on the point of being launched, indeed, I'm prepared to say it was inevitable. General von Lossow and Bavaria had gone into open rebellion against the Reich. A whole current of radical opinion was emerging in favor of a bloc of republican parties around red Saxony: the journalists Georg Bernhardt and von Gerlach supported this position. The Rhineland separatists acted; their initiative brought out the full extent of the danger to German unity posed by
reactionary intrigues. Meanwhile the Reichswehr moved into red Saxony. There, anger and indignation were expressed energetically at the workers' conference in Chemnitz.
¹⁶²
The left social democrats, in Berlin and Dresden, had committed themselves to refusing to accept any armed attack on Saxony. Food riots were stirring up crowds of unemployed outside every town hall in Germany.

At this point, a general strike, coming up head-on against the bans of the military dictatorship, would have drawn in all the working masses and won the sympathy of all republican elements. It could have had clear slogans, fitting the aspirations of the majority of workers and of the middle classes:

“Bread!” “An end to martial law!” “Peace for workers' republican Saxony!” “Unity of the Reich!” “Disarm the Bavarian reactionaries!” “Workers' government!”

This mass movement did not take place.

The KPD was ready. A large and vigorous minority of hungry workers were ready to fight if necessary. Rather than attacking bakeries, the unemployed of Germany would have very happily fought for a workers' government. Democratic opinion, that of the middle classes, would have understood workers' action at that moment. What element of inertia prevented it?

Two things. The determination of the social democrats in the government to persevere with their treachery at all costs. And the indecisiveness of the left social democrats.

The former, to tell the truth, is a counter-revolutionary factor. As for the latter, many of us do not as yet know the full extent of it. The left social democrats are only reluctant revolutionaries; they still all too often treat the likes of Ebert, Wels, Robert
Schmidt and Sollmann, not as deserters who are infinitely dangerous to the working class, but simply as party comrades who happen to belong to a different tendency. But it's not a question of tendencies! In disintegration, social democracy has preserved, within the framework of its formal unity, two hostile parties condemned to fight to the death every day. This party once again includes, side by side, Spartacists and Noske's soldiers. But to become conscious of themselves, to become genuine revolutionaries, the former still have to shake off the influence of the traditions of the old social democracy, the fetishism of unity, some remaining republican illusions. As for the latter, they have long been genuine counter-revolutionaries.

The lost opportunity may recur, perhaps even very soon. But we should observe that the failure of the left social democrats, in the third week of October, has done the German bourgeoisie a service that is more or less equivalent to that rendered by the official SPD in August, when it joined the Great Coalition.

In the last week, the positions of the German capitalists in the social war have in fact been significantly strengthened. Fifty thousand men of the Reichswehr have entered red Saxony. Though it is bluff and fraud at the beginning of a new financial tactic, the appearance of “real value” paper money will give some relief to the middle classes and to small traders. The conflict with Bavaria has become chronic and is returning to normal. The negotiations with the Reparations Commission finally seem about to begin… The time now seems right for a bourgeois offensive: we have just learned that it has taken place against red Saxony.

Never yet have the power of class consciousness and the effective value of the revolutionary spirit been so clearly visible in Germany as today, where the rule of the bourgeoisie endures only thanks to the treachery of the leaders of the social democracy and thanks to the failure of the advanced masses in their party.

The underhand comedy between Munich and Berlin is still going on. Von Kahr seemed to be reverting to a more favorable attitude towards Herr Stresemann; the Reichsrat, arbitrating the difference, gave its approval to Stresemann; von Kahr thanked Stresemann for his loyalty during the Palatinate incident; then suddenly, on October 25, von Kahr declared that he no longer wished to discuss with a Berlin government “under Marxist influence.” He called on Stresemann to resign. Berlin replied with a sharp note, holding over the head of the Munich dictator the “censure of the German people.” And…

And Berlin sent an ultimatum to the workers' government in Dresden (October 28). Berlin demanded the withdrawal of the Communist ministers whose attitude was “anti-constitutional.” The ultimatum expired the next day, Sunday, at noon. If Herr Zeigner resisted, “serious measures will be taken.”

While this ultimatum was being drawn up in Berlin, the Reichswehr was shooting on a threatening but unarmed crowd at Freiberg (Saxony), killing twelve workers and wounding a hundred! The third murder of workers in red Germany in less than five days. With reference to the previous incident (October 24, Pirna, one dead!) the commander of the Reichswehr has had notices posted proclaiming that “the troops will not discuss nor hesitate to make their orders respected; they are not the police, they must act in all circumstances, they will act, with pitiless rigor…” As in wartime; as in enemy territory.