Witness to the German Revolution (29 page)

In a country where there are, at the lowest estimate, a million and a half unemployed, where several million workers are already working short time, where it is impossible for the state to give assistance to the unemployed, where the unemployed are condemned to the most wretched poverty and death by starvation, the heads of industry see no salvation—for their profits and for the social order they represent—except in increasing unemployment and extending the working day. They are thus, quite deliberately, creating an intolerable situation: for the masses of unemployed cannot consent to die slowly and peacefully of hunger, and nor can the masses of workers still employed in the mines and factories accept complete enslavement, which, moreover, would mean the unemployed were condemned without hope of appeal…

But the bourgeoisie is calculating shrewdly. It believes it will be safe against an insurrection, thanks to the dictatorship of General von Seeckt and even more thanks to the incredible cowardice of the social democracy; it no longer fears the ADGB (Federation of German Trade Unions), which is demoralized and penniless, and whose leaders, like those of the SPD, are willing to put up with anything…

In the coming days the eight hours will be discussed in the Reichstag. Already it is being said in Berlin that the social democrats, who were supposed, this Tuesday, to overthrow the Stresemann cabinet with a great barrage of questions, will do nothing of the sort. So the man at the center of the intrigues against the working class will probably remain in power. Unless the reactionaries want to replace him with somebody more energetic. The social democrats will abstain from voting and the eight-hour day will have had its time…

Berliners facetiously ask each other; “Have you seen the Rentenmark?” As people might say at Tarascon: “Have you seen the Tarasque?”
¹⁷⁹
But this is no joking matter. We must take note of the total scandalous failure of the first “real value” currency created by the Reich government…to satisfy a demand from the trade unions concerning the payment of wages in paper that is worth something. The 800 million of the gold loan has been entirely swallowed up by financial speculators who have achieved enormous profits from it. Not one worker in Germany has seen a single banknote even of the lowest value.

So now we have beginning, in identical conditions, the experience of the Rentenmark…

The Rentenmark has been in circulation since November 15. Nobody has seen it. Apparently you can get it clandestinely at crazy prices. Wages continue to be paid, without any hope of a change, in paper marks which we have now definitely decided to call wage-marks. Of the appearance of the Rentenmark, the general public knew nothing except for some indirect but very suggestive information.

A statement to the press tells us that, on November 15, the chancellor met the directors of the Rentenbank. The president of this bank made him a speech about the appropriate way of stabilizing the financial situation in Germany. The directors of the new bank have all been selected from among the most influential figures in industry, trade, agriculture and banking. All, in short, are big capitalists. And here is the obligatory advice they came to impose on the head of government:

German foreign policy must take account of the economic weakening of the country (translation: accept all capitulations that suit capitalist interests). The state budget must be balanced by measures of strict economy; administrative staff must be limited in numbers (translation: sacking of civil servants, ten-hour day, abandoning nationalized enterprises to private capital…) Taxes “harmful to production and trade” must be removed (obviously taxes on property, capital and profits)… The financial autonomy of the states must be extended (as Bavaria wishes, and to ensure that the Rhineland state of tomorrow belongs to the plutocrats alone)… Production expenses must be cut by lengthening the working day (final agreement!).

The directors of the Rentenbank stressed to the chancellor that the creation of the Rentenmark was a sacrifice agreed by the possessing classes who are fully entitled to compensation. In reality these gentlemen already constitute a “Directory” which has the government of the Reich by the throat, since they can cut off its resources whenever they please; and it has been widely noted that they have, for obviously political reasons, delayed the appearance of the new paper money by several weeks.

It's easy to see what the Reich is losing by the operation. What is not at all easy to see is what it could possibly hope to gain from it. The financial mess is such that Herr Stresemann found it necessary to appoint an extraordinary commissioner for currency,
Währungskommissar,
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht,
¹⁸⁰
who is said to be more than usually competent and honest. But what powers does he have? He can prevent measures being taken, but he can't
require them to be taken. He has no authority over the Rentenbank. Has he any more power over the Reichsbank? No. Questions of taxation do not fall within his competence, but are the responsibility of the ministers of finance and economics. The backing of the gold loan and other similar possible issues concerns the whole cabinet and does not concern Herr Schacht. Budgetary savings are the sole province of the minister of finance. But what then are the powers of the new commissioner? I've no idea. It could be another Berlin joke: “Do you know Dr. Schacht's powers?”

Before being appointed, Dr. Schacht had insisted on all the dangers involved in the issuing of the Rentenmark and he had proposed remedies that were apparently serious. This Utopian had asked that measures should be taken to insure against the corporate-capitalist character of the management of the issuing bank; that steps be taken to prevent a new inflation which, thanks to the old credit mechanism, would again become a source of enormous profits for certain circles; that the mortgage taken by the issuing bank on private assets should be distributed equally, without shady schemes; that measures should be taken so that the Rentenmark was not monopolized by speculators as the gold loan had been… He went so far as to ask that in making economies they should remember that “the physical existence of the citizen must have priority over reason of state,” in other words that, on economic grounds, they should try to avoid condemning millions of poor people to permanent starvation (according to Leopold Schwarzschild in
ontag Morgen
). Is it not amusing to find a bourgeois journalist quoting these cruel suggestions by a bourgeois financier? So the Rentenmark scarcely permits any illusions…

…And the wages-mark carries on with its work. A professional worker who is a friend of mine, “very well paid” in his own words,
had the following misadventure just last week. He learned on Wednesday that his earnings for the week were fixed at seven billion. He was satisfied. Since that day the gold mark was worth two billion, that meant he had 85 gold marks for the week. But when he collected his seventeen trillion on Friday, November 12, the gold mark having risen in the meantime to 600 billion, the sum was now worth only 27 marks… This Friday many workers for their part received only 7, 8 or 9 trillion, roughly a French five franc piece from before the war,
¹⁸¹
for a week's work, to live for a week! But from November 10 to 16, while the rate of the dollar rose only by 166 percent, the cost of living rose by 224 percent. The new inflation—that of papers with real value—continued. Calculated in gold, the cost of living had gone, in those six days, from 104.6 percent to 127 percent (the cost of living in 1914 being represented by 100) and the cost of food from 152.6 percent to 183.2 percent. I have taken these figures from the main paper controlled by Stinnes, who certainly doesn't produce it to help Communist propaganda. They prove just how much harm is done to the worker paid in wages-marks by the issue of paper money with “real value.”

