From War Credits to Armed Defeat: The German Revolution 1914-1919
Ernest Mandel on the Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Germany
[Thanks to our supporting subscribers, we’ve conducted enhanced analysis of the audio from Ernest Mandel’s lectures in 1976, integrating a second recording that partially overlaps. This post is the first half of the combined contents of the first two recordings from Ernest Mandel’s 1976 lectures, broadly covering the first of three days. A second instalment will cover the second day. The third part is here, reflecting the final day.]
PART I: The August 4th Betrayal and Early Opposition (1914-1916)
From Ernest Mandel's 1976 lecture on the German Revolution
The August 4, 1914 Betrayal
I will provide an essentially chronological reminder that begins with August 4, 1914, as you know—the vote for war credits by the SPD fraction of social democracy in the Reichstag, contrary to all congress decisions in Germany and internationally of the Second International before the war.
It should be noted that in the internal debate within the fraction, there were 14 votes against and 78 votes for the war credits vote, but in the assembly, the norms of the Reichstag [meant that] no one votes against because they also don't vote against the war credits vote. Everyone accepts the discipline.
The Vorwärts Opposition: First Reactions
The first reaction, almost the day after the vote, does not come from Liebknecht, as is generally thought, but from the editorial team of Vorwärts, which is the central organ of the party and, at the same time, the organ of the Berlin section of the party, which is a moderate left section, centrist if you will, very pacifist but very anti-war.
The reaction of Vorwärts, which had as editor-in-chief at that moment comrade [Stampfer], whom we will talk about again today and tomorrow, who played a very great role in this whole process of the German revolution and who will join the Communist International in October 1920.
Therefore, the Vorwärts editorial staff's reaction is a veiled opposition. There is censorship; they are careful. These are centrists, not revolutionaries, but still a public reaction.
Liebknecht Breaks Discipline: The Parliamentary Opposition Grows
The first public reaction that crystallized the opposition to the war was the second vote for war credits on December 2, 1914. Karl Liebknecht, then the first deputy of the 112 Social Democratic deputies to break the discipline of voting in plenary assembly, opposed this. This caused much tension within the party and the party leadership, but disciplinary measures were not yet taken against him.
The two camps continue, if you will, the internal logic. On March 20, 1915, this time, the parliamentary fraction votes not only for the military budget but for the entire budget. This is contrary to a decision taken contrary to all Social Democratic tradition—to vote for the budget means in reality to vote confidence in the government, in a conservative government, and in the bourgeois state as a fraction.
This time, there are 32 votes against, not only 14. And in the plenum, there are two deputies who break discipline: Liebknecht and [Rühle]. Thirty deputies leave the hall before the vote.
The 1,000 Signatures Letter: National Opposition Crystallizes
The next stage, still now the centrist opposition, which will give rise to the first great split, to the creation of the Independent Socialist Party, crystallizes nationally on June 9, 1915. A whole series of party leaders sent a letter to the leadership, to the central committee, which is called the Parteivorstand, and to the leadership of the parliamentary fraction, gathering about 1,000 signatures against support for the imperialist war and against support for the government, the vote for credits.
These are three of the principal leaders of the party. We must add Hugo Haase, who is the national president, Kautsky, who is the editor-in-chief of the party's theoretical weekly and the party's number one theorist, and Bernstein, who is the old guard, the old reformist guard. But on this question of war, pacifists and those against supporting the war sent a letter together.
Which will therefore obtain about 1,000 signatures from party and union officials. There is also a response from the party leadership against this letter. This is the crystallization of the factional struggle.
Zimmerwald and the Growth to Twenty Deputies
In September 1915, the Zimmerwald Conference—the first international and not only national manifestation of opposition to the war—considerably reinforces the opposition to social patriotism in the SPD. It is said—this is a figure that must be kept with prudence—that the Zimmerwald appeal, the Zimmerwald manifesto which, as you know, was written by Trotsky, is distributed in several million copies in Germany and has a very, very profound effect on the party base.
December 21, 1915. Effect of Zimmerwald: This time, 20 socialist deputies voted against war credits. So first there was one, then two, now 20, and these 20 are the nucleus of the Independent Socialist Party that will be constituted. They are suspended, practically excluded from the fraction and from the party.
They will begin to organize in a grouping that is first called with a fanciful name: "Working Community," work groups. They do not yet dare call themselves a party—the public split with a party that has been unified for 35 years is a very hard story. But after a few months on a subject of this kind—betrayal of the interests of the world proletariat—the split, obviously, is more easily acceptable than on subjects of a purely technical and organizational nature, and it is therefore consummated at Easter 1916 when the Independent Social Democratic Party is officially constituted—a centrist organization of very, very great scope.
From Political Struggle to Class Struggle
The fundamental issue is that the struggle of differentiation, which until this time had been a purely political and ideological struggle, now undergoes a transformation into the field of class struggle itself.
From 1916 onwards, the German working class, and above all the working class of the great munitions factories of Berlin, began to manifest their opposition to the war.
Spartacus Formation and the May Day Demonstration
Spartacus, which had been founded on January 1, 1916, but which functions within the Independent Socialist Party and does not function as an open party, had made on May 1, 1916, a call for public demonstration which takes place but which is quite modest—much more modest than most demonstrations of communist life today. Two thousand, two thousand five hundred people, something like that, who gather around Liebknecht for a small speech of one or two minutes before the police intervene, then the demonstration disperses. But he is arrested.
The First Mass Political Strike: June 28, 1916
And a trial is made against him, and the trial provokes a very, very great emotion. And there is an agitation in the Berlin enterprises that shows they want to make a political protest strike on the day of the trial's opening.
