Witness to the German Revolution (28 page)

We have often written before: the German nation, considered as a unit of labor and culture, has no more dangerous enemy than its own “national” big bourgeoisie. Now the coming end of the drama of the Ruhr is giving us a truly tragic confirmation of this fact. For long months, suffering the rule of the German occupation made worse by continual military sanctions, dying of hunger, the Ruhr proletariat has resisted French imperialism; meanwhile the funds intended by the Reich to support passive resistance were swallowed up by arms for the black Reichswehr and by the strongboxes of the big industrialists of the occupied region. Those who profited from the passive resistance are now negotiating with the French victors. In the debate going on at present between French and German capitalists, the labor, hunger, revolt and blood of the miners and iron and steel workers of the Ruhr are the object of the most Machiavellian schemes. The Ruhr industrialists have already stated that they cannot guarantee, under the
conditions imposed on them by their powerful rivals, the payment of wages: they are shutting the factories and the mines. As of December 1, if not earlier, there will be a complete lock-out throughout the Ruhr.

The new minister of the interior in Stresemann's government, Dr. Jarres, former lord mayor of Duisburg, a man of the right and a known supporter of Rhineland separatism, has begun his ministerial activity by cutting off food supplies to millions of unemployed, locked out by their employers, in the Rhineland and the Ruhr. Two million workers, who have borne the full burden of the passive resistance, now have no other means of subsistence.

No means of subsistence!

What do the tycoons of mines and ironworks, of whom Stresemann and Jarres are only the agents, want to achieve? The crime they are committing against all “their people” by condemning the workers of the Ruhr to hunger and unsuccessful food riots could have only the following aims:

General von Seeckt, “in possession of full military powers through the territory of the Reich” is issuing Tsarist-style edicts everywhere… On November 12, he had posters put up formally forbidding all the printers in the Reichsbank to stop work. The decree instructed strikers to return to work without delay, threatening that if they did not they would suffer all the rigors of martial law. The edict didn't impress anyone. A few weeks ago General von Horn banned strikes in Berlin. Nonetheless, not a single bourgeois daily appeared, apart from one miserable nationalist rag set by nonunion labor. Having observed that his threats were useless, dictator von Seeckt has just decided to break the strike by repressive measures. On November 15 there were numerous arrests of trade union officials, mainly social democrats, from the striking organizations. Let us mention those of the president of the union of Berlin printing workers, Robert Brauns, of the president of the printers' assistants, Gloth, and of the delegate from the bookbinders, Gäbel. Six other well-known trade union officials are victims of the military authority's
lettres de cachet.
¹⁷⁶
Various members of factory committees and less well-known militant strikers have just been imprisoned. Since all these arrests were carried out by virtue of the military dictatorship, they had no need of any legal justification; the victims have no right to any legal defense…

We think that these means, imitated from Tsarist Russia, will not succeed in breaking a strike originally caused by hunger. Admittedly they are planning to use other measures against it which are outrageous even in the Germany of the generals. Unemployed printers from the Brandenburg province and from Berlin—there are several thousand of them—will be required to replace the strikers on pain of having their unemployment pay withdrawn. Required to become scabs or to lose their last piece of bread! The
Oberpräsident
of Brandenburg has signed this decree. The leaders of disintegrating bourgeois Germany think they can do anything they like. Which should cause us greater surprise: their lack of psychology or their class cynicism?

(In the last few moments I have heard that the strike has been broken: “Faced with the threats of the military authorities, taking account of the negotiations in progress and the promise to release the arrested militants,” the officials of the print unions have decided to resume work.

It's a defeat. Worse: it's a capitulation.

When the KPD proposed a general strike, the social democrats replied that the Berlin working class “was too hungry to fight” but that they were going to prepare a workers' offensive throughout the Reich territory. But throughout the Reich territory, are workers not likewise “too hungry to fight?”)