Let's conclude. The looting of Germany, the robbery of the working classes and the middle classes, the systematic starvation of the proletariat are continuing. These are the results of class politics carried out very consciously. The task is to carve up and degrade the nation, to sacrifice its unity, to wreck its culture, and to injure its deep vital energies in order to save the capitalist order.

On November 23 Stresemann finally resigned. On the same day the KPD
was made illegal.
Correspondance internationale
did not appear between
November 20 and December 13; its Berlin offices were closed as part of the
repression against the KPD and the journal moved its headquarters to
Vienna. To cover this period an article is included from
Bulletin communiste
, weekly journal of the French Communist Party, which
frequently reproduced Serge's articles.

Bulletin communiste
, December 6, 1923

Berlin, November 29–30, 1923.
¹⁸²

I'm writing these lines on the evening of November 29. In formal terms the cabinet crisis has already lasted since November 23, but in reality it has been going on much longer, and in “well-informed quarters” there is not the slightest hope of finding a satisfactory solution to it. Herr Stresemann has resigned. After a lot of beating about the bush, president Ebert had entrusted one H. Albert with the job of forming the new government, leaving aside all party motives. Although H. Albert had made known his intention to leave most of the retiring ministers with the same portfolios, and to give Stresemann the foreign affairs ministry, his scheme collapsed when faced with the dissatisfaction of the parties. In fact, heavy industry and the landowners have had enough of transitional solutions.

We should simply note which “unpolitical” figure president Ebert had chosen. Doctor Albert—with whom the author of these lines, who is not happy at sharing the name, has nothing in
common!—a senior civil servant of the pre-war regime, who during the war, at the most difficult times, was the closest collaborator of Herr Helfferich. He drew up the economic clauses of the imperialist treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk. He was obviously qualified to interpret the Treaty of Versailles.

There is also a von Kardof plan. But Herr von Kardof, a member of the German People's Party of Stresemann and Stinnes, has not found much support in his own party. Just this morning there was talk of a government headed by Stegerwald, leader of the Christian unions—which are continuing to abandon him—and of the right wing of the Center Party, a government which would include the German National People's Party (monarchists and revanchists
¹⁸³
), the German People's Party (Stinnes), the Catholic Center and the German Democratic Party. Another failure, this time caused by the intransigence of the DNVP, who demanded the break-up of the Great Coalition in Prussia, with the clear aim of immediately proceeding to take advantage of their presence in the Reich government to carry out the
Bavarianisation
of Prussia. (To use their own words: “Purge of the administration, reorganization of the police, etc., in a national spirit…”) Finally there was talk of a Jarres government, which would have been merely an dubious substitute for a Stresemann government. Now they're talking of a Marx government (Catholic Center).

We shall not waste time examining all these wretched parliamentary combinations. It is more important to draw the general conclusions from this long crisis. In reality, the present Reichstag can no longer constitute a viable government, since it no longer represents the real forces confronting each other in the country. The DDP and the SPD still have more than 230 seats. The parties of the extreme left and the extreme right are weak there, while in
the country all real power—money, army, authority—belongs to the big industrial and landowning capitalists; all the real resistance to reaction, the resistance of the proletariat and of the proletarianized middle classes, tends to concentrate around the KPD. Heavy industry and the proletariat, the forces confronting each other are immense; parliament realizes it. Quite unable to come to an agreement, the parliamentary groups which represent—very, very badly—the contending classes cannot either find grounds for agreement or decide on clear solutions that might unleash forces which the big bourgeoisie is rightly afraid of.

All the parties and president Ebert hesitate in face of a dissolution of the Reichstag, their only constitutional expedient. For then they would either have to violate the constitution by postponing the elections, or call them within sixty days on the basis of universal suffrage. Now there are many indications, notably the recent local elections in Bremen, which have revealed the mood of the electorate. A regroupment of parties would work simultaneously to the advantage of the most open reactionaries and of the most energetic proletarian action, and to the detriment of the DDP and above all the SPD. And since nothing entitles the reactionary parties to count on a parliamentary majority, the new chamber might well be nothing other than a civil war parliament…

So a chancellor is needed. They need an eloquent and flexible minister, who at one and the same time would serve the interests of the big monarchist landowners, of the tycoons of heavy industry, of the generals anxious to restore order—which is disturbed by the hungry—and of the most cowardly of social democratic parties, solely concerned with saving republican appearances… While they look in vain, the real German government is doing deals with French imperialism, signing profitable capitulations, economically detaching the Rhineland and the Ruhr from the Reich, and confirming the legal cancellation of the eight-hour day. The
Rhineland industrialists Stinnes, Vögler, Krupp and Wolff have signed agreements with the MICUM.
¹⁸⁴
They have made peace with the French enemy. They have got their 48 percent. They have the support of the French bayonets against the Rhineland proletariat. An official note passed to all the newspapers has observed that the 1918 demobilization decrees which established the eight-hour day in Germany have not been extended. The SPD did not bat an eyelid. And this ending of the eight-hour day, the only serious gain made by the workers in the 1918 “revolution,” seems to us much more important than the cabinet crisis.