And effectively, when the trial opens on June 28, 1916, it is the first mass strike against imperialist war in the belligerent countries that takes place: about 55,000 workers from Berlin and about 10,000 workers from another city, a provincial city, Brunswick, which is moreover one of the centers of the left, go on strike.
The strike lasts only one or two days, it is quickly broken, but it gives an immense impulse to the centrist left. It shows that the division is no longer a division between ideologues of two sides or between theorists of two sides, but that it is within the working class itself that a current begins to identify with opposition to the war.
The Revolutionary Shop Stewards: Systematic Preparation
This translates notably into a systematization of votes against all governmental measures in Parliament by Haase and his group, therefore, of about twenty Independent Socialist deputies. This is reinforced after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of March 1917 and the foundation of the USPD. And this then finds a translation in the metalworkers' union, which is the avant-garde union, the most powerful union, the most representative of the organized German working class.
At the beginning of the war, a semi-clandestine group had been constituted, if you will, a left fraction of the Berlin metalworkers called "Revolutionary Shop Stewards" (Revolutionäre Obleute), starting from the turners of the turners' subsection, because the union was still organized on a craft basis—craft unions.
The Revolutionary Shop Stewards group dominates the turners' group and thus has an extremely important network. This leadership is present in all factories from the start, and they will be the backbone of the Independent Socialist Party and all the preparatory work of the German revolution.
In this sense, it is entirely false to claim, as is still done now, sometimes in manuals—whether Stalinist, ultra-left, or social democratic—that the German revolution of 1918 was spontaneous. That is absolutely false. Much less so—it was much less spontaneous than the Russian revolution of February 1917. It was systematically prepared by this group of Revolutionary Shop Stewards on whom we will return later, because their role in the entire transformation of the German movement during these years was completely decisive.
PART II: Revolutionary Shop Stewards and Mass Organization (1917-1918)
From Ernest Mandel's 1976 lecture on the German Revolution
The Conquest of the Metalworkers' Union
The first organizational task of these comrades—the project they had before their eyes, which was less political than a project of mass organization against the war—was to conquer the majority of the Berlin metalworkers and, therefore, break through the first corporatist wall. They had the majority of the turners and wanted the majority of all the metalworkers.
They used a general assembly of delegates from all factories for this purpose, which took place on April 15, 1917. And these general assemblies—there were very few during the war. Manifestly, the military administration, which had a veritable dictatorship in Germany, had no interest in encouraging dangerous worker meetings of this kind.
However, without directly confronting the unions, they could not prevent at least one annual assembly. So the 1917 assembly was convened for April 15, and after what had happened in 1916, a confrontation between right and left was already expected at this assembly.
The 1916 Victory: Müller Defeats Cohen
In 1916, Adolf Cohen, who had been the Social Democratic leader of Berlin metalworkers for 20 years, was narrowly defeated among 2,000 delegates by Richard Müller, the leader of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and who would be the president of the executive committee of the workers' councils of Berlin during the November revolution.
The 1916 vote doesn't commit to anything yet. It's a vote on the general principle of not supporting the war, of defending—or more precisely, of not supporting the Sacred Union anymore, of continuing to defend the class interests of workers, wage interests, etc., etc. The 1917 debate is much more important.
The April 1917 Strike: Political Demands and Bourgeois Miscalculation
Richard Müller prepares for them a plan of demands in which immediate demands regarding food supply and wages are very skillfully mixed with political demands, taking up, if you will, the platform of the Soviets that already exists: immediate peace, without annexations or contributions, fraternization, etc., etc.
Two days before the meeting of these 2,000 metalworkers, therefore delegates from all the large factories in Berlin, the military administration arrests [Müller] and deports him to a military disciplinary camp. From the bourgeoisie's point of view, this is a mistake because it has the opposite effect. Like Liebknecht's arrest before, it considerably radicalizes the metalworkers' movement and raises the question of an immediate strike for the liberation of their leaders.
The Dangerous Flexibility of the Reformists
The reformist right retreats. We will return to this, moreover—it's a vital aspect of all these events, the very dangerous flexibility of the reformists, but how they behave in the face of a revolutionary upsurge in a much more intelligent way than is generally believed.
The reformist right retreats immediately. Whereas it was against the strike just a few days previously, it now supports it, but it says: strike only for the immediate demand, not strike for political objectives that cannot be satisfied anyway and that lead workers to defeat.
The First World Political Strike Against Imperialist War
The result is that the strike takes place. It's a very broad strike. One cannot yet say a general strike, but a very broad strike of between 200,000 and 300,000 metalworkers on April 16, 17, 18, 1917. Very proudly, moreover, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards say that it's the first political strike against imperialist war—a broad strike that has taken place in the entire world.
They are not wrong. Before the fall of tsarism, there had not been a strike of this kind, a political strike with political objectives of 150,000 to 300,000 workers. That's not even so bad for a political strike. Obviously, the bulk of the strikers is in Berlin, about 200,000. A second very important strike center is in Saxony, more precisely in Leipzig, which is the main city of Saxony.
We will also return to the role played by the Saxon left in the German revolution. It was a very important element in all the events between 1917 and 1923. Alongside Berlin, Saxony is the center where the left is strongest. There are smaller strikes in Brunswick, Magdeburg, and [other cities], which are also traditional centers of the worker left.
The political demands are mainly advanced in Leipzig and Berlin. In Berlin, the only political demand that was advanced was the liberation of Müller. The strike is obviously not crowned with success. The repression is real, but still limited.
