Why Fascism? by Edward Conze and Ellen Wilkinson 1935
The collapse of the whole workers’ movement in Germany – Socialist, Communist and trade union alike – was so sensational, the repercussions outside Germany so considerable, that the whole story must form an object of study, a complete laboratory experiment in the rule of orthodox Social Democracy. To say, as leading Socialist politicians have done, that it is unfair to criticise a man when he is down is to ignore the fact that the German situation is a standing invitation to the capitalists or the Fascists in the rest of the world to go and do likewise. And unless the lesson of those 14 years of the Weimar Republic can be learned in time by the worker’s movements in other industrial countries, that invitation will obviously be accepted, and with probably much the same results.
Why could the huge Marxist parties in 1933 offer no resistance to the Nazis, who only four years previously were a small minority? What was the cause of this weakness? It could not have been caused by Hitler, though it obviously did much to help him. The Socialists and the Communists each put practically the whole of the blame on the other, so it is necessary to consider each of these records and policies in turn, to see whether any explanation can be found for this debacle.
The Social-Democrats: The main trouble with the German Social-Democrats was that they had never been a Socialist party, which would not have mattered much if they had not thought they were. But their actions never tended towards a replacement of capitalism by Socialism. Their policy was never guided by any desire to destroy the capitalist system and to build up a Socialist state. Essentially they were a reform party, whose aim was to secure the greatest possible share for the workers out of capitalist industry. When after 1918 the power fell into their hands, or rather was thrust into their unwilling grasp by the revolutionary workers and soldiers, they were completely without any plans for socialisation, or for any new policies whatever. What they really wanted was to get the power back into the hands of the big industrialists as quickly as possible, so that they could proceed along the familiar lines to fight the capitalists for what was to be the workers’ share of what they had given back.
The trade unions made no bones about what they really wanted. They concluded a peace treaty with the industrialists, which was followed later on by the agreement between Stinnes, the big capitalist, and Legien, the trade-union leader.
As the governing party for a time, given power in a revolutionary situation, the Social-Democratic Party were in a terribly difficult situation with the Allies in their Versailles mood. Kautsky, the famous Marxist theoretician, produced the convenient theory that it was impossible to socialise industry in the broken state in which German industry was in 1918. He did not state the obvious corollary, that if industry was not broken the capitalists would be strong enough to prevent any socialisation and the masses would have no desire for it.
Accustomed to regard themselves as a permanent minority, the Social-Democratic leaders had never thought very concretely about how they would introduce Socialism if ever they got the chance. They had not the realistic mentality of Lenin, who, when in exile with a few friends, immediately put them at work on the tasks of how they would act as Ministers supposing the revolution was successful. The German Social-Democrats formed a committee – the Socialisation Committee – rather on the lines of Mr MacDonald’s committees for a similar purpose, except the German committee did consist of people who were supposed to be Socialists. But this committee after considerable discussion only served to show that there was no agreement whatever about the fundamentals of what the Social-Democratic Party had been preaching on their platforms for 50 years.
With the power completely in their hands in 1918, the Social-Democratic Party made no attempt to abolish the class rule of the capitalists. They did not want to take over the full responsibility. The private ownership of the factories and the land was left untouched. There were only some half-hearted attempts to limit this power. One was a system of taxation, planned and introduced not by a Socialist, but by the Roman Catholic leader, Erzberger. This struck hard at the biggest fortunes, and was a cause of considerable complaint by the owners of them. But the net result of this was that milliards of marks were continually disappearing abroad, and the government did not stop this. The capitalists made the same answer to the state which takes a high proportion of their wealth without taking their responsibility, as they make to the municipalities who put on high rates. They simply go away.
At the same time the Social-Democrats left the people who stood for the old regime in positions of great power, as officials, as police presidents (till later), and above all as the teachers in schools and universities, and as judges in the courts. ‘We shall not make the same mistake as the Social-Democrats and leave our enemies in the position to strike us from behind’, said Dr Goebbels when the Nazis took power.
Factory councils were only granted in 1920 in response to great pressure from the workers for something to be done, and then only after the machine-guns, mounted on the Reichstag building, had fired into a demonstration and killed 42 workers. The Law of the Works Councils gave some control of conditions in the factories to the workers, and at first these councils had great influence. But the German trade unions had been built along very different lines. They were not concerned with the factory as a unit of production. In other words, they were not concerned with the workers taking control of industry, because they were not organised with that aim in view. Their work, as the trade-union leaders like Legien, Urban and Leipart saw it, was to secure for the workers as large a share of the capitalist cake as possible by means of large-scale wage agreements, easy to enforce, and leave the whole question of management to the employer.
The experienced trade-union official working full time at this job and paid for it, is of course a much more efficient person normally (though not necessarily) than the workers at the bench, elected by their comrades on to the factory council. These were not given either the time or chance to gain much experience because the trade-union officials resented the competition, and were afraid that they might endanger national agreements by simply not knowing fully the national position. In 1930, only seven million workers out of 15 million took part in the elections for these workers’ councils. If the national unions had had the idea of taking over the industry, even at some future date, these works councils could have laid an invaluable basis by training workers in problems of management, and raising a local leadership, priceless at a moment of struggle.
