Witness to the German Revolution (9 page)

To make it worse, wages are not always paid at all! In Munich, for the last ten days, there has been a shortage of paper money, and the banks are not issuing more than 500,000 marks (2.5 French francs at pre-war value) per person, per week. Workers get vouchers which will be cashed later—if it's even three days later they will already have lost half their value. There's a similar crisis in Cologne. In Mecklenburg, metalworkers are having to wait for their wages…

There are disturbances at Oberhausen, in the Ruhr: the police opened fire on workers who took to the streets to shout that they were without bread: two killed, eight wounded. Disturbances at Wiesbaden. Disturbances at Munich. Disturbances at Dresden.
Disturbances in the Erzgebirge. The basic question is as follows: for how long can the lead bullets of bourgeois order continue to take the place of bread in a country of 60 million inhabitants, of whom nine-tenths are in a situation of wretchedness?

At last social democracy has noticed that things are not going very well. The big bourgeois parties have dropped Herr Cuno in as far as it's possible for them to drop him; the SPD hesitates, deliberates and…gives him a vote of confidence. On July 30 thirty oppositional SPD deputies met at Weimar; Kurt Rosenfeld, the former member of the USPD,
⁸⁸
and Paul Levi, the former Communist, are airing their views. Opposition to the Cuno government (it's about time…), rejection of a great ministerial coalition from Stinnes to the SPD, in preparation (you don't say!) for collaboration with the Communists…(nothing more, nothing less). It is touching to see Paul Levi wanting collaboration with the Communist Party that he betrayed, abandoned, tried to infiltrate, abused and insulted
⁸⁹
… So this abominable Muscovite party has some good features in his eyes, when the hungry, despairing proletariat is beginning to abandon the likes of Paul Levi and Rosenfeld just as it is abandoning the likes of Stampfer and Wels.
⁹⁰
All these former USPD members are still above all the party of hesitation and empty protest; their present attitude simply shows that they are aware of the growing disaffection of the masses with regard to social democracy. If they
really had any revolutionary dynamism there could only be one consequence: an immediate break with the wretched reformist SPD, the party that is guilty of every betrayal and despicable action, the party which tomorrow will try again, with Stinnes, to save German capitalism. On August 4, according to reports, the SPD fraction in the Reichstag decided by 120 votes to 60 to effectively maintain its previous attitude and prepare a great cabinet coalition, for which citizen Stampfer in
Vorwärts
has taken on the job of enthusiastic advocate… The social democrats in Hesse have already come out clearly for ministerial collaboration. In Germany the reformist SPD is the last, most tenacious, and most influential of defenders of bourgeois society in total bankruptcy…

The Great Coalition: Stinnes-Stresemann-Noske-Hilferding
Correspondance internationale
, August 18, 1923

On Thursday August 9, Chancellor Cuno, the man of bankruptcy and famine, the man whom the whole of the press and public opinion believed to be on the way out, appeared before the Reichstag, asked for a vote of confidence and got it: the SPD observed benevolent neutrality towards him. Throughout this memorable session he looked just like a man who was finished, overwhelmed by his responsibilities. He began his speech with the words: “In a few days…”—he was interrupted by a shout of, “In a few days the dollar will be worth ten million!” Faced with jeers from the Communists, he put his head down and mumbled that “the government will be ruthless in quelling disturbances.” The majority gave him his vote of confidence and the next day the
Berliner Tageblatt
announced that “from now on there can be no question of a cabinet crisis.” Stinnes' paper, the
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung,
published an editorial praising him for speaking
“so clearly, so strongly, so determinedly.” Herr Cuno was still there. It was Friday… And on Saturday Herr Cuno went.

All the bourgeois parties had told this bankrupt—the SPD nodding its approval—“You can stay in power!” The working class shouted: “Get out!” And he got out.

He acted wisely. For two days the courtyards of the Reichstag were besieged by innumerable delegations from the factories which had come to demand Herr Cuno's resignation. On Friday, August 10, there was virtually a general strike throughout Germany. The big factories in Berlin began passive resistance, systematic go-slow and then more vigorous action. Berlin metalworkers stopped work. Printers too—in particular those working for the Reichsbank; a tube strike had just been ineffectively stifled. In Hamburg, work stopped in the docks. At Lübeck in Saxony, at Emden, at Brandenburg, at Gera, at Lausitz, at Hanover, at Lea, huge mass movements stopped production, brought massive crowds onto the streets, sometimes turned into rioting, and confronted shopkeepers and capitalists with the immediate threat of a revolution.

