Markus Lehner, 10. October 2023
When people talk about a failed socialist revolution in Germany, they usually think of the November Revolution of 1918 and the subsequent crushing of the so-called Spartakist Uprising and the murder of the Communist leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919.
In fact, the revolutionary development missed by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the second half of 1923 was a much more decisive defeat. Trotsky described “the German events of 1923” in his “The Third International after Lenin” as the central turning point in the period after the First World War.
It meant both a temporary stabilisation of the post-war order and the confirmation of the international isolation of the Soviet Union, with all the consequences for the inner-party bureaucratisation of the Russian and German CPs and the Communist International as a whole. This in turn was to lead on to the KPD’s disastrous “Third Period” policy from 1929-1933, along with the SPD’s equally deadly collaborationism, enabled Hitler’s rise to power.
Reason enough therefore to recall these events and their lessons one hundred years on.
It is a commonplace that the 1918-19 Revolution was betrayed by the German Social Democracy (SPD). The revolutionary dynamics of the overthrow of the Hohenzollern monarchy, the uprisings of the sailors and soldiers, the mass strikes led by the revolutionary shop stewards (Obleute), the establishment of a system of councils by workers, soldiers and sailors, all had the potential to establish the rule of the councils just one year after the Russian October Revolution.
Unlike Russia, however, there was no communist cadre party, trained in political strategy and tactics. The “Spartakusbund” was a small, isolated group of former left wing social democrats that grew mainly on the popularity of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The much bigger, centrist Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) should have been able to present an effective political alternative to the majority SPD, but without a clear revolutionary perspective, its leading role in the councils was soon undermined by the SPD’s realpolitik.
The SPD under Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske, and in cooperation with the reactionary Reichswehr leadership, was able to stall the revolution and carry out a democratic counter-revolution, with the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The trap of the “January Uprising” in 1919 and the slaughter of large sections of the revolutionary vanguard, (the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were only the tip of the social democratic organised white terror) was followed by the defeats of uprisings in the Ruhr, Bremen and Munich Soviet Republics which sealed the counter-revolution.
Revolutionary Aftermath
The KPD, founded on 1 January 1919, was unable to counter this and remained isolated even within the vanguard of the working class. The revolutionary Obleute and other active factory cadres ultimately chose the USPD as their political home. After the revolutionary situation had plainly given way to defeat, the KPD, in ultra-left fashion, refused to switch to more defensive tactics and participate, for example, in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in January 1919 . The difference in mood between the vanguard and the mass of workers was expressed in the results. Only 7.6 per cent of the votes went to the USPD as against 38 per cent for the SPD. The KPD did not stand and received only 2% in the Reichstag elections the following year. The left had underestimated the continued hold of the Majority SPD and the persistence of a reformist consciousness in the working class.
With the establishment of the Weimar Republic, however, bourgeois rule, together with its social democratic safeguards, was anything but stable – the revolutionary ferment continued. Big Capital did not succeed in stabilising economic conditions, given the reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, signed in June 1919. The international political conditions on the defeated country and the economic problems faced by most factories led to inflation and mounting debt, which sparked serious industrial conflicts. The following years were marked by large waves of strikes and mass economic struggles, which were simply about questions of daily survival.
At the same time, the political regime of the bourgeoisie was full of contradictions. With the National Assembly, a “Weimar Coalition” had been established, seemingly supportive of the construction of a parliamentary-bourgeois system of rule.
But, especially within the camp of the bourgeois parties, the German People’s Party (DVP), which represented the more reactionary upper middle class around Hugo Stinnes and Gustav Stresemann, and the German National Party (DNVP) an even more reactionary force around Alfred Hugenberg, had strong connections to the military high command, smarting from the huge reduction of the armed forces dictated by Versailles, and themselves linked to the emerging fascists. All these parties favoured authoritarian solutions and agreed on the containment of the influence of the all the workers’ parties as far as possible.
