by Merilyn Moos
198. The committee membership were, from the Social Democratic majority, Ebert, Scheideman, Landsberg, and from the USP, Haase, Dittmann and Barth.
199. A butcher by trade, he had become a SPD MP in 1906.
200. Ebert had been one of the leading Social Democrats to support involvement in the First World War. In 1918, he become the first Chancellor of the new Republic and was responsible for sending in the Freikorps against the Sparticist uprising.
201. These included not just ‘the left, like Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Leviné, and Jogisches but also a former Deputy prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Christian Democrat Erzberger of the Foreign Secretary, Democrat Walther Rathenau, the pacifist Hans Paasche, and the Independent Socialist Kurt Eisner‘. Leviné was sufficiently important to Siegi and Lotte that Lotte many years after Siegi had died attended a lecture by Eugene Leviné, Leviné’s son, at the Ethical Society on 27th June 1993 (something she would have done for Siegi, not for herself). Its analysis chimes almost completely with Siegi’s, although it ends with the horror of his father’s being shot.
202. Morris, William: A Dream of John Ball (serialised 1886-7, book version1888, from John Ball’s sermon on Blackheath in 1381), kindly lent me by Ken Montague.
Appendix 1
Siegi Moos’s articles on the role of revolutionary theatre for Arbeiterbühne und Film, 1930-1931, edited by Weber, translated by Ian Birchall.
AGITPROP
Siegfried Moos
These lines are intended to encourage discussion. The ATBD [German Workers’ Theatre Federation] has made a major step forward. It has recognised by a massive majority that today there can only be one form of workers’ theatre: the theatre of struggle. To raise this theatre of struggle to its highest possible level, to rid it of all harmful dross, must be our next task.
The first target is the “happy ending” of every play. Just as bourgeois art usually ends with a kiss, so we end with the class enemies being thrown out by the powerful fists of the workers. The difference is that the bourgeoisie wants to have a pacifying effect, whereas we want to have a rousing effect. If we use our happy endings very sparingly over the course of time, we can have a rousing effect. But if the happy ending of chasing off and defeating becomes a habit, it will eventually lose its effectiveness, until it turns into its opposite, and has a pacifying effect on workers. They see their desire to defeat the capitalists accomplished on stage too often. But in the real world they feel too often that these capitalists are still exercising their rule. The events on the stage, which should be a piece of reality, become an empty game. It is better for our acting to leave the spectator with a feeling of dissatisfaction than one of complacency. How effective is the conclusion of the play by Die Nieter [The Riveters – a Hamburg agitprop troupe] God-Given Dependence, in which the capitalist lords it over the proletarian, calling out: “Look, he is already nearly asleep!” Here the spectator realises what a lot of work there is to be done by the workers who are already awakened.
Our acting serves the class struggle. What the class struggle demands from the working class at the present moment, we must put on stage and shape it so that the worker recognises what he has to do today in order to achieve his final goal, the overthrow of the capitalist social order and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. If we move into an acutely revolutionary situation, i.e. if armed struggle for the conquest of power is impending, then we shall show in our plays only and exclusively the victorious working class on the attack. And in this acutely revolutionary situation we shall not merely provoke applause, but assist in provoking struggle, assist in bringing about the moment when we can exchange the stage for a different arena of struggle. We don’t want applause, we want to be the dynamos of class struggle. So we have to ask ourselves: what are the tasks that the revolutionary worker has to fulfil today? We have to mobilise the working class against the raging of class justice, against witch-hunting of the Soviet Union, against the already existing and imminent bans on revolutionary organisations, against cultural reaction, against preparations for war, against the Young Plan, against wage cuts and sackings, against the existing order of society. We must win, by discussion, apathetic Social Democratic and Christian workers for class struggle and revolutionary organisation. We must fight the scum of the bourgeois press and promote the revolutionary press. We must defend ourselves against fascist murderers. We must ensure that positions of responsibility in the working class – works councils, shop stewards, trade-union officials – are filled by trustworthy revolutionaries. We must win the woman worker for active class struggle. Out of these tasks our happy ending is also produced: a Christian worker who is convinced by the facts that his ideology is distorted and his leaders are corrupt, tears up his old party membership card and joins up with the revolutionary workers. - A worker, who is signing up subscribers to the revolutionary press, the visibly increasing circulation of this press and the decline of its opponents. – A victorious defence against a surprise attack by the fascists through workers’ fists. (Caution! The law for the defence of the Republic!) - How a revolutionary represents the interests of the employees to the management. - How mass action prevents wage cuts and sackings. - How a working woman becomes class conscious: These are examples of real happy endings.