Mandel's Reading from Lenin's Complete Works
I don't know if you have ever read... in Lenin's complete works, at least the fourth edition, the third and the fourth edition, the last edition, there is the stenographic record of the last meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on the eve of the October insurrection. It's an extraordinary document.
All the speakers, without any exception, speak of the provincial cities [as showing that the insurrection would be] a stupid adventure. [They say:] "We have no mass support. The masses have gone over to the anarchists, [we have] no strength, we have no cadres, we have no force." That's it. Everyone gives reports like that.
How Revolutionary Assessment Can Be Wrong Even 24 Hours Before Success
Then there, you are not dealing with novices, you are dealing with old revolutionary cadres who have been implanted in the working class for 20 years, who know the depths of factory life, [who know] the flesh and blood of the Russian working class. I say for 20, 25 [years], they made such a gross mistake.
24 hours before [the insurrection], [Lenin] did not have [the real picture]. For all sorts of reasons that have nothing [to do with their capacity], [they had an] incomplete perception of the immediate reality in the factories. The appreciation of the party cadres was totally false.
[They] did not say that the revolution is in retreat—that's not it. They did not make a mistake of black and white. In that case, it would have been much more serious. They were too tied to the class. They understood the fundamental movement, but they had a much too pessimistic appreciation of the moment.
What the party cadres believed to be a beginning of passivity and conjunctural retreat was, on the contrary, the concentration of forces, the waiting for the decisive battle and for the signal for a decisive combat. When [the signal] was given, the working class responded [immediately]. There was no [hesitation].
The Psychological Victory: Breaking the Paralysis
In general, the left and a broad worker avant-garde draw from this a very great feeling of confidence, that is to say the impression of paralysis, demoralization, and powerlessness of the working class—which was the most harmful effect of the capitulation of August 4, 1914—is now overcome.
Proof is made that one can strike and that one can act with the weapons of class struggle, even during military dictatorship, even under occupation—occupation, if you will, the control of all cities by military commandants—even with the state of siege, even with censorship, even with all the repression that reigns during the war.
And this is obviously a feeling that plays a very important role.
The October Revolution's Double Impact
But now an external element is going to intervene. Until this moment, you can say that this whole affair followed an internal logic with a slight influence from Zimmerwald and from the February revolution. But the effect of the October Revolution, the October-November 1917 revolution, is going to be completely different.
It's going to be a capital effect—doubly capital. First, because the idea of Soviets, the idea of workers' councils, is going to take hold in Germany, and quite bizarrely, moreover, it's more the centrist left—that is to say the Revolutionary Shop Stewards of the metalworkers—than Spartacus that is going to take up this idea and identify with it.
The Council Movement: Self-Organization vs. Political Power
They have, if you will, recuperated this idea of soviets in a rather syndicalist, rather councillist manner. They see in it, like us in our elementary interpretation today, above all the self-organization of the working class, rather than the question of the exercise of political power. That comes after, but the self-organization of the working class against the bureaucratic leadership blankets that crush the initiative of the masses.
They take up this idea, generalize it, and present themselves as those who are organizing a Soviet movement, a council movement in the enterprises, which is, moreover, going to happen.
Trotsky's Psychological War: From Propaganda to Agitation
The second colossal effect of the October revolution is that this time, the question of peace ceases to be a question, let's say of propaganda, and becomes a question of agitation.
Obviously, in a war situation, when the question of peace, of stopping the war, becomes a question of agitation, for the imperialists, for the government, it's catastrophe. It's the beginning of disintegration.
Here, we must above all pay homage to Trotsky's political genius and political perspicacity. He understood this much better than Lenin and any Soviet leader. He understood that in the atmosphere that reigned in Germany and Austria, an agitational conduct of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations would have a shock effect.
The Great Deception Revealed
He was perhaps a bit too optimistic concerning the delays, but he understood the fundamental mechanism. To understand this, one must understand that social democracy had obviously deceived the German working class, systematically deceived them for three years. The war waged by German imperialism had been presented to them as a defensive war.
They were told: well, we are pacifists. We are peaceful people. We only want to leave everyone alone, but we are encircled. They are attacking us. English imperialism wants to cut us off from world trade, and above all, tsarism wants to crush the German movement.
Tsarism wanted to establish an autocratic and dictatorial regime in Germany. Incontestably, a good part of the German working class believed this propaganda, which was spread by all the Social Democratic press, with few exceptions, by all the Social Democratic leaders except the centrists, and by all the official propaganda as well.
The Mask Drops: Brest-Litovsk as Revealer
And the manner in which Trotsky conducted the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk—everything, including even the price he paid for these negotiations, that is to say the objective possibility for German imperialism to seize additional Russian territories—obviously acted as an enormous revealer for the German working class.
During the first weeks of negotiations, there was calm. They believed that since the government accepts negotiation, they said: "but you see clearly, so our impression wasn't false. Our government is still pacifist. We want peace. We show it by negotiating with the Russian revolution."
But afterwards, when the German negotiators were forced by Trotsky to drop the mask, when they showed their imperialist, annexationist goals, when they showed that they wanted a brigand's peace—that was a colossal emotion in Germany, absolutely colossal in Germany and Austria as well.
Mass Political Transformation
And the idea that they had been deceived and that the war was an imperialist war, a war of conquest, a war of brigandage—this idea, from that moment on, penetrated, if not the majority, at least very broad layers of the German working class. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of German workers became practically overnight political adversaries of the war, political adversaries of the regime, and people who understood that the regime was an infamous regime that was hardly better than the tsarist regime.