Thereupon the SPD convened its parliamentary fraction to revise its decisions of two days earlier. Three bourgeois parties, the Catholic Center, the German Democratic Party and the German People's Party, immediately endorsed the SPD program for a coalition (vigorous financial measures, revision of taxation policy on the basis of stimulating real values,
⁹¹
struggle against inflation, orientation towards the re-establishment of the gold mark, wages based on stable values, purging of illegal organizations from the Reichswehr, a solution to the problem of reparations compatible with the unity and sovereignty of the German people, membership of the
League of Nations). The Stresemann cabinet was formed. The leader is an ambitious old businessman, with a reputation for energy, former leader of the National Liberal Party and now leader of the German People's Party, at the service of Herr Stinnes. His Great Coalition means an alliance between the plutocracy and the social democracy, from Stinnes to Noske, to overcome bankruptcy and fight against revolution.

Stinnes's man, the former business agent of the association of Saxon industrialists, the “progressive” former monarchist, has united, in order to govern this Germany of starving and exhausted workers, with the eminent “Marxist” of the Austrian school, Hilferding, formerly of the USPD, author of
Finance Capital,
former editor of
Freiheit
,
⁹²
the greatest theoretician, after Kautsky, of reformist socialism—and one of the benevolent gravediggers of the Socialization Commission
⁹³
in 1918. As minister of the interior, he has kept the social democrat Oeser, and at the ministry of justice he has reinstalled the social democrat Radbruch, notorious for outrageous extraditions. While this brilliant coalition was being established in power—uniting all the parties of a ruthlessly selfish bourgeoisie, which has just driven the nation to the brink of the abyss, with a social democracy which crawls on its belly to it—workers' blood was flowing almost everywhere in Germany… For there have been 50 deaths, 50 murders of workers in three days…

The Great Coalition has a fine mess to deal with. In less than a week, the economic crisis has worsened in unbelievable proportions.
On August 7 the dollar was quoted at New York as worth 2,127,600 marks; on August 9 it was worth 6,500,000 marks. The same day a bushel of corn cost 2.08 dollars at New York and 2.45 dollars at Berlin. Corn was noticeably more expensive at Berlin than in the land of the dollar. Prices rose prodigiously. From August 7 to August 8, they doubled or tripled (a single egg went from 15,000 marks to 30,000; a pound of potatoes from 15,000 to 30,000; a pound of flour from 70,000 to 150,000; rice from 50,000 to 200,000; coffee from 600,000 to 1,800,000). In three days the price of bread tripled, going from 82,000 to 160,000 marks, then to 240,000. From August 7 to 8 the price of clothing and shoes leaped even higher still. The cheapest men's shoes went from 3,500,000 to 9,500,000. A tram ticket cost 20,000 and a newspaper 30,000. Now the
Frankfurter Zeitung'
s wholesale trade index for July already showed an increase of 617 percent. For these startling figures to have any precise meaning, they must once more be compared to wages. At the beginning of August, wholesale prices were 286,248 times what they had been before the war; wages were 87,000 times pre-war wages. So workers of 1923 have lost two thirds of their 1914 wages. In general German workers' wages vary between five and 25 (pre-war) centimes
⁹⁴
for an hour's labor. As for those with retirement or invalidity pensions, we know some who in July got a monthly payment of 10,800 marks (one tram journey). In the face of this prodigious daily price rise, retailers—themselves grabbed by the throat by the wholesalers—limited or stopped sales, afraid of not being able to replenish their stocks. The working woman had her money refused by the cautious grocer. A shortage of milk, butter, eggs, potatoes, vegetables. On Thursday, August 9, retailers
went on strike and the big stores shut in solidarity, demanding from the government that they should be allowed to fix prices in gold marks—for a working population paid in paper marks! To make things worse, the Reichsbank shut its doors, overwhelmed by the demand for paper money. For eight days there had been a shortage of notes. They had been ceaselessly printing notes of five, ten and 20 million marks—now they are even using private printshops to print
assignats
⁹⁵
for 50 and a 100 million. The city of Berlin is putting old notes in circulation overprinted so as to increase the value by a thousand times. The banks were issuing checks for five million marks, sometimes typewritten ones which few people accepted.