You know what I mean. The working man and woman who attended must not go home and say: “That was wonderful! What a splendid theatre group!” They have to become active fighters in our ranks. They have to carry on agitating for the things we have agitated for on stage. They have to advance through us in their class consciousness. We don’t want the sort of audience which takes pleasure in our acting as it would take pleasure in a good gymnast or a bad singer. The pleasure, applause, recognition that we arouse must only be by-products of our primary goal: agitation. Our agitation shall and must be lively, a fresh breeze must blow from our boards, but our impact must derive as much as possible from agitational content and as little as possible from theatrical stunts. Agitating must not be pushed out or stifled by entertainment. If we have an audience of workers, who have already recognised the role of the press, the church and Social Democracy, and we put on stage the representatives of the church, press and Social Democracy as if they were imbeciles, lackeys of capitalism, clowns and whores, then we have produced popular entertainment and not agitation. If our audience consisted of a hundred per cent revolutionaries, we could afford to do that. But it consists mostly of people who are just on the way to us, who are beginning to doubt their previous way of looking at things. We have to win these people. We shall not win them, we shall not convince them with clowning; mostly we shall repel them. A good play about the press would have to show, in caricatural form, what the bourgeois press does and what it doesn’t do, in order to expose its tendency to stupefy. It would have to investigate the causes of the wide circulation of the bourgeois press, such as tradition, the placing of advertisements, novels, sensations, refer to its antagonism to the working class and to the Soviet Union; and then prove that only the revolutionary press represents the interests of the workers. - We must show in our plays how and why the leaders and upper layers of the [Catholic] Centre Party, of the SPD and of the Nazis have interests that are different from those of the mass of the workers. We must put on stage the facts about their hostility to workers in workplaces and in parliament. But we have a superfluity of such facts. So it is the task of the revolutionary to tear through the tissue of lies produced by capitalism, and to bring the truth about things to the masses.
How easy we make for ourselves, for example, plays against religion. How many crimes the church has committed over the years! But Marx and Lenin have taught us that the origin of religion is of an economic nature. Lenin said: “We are unconditionally opposed to the slightest offence to the religious conviction of workers who have still retained their belief in God.” But in our plays the priest is a semi-idiotic clown, who may well be able to offend religious feelings, but is not able to recognise how strong and dan
gerous the church is, to recognise that it is one of the most harmful enemies of the working class. The church and war, the church and exploitation (see for example Bebel’s speeches, published by the Neuer Deutscher Verlag), the church and the Soviet Union, the church and justice. What a lot of material there is there! It is only about two years ago, that a fascist arms depot was discovered in the St Michael’s church in Munich. In Germany there is a man of the Centre Party, Brüning, who is a relentless enemy of the working class, etc.
What I want to say is that our opponents are not clowns but enemies. Enemies! And against enemies we need sharp weapons, not toys. Workers’ theatre is theatre of struggle. Our troupes must be troupes of struggle, our words must be arrows and the laughter of our audience must be bitter as gall. That is agitprop.
Arbeiterbühne und Film, No 6, June 1930.
MARCH – THE POLITICAL CONTEXT AND THE SITUATION IN THE ATBD [German Workers’ Theatre Federation]
Siegfried Moos
A crowd of rioters raised mutinous and impudent demands …. Since their furious advance led to fears that they had evil intentions, the square had to be cleared by mounted police riding in step with sheathed weapons; two infantry rifles went off accidentally. A rabble of miscreants, mainly consisting of foreigners, filled the inflamed minds with thoughts of revenge, and thus became the fearsome instigators of bloodshed. The troops first used their weapons when obliged to do so by several shots.