Trotsky's Strategy Within Two Fingers of Success
Well, in Austria, this leads to a general strike in January. That is to say, while the Brest-Litovsk negotiations were passing through their decisive stage, one can say that Trotsky's project was within two fingers of triumphing. That is to say, well, this was his project: to drag out the Brest-Litovsk negotiations until revolution broke out in Austria and Germany.
He didn't completely succeed. The general strike in Vienna and Austria didn't provoke revolution, but it came within two fingers of provoking it. And in any case, it also provoked in Germany a very, very powerful mass strike, an enormous mass strike—probably between 500,000 and 600,000 workers went on strike at the end of January in Germany, and this transformed the entire situation in Germany.
The Old Mole Appears Above Ground
That is to say, this is the beginning, in reality, of the work—if you will, the old mole now appears above ground. It is no longer underground—this work of generalized [agitation] in the army. It's agitation in the army that really begins. The collapse of the German army is now only a question of time.
Ludendorff's Confession: The Mortal Blow
It must be recognized—probably relatively few comrades know this—it must be known that Ludendorff, the chief of the German army, recognized it in his memoirs: "We believed we had won the peace of Brest-Litovsk, that we had conquered from a disarmed Russia the wheat, the oil, the raw materials that would allow us to prolong resistance in the west. We had not taken into account the psychological effects and, as he says, demoralizing effects of what was going to happen.
We didn't understand that we had not only imported with this peace the oil, the wheat, etc., but we had also imported revolutionary agitation and revolutionary disintegration of the rear and of the army. And that gave us a mortal blow." I believe that broadly, this corresponds to the truth.
The Price of Revolutionary Advance
This time, the repression is very violent. Contrary to 1917, one of the principal political leaders of the Independent Socialist Party, Dittmann, who will moreover be one of the six People's Commissars of November 1918, [and other] metalworker leaders in Berlin, when he speaks before some tens of thousands of very [militant] strikers, is arrested immediately by the police, they make a trial against him the same day for sedition, they condemn him to five years of forced labor.
PART III: The November Revolution and Its Contradictions (1918)
From Ernest Mandel's 1976 lecture on the German Revolution
The Kiel Mutiny: The Spark
A final offensive took place on the Western Front in the spring of 1918, but Germany no longer had the resources to victoriously oppose the Western imperialists after the counter-offensive began. The Western Front collapsed, marking the beginning of the demoralization of the general staff, who were preparing the armistice negotiations.
It was at this point that an incident occurred—a provocation, ignited by the extreme right within the German state apparatus, that set off the powder keg. The chiefs of the fleet, who were the ultras of imperialism, knew that among the armistice conditions the Western imperialists would present to Germany was the intact delivery of the fleet to England. They wanted to avoid this at all costs, as honor was at stake. They prepared for the fleet to leave the port of Kiel to engage in a desperate battle, essentially to sacrifice 80,000 sailors, given the one-to-two balance of power at the time. This fleet would have been massacred, and practically all these sailors would have been killed.
The Mutiny Spreads: From Kiel to the Nation
A mutiny broke out on the battleships, starting with a practically proletarian group. The stokers, who were supposed to start the ships, refused to light the fires. The mutineers prevented the fleet from leaving, which, in reality, meant they were benefactors of humanity by saving 80,000 lives, though they were not treated as such. They were immediately treated as mutineers, imprisoned, and sentenced to severe penalties by military tribunals. Some were even sentenced to death.
Street demonstrations ensued, where a detachment of officers—a first in Germany, though it would become a regular occurrence—fired provocatively and idiotically at the crowd, which already included workers from the arsenals and docks mixed with the sailors. This resulted in many deaths, about thirty killed and many wounded.
The reaction was instantaneous: a general strike in the city, mutiny within the city, election of workers' councils, and election of sailors' councils. The city was taken over practically without a fight. The few groups of officers were unable to defend themselves. The entire city garrison sided with the revolution, which took hold by November 3. In the following days, the general insurrection spread to all ports in northern Germany, including Hamburg, Bremen, and smaller cities like Lübeck. The sailors formed a shock group, the famous "red sailors," who would later form a real division called the People's Sailors Division, traveling all over Germany to inform people about what had happened.
Revolutionary Preparation in Berlin
This acted as a detonator on November 4, leading to widespread insurrection by November 5 in Rostock, November 6 in Bremen, and November 7 in Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, and other cities. The revolution spread throughout most of the country, except for Berlin.
In Berlin, the affair was very well prepared. An organization of "men of revolutionary confidence" controlled all the large factories. They aimed, much like Trotsky in October 1917, to ensure the neutralization or agreement of the soldiers before attempting a trial of strength. This was crucial because Berlin had many more soldiers, and the garrison was ten times stronger than in Leipzig, and they wanted to avoid a global conflict between workers and soldiers. Their project was quite well-prepared, as well-prepared as Petrograd, though it was clandestine, not public. They were well-prepared for penetrating and sounding out the barracks, and for extending their committee networks into the barracks.
The Acceleration: November 8-9
The revolution was supposed to take place on November 11. However, another "accident" occurred for the fourth time—a provocation from the right. The former editor-in-chief of the Vorwärts, who had been "stolen" by the right-wing social democratic leadership and later became the main political advisor to the revolutionary confidence men, was arrested on November 8.
On the night of November 8-9, the delegates in the factories decided to start a general strike the next morning, from four o'clock onwards. The factories quickly stopped, and the strike transformed into an armed insurrection almost without a fight. A huge procession of workers moved radially from the industrial suburbs to the city center. They systematically passed barracks; either soldiers left and joined them, or officers locked soldiers in the barracks out of fear. In such cases, the workers broke down the barracks gates and stormed them from the outside.