There is a certain futility in blaming men for not doing what they had never any intention of doing. The clash between the two sides – workers’ councils and national unions – was a real one so long as men were at the head of the unions who only thought in terms of the old motto ‘defence not defiance’, or in the more up-to-date phrase: ‘wages, not power’. But there is no essential clash between the two ideas. If the basis of the trade-union movement is really socialistic, it is only a question of organisation and planning to devise means by which the two functions – the worker at his bench, and the worker as part of a national unit, can be dove-tailed in to the benefit of both. The loss of interest in the national unions, particularly in this country, which, now that the German movement has gone, remains the classic home of the national trade-union idea, is largely due to the inelasticity of mind which does not see that a union can become so large and bureaucratic as to mean little in human terms to the members. Some of the most effective strikes recently have been waged by workers actually unorganised, but who showed great powers of cohesion when they had the responsibility thrust on them. The weakness of the German unions at the moment of decisive struggle is proof of how out of touch with the actual feelings of the workers the high bureaucracy had become.
But these two measures, taxation and factory councils, left the private ownership of the means of production in the main untouched. The big industrialists, worried at the whole position, were in a mood to be reasonably thankful if they were left anything. But when they saw that they had really nothing to fear, the situation changed and the Social-Democratic Party was at the mercy of the men who really owned the country. The influence of the Social-Democratic Party remained very great, but they actually participated in government for only six years out of the 14 which the Weimar Republic lasted. They had tens of thousands of councillors in the municipalities, hundreds of burgomasters and the police presidents in the most important towns. But in 1918 they had held the full power in the state, and if they had known what they wanted to do, they could have done it. As it is, what they really wanted happened – the ruling and financial classes resumed responsibility which the Social-Democratic leaders were really afraid to have in their hands.
The Fight Against the Communists: There was something else of which they were also afraid. There was a section of the workers which demanded full power and wanted to take it. There were the Spartakists, and later the Communists. Against them the Social-Democratic leaders showed great power of decisive leadership. Against them they organised the forces of the counter-revolution. The scattered and disheartened remnants of reaction were carefully gathered, financed and armed. Among them were many men now leading Storm Troopers, and who ordered the flogging of Heilmann and other right-wing Social-Democratic deputies in 1933. Noske publicly thanked these men for their brutalities against those sections of the working class who were fighting for Socialism in Germany. By thus forming a united front with all the reactionary elements in the country, it was the Social-Democratic leaders who actually split the working-class movement in Germany and paved the way for Hitler.
By 1923, several Communist insurrections had been suppressed. The leaders of the Left, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the two most effective leaders that the workers produced at this time, were killed – as was proved in the process against Prinz, [1] actually at the instigation of Social-Democrats. Some days before they were murdered, the Vorwärts, the official organ of Social-Democracy, complained in a poem: ‘Many wounded and dead lie in a row, but Karl, Rosa and Radek are not among them.’ The hint was taken. Two days later two were killed. The terror against the Communists continued. Nothing that the Nazis have done against the Social-Democrats cannot be matched by the outrages of Noske’s troops against not only Communists but simple workmen who thought that they were fighting for what the Social-Democrats had taught them was the aim of their movement. The facts of this terror are well established, though well-intentioned persons outside Germany have dismissed the accusations against the Noske troops as mere Communist propaganda.
Having decided by their actions against any attempt to introduce Socialism, having left untouched the real power of the capitalists, and having choked the social revolution, the Social-Democratic leaders had only one way open to them, to collaborate with the capitalists to get as much as they could for the workers. And that they did with energy and sincerity.
Treaty Between Trade Unions and Employers: The peace treaty between the unions and the big employers was followed by full and formal collaboration between Stinnes, the magnate of the Ruhr, and Legion for the trade unions. When in 1924-25, rationalisation became the ‘road to prosperity’ in the USA, the Social-Democrats swallowed the propaganda quite uncritically, apparently without any test of the new method against their Socialist theories. They went all out to press forward the introduction of rationalisation into German industry, and this took place with German thoroughness. The Social-Democrats argued that higher wages are impossible without greater productivity of industry. They adopted the ‘Produce More’ slogans which the British trade-union leaders had caused to be placarded over England three years previously. They did not distinguish between the kind of rationalisation that raises productivity by eliminating waste, senseless competition, extravagant advertising, the good type of rationalisation, and the type that raises productivity by raising the degree of exploitation.
This vital distinction was simply not recognised by the Social-Democratic trade-union leaders. Reading through speeches made at that time at the various international conferences, it is obvious that the general policy of the trade unions was to do what they considered their job, and to let the employer do his.
They had no desire to interfere with him so long as he would honour collective agreements. In this they differed in no way, either then, or for that matter now, with the bulk of the trade unionists in other European countries, especially in England.
