Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  At Berlin, the same day, the local congress of the SPD gave a majority to the “left” opposition.

  An immense danger is emerging in the Ruhr and Rhineland. Financial aid from the Reich to industry in the occupied territory stopped on October 20. The big industrialists have declared that they are unable to pay wages. Six hundred thousand workers, weary after six months suffering, will find themselves without bread. What will they do tomorrow?

  At Chemnitz (Saxony), a congress of all the workers’ organizations in Germany, including the organizations banned and dissolved by General Müller¸ met on Sunday (October 21) and decided to respond immediately to any Reichswehr action against red Saxony by a general strike. As I am finishing writing these reports, I am told that troops have opened fire in Dresden. If it is true, battle may be joined within a few hours. “Everything is at stake!” wrote Brandler on Saturday. It is certain that if the Bavarian reactionaries carry out a coup, the proletariat of central Germany will not be able to tolerate for another hour the unspeakable provocations of a general who is in a hurry to play the part of a Galliffet.

  Double standards

  Herr von Kahr has made the Seventh Division of the Reichswehr, quartered in Bavaria, take an oath of loyalty to Bavaria. He has forbidden the publication of appeals by the Reichswehr minister, Herr Gessler, and by General von Seeckt. He has suspended until further notice the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung (the bourgeois “General News”), which was guilty of having printed these official statements of the Berlin government. The Federal Council (Reichsrat)157 has been asked to “arbitrate” the conflict between Munich and Berlin. The impotence of the Reich could not be more complete.

  Herr von Kahr claims he wants to “defend German unity” against the “Marxist influences” affecting the Stresemann cabinet.

  Meanwhile impressive troop movements are taking place in Saxony. The Reichswehr from the most reactionary regions in Germany is concentrating its forces, fully equipped for war, in the industrial districts of red Saxony. General Felsch is operating in the Königsbrück-Bischofswerda-Dresden region; General von Ledebur around Leipzig; Colonel Faehrenbach in the Hof area. At Meissen (on October 22) troops, retaliating against a revolver shot fired from a house window, wounded several people. At Pirna, General Felsch ordered soldiers to open fire on demonstrators (one killed).

  Speaking in the Dresden Landtag, Herr Zeigner exposed the duplicity of the Great Coalition (October 23). The Berlin government had sent him a letter assuring him that the reinforcement of the Reichswehr in Saxony had as its primary object the protection of the state’s frontiers against possible aggression by the Bavarian fascists. But General Müller, the commander-in-chief of the troops, said he was authorized to “restore constitutional order in Saxony.” One provocation after another. After his anti-Communist manifesto last week and his second threatening letter to Herr Zeigner, he ordered a march past in front of the Dresden town hall by Mecklenburg infantry, a squadron of hussars, armoured vehicles, artillery, cyclists and sappers. These purely strategic maneuvers are harmonized with economic maneuvers which are perhaps even more worrying. The blockade of red Saxony is a fact. Industrialists are boycotting the workers’ government. The military command of East Prussia and Silesia had banned the export of potatoes to Saxony. This ban was lifted on October 20, but traders asked such a high price—in gold—for their potatoes that Saxony, with its low wages, could not afford them. Bavaria put a ban on sending dairy products to Saxony. Its ministry of food is carrying out a particularistic 158 policy. According to Heckert, Saxony today has 900,000 destitute out of 4,800,000 inhabitants. In the textile industry they are working two days a week. In the coalmines, they work between 24 and 32 hours in six days. At Brona (Leipzig) for the second week of September, miners got a wage of 700 million, while a season ticket on the regional railways cost them 500 million. Many have had to give up claiming their coal ration, because they can’t pay transport costs. The millers have no corn left. The management of the Reich granaries is asking a price for its cereals that is 41 percent higher than the stock exchange’s—a price nobody can pay… But for Russian corn, catastrophe would be imminent. So the situation in Saxony is more serious than ever.

  City without bread

  Berlin has no bread. Mobs, police, scuffles outside bakeries. On October 22 and 23 the police had to intervene four times to prevent looting. It didn’t always succeed. Groups of unemployed made their way without warning into a shop and said calmly: “Give us bread—or so much the worse for you!” They were allowed to take what they wanted. Elsewhere poor people turn up with their billions of marks, and, finding the shops empty, become enraged.

  It is said that there is no shortage of corn: this famine is simply the result of inflation and speculation. For the last six or seven days the dollar has doubled in value almost every day. On October 15 it was quoted at 3,600 million; on October 23 it was sold in Berlin for 70,000 million. The price of bread has risen in proportion. All those in the population who had the money hastened to stock up with bread before the increases of the coming days. The poor are left high and dry with no bread…

  The Great Coalition abolished ration cards for bread: that was one of citizen Hilferding’s reforms; the result was so visibly that the rich would grab all the bread that it constituted a major danger; hence the coupon has just been reintroduced (as from October 24).

  To resolve this situation, Herr Stresemann has given responsibility in the cabinet for food to Count Kanitz, an agrarian, a big landowner, who has just resigned from the DNVP. The SPD ministers have agreed to collaborate with this gentleman: but he has no intention of collaborating with them: as soon as he was appointed, he issued a manifesto (October 22) to farmers and patriots declaring that he was determined: “never to agree to measures which interfere with the interests of production.” These are the very words used by industrialists and landowners who refuse to pay taxes on property because they “interfere with the interests of production.”

  Berlin has no bread. The bourgeois parties and the SPD in power have appointed one of the great starvers of the people to look after food supplies for the country!

  Hunger and rioting everywhere

  The separatist movement in the Rhineland region seems to have collapsed pathetically. At Aachen, the great majority of the population showed themselves so hostile to the two thousand armed bourgeois who put up the green, white and red flag on the town hall, that the Belgian military command didn’t dare take them under its protection. The Rhineland Republic only lived for a few hours (October 22). By the way, where did the weapons come from to arm the shock battalions of the separatists?

  At Hamburg, on October 23,159 street fighting and intervention by the navy. The blood of the poor on the streets. Lead instead of bread. Court-martials. Tomorrow, perhaps, executions. Order. For the moment there are four killed and 108 wounded on the side of the rioters. The police have seven dead and about thirty wounded. Hamburg is governed by a coalition of bourgeois and socialists. The SPD have urged the workers not to follow the Communist call for a general strike. “Communist riot,” says the press. Of course this is a lie: our party rejects isolated, partial