The Triumph: November 9
Some of Berlin's leading young revolutionary agitators were killed during this time, though not many people perished – only a few dozen deaths, even fewer than in Petrograd's revolution. In a city of 4 million, this was a practically resistance-free triumph of revolution. Unfortunately, among the few dead were some of the most intrepid young revolutionaries who would make serious mistakes in the coming days.
By one o'clock in the afternoon, the victory was secured, formally culminating in the storming of the Emperor's castle. The Emperor was far away, at army headquarters in Belgium, and the police headquarters had already been stormed around three to four o'clock in the afternoon. [Liebknecht] formally proclaimed the German Socialist Republic at the castle, just minutes after Philipp Scheidemann, a main right-wing Social Democrat leader, proclaimed the German Republic. This was a small, but significant, nuance. The empire collapsed [in a few hours]. A left-wing socialist was appointed head of Berlin's police and armed forces, meaning the Berlin garrison was under the leadership of people who were not only revolutionaries but who proclaimed the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Formally, political and armed power was in the hands of the German working class on the afternoon of November 9.
The Fatal Contradiction: Congress Resolution
This has been, from the technical point of view, from the institutional point of view, the beginning of the end which begins almost in the first hours of the revolution. The congress of workers' and soldiers' councils votes a resolution which, moreover, is only the reflection of reality. [The] resolution contains two points. First point: in military matters, all power is in the hands of the soldiers' councils. Second point: in matters of military discipline, the power of command remains in the hands of the normal command instances.
That is to say, all power is in the hands of soldiers' councils, [but the soldiers] must, as before, obey the orders of non-commissioned officers, officers and general officers. This is obviously grotesque, but it reflects perfectly this incapacity to understand that one cannot simply use, by putting on a cap in place of a top hat, the bourgeois apparatus as it existed before, but that one must destroy this apparatus and replace it with another centralized apparatus which functions as a true state apparatus at the national level.
Liebknecht's Tactical Disaster
This has been, from the technical point of view, from the institutional point of view, the beginning of the end which begins almost in the first hours of the Revolution. You will read in the text one of the decisive episodes of the month of November 1918. There is an assembly of workers' councils. Liebknecht arrives. He is welcomed by a thunder of applause.
If, at the beginning of the meeting, it had been necessary to propose a motion: "we designate comrade Liebknecht as president of the German Socialist Republic as head of the government of the German Socialist Republic," the motion would have been voted almost unanimously. He begins to pronounce a speech which is a long denunciation of the crimes of social democracy from [19]14 to [19]18.
The Fatal Political Transformation
The more he speaks, the more he becomes a minority. When he has finished speaking, it's already lost. The Social Democrats already have the majority in the hall. They didn't even have to open their mouths. And [the fact is that] all these crimes committed by the Social Democrats, all these tricks that I indicated, all these maneuvers that I indicated, that is to say operations with the class enemy, informing [on revolutionaries], are crimes which are perceived and understood, I would say even more, known only by an infinitesimal minority, by those who supported [the opposition], not by the great mass.
The Problem of Revolutionary Literature and Mass Consciousness
When you want the great mass to know what was the revolutionary literature, its diffusion during the war—a few tens of thousands of copies in a country of 70 million inhabitants who knew all these things there. And does one believe that it suffices to make a speech of denunciation to make millions of people change their political allegiance?
Obviously not. It was necessary to understand that it was necessary to begin a political battle to detach the working class from social democracy, not simply a flamboyant and inflamed denunciation.
The Understandable Revolutionary Response
And in this sense, the manner in which the revolutionaries took [this defeat], I do not reproach them for it. We know all that. We repeated the same thing with the Stalinists. It's understandable. When one has assassinated Trotsky, when one has, after the Moscow trials, when one has assassinated Trotsky, when obviously a feeling of indignation, of hatred against Stalinism, developed in the revolutionary avant-garde, when there were worse crimes against the Spanish revolution, crimes against the [Hungarian and Italian revolutions].
We have all learned to detest, to hate the [Stalinist] bureaucracy. It was just [right], as it was just [right to hate] the reformist bureaucracy at that time. But one thing [is] that we detest them and we hate them, and another thing is the manner in which it is necessary to transfer this understanding to hundreds of thousands of communist workers.
The Inadequacy of Pure Denunciation
And for that, obviously, denunciation, the simple recounting of events, the repetition of historical crimes, that absolutely does not suffice. That touches a minority. Something entirely different is needed to make this consciousness penetrate into a broader layer. And that is obviously an infinitely more difficult task which is a task of strategy and political tactics that one learns little by little through experience, that one does not obtain just like that, and that the German communists did not [master] in [19]18 any more than we had it in [19]33, [19]36 or in [19]44.
Ebert's Triple Transformation
[In the space of twelve hours], Ebert undergoes a triple transformation: Imperial Chancellor → Republican Chancellor → People's Commissar. This remarkable adaptability shows the dangerous flexibility of the reformist leadership in revolutionary situations.
PART IV: Social Democratic Counter-Revolutionary Tactics (1918-1919)
From Ernest Mandel's 1976 lecture on the German Revolution
The Revolutionary Response Problem
But the worst of the tricks, and against which the revolutionaries are most disarmed, is the unity trick. The first speech that the reformists make: "We are all brothers, we have made a victorious revolution. Look how magnificent it is—there have been fewer deaths than on a Sunday, there are [more] deaths by accident on the road. [We have made] a magnificent victorious peaceful revolution.
We are going to show the world that one can construct a new society without bloodshed. Let us all remain united, let us all remain united." [This] will have an immense echo among the workers, even the most advanced workers. And the revolutionaries who begin to oppose this current, by taking it head-on [as they did]—the comrade [Liebknecht] was much more clever on this subject, but [Rosa Luxemburg] herself, she used [extraordinary formulas].