It is a little difficult to see why the German trade-union leaders, bureaucratic in a way that no other country understands bureaucracy, should complain against the Fascist labour organisation, except in so far as they have taken the jobs of the Social-Democratic officials – because their organisation for the regulation of wages and of conditions of work resembles the Fascist bureaucratic organisation as one hair resembles another. Three sets of people decided about wages and working conditions: representatives of the capitalists, of the trade union and of the government. The government representative could make his decision final, and could declare a strike or a lock-out to be illegal. Between 1924 and 1928, 53,000 cases of dispute were settled in this way, and in 2840 cases the government made its decision obligatory.
This system gave quite definite advantages to the workers. It enabled them to get their share of the prosperity years of 1924-29. A certain security and stability was given them by the collective wage agreements which, by January 1928, covered no less than 11 million workers out of 15 million. In the years of the Weimar Republic the system of collective agreements became almost universal.
At the same time the money spent on social services increased enormously. The figures of the money spent on National Health Insurance are instructive.
Year Million Marks 1914 580 1925 1380 1926 1490 1927 1720 1928 2100 1929 2300
In addition the 48-hour week was almost generally observed until 1929.
It is impossible not to have a feeling of sympathy with men who had laboured under all the disadvantages of the prewar days, and who, feeling that all these collective wage agreements and improved social services were an instalment of the Golden Age, regarded the Spartakists as dangerous extremists, endangering solid advantages by crying for the moon. It was a good racket while the prosperity bubble lasted, but even during that period it had its other side.
The number of accidents owing to reckless rationalisation and conscienceless speeding-up of the workers increased year by year. At the same time the productivity of labour increased quicker than wages, and this soon led to further unemployment. The rigidity of the wage agreements prevented the youths from getting into work, and they tended to drift off into the Fascist movement.
The Bubble Bursts: In 1929 the bubble burst. The whole system of collective bargaining which had been built on the precarious American-subsidised prosperity of the German capitalists began to crumble. The unions were helpless, and had no other solution to offer than to accept the employers’ demands. The employers at once demanded sweeping reductions in the standard of life of the workers. The wages were reduced by 30 to 40 per cent in Germany, USA and Italy; if union or non-union it made no difference. Social-Democratic trade unionism was therefore discredited.
Now it is possible for the German trade-union leaders to argue that they did their best for their members. They secured them as large a slice as possible of the cake while there was any cake left to cut – and when there wasn’t, could the Communists do more? They had at least kept the machinery of production intact, which would certainly have been smashed if the Spartakists had secured enough backing to stage an effective revolt. And in a ‘normal and stable capitalist situation’ of alternating booms and slumps that argument has held good for many years.
But there was not even the appearance of normalcy and stability in postwar Germany. For any set of responsible men to argue and act as though the fever flush of the 1924-29 days was likely to last; to base on that a continuation of their old policies, was simply inviting the smash that came. A rigidity of policy that would listen to no new ideas, no suggestion that the Socialism they had preached might be their way out, took all the life out of the movement, so that when the time came for them to call for help there was no one to hear. And they did not even call.
Social-Democracy and the Middle Classes: But on what basis did the workers get their slice of cake even when it was there? A collaboration between capitalists and workers is obviously only possible on the assumption that other people are exploited in the joint interest of capitalists and workers, instead of the workers bearing the whole burden. In England the colonial masses make possible the reformist policy of the Labour Party. The comparatively high standard of life and the costly social services could not be paid for if it were not for the drain of profit from sweated coloured workers. Germany had lost its colonies and spheres of influence by the Treaty of Versailles, and was for some time reduced to the state of a half-colonial country. The only people who could be made to pay the price of the worker – capitalist collaboration were the middle classes and the peasants. The years of the Weimar Republic between 1923 and 1929 were an experiment in open exploitation of these classes to pay for the high capitalist profits and the collective wage agreements and social services of the workers.
The depreciation of the mark, which was fostered by the capitalists and not prevented by the Social-Democrats, led to a confiscation of middle-class savings by the capitalists and the state, since both got rid of their debts and loans.
The development of big stores and the cooperative movement, which expanded enormously in these years, ruined many small shopkeepers. The Social-Democrats, who were naturally keen on the cooperative development, approved also of the concentration of private capital, believing that thus it would be easier to take over ‘some day’. The middle classes could not be expected to like this theory.
The property of the peasants was gradually swallowed by finance-capital, partly because heavier taxes were imposed on fixed than on movable property. In the interest of the standard of life of the industrial workers (and to reduce the amount that had actually to be paid out by the employers), the prices of agrarian products were kept low. The agrarian crisis broke in Germany in 1927. Nothing effective was done to help the peasants.
This policy produced its natural result in the exhaustion of the resources of the middle classes and peasants, as the reformist policy of the Labour Party will presumably find its end in the exhaustion or loss of the colonies. This third group in the German state saw that they would inevitably be ruined by the organised forces of capital and labour; that they were doomed to be ground between these two great millstones if they themselves remained unorganised. They found a leader in Hitler, and organised themselves under the banner of National Socialism with its specially strong appeal to just these threatened classes. This revolt of the middle class threatened the basis of German capitalism, especially when, as we shall see later, its ranks were considerably strengthened by those elements in the working class who had become disappointed with the policies of the Socialist and Communist Parties. These, together with the ex-officers, made the SA into a serious fighting force.