A familiar text! “Rioters”, “mutinous demands”, “rabble” “foreigners”, “instigators of bloodshed”. Come on! This text is a bit dusty. A proclamation by His Majesty, King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia “to my dear inhabitants of Berlin” on 18 March 1848, when two shots “which went off accidentally” and injured nobody led to 200 barricades springing up from the pavements. The March Days.
Friedrich Wilhelm has been rotting for quite a long time. Kings and emperors came and went. One century died and another was born. The monarchy passed away and the republic came into existence, but the “rioters, mutineers and instigators of bloodshed” remained. Herr Grzesinski, Herr Severing! You can be proud! Your wise ideas have blue blood in their veins!
The King’s speech pleasantly surprised us. Praise for the Constitution and peaceful progress is a statesmanlike thought of the first order…. We have long stood on the principle indicated by the King and we continue to resist all endeavours that are unconstitutional and against the state…. All those who conspire against the foundations of the state must be put into confinement.
Now this is not another text from 1848, but is taken from the central organ of the Bulgarian Social Democracy, Narod, of December 1930, where the leader of the Social Democracy, Pastuchow, is celebrating Tsar Boris of Bulgaria, the ruler over the land of white terror.
Herr Grzesinski, Herr Severing, your comrades! You can also learn more from your comrade MacDonald, an English gentleman and British Prime Minister. You should be aware that the revolution of the Indian people against its British oppressors has been drowned in blood by the bombs, tanks and machine guns of the British “Labour” government, that “mutineers” were thrown into jail, strangled and tortured. Isn’t that so? Perhaps it might interest you that the government of your comrade MacDonald has issued annually the appropriate “Honours Lists” on the birthday of His Majesty the King and Emperor and at New Year. Comrade MacDonald understands the need for honours. The police chief of Bombay, the police chief of Punjab, who have hundreds of human lives on their consciences, were elevated into the hereditary nobility. Altogether 82 members of the police forces were honoured for their heroic deeds. But that was not enough men deserving honours. 60,000 political prisoners are languishing in Indian jails. Comrade MacDonald did not forget them. Comrade MacDonald understands the need for honours. The prison governors of Sylhet and Visapur, prison officials in Bombay, Bihar and Orissa were singled out for honours. The chief judge in Bombay was elevated to the nobility. And so that God also should distribute his blessings, archbishops and missionaries received the Kaisar-i-Hind medal for “public service”. Herr Grzesinski, Herr Severing, you’re out of luck. If you had lived in the British Empire, you would already have been elevated to the hereditary nobility. You’re out of luck. But perhaps you can take things even further in Germany. Five million unemployed, three million unemployed, 2.6 million impoverished agricultural workers, that’s ten and a half million with their families condemned to hunger and death by starvation, so there’s plenty of work for rubber truncheons and “tougher weapons”.
Every day in Germany 18,000 workers lose their jobs, 3000 become ineligible for unemployment relief, 45 people are killed by rationalisation, 20 people are driven to suicide.
Every day Herr Krupp earns 43 thousand marks. The People’s Republic.