Rosa's Tactical Limitations
I will return to this subject in an instant. Despite her much finer tactical sense, she too had insults on her lips, foam at her mouth. One could not avoid seeing it. Faced with the crimes of the Social Democrats, but it was necessary to understand how to articulate it in a manner comprehensible to the masses.
When revolutionaries respond to the unity discourse by saying: "No, we are not all brothers. There are traitors among us. Half the people here present are scoundrels and assassins," the cleavage was made in a manner inevitably unfavorable for the revolutionaries who risked being isolated, who got themselves isolated not only by the maneuver of the adversary, but by their own childishness, their own incapacity to respond by maneuver to maneuver, by tactic to tactic, [instead] opposing principles to tactics.
The Impossibility of Principled Victory
One cannot triumph with that. By proclaiming general and abstract principles against maneuvers of extremely clever adversaries. So, the Social Democrats, apart from the unity trick, they used three or four other tricks that must be understood.
First Trick: Foreign Intervention Blackmail
One is the blackmail of foreign intervention. That is a particularly perfidious trick on their part. There are people who had fought for four years alongside their own imperialism, saying [they wanted] to hang imperialists from the opposing camp, and who suddenly at the moment of revolution say: "We cannot survive without the aid of England and America.
If we make revolution here, Wilson is going to cut off our food supplies. We will have nothing more to eat. We will have no more raw materials. It is absolutely necessary to reestablish order, reestablish order immediately. If we do not reestablish order, there will not be a single train of food that will arrive in Germany and the entire German people will die of hunger. We will see the day after tomorrow."
When [during] the Spanish revolution, arguments of exactly the same kind were used, that is to say, terrorize the workers with foreign intervention and present themselves as the only valid interlocutors of the foreign powers who would never discuss with the revolution, but who, with Social Democrats and with a democratic republic and with a council—with a constituent assembly—would begin to discuss.
Second Trick: Economic Chaos Arguments
Another argument is the argument of internal economic chaos—this is not a classic argument of social democracy which has been taken up by the centrists. On this point, there was [a] fusion, [a] bloc, between the Independents—except the extreme left of the Independents who will join the Communist Party afterward—and the Social Democrats: "It is necessary to socialize, agreed. But it is a serious, organized enterprise.
One does not socialize like that. One does not first destroy an industrial apparatus in order to afterward reconstruct our own. That is to court catastrophe. It is necessary to keep the industrial apparatus intact. Workers, you are now in power. Do not strike against yourselves.
What is this wave of strikes? You are starving yourselves. These factories already belong to you. So get back to work. You are working for your own account now, etc., etc." This argument carried profound weight, and it carried all the more weight because, effectively, from the revolutionary side, nothing valid was opposed to it.
The Revolutionary Counter-Argument Problem
That is to say, against the argument of bourgeois centralization, [there should have been] the argument of worker centralization. A socialist plan is needed immediately—for that, a workers' government. Well, that is an argument that carries in a debate. If one responds simply to this argument: "Good, you let the spontaneity of the people work.
The workers have been oppressed for so long. Now they must be free to do what they want." That is an argument which is not very convincing, because then the Social Democrats appeared to be the people of good sense who say: "Yes, yes, the workers want to be free, but they also want to eat.
They also want to heat themselves. We are in the middle of winter. With speeches, are you going to bring them food? Are you going to bring them coal, etc., etc.?" There, obviously, the argumentation carried weight. The Social Democrats appeared like practical people, like realistic people, like organizing people, against the speechmakers, the utopians, the dreamers, the revolutionary romantics.
Third Trick: The Socialization Deception Campaign
One of the most scandalous, most ignoble maneuvers is the vote by the congress of [workers' and] soldiers' councils unanimously, on the proposal of [Däumig], who is the rapporteur and, if you will, the representative of the centrist right of the Independent Socialists. But the Social Democrats pretend to oppose [it] first, then rally [to it], and the trick is voted with unanimity and enthusiasm.
"We give a mandate to the Council of People's Commissars to begin immediately the socialization of industry."
And then Germany is covered with Social Democratic posters, who moreover conduct their electoral campaign for the elections of the constituent assembly essentially with this slogan: "Socialization is on the march. The gains of the revolution are there. We have the democratization of power, so we will have the majority. We begin to take the factories, especially the coal mines, the heavy industry—this is what we begin to socialize with. So the revolution is finished, political power is acquired, economic power is acquired, everything is settled."
This was total deception. Nothing was done to socialize anything whatsoever. In the constituent assembly, there was a bourgeois majority. No decree on socialization was voted. Even the decrees on workers' control by the workers' councils were not voted. It was the restoration, in the space of a few weeks, of pure and simple capitalist power.
So this was an operation of deception. As I said earlier, it did not pass like a letter in the mail. The Social Democrats paid a very heavy price. On the political question, there was confusion, and there they did not pay a very heavy price. On the economic question, there was less confusion. When one spoke to the miners about the socialization of the mines, they understood what it was about. That was not a reverie.
Workers' Eventual Realization and the Political Price
And when they realized after a few weeks that the bosses were back in place and that they were working again for the account of private bosses, then there was tremendous indignation. And there, social democracy paid a very, very heavy price. As I said earlier, they actually lost very rapidly, as a result of this, the majority in the trade unions, to the benefit of the centrists, to the benefit of the Independent Socialist Party. But in the decisive weeks, the deception worked.