On the other hand, there were fairly considerable sections who had not gained by the policy of rationalisation, who were infuriated by such incidents as Zörgiebel’s [2] shooting of 33 workers on 1 May 1929, and who were disgusted by the lack of resistance to the Nazis that the Social-Democratic Party leaders displayed. They went to the Communists. The election results showed that from 1928 the working-class quarters in the chief towns tended to vote more and more Communist and less and less Social-Democratic.
For all these reasons the Social-Democrats began to lose their value for the capitalists. There was no fight left in the leaders. After 1930 they simply yielded to each new form of pressure, each new demand exerted by the organised capitalists, whether economic, as wage reductions, or political – the practical abolition of the Reichstag. They drifted into the policy of the ‘lesser evil’, which consisted in uniting with the Reaction – Hindenburg and Brüning – against the Nazis. True, by this policy they kept the Nazis out of power for at least two years, but only at the cost of discrediting themselves hopelessly in the eyes even of their own members, by handing over one position after another.
When, at last, in July 1932, one of the ablest of them handed over the powerful, and armed, Prussian police to the serious pressure of one lieutenant and three men, they were of no conceivable use any more to the capitalists with whom they had collaborated. The magnates had to look for other allies, a new mass basis. One further degradation was left to the Social-Democratic leaders. They had still to vote for the greater evil. They held up their hands for Hitler in the Reichstag on 17 May 1933. Some days later they were dissolved. This was the fruit of the seeds sown in 1918. This was the end of the decision to collaborate with the capitalists, suppress their own Left elements, and postpone Socialist reconstruction to a more convenient season.
From the masses, the Social-Democratic Party executive could expect no serious help, except votes which were given almost automatically. When they used the slogan, ‘Give us power, and we will give you Socialism’, no one believed them – after 1919-23. They did not want the help of the powerful Communist sections of the working class. A Hamburg Social-Democratic leader said at the time when his party friend, Eggerstedt, the Socialist police president, shot 17 Communist workers who opposed a Fascist demonstration: ‘Better ten times with the Nazis than once with the Communists.’ This expressed tersely the general attitude of the Social-Democratic leadership. The events after the Kapp Putsch in 1920, like the events after the Kornilov Putsch in 1917 against Petrograd, had shown that if once the masses are roused into movement, even under the leadership of the Social-Democratic Party at the beginning, it is very difficult to prevent that movement turning into revolutionary channels.
When foreign Socialists deplore the split in the labour movement in Germany and blame the Social-Democratic leaders wholly for it, it must be remembered that a Communist revolution would have meant the annihilation of the Social-Democratic Party as a party and the physical destruction of many of its leaders. The memory of Noske and of the activities of many of the Socialist police presidents would have made that certain. Once that river of blood had flowed, reconciliation between the two movements was well-nigh impossible. At the late hour at which something of the kind was attempted by the Leftish leaders of the Social-Democratic Party, like Dr Breitscheid, who in his election speeches of 1932 was making open overtures for a united front, this was completely impossible. Hitler, it was thought, might find some use for Social-Democratic leaders: Thälmann never.
The Communists: The record of the Communists makes nearly as dismal reading as that of the Social-Democrats. They were only defeated after they had done everything possible to destroy themselves. No country outside Russia has presented its Communists with greater opportunities than the Germany of the Weimar Republic. Few parties have had finer personalities at one time and another among their leadership. The record of the Communist Party in Germany is one of magnificent opportunities thrown away, and good men sacrificed for ends that were not theirs.
The heroic illegal work of the Communists since Hitler came to power has tended to silence criticism. The Russians have rushed in to stifle complaints that might come too unpleasantly near to Moscow by a blanketing resolution in June 1933, that the German Communist Party line was throughout the correct one. An individual may be unlucky. He may deserve success without attaining it. But if the line of a party be correct, it does not go down without a murmur in a situation that it has foretold for years may happen and for which, therefore, it may be presumed to have prepared. The faults that brought down the German Communist Party are rampant in other countries. It is doing no service either to Russian or German workers, or to the men and women who have fallen in the struggle, not to insist on discussion of all the factors in the situation. The men who could not stand up to Moscow when they had the resources of an immense party behind them are hardly likely to be able to say what they really think when they are refugee guests in the Moscow household.
The Russian Model: In the first place, the German Communist Party used Russia as a Christian uses Heaven. The name was an answer to every problem. Always from the beginning, and in the course of the years with the progress of the Five-Year Plan, German Communists referred to Russia as the model of what should happen in Germany.
Fundamental differences between Russia and Germany were admitted to exist, but they were never clearly worked out. Certainly they were never popularly explained and consequent alterations suggested during the whole of the 14 years of propaganda. In this way the Communists deprived themselves of a concrete programme suited to German conditions. They instilled into the workers the vague idea that ‘after the revolution’ the party would do the same sort of thing as the Russians. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ would solve all problems.