As early as 1920, the republic was thus literally torn between the proletarian mass struggles on the one hand and the reactionary mobilisations of the German nationalist and proto-fascist parties on the other. The climax was the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, when officers close to the DNVP tried to replace the government with a military junta. The ensuing general strike, called by the SPD union leader Karl Legien, however, stopped this putsch in short order. He actually proposed a government of the SPD and USPD but with the SPD not being prepared to settle accounts with the reactionary forces in the Reichswehr and DNVP, this proposal collapsed . The SPD was too afraid that workers’ actions against reaction might develop in a socialist direction. In fact, the subsequent strikes and struggles of the “Red Ruhr Army”, an armed militia in Germany’s main industrial area, were put down by the same reactionary Reichswehr troops that had previously moved against the republic, with the authority of the SPD-led government. This finally generated mass working class disillusionment with the SPD and, as a consequence, led to a violent crisis in the ranks of the SPD. In the following Reichstag elections, the SPD slumped to 22%, while the USPD soared above 18%, the KPD, as we saw, was a negligible quantity, with only 2%.
The parties of the original Weimar coalition, which had included the German Democratic Party (DDP) of the liberal industrialist Walter Rathenau and the (catholic) Centre Party, also achieved about 22 and fell. The SPD did not rejoin the Reich government because of its internal conflicts, and a very shaky coalition of the DDP and the right wing DVP was formed with the parliamentary “toleration” of the SPD. This arrangement provided one government crisis after another for the next few years.
Crisis
The question of reparations payments eventually led to an escalation of the crisis. The reparations had to be paid in gold bullion, foreign currency or “in kind”, meaning coal, industrial and agricultural products. This led to a devaluation of the currency and increased speculation against the mark. The loose money policy of the Reichsbank made cheap mark loans possible, which were immediately exchanged for dollars or pounds, only to be repaid at a profit when the mark fell in value.
Delays in the payment of reparations led the French government of Raymond Poincaré, to send French troops into the Ruhr in January 1923 with the intention of forcibly seizing the coal and iron owed. Ironically, the Reich government under Wilhelm Cuno proclaimed a policy of “passive resistance” which included a general strike by the Ruhr workers and promises from the Reich government for full wage payments (financed by printing marks). With this, the currency’s value finally collapsed and hyperinflation ensued. French forces responded with harsh shows of force – opening fire on workers refusing to take orders in the Krupp steel works. Public servants refusing orders were expelled from the Ruhr altogether. Overall, 132 were killed and approximately 150, 000 expelled. A severe economic crisis unfolded such that, by mid-1923, the economic and political system of the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse.
The KPD becomes a Mass Party
In the meantime, the political left had also changed significantly. The KPD had separated from its ultra-left wing (KAPD) in 1920, and begun to carry out mass work with systematic tactics later formulated as the united front. Furthermore, it was able to merge with the left wing of the USPD at the end of 1920. In doing so, for the first time, it became a mass party with about 300,000 members. Through the organisational roots of the USPD left, it also became an influential factor in trade unions and workplaces. In addition, from 1921 onwards, there was the systematic application of the “united front policy”, formalised by the Communist International December/January 1921-22, which the unified KPD played an important part in developing.
At the beginning of 1921, the KPD sent an “Open Letter” to the workers’ organisations, including the leaderships of the SPD, USPD and the trade union federation, the ADGB, with a suggested programme of demands for a joint wage struggle, the fight against unemployment and inflation, and the formation of workers’ self-defence militias. While the reformist leaderships rejected it, as expected, the initiative was taken up by countless grassroots organisations in workplaces and city districts. Over time, these became supra-regional structures, such as national works council congresses. In 1922, the reformist leaderships, for their part, had to launch similar campaigns in order not to lose the initiative. These were also taken up by the KPD and often wrested from the reformist leadership. As the crisis deepened in 1923, this policy ultimately led to the SPD losing control of the trade union and workplace vanguard to the KPD in key branches and regions.