Historical Documentation of Their Bad Faith
Why do I say that the Social Democrats were at that time really scoundrels and traitors in the literal sense? Because all these maneuvers, all these operations, these were operations of bad faith. When they shouted "socialization is on the march," they did not believe it for a single instant. When they shouted "long live the German socialist revolution," they did not believe it for a single instant.
That is not a subjective affirmation that I am making. We know today through published historical documents that at the same moment when they were making these oaths, they were establishing a permanent telegraph line with the general headquarters of the army, that there was not a single decision that was taken during this period without consulting beforehand with the chiefs of the counter-revolution, that all their calculations were concentrated on the fact of bringing to Berlin counter-revolutionary troops to disarm the workers.
Noske's "Bloody Dog" Declaration
That is to say, in this sense, the word "traitor" has all its significance. These are people who deceive the workers to realize a deliberate counter-revolutionary plan. In November, December, January [19]18-[19]19, that exists. There is a counter-revolutionary plan, quite precise. [We] know the famous formula. There are precise testimonies. Even people understand it, they themselves understand it, even like that.
[Noske] used the famous formula: "In a situation like that of the disorder that there is in Germany, there is at least one who is going to have the courage to play the role of the bloody dog. Well, it will be me who will be the bloody dog." That, he did not say at the congress of workers' councils. Obviously, if he had said that, he would have been chased out.
He would not have been able to play the role of bloody dog. He said it in internal meetings of his party, and he lied to the workers. He said the contrary to the workers of what he thought, of what he was preparing. In this sense, the term betrayal is obviously quite applicable.
The Historical Context of Understanding
After the January massacres, after the assassination of Rosa and Karl, after the practically uninterrupted assassinations of revolutionary militants throughout the year 1919, after the massacre of the workers of central Germany in March 1921, the affair is placed in a historical context. The workers begin to understand that in an epoch of revolution and counter-revolution, one cannot apply the criteria of a peaceful epoch.
The Balance of Forces Problem
If one wants to honestly appreciate the balance of forces on the eve of the January insurrection, [one must say that] the extreme left—thus it is above all the extreme left of the Independent Socialist Party, because Spartacus [was] quite secondary—the extreme left had the support [of] half a million [people] in Berlin. [This] was shown by demonstrations.
Obviously, of these half million, there are only 10,000 who are armed, 15,000 who are armed, who have facing them a concentrated counter-revolutionary force of tens of thousands of trained officers and soldiers. It is an unequal combat, already condemned to defeat. But even if it were not condemned [to defeat] in Berlin, manifestly, it was [putting] the avant-garde of the German working class of Berlin in an impossible situation with the rest of the working class.
The Tactical Superiority of the Reformists
The dangerous flexibility of the reformists, how they behave in the face of a revolutionary upsurge in a much more intelligent way than is generally believed, shows the enormous tactical problems facing revolutionary forces when confronted with experienced counter-revolutionary leadership that understands the art of political maneuver.
PART V: Armed Struggle and Disarmament (1918-1919)
From Ernest Mandel's 1976 lecture on the German Revolution
The Decisive Question: "A Group of Armed Men"
While this is the purely formal aspect, it's important to understand that it wasn't decisive. The state is, in the final analysis, a group of armed men, which is even clearer in revolutionary situations than in calm ones. The decision would be made on the ground, not in resolutions. On November 9, 1918, revolutionary soldiers and workers held the weapons in Berlin. The counter-revolution triumphed through two classic means: first, the formation of a counter-revolutionary armed force, and then a trial of strength between this force and the revolutionary force, leading to the disarmament of the workers. This exact process would be seen in Spain. This classic process in proletarian revolutions, even in the 1848 French Revolution and the Paris Commune, fundamentally revolves around the arming and disarming of the lower classes.
The Eight-Week Period of Bourgeois Fear
There was a series of stages in the disarmament of the workers, which was not easy. For four to eight weeks, the bourgeoisie, not just in Germany but in Europe, was afraid.
Detailed Breakdown: 500,000 Berlin Supporters but Only 10,000-15,000 Armed
If one wants to honestly appreciate the balance of forces on the eve of the January insurrection, [one must say that] the extreme left—thus it is above all the extreme left of the Independent Socialist Party, because Spartacus [was] quite secondary—the extreme left had the support [of] half a million [people] in Berlin. [This] was shown by demonstrations.
Obviously, of these half million, there are only 10,000 who are armed, 15,000 who are armed, who have facing them a concentrated counter-revolutionary force of tens of thousands of trained officers and soldiers. It is an unequal combat, already condemned to defeat. But even if it were not condemned [to defeat] in Berlin, manifestly, it was [putting] the avant-garde of the German working class of Berlin in an impossible situation with the rest of the working class.
Why Revolutionary Parties Can't Easily Escape Pressure for Premature Action
This first setback for the counter-revolution led to considerable radicalization, which, paradoxically, was dangerous because it misled the left about the real balance of power. In reaction to this failed coup, the German revolution witnessed its largest demonstration ever, with over half a million workers and soldiers in Berlin. The Social Democrats could not even speak; they were completely liquidated.
The only ones who could speak were the extreme left-wing speakers, who were cheered and cheered, creating a false image for the revolutionaries in Berlin regarding the national balance of power. They had the impression that the entire Berlin proletariat was ready to fight militarily on their side, when in reality, only a small minority was truly prepared for a showdown, though the majority supported them out of sympathy. This encouraged the showdown in January.
The Tactical Dilemma of the Revolutionary Vanguard
The dangerous flexibility of the reformists, how they behave in the face of a revolutionary upsurge in a much more intelligent way than is generally believed, shows the enormous tactical problems facing revolutionary forces when confronted with experienced counter-revolutionary leadership that understands the art of political maneuver.