When the Communist Party leaders in a German town were asked what they would do immediately after a revolution, it was obvious that they had only the vaguest ideas and simply relied on instructions sent from above – a fatal habit of mind as was shown in March 1933. The party apparently could not be bothered with the detailed problems of socialisation which must surely be worked out beforehand by a party that really is aiming at power, if it is not to be in a position of complete helplessness at the crucial moments. For Socialism as a creed to secure the adhesion of the average citizen, it must above all things be concrete. It must provide the answer to the problems that are pressing on him, or otherwise he is completely uninterested. This essential work was omitted by the Communist Party. All difficulties were met by general references to Russia.
This might have got them through, if the German workers had been whole-heartedly attracted by the Russian experiment, but they were not. Wanting immediate relief from the deepening economic chaos, the German workers were repelled by the prospect of a complete disorganisation and partial destruction of the German factories by civil war, and under inexperienced leadership. One of the authors met with this point of view very frequently in discussions with Social-Democratic workmen.
The immediate prospects which the Communists held out to such workmen was not Socialism, but revolution and civil war. They could not promise the help, the relief from suffering and semi-starvation which the workers wanted, but only further hardship. The consequences of the Russian Civil War were well known in Germany. It was not a question of ‘White’ propaganda. The Russian frontiers were too near. Too many German workers had been themselves to Russia for the facts not to be fairly accurately known to many German workmen. They knew that the country had been almost destroyed and that industrial production had gone down to 15 per cent of 1913 in the early years. In Germany, everyone knew that civil war would be much more terrible, and the destruction by White troops, and perhaps foreign intervention, at least as considerable. If a peasant country like Russia had had to go through a famine, how could Germany get through such a period?
German workers, like workers anywhere else, only take the Russian way if their backs are to the wall; if it is a matter of life and death for them to make an armed insurrection on a scale large enough to win power. As the events of 1870, 1905 and 1917, this happens only immediately after a war. Whereas Fascism springs out of moderate distress, Bolshevism comes from complete despair. The German Communists put out the slogan, ‘We show the way out’, but their reliance on the Russian model meant that they could only show the way to immediate disaster with a dawn of hope at the end of it.
Communist Organisation: The Communist Party in Germany, as elsewhere, was an anti-parliamentary party claiming to use the Reichstag as a platform and not to take it seriously. It must therefore be judged mainly by its work in the factories and on the streets rather than by its electoral results. The highest vote the German Communist Party reached was six million voters in November 1932. In June 1933, it claimed that there had been no defeat of the Communist Party in Germany because in the March elections of 1933 it had retained five million of these voters.
In the conditions of terror and dismay in which those elections were fought after the Reichstag Fire, this was a creditable result even for a party that had claimed there was some value in electoral success, but what was the value of these votes to a revolutionary party? Were they willing to follow the lead of the party in an actual fight on the streets for power and for Communism, or were they in the main simply discontented people who cast votes of protest without any intention of backing up those votes by specific action?
To what extent was the Communist Party able to organise these discontented elements even as support for the party as a spearhead? It is curious how little they were able to do this.
Every close observer of the German Communist Party was struck by the lack of organisation, of responsibility and discipline in the everyday work. It may seem a small thing that meetings, however important, always began late, and often did not finish until the small hours of the morning, but for the workers this was a serious thing. For the unemployed it did not matter. But it was the workers in the factories who had to be at work in the early morning who represented the strength that the Communists so badly needed.
The Communist Party enforced a rigid discipline – but only in matters of doctrine, not of action. Responsible and active workers were easily expelled because they could not agree with this or that decision of the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (referred to invariably to the bewilderment of the workers as ‘the Plenum of the Ecci’). But there are few cases of action so drastic being taken against members who would verbally agree with anything, but who failed to turn up at some important meeting, or did not trouble to deliver their leaflets.
These may seem small matters of detail – but they are symptomatic of, and to some extent the cause of, the continual defeat of the Communist Party in almost all its actions in the factories, in strikes, in rent strikes, and those actions of mass discontent on which it placed great importance. The workers came to know that while the Communists were brave and active, and although they made burning speeches of discontent, when they had got the workers to the point of white-hot enthusiasm, they usually did not know what to do next. The result was that their influence in the factories was exceedingly small. In 1930, the results of the elections for the factory councils was as follows:
Trade Union % of Membership of Councils Social-Democratic 86.9 Christian 7.2 Communist Party 1.5 Others 1.4
In April 1932, the Communist Party claimed to have 332,000 numbers, not all of them very active. In a report on the situation in Germany made in 1933, but describing the position up to 1932, Piatnitsky, an important Russian member of the Communist International, and one of the Old Guard of experienced Bolsheviks, said: ‘Up to the present the [German] party has not been able to secure points of support in the factories, without which no Communist Party can carry on serious work.’