In the year 1930, 69 workers were murdered by the police and fascists, 5200 injured, 1400 imprisoned. In January 1931, in one month, 19 workers were murdered by the police and by fascists. The road to socialism. The ordinary mortal is taxed on every last cup of coffee. In one year, through flight of capital, capital robbed the revenue of twelve to fourteen thousand million marks. National sentiment. In the last two years national insurance was cut by two-and-a-half thousand million, in the last year workers’ income was reduced by between six and seven-and-a-half thousand million. But Siemens is distributing fourteen per cent dividends just like before. And again wages are reduced and social expenditure is cut and again new taxes are raised for the masses. But not an iota is removed from the thousands of millions spent on armaments, not an iota from the hundreds of millions for the police. – That more is spent on the maintenance of a police dog than for an unemployed person merely testifies to the statesmanlike intelligence of our rulers. – Not an iota is cut from the hundreds of millions for the church. The church has earned it. Pius XI joins in with the loudest voice to incite against Soviet Russia, “for the persecuted Christians”. Pius XI, pope by divine providence, has already issued an encyclical about Christian marriage. Against the economic, political and sexual liberation of women. “He shall be your master.” Birth control and abortion are forbidden and shall be punished. Marriage shall be indissoluble. “It is the foundation of a healthy state.” Thus speaks the Holy Father. Everything clean and proper as in Hitler’s programme. With particular pleasure the Pope reports the “solemn and fortunate agreement in the spirit of Christ between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy.” In the spirit of Christ, when in Mussolini’s Italy out of five to six million rural workers 80 to 90 per cent have not found any work for months, when out of four-and-a-half million workers in industry, trade and commerce, one million are unemployed and two million on short time, when the wages and salaries of workers and employees are continually reduced, when the average hourly wage of an Italian worker does not even come to 1.50 lira ((0.30 marks), when during fascism’s eight-year rule real wages have fallen by 45 per cent. “Happily the Italian people have not yet got used to eating more than once a day.” (Mussolini on 13.12.30) Such are the blessings of fascism in the spirit of Christ.
And these people dare to incite against Soviet Russia. Reports are coming out of the Soviet Union which are already beginning to be unimaginable for us. Demand for two million new workers. In the capitalist world there is unemployment of around fifty million, in America alone ten million, and here is a country with the problem: where shall we find two million extra workers? Or else: the Five Year Plan in three years. The Five Year Plan, which was regarded as ridiculous chimera and fantasy because of its gigantic figures, has already been fulfilled to such an extent that even the target of “the Five Year Plan in four years” has become too small. What an inconceivable development of strength in the land of the proletarian dictatorship, in the land of “Bolshevism which destroys everything”. Capitalism is fully aware of the danger which threatens it through the triumph of the socialist system in the Soviet Union. Hence its feverish war preparations, hence the suppression of the revolutionary proletariat with the methods of fascis
m.
Our task is to arouse mass struggle against fascism. Ahead there are big strikes - in March the wage agreements for over six million workers expire. - Ahead are the elections for the works councils, and Youth Day. In the coming war youth is one of the most decisive factors. We have to win them over, we have to fight for every single young person, just as we fight for every Social Democratic worker. The works council elections will give us a new opportunity to measure the strength of the revolution against our opponents. In wide circles of the SPD is appearing an honest opposition to the politics of the SPD, a strong need for a united front of struggle against fascism. Never was the situation so favourable as today for forging such a front. It is up to us to use this situation with all our strength. It is not yet too late. All the Marches are not yet past.
II
Is the workers’ theatre armed for the coming tasks, are our weapons sharpened? Our art seeks to shape in concentrated form the connections, which are decisive for the class struggle, between our class and the world around it, and to activate it for the daily struggle, in which it will turn not only to intellect but also consciously to emotion. Would we for example have achieved this with a happy ending in which the workers drive off the capitalists? No. In such driving we have formed in concentrated manner the emotional relations of the workers to the class enemy and aimed at a corresponding effect. But the situation in which we acted was not yet ripe for driving off the capitalists, but rather the tasks ahead of us were the organisation of the masses, promotion of our press, propaganda for strikes, etc. Only when our plays are burningly topical in their impact do they carry out our tasks.
They will continue to carry them out only if they are thoroughly grounded. The fatter the belly, the bigger the cigar of the capitalist or the party boss, the easier it is to obtain an effect, but also the less substantial is the political value. Our task is to show the rôle of capitalism, the rôle of the bureaucracy in the class struggle, independently of the fatness of their bellies or the size of their cigars. The possibility of artistic effect is not reduced by the correctness and depth of the political content, but is only created through it.