Revolutionary situation
The economic chaos led to a wave of strikes against the Cuno government in August 1923 that eventually led to its fall. In Saxony and Thuringia, the left SPD, with the acquiescence of the KPD, formed a government that allowed the formation of “proletarian hundreds”, that is, armed workers’ militias. On the other side of the barricades, in Bavaria in particular, armed reaction, both in terms of fascist bands, including Hitler’s growing Nazi Party, with its links to the Reichswehr, stood ready to strike.
Thus, by mid-1923, we have all the central elements of a revolutionary situation: a capitalist economy in hyperinflationary collapse, hunger revolts and spontaneous uprisings, a severe political crisis at the government level, with Cuno unable to either continue the passive resistance due to state bankruptcy but trapped by its own nationalist rhetoric from backing down to Poincaré. On the other hand, there was now a well-organised and revolutionary KPD that was actually on the verge of ending the SPD’s decades-long domination of the German working class.
The Right
On the one hand, the commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr, Hans von Seekt, was waiting for Reich President Ebert (SPD) to declare a state of emergency in order to establish a military dictatorship. On the other, a state of emergency had already been carried out in Bavaria and an authoritarian regime had been established that declared itself in defiance of the orders of the Reich government. Behind this state of emergency regime in Bavaria, openly fascist fighting forces around Hitler and Germany’s war time commander and virtual dictator Erich Ludendorff, were also gathering, waiting for the signal to “march on Berlin”, in conscious imitation of Mussolini’s black shirts’ March on Rome in October the previous year. In autumn 1923, Bavarian Reichswehr units marched into northern Bavaria. Everything boiled down to a decisive battle between the revolutionary workers and the Reichswehr and the fascists.
In retrospect, the escalation of the situation, which can only be called a revolutionary situation, had been clear since August 1923 with the fall of the Cuno government. It is therefore ridiculous when it is often claimed today that the KPD, at the urging of the Comintern, embarked on a “putschist adventure” in the autumn of 1923, and that something like a Russian October would never have been conceivable in Germany.
The KPD policy
However, the KDP leadership at the time, around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, did not understand this escalation of the situation. They relied on an unbroken continuation of the hitherto successful united front policy and thought any further momentum towards a workers’ government to be “premature”. Thalheimer advised instead the “broadening of the council movement” as a gradual preparation of the working class for the conquest of power.
The Comintern had recognised that, with the fall of the Cuno government, the situation was moving towards an open clash with reaction and that the growing influence of the KPD in the working class absolutely had to be used for the establishment of a workers’ government; that therefore the arming of the working class and the seizure of power – the armed insurrection – had to be prepared. KPD leaders were summoned to Moscow and in long discussions were finally convinced of this. The struggle for power was to be launched in October/November 1923 and detailed, conspiratorial planning for the uprising took place. To prepare for this, the KPD entered the regional government of Saxony on 10 October and that of Thuringia on 16 October. The intention was to arm the workers and use these states as “deployment areas” – not to enjoy ministerial office or fuel illusions in a “socialist” programme of the governments there.
On 12 August 1923, Cuno and his cabinet resigned as a result of a vote of no-confidence initiated by the SPD. He was replaced as Chancellor by Gustav Stresemann of the DVP, heading a grand coalition, including the SPD. But the long delayed reaction of the KPD leadership allowed the bourgeoisie the breathing space to solve its leadership crisis after the August events. The SPD – in danger of its own demise – again decided to save the bourgeoisie. On 13 August, the DVP and SPD formed a grand coalition. It abandoned the Ruhr blockade, negotiated a solution to the reparations question with the Allies and took steps to curb inflation. The government faced with threats both from the right (Bavaria) and the left (Saxony/Thuringia) struck first at the left with emergency decrees and the threat of invasion by the Reichswehr. The governments in Saxony and Thuringia were given an ultimatum to disband the proletarian militias, SPD ministers and SPD Reich president Ebert thus threatened SPD-led state governments with military force!
October
Thus the conflict situation was clear: there had to be a decisive confrontation between the KPD-led workers and the Reich government or the reactionary forces from Bavaria before the end of October.