He further states the astonishing fact that only 11 per cent of the total membership of the party were in the factories as against 62.3 per cent in 1928. In 1932 there were 35,000 Communist Party members who were factory workers after 15 years’ intensive propaganda among the factories. But the Communist Party cells had been recognised as a very serious danger to the established order and to the Social-Democrats in 1923 and 1924.
The Communist cells also decreased in number:
Year Factory Cells Street Cells 1925 – 100 1926 2243 – 1928 1556 – 1929 1411 2519 1930 1524 2824
Also very instructive is the distribution of the factory cells among the different sizes of works (in 1929):
Number of factories
in which cells existedNumber of workers
employedPercentage 33 out of 711 More than 5,000 46.00 328 out of 1,051 1000 to 5,000 31.00 245 out of 1,780 500 to 1,000 14.00 702 out of 40,188 50 to 500 1.70 103 out of 148,112 10 to 50 0.07
Fluctuation: The Communists admit their weakness in the factories, but lay the blame for this on the attitude of the Social-Democratic officials. Of course the Social-Democratic officials were not friendly, but the question to be answered is why, then, were the Communists not able to win the Social-Democratic workers over to their side? The workers appeared to regard the old Social-Democratic leaders, fiercely though they criticised their lack of action, as definitely the lesser evil. There was a continual movement of workers into the Communist Party, who joined with an earnest desire to help and to work. Many of them soon left again, either because the Communist Party seemed able to find no use for them, or they were repelled by the inelasticity of the organisation and its curious dogmatic jargon, and by the lack of responsibility so frequently shown by the local leadership.
This movement in and out reached the proportions of a phenomenon. The Communist Party were themselves well aware of the fact and dignified it by an appropriate technical term. They called it Fluctuation. And it grew worse. In 1929, the Communist Party had on the average about 130,000 members, and 39,000 left it during the year. In 1930, with 150,000 members on the average during the year, no less than 95,000 left the party.
The 1930 figures are specially important for history. This was the year when the full effects of the depression were being first felt. It was the year when the workers dimly realised that the Social-Democratic policy of collaboration with the capitalists had definitely broken down. The old ties were loosening. The workers were anxious for a lead. It was the last year of opportunity for the Communist Party. It was the year when the Nazis won their first big electoral success. For the years 1931 and 1932 no fluctuation figures were published.
For years it was actually the fact that the majority even of the active members were less than three months in the party. The Communist Party were very successful in what might be called their side-shows. They won many Social-Democratic workers for the RGO (the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition), thus creating many difficulties for themselves, as well as earning the accusation of splitting the unions in the face of the employers. The united front activities under Münzenberg’s clever and experienced direction were influential, especially the Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe (Workers’ International Relief), and similar organisations. They ran useful joint actions against war and against the Fascists, but none of these successes were deep or lasting.
The chief task of a Communist Party in such a situation as existed in Germany is surely that of winning over the workers for the final struggle. Actually they wasted what confidence they gained from the workers by a series of badly-prepared and ill-advised actions which were not only foredoomed to failure, but which made it difficult, increasingly difficult as time went on, to rouse the masses even to the pitch they had once attained under Communist leadership.
Communist Isolation from the Masses: As compared with the British Communist Party, the German Communist Party was a mass party, but even of the manual workers it could only gain a minority. The Communists cherished many illusions about this. They always maintained that the workers were turning Communist because the Communist theory is the theory of the class-conscious proletariat. But as the workers, even the majority of the class-conscious workers who remained obstinately loyal to the Socialist Party, did not in fact come to the Communists, or when they did, very soon went out again, this fact had to be explained away. The usual explanations given in the Communist press amount to the statement that the Social-Democratic workers were either fools or they were being bribed.
Of course this was not stated quite so baldly – particularly the first. But if the assumption is that the Social-Democratic workers not only tolerated, but actually backed, a betrayal of their interests which was so easily seen through by the Communists and so frequently explained by them to the workers, what other explanation could there be than their foolishness and simplicity compared to the Communist workers who so easily saw through the whole ‘Social-Democratic swindle'? Alternatively, the German workers had become a workers’ aristocracy, too heavily bribed by the capitalists to be willing for revolution. As regards the well-organised and fully-employed workers, this was nearer the truth, as we have already shown.
The ‘fools or bribed’ theory was particularly popular until 1931, for in that period the mass of the unemployed were certainly behind the Communist Party, and the explanation fitted in very well with their general anger and disgust at the self-satisfied Social-Democratic leadership. But the theory is too shallow really to account for the whole failure of the Communist Party to win a majority of the masses to itself.
If the Social-Democrats were betraying the workers, why did not the Communist efforts at enlightenment of the workers meet with greater success? Why could they make so little impression on the solid phalanxes of the trade-union membership for example? The lack of a revolutionary situation? But if six million unemployed, and four years of the deepest depression in history, do not create one, then what will?
The Communist bureaucracy, though it talked and wrote so much about the masses, became curiously separated from them. There were, of course, brilliant exceptions to this, but in general even the German Communists themselves admit it. At a huge meeting in London in connection with German Relief, one of the present writers was the speaker with Mr Harry Pollitt, the chairman of the British Communist Party. When the appeal for the collection was being made, Mr Pollitt helped with gathering the notes and cheques and special donations that came to the platform, took charge of the counting, and gave a hand in the technical work of the collection.