The show of force began, rather foolishly, with the revolutionaries taking the offensive by occupying a few newspapers, particularly the Vorwärts, the organ of social democracy. They were besieged in these newspapers by counter-revolutionary forces and driven out with all sorts of deceptions. They were offered an armistice, went out, and were massacred.
They were offered an armistice, went out, and were massacred. Repression was organized on a massive scale. The Left was crushed, Rosa Luxemburg and [Karl Liebknecht] were assassinated a few days later, and the Spartacists and the Left were hunted down. This was the "bloodbath," a general event.
The Victory of Institutionalized Counter-Revolution
This marked the victory of the institutionalized counter-revolution, with the political liquidation of the organs of dual power and the reconstitution of a bourgeois state. Central power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The Social Democrats, who still hoped to have a majority in the constituent assembly at the congress of workers' and soldiers' councils, did not even achieve a bourgeois majority. From an institutional point of view, things were back to normal.
The Formation of Counter-Revolutionary Armed Forces
The counter-revolution's weaponry involved the Social Democrats gathering a force of Freikorps, reactionary officer-soldiers from the most backward regions of the country, around Berlin. Under the leadership of General Fromm, these forces were allowed to enter Berlin in small groups, building up a counter-revolutionary strike force that crushed the revolution in its second, most spectacular and confusing, phase.
The Armed Character of Workers' Councils Throughout Germany
These organs, these workers' councils federated locally, generally have an armed wing. There are in most cities where these workers' councils subsist, armed detachments either stemming from the decomposition of the army and thus from parts of the garrison that went over to the side of the people in November 1918 and who maintained their arms and who are in the process of demobilization, but who resist their demobilization a bit because they consider themselves as the armed wing of the workers' councils and who have seen what happened in Berlin, who have seen the Berlin massacre [and ask] who will defend them. The councils [understand] the possibility of such a massacre, [these armed detachments are] either composed of armed workers who armed themselves during the November revolution and who do not want to give up their arms.
The Law of Disarmament and Resistance
Then there was repeated in a whole series of parts of Germany and in a whole series of German cities the classic scenario that we already saw in January 1919 in Berlin and that we saw in the Paris Commune, that is to say the decisive test for the counter-revolution is the disarmament of workers, it is the disarmament of the revolution, and the revolution does not easily let itself be disarmed—this is the law of every revolution.
Once workers have arms in [their] hands, to snatch them away is not easy and it provokes 99 times out of 100 suspicion or resistance. The resistance may be ineffective, especially during a retreat, and in 1919, we are in conjunctural retreat concerning relations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but there is resistance.
The Systematic Disarmament Process
[Throughout 1919], this systematic disarmament process was carried out across Germany. The bourgeoisie understood that as long as workers retained arms, the revolution could reignite. The Freikorps units, composed of the most reactionary elements, were specifically designed for this task—they had no loyalty to the working class and could be counted on to use maximum violence.
The Formation of the Communist Party Under Fire
In parallel, there was the process of forming the Communist Party, a reaction of revolutionaries to the left of the centrist independent social democracy. The Communist Party was formed on December 30 or January 1, 1919, just on the eve of the crushed January insurrection. Its constitution was based on an equivocation, as the true political leader of this party, Rosa Luxemburg's group (the old left democrats), was against the party's foundation at that time, especially with the existing forces, which it believed were ultra-left in their majority.
Rosa's Assassination and Its Consequences
Rosa Luxemburg was also drawn into the January insurgency, which led to disastrous political consequences. After the assassination of the party's main leaders, an ultra-left group dominated the party throughout the first half of 1919, turning it into a small, impotent sect. It refused to participate in elections and unions, becoming totally marginalized. The entire radicalization of the working class at this time went through the independent socialist party, which grew from 100,000 to 300,000 members, and not through the Communist Party. The Communist Party had only about 12,000 or 13,000 members, with a very limited geographical presence in a few large cities. Many large cities had fewer Communist Party members than they have today.
The Strategic Lesson: Only a Series of Defeats
Contrary to what revolutionaries and later historiography (including ultra-left and Stalinist) believed, January 1919 was only one of a series of tactical, short-term, and temporary defeats. The first phase of the political counter-revolution ran from November, the day the revolution broke out, to the beginning of the 1920s. It was a coalition of all the country's political forces against the far left. A new cleavage emerged, as the counter-revolution aimed to wipe out not only the far left and the centrists but also the moderate Social Democrats. Political life saw the right and far right opposing the entire labor movement and the social democratic government and president of the republic.
The Response: Lightning General Strike
The response was a lightning general strike, the most successful seen in Europe. Immediately, everything stopped: all factories, all public services, water, electricity, gas, public transport, and banks across the country. This was an extraordinarily spectacular general strike based on a total unity of action of the [entire labor] movement. Here, the role of social democracy's bankruptcy became evident, even to a more moderate layer of workers, leading a new sector to fall into the camp of centrism outside the reformist camp. When people saw that the Social Democrats had collaborated against revolutionaries for two years, and now against revolutionaries who were being "cut [at] the throat," they had to break out.
The Eternal Pattern of Revolution and Counter-Revolution
The fundamental lesson is that in every proletarian revolution, the question of arms becomes decisive. The bourgeoisie may temporarily lose political control, but as long as they can form counter-revolutionary armed forces and systematically disarm the working class, they can reconquer power. This pattern would be repeated in Spain and represents the classic dynamic of revolutionary situations in Western countries.
We have added a section, "Mandel's Reading from Lenin's Complete Works", to this post. While some words are missing we think readers will benefit from this section.