The KPD had prepared its cadres conspiratorially for the coming conflict, but on the whole had not carried out a decisive change in its public propaganda and agitation that would have prepared the shift from the defensive united front policy to an offensive. In fact, solidarity actions with Thuringia/Saxony decided by grassroots organisations in other regions were prevented by the KPD – to avoid the danger of “provocations”. Large sections of the class continued to believe that SPD participation in the Reich government, together with the strength of the working class, could save the two “workers’ governments”.
On 21 October, the KPD leadership then put all its eggs in one basket. At a conference of the Saxon factory councils, it proposed to defend the workers’ governments by armed force, accompanied by strikes and armed action throughout the Reich. The conference delegates were taken completely by surprise by this sudden U-turn of the KPD and were apparently not yet ready for this outcome. The KPD proposal was rejected! As a result, the Brandler leadership found that there was no broad working class support for armed resistance and cancelled the already planned Reich-wide actions. Only in Hamburg, did some actions take place, but these were soon put down.
By the end of October, the workers’ governments of Saxony and Thuringia were deposed and reaction began to rage there. Thousands of workers were arrested, hundreds sentenced to the heaviest penalties or “shot whilst trying to escape”. The hitherto defiant and threatening Bavarian government now quickly swung over to the line of the Reich government, put down the Nazi uprising (which went down in history as the Beer Hall Putsch) and reintegrated itself into the Republic. With the introduction of Stresemann’s Rentenmark (backed by land mortgages) in November, and economic stabilisation, the Reich government then finally had the severe crisis under control and the Weimar Republic was stabilised up to the 1929 Crash . The revolutionary period that had begun with the November Revolution was finally squandered with the German October 1923.
Balance sheet
The decisive factor for the defeat of 1923 was not a “treacherous leadership” or a lack of willingness to fight on the part of the workers. The decisive factor was serious errors in the political assessment of the situation and the timing of the necessary transition from a defensive united front policy, which had been successful for the previous years, to an offensive confrontation with reaction.
It is not a question of taking such a decision only in the party leadership and making conspiratorial plans for overthrow. It is also about using the influence gained in the rank and file organisations of the class to mobilise them for confrontation. Factory committees, regional conferences, proletarian hundred-units, etc., should have discussed and decided on appropriate resolutions, throughout the mounting crisis, long before October.
Likewise, the maintenance of the united front orientation or the entry into government in Saxony and Thuringia should have been accompanied with the warning of the Social Democrats’ inevitable betrayal and the clear announcement to break with the united front in that case. Finally, it was a grave mistake to link the question of the uprising at the end to the majority conditions of a works council congress with strong SPD participation.
In the end, this was simply the culmination of poor preparation. As a result, the assumption of leadership of the uprising in Germany lacked a corresponding foundation in council structures in the working class. Thus, all that remained for the KPD was a more or less orderly retreat. Some revolutions are not betrayed; the revolution of 1923 was simply missed and run into the sand by serious political mistakes. This is a major reason why dealing with these historical events is still important for revolutionaries today. It clearly shows the importance of revolutionary organisations and their leaderships in socialist revolutions, as well as the limits and dangers of united front politics.
Trotsky on the German October
“What was the fundamental cause of the defeat of the German Communist Party? This, that it did not appreciate in good time the onset of a revolutionary crisis from the moment of the occupation of the Ruhr, and especially from the moment of the termination of the passive resistance. It missed the crucial moment. The most important thing however was this; to ensure in good time the decisive tactical turn towards the seizure of power and this was not done. This was the chief and fatal omission.
(….)
The time for the uprising was fixed when in essentials the enemy had already made use of the time lost by the party and strengthened his position. The military technical preparation, begun at feverish speed, was divorced from the party’s political activity, which was carried on at the previous peacetime tempo. The masses did not understand the party and did not keep step with it. The party at once felt it severance from the masses and proved to be paralysed. From this, resulted the sudden withdrawal from first class positions without a fight, the bitterest of all possible defeats.”
Through What Stage Are We Passing June21 1924 in Leon Trotsky The Challenge of the Left Opposition 1923 -1925, Pathfinder, New York 1975, pp170-71