A high functionary of the German Communist Party, who was on the platform, looked with surprise at the chairman of the British Communist Party doing this. ‘In Germany our chief leaders would not have done so.’ Then he added: ‘Perhaps it would have been better if they had.’ A slight incident, but indicative of a certain remote and aloof attitude. The Communists can retort with truth that their leaders were far closer to the masses than the Social-Democratic bureaucracy, without invalidating the general argument.
The steady overwork of the active Communist leaders, and no one can say that they did not do their full share, transformed them into technicians with a technical jargon – convenient portmanteau phrases for officials dealing constantly with the same set of ideas, but completely bewildering to the average worker. This unfortunate tendency set in early.
In 1928, the Comintern published a programme of 90 pages. It was translated into German – not into the language of the workers, but into that of an international intelligentsia. An appendix of 11 closely-printed pages gave the German equivalent to the Latin and Greek words used in the text. It had apparently occurred to no one to translate the text directly into the workers’ own language. Technicians writing for technicians may plead the necessity of a new vocabulary for ideas and things for which there are no equivalents in ordinary speech. But the popular propaganda for a mass revolution cannot be conducted in the language of the quantum theory. What does ‘ideological capitulation before the bourgeoisie’ mean to the ordinary worker? A phrase like ‘kow-towing to the boss’ may lose a certain exquisiteness of accuracy, but at least the plumber’s mate knows exactly what is meant.
Polysyllableism is a habit that grows. In the early years the Communist propaganda was the liveliest in Germany. Those were the days of its growing strength and power. But as the concentration on and quarrels about fine points of dogma developed, the new converts found themselves in hot controversies about Trotskyism, Brandlerism, Ultimatism, which had no meaning to them except that Trotsky, whom they had been taught to admire as a red-blooded revolutionary, was evidently a bad lad. A worker in such circumstances does not express his ignorance. He is afraid of being laughed at, if the other people know, or pretend to know. He simply stays away. And that the German proletariat who were attracted by their thousands by the Communist energy, soon did, when they were expected to understand the fine points of all this doctrine.
The degeneration is shown in the slogans of the Communist Party in the later elections. Once they had hit home like fists. But by 1932, the Communists were reduced to using slogans like ‘For the poor against the rich’, which is 1830 not 1930. Nothing shows the health of a party like its slogans. From a lively growing party with its roots deep down among those it is leading, effective slogans and propaganda bubble like springs. By the 1930s the wells of Communist inspiration in Germany had run perilously low. Even the official publications of the party complained that the party was behind the masses instead of leading them.
More important than the efficiency or otherwise of the work done is the blunt question that the collapse of the Communist Party in Germany has forced to the front. Does the Communist theory itself bar any Communist Party from rallying behind it a sufficient majority of the population to make a successful revolution possible? This question we discuss in detail in Part III. Here we can only look briefly at the way it worked in Germany. The Communist Party was in fact excluded from the sympathies of the countryside by its rigid collectivism. [3] In Russia, the Communist leaders had something to offer – the big landed estates, the object for generations of the fierce envy of the land-hungry peasants. But there are no considerable estates in Germany except in East Prussia and Pomerania.
The theory of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ is quite unintelligible to the peasants. And if they did understand it, they would hate it even worse than when they don’t. There is nothing the peasant objects to more than that he should be ruled by a town bureaucracy, especially a bureaucracy of town workers who know nothing about the country, and lose few opportunities of demonstrating the fact. In Russia, the victorious proletariat could at least offer them the products of modern industry – when they got industry going. But in Germany that was no offer, for capitalism was already providing those more efficiently than Russian industry looked like doing for some time to come.
The same theory offended deeply the white-collar workers and the invaluable technicians. Nothing was done to break this psychological resistance. Obviously, a white-collar worker must be willing to admit the complete equality man-to-man of the middle and manual worker classes. But it is a different thing to ask him to regard the manual workers as his superiors, even at jobs he knows a lot more about than they do. Many German technicians went to work in Russia, and came back enthusiastic about the big-scale vision of the Bolsheviks, but very angry and disillusioned about the chaos that was being caused, quite unnecessarily, as it seemed to them, by the subordination of expert but bourgeois technicians to inexperienced but class-conscious bureaucrats. The rigid sectarian character of the Communist Party in Germany led to an isolation of themselves and those they led, which proved fatal in the testing days of 1933.
This disorganisation, this lack of contact with the masses, these obvious shortcomings were not discovered after the collapse of 1933. They had been the subjects of complaint in the Communist press for years. Why, then, were they not remedied? Does the fault lie entirely with the personnel of the party and its leadership? No one who knew the Communist leadership in those years will deny that it contained some of the ablest people in Germany. The fault lay deeper. It was the necessary consequence of changes in the Communist International. After 1923 the Communist Parties outside Russia waned in strength.