The report by the minister of finance, Hermes, to the Reichstag, brought some staggering revelations. The Reich's public debt, which on January 1 stood at 1,629 billion on August 4 reached 210 million gold marks. In the first ten days in August the state debt rose by 40 percent while its income, at the end of July, scarcely covered 4 percent of expenditure. In the last few days, they didn't cover more than 2 percent. In other words, the German state no longer had any income.

How well a capitalist state functions! Manufacturers and traders calculate in dollars, and only do business in dollars and other stable foreign currencies. The mark, as we have said before, is only the counterfeit money which the boss slips into the workers' hands every Saturday—and which the boss, the financier and the speculator also hand over to the taxman, when they agree to pay their taxes after six months or two years delay. The Reichsbank has given credit in gold to commerce and industry which has been repaid in paper money that had declined in value. In a year, it has thus given the capitalists nearly 50 million gold marks—and this
impoverishment of the state is one of the main causes of the death agony of the mark. When the head of the Reichsbank, Herr Haverstein, was asked what proof of the extent of need was provided by those asking for foreign currency, the worthy financier answered coldly: “A businessman's word.”

The state coffers no longer contain a single coin of any value. The gold reserve has been given to the bandits of high finance. No more food in the towns, no more wages, not even any more paper money available to give the appearance of wages.—The social democracy has in fact betrayed, lulled and enfeebled a part of the working-class population. French militarism has crushed it in the Ruhr, and is now willing to unite with Stinnes and Noske against a working class rising. But all the same, things cannot go on in this way. Under the pressure of an irresistible strike movement and of food riots, the Cuno government, before collapsing, made the Reichstag vote for a series of laws which finally obliged commerce, industry and the banks to pay something: a 400 percent increase on company tax, a new tax on large incomes, varying between 200 percent and 1,600 percent of the old rate; a requirement for industrialists to pay double the deductions from workers' wages (taxes on wages); a tax in gold on agriculture (1.5 marks per month for a property worth 2,000 pre-war marks). The terrified bourgeoisie had understood the necessity to make sacrifices.

As I write, the general strike, called throughout Germany by the factory committees, seems to be spreading, despite the formation of a new government and the repeated calls from the leaders of the ADGB for a return to work. The factory committees have, in the present situation, a role which is in some ways reminiscent of that of the soviets at the beginning of the February Revolution in Russia
in 1917. They bring together the most vigorous elements from all the workers' parties, and they constitute a genuine proletarian power in the face of the government. Now the whole of Berlin stops when confronted with their little red posters; there is excitement and discussion, but nobody dares deface them. The spontaneous strike movement of the last few days, marked by strikes of metalworkers in Berlin, of miners in Saxony and dockers in Hamburg, has been channeled, led and united by the factory committees. Everywhere the movement has been formally condemned and sabotaged by the reformist union leaders. Everywhere the social democracy and the police lined up together against it. On Saturday in Hamburg, there were several killed. At Wilhelmsburg on Monday, six died. At Hanover, Noske, the social democratic chief official, gave the order to fire on the crowd: 20 deaths. At Greiz, 15. At Aachen, 10. At Zeitz (near Halle), 20. At Jena, the fascists and the municipal police went into action together, and there were some 30 killed and wounded. At Wroclaw, there are reports of one killed and 30 wounded. At Kulmbach one was killed, at Krefeld four, at Ratibor four, at Strassfurt one. But it is impossible to list all these events which keep on happening, in ever greater numbers, hour after hour. Everywhere there are reports of attempts to ransack shops, of the looting of stocks of potatoes from markets by housewives, of large demonstrations by strikers, of vicious attacks by police, of dead—workers—and wounded. At Halle and Leipzig, strikers have confiscated the cattle belonging to landowners in the surrounding area, killed some and distributed the meat.