From Betrayal to Revolution: Part 1 of Ernest Mandel on the German Revolution
First time in English
Part 1. The German Socialist Movement 1914-1918
Ernest Mandel’s lecture begins with the Social Democratic Party's (SPD) vote for war credits on August 4, 1914, contradicting all previous international resolutions. Internal opposition emerged first from the Vorwärts editorial team, led by moderate centrists who opposed the war. This marked the beginning of organized resistance within the German socialist movement.
Opposition crystallized with Karl Liebknecht becoming the first deputy to break party discipline in December 1914. By March 1915, 32 deputies voted against the budget, with some leaving the assembly. A letter signed by 1,000 party officials protested support for the imperialist war, showing the deepening split within German social democracy.
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The September 1915 Zimmerwald Conference strengthened international opposition to the war. The Spartacus group was founded on January 1, 1916, operating within the Independent Social Democratic Party. The first mass strike against the war occurred on June 28, 1916, involving 55,000 Berlin workers, demonstrating that opposition had moved from ideological to class struggle.
Part 1 concludes with Mandel outlining the "Revolutionary Shop Stewards" (Revolutionäre Obleute), which emerged as the backbone of revolutionary preparation, particularly among metalworkers in Berlin. They systematically prepared for revolution, conquering majority support in the metalworkers' union. The April 1917 strike involved 200,000-300,000 workers, marking the first large-scale political strike against imperialist war globally.]
The August 4, 1914 Betrayal and Early Opposition
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... No one votes against because they also don't vote against the war credits vote. Everyone accepts the discipline.
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. The first public reaction that crystallised 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. Two deputies break discipline in the plenum: Liebknecht and [Rühle]. Thirty deputies leave the hall before the vote.
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.
Growing Parliamentary Opposition
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.
I will give you an idea of the extent of this story in a few moments, but what is going to happen now is this: 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, 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. 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 Zimmerwald Conference and Spartacus Formation
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, a name that is 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.
The first organisational task of these comrades—the project they had before their eyes, which was less political than a project of mass organisation 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.
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.
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 radicalises the metalworkers' movement and raises the question of an immediate strike for the liberation of their leaders.
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 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. 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 Revolutionary Shop Stewards and Mass Organization
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.
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-organisation of the working class, rather than the question of the exercise of political power. That comes after, but the self-organisation of the working class against the bureaucratic leadership blankets that crush the initiative of the masses.
They take up this idea, generalise it, and present themselves as those who are organising a Soviet movement, a council movement in the enterprises, which is, moreover, going to happen. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This time, the repression is very violent. Unlike 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 - a leading Berlin metallurgist, when he speaks before several tens of thousands of strikers, is arrested immediately by the police. They put him on trial the same day for sedition, they condemn him to five years of hard labor.
This moreover hardens the strike once again - it's the third time that first with Liebknecht, with Richard Müller, and now with Dittmann - and this gives him, on the one hand negative, an enormous popularity that he will use in a rather counter-revolutionary sense in November and December.
The Independent Socialist Party now becomes a great mass party with a base that is in reality majority in the large factories of Berlin and with an ultra-rapid, ultra-rapid penetration inside most of the country's factories.
Fourthcoming: Part Two
Impact of the October Revolution and Brest-Litovsk
The October Revolution had a decisive impact on Germany. The idea of workers' councils took hold, and the peace question became agitational rather than just propaganda. Trotsky's conduct of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations exposed German imperialism to German workers, leading to massive strikes in January 1918 with 500,000-600,000 participants and transforming the entire German situation.
The Naval Mutiny and Revolution's Outbreak
The revolution began with a naval mutiny at Kiel in November 1918, when sailors refused to participate in a suicidal final battle. The mutiny spread to other ports, and revolutionary sailors traveled throughout Germany. The revolution reached Berlin on November 9, 1918, when massive worker demonstrations overwhelmed the capital with minimal resistance.
The Seizure and Loss of Power
On November 9, the revolution formally triumphed with workers and soldiers controlling most German cities. However, the Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in December voted to transfer power to a constituent assembly rather than maintaining council power. The Social Democrats maneuvered skillfully to regain control while appearing to support the revolution.