Only the Russian party became stronger and stronger, and there was no longer any effective counterweight to its overwhelming influence in the International. The officials of the Communist Party in Germany (as in other countries) were not responsible to the masses, not primarily even to their own members. Members who disapproved of the general line could leave the party, but the lower officials were responsible to the higher; these again to their superiors, and ultimately, it cannot be denied, to the Russian government itself.
It was inevitable that this continual ‘looking to Moscow’ must destroy the initiative of the members of the national parties, especially as Moscow was continually interfering in comparatively trivial matters, and what was worse, in matters of import of which they could not possibly have the same understanding as the German leaders. But in all the world there is nothing and no one that can induce a Russian, in the full and righteous pride of his new achievement, to believe that there is anything in its own affairs that any country might conceivably understand better than himself.
In a broad sense it is true that there may be a very real harmony of interest between the German workers and the Russian Soviets, but the immediate problems of the Russian government were concerned with the building up of a great industry. However interested they might be sentimentally in the progress of the German revolution, as realists they had to be concerned with the fact that such a revolution might upset the supply of the badly wanted machinery from the one country from which they could get credit on reasonably favourable terms. Russian exports to Germany were of supreme importance during the Five-Year Plans. Peaceful relations with this powerful neighbour which could so easily be used as an excuse and as mercenaries by the hostile capitalist powers were equally essential.
When it became only too obvious in 1933 that the Nazis were by far the strongest power in Germany, the Comintern was promptly paralysed. No action was taken either inside or outside Germany against the Nazis. The Russian government displayed its anxiety to be friendly by actually placing large orders just during the first few critical weeks. The Comintern as an instrument of foreign policy has never hesitated to sacrifice its foreign sections in order to keep Russia out of trouble. And there is no special reason why it should. Even from the Communist point of view, it is of the highest importance that their first great experiment should be a success, and not ruined by the premature war that certain influential quarters would be only too glad to have an excuse to force upon it.
But the Russians cannot have it both ways. Either they must allow the national sections to work out their own salvation without continual Russian interference with their internal affairs, or else they should be prepared to come to their assistance when the result of that interference among other causes has landed the national section into serious trouble. We have heard Communist exiles speak with intense bitterness of the attitude of the Russians to the German party after years of loyal cooperation by the German Communists.
These were the reasons partly responsible for the collapse of the Communist Party in Germany. Not unnaturally, the Communist bureaucracy denies that there was any such collapse. ‘There was no defeat in Germany’, says the Comintern. The tragedy of this attitude is that it prevents the Communists learning from the mistakes that are so evident even to the most sympathetic observers. Just as for years the Communist Party wasted the ardent heroism of many of its supporters, so now its best members are being sacrificed for the illegal distribution of out-of-date leaflets that have no bearing on the situation. ‘Defend the Soviet Union’ is one that has caused both deaths and imprisonments in Germany – irreproachable as a sentiment, but a little quaint in the circumstances.
The admirable quality of its leading members who have stayed in Germany to work there when so many of the leading Social-Democrats have sought refuge in exile, has not been without its effect in other countries. But if the dependence on Russia is to continue, then the Communist Party cannot become a serious danger to the Hitler regime. It will be dependent on a prop that for the most admirable of reasons may have to be withdrawn at a vital moment. It will be kept out of living contact with its own masses.
From this examination of the condition and activities of the Socialist and Communist Parties, and the trade unions in Germany, the unpleasant fact emerges that Fascism, unreasonable as it appears, seemed in 1933 the only alternative available to the masses in Germany. Since both the other ways – the path of reformist pacts with the capitalists and the path to revolution – were blocked, only the way of an aggressive imperialistic expansion seemed to be open. This, in fact, became the line of least resistance, and therefore inevitably it was taken.
The German masses hesitated long before they travelled that road. They first tried the two Marxist parties, and showed in great part a stubborn loyalty to them as long as it was possible. Only after the leadership of these parties had demonstrated to the full their complete inability to solve the pressing problems of the time was the way free for Hitler. The masses either went over to him, or, as was to a greater extent the case, were too demoralised to resist him. Hitler could not have conquered the German masses. He could not have attained power if the path thereto had not been prepared for him by the mistakes of the workers’ leaders. For those mistakes, Social-Democrat, trade unionist and Communist must each accept their full share of the responsibility. It might be worthwhile to consider the German events from this point of view, in order to see how (or whether) a repetition of the same process may be avoided in Britain.
This is not the end of the story even in Germany. But before the effective opposition to Hitler can grow, the lessons of the period of the Weimar Republic have to be learned. They cannot be learned, or even understood, while the slogan ‘There has been no collapse in Germany’ holds the field.
1. Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Revolution (1929), pp 294-96.
2. Social-Democratic president of Berlin.
3. ‘The education of the party officials and the party membership for the special tasks of agitation, propaganda and organisation in the countryside, and their instruction about the principles and tactics of the Leninist policy of alliance between workers and peasants, is still in its first beginnings.’ (Quoted from Report of Eleventh Party Conference of German Communist Party, p 86)