Arrests of striking printers… Arrests of striking millers (Berlin, November 15)… Arrests of Communists (on any pretext)… Arrests of journalists… There is talk of nothing but arrests. (In Berlin—not in Munich!) According to the most recent news several dozen Communist militants were arrested yesterday and the
day before (November 13-14) at Cottbus, and in Berlin and its surrounding area, on the traditional charge of “plotting against the security of the state.” The journalist Walter Oehme, who has made revelations about the reactionary forces, has been put behind bars thanks to General von Horn. A Jewish social democratic journalist, correspondent of a New York publication, has been arrested for having sent his paper too graphic an account of the recent pogroms.
¹⁷⁷
Journalists with credentials from major foreign newspapers are prudently taking care not to sleep at home… The prisons are crammed. Arrests at Chemnitz, at Leipzig, at Dresden. At Hamburg, a trial of four-hundred workers is being prepared…

But Ludendorff is at liberty—didn't he give his word of honor to…carry on?—and is making speeches over the graves of the victims of his failed coup on November 7. Ehrhardt, the escaped prisoner from Leipzig, for whose capture there are still posters in the stations promising “a substantial reward,” is showing himself at parades in Munich and demanding that he be amnestied. Rossbach, freed by the Leipzig High Court, is reorganizing Hitler's gangs. In short, nobody has been troubled after the abortion of the grotesque plot in Munich. But, the day after the ransacking of the editorial offices of the SPD paper in Munich, Herr von Kahr finally closed down all the socialist press in Bavaria. To regain some influence with the National Socialists, who were very angry at his aboutturn, he has announced that the KPD is dissolved…

A final detail of this overall picture: Crown Prince Wilhelm has returned to his estate in Silesia. On this point, it is not generally known that he was given permission to return by the Stresemann cabinet at a time when it still included the social democrats. Perhaps
our great Socialist politicians wanted to stir up discord between the monarchist clans of Wittelsbach and Hohenzollern
¹⁷⁸
by facilitating the Crown Prince's return. They have achieved this result, but at the price of a new outbreak of reactionary intrigues.

Uncurbed repression against the left. Arbitrary actions by the generals. Non-stop reactionary and monarchist plots. The instigators of reactionary civil war go unpunished. Outrages by the nationalist gangs. Arms for the nationalists. Open preparation of a coup on a massive scale. That is the balance sheet of the present period. The United Social Democratic Party has finally begun to seek remedies to all these ills, remedies that are worthy of the Second International. To seek? What am I saying? It has found them. Listen carefully. Don't dare laugh. The SPD is demanding a meeting of the Reichstag. It… ah! But this time it will be serious! It is preparing to ask parliamentary questions! It is going to ask seven questions, perhaps even eight, of Herr Stresemann! Even if it means provoking a new cabinet crisis, it will no longer give him a vote of confidence! You must believe me!

Vorwärts
sets all this out with imperturbable gravity, foresees a dissolution of the Reichstag and prepares its readers for intense struggle…through the ballot box. For, you see, if the Reichstag is dissolved according to the terms of the constitution, elections must take place within a period of sixty days. The fact that gentlemen like Stinnes, von Kahr, Stresemann, von Seeckt and Ludendorff don't give a damn for the constitution doesn't seem to have occurred to the editorial staff of
Vorwärts
as yet.
Vorwärts
is a comic paper.

Correspondance internationale
, November 20, 1923

The fate of the eight-hour day is being decided at this very moment. The “demobilization decrees” of 1918, which provisionally established the eight-hour day, expired on November 17. They have remained in force for five years, without the SPD—which for the first two years was a leading party in the German Republic—ever thinking of bringing in a law to guarantee the gain of the eight-hour day, despite its temporary character. The eight-hour day has now been legally canceled, a few days ago. Herr Stresemann never concealed his intention not to extend the demobilization decrees. Doubtless the reformist unions asked for them to be extended; but the bourgeoisie would be very stupid and very softhearted to yield to the timid, hesitant and formal demands of the unions. In Berlin and various other cities the authorities have clearly stated that there can now be no question of maintaining the eight-hour day. On this subject, the opinion of the German bourgeoisie is unanimous. In the Ruhr in particular, the lock-out in the mines and the iron and steel industry had the object of imposing the ten-hour day on workers. “The Ruhr employers state that they are not in a position to continue production if expenses are not considerably reduced. The only way to reduce them, they believe, is by extending the working day and dismissing about one third of the labor force…” I take this precise accusation from
Vorwärts
which thus explains the complete cessation of work in the Ruhr mines that has been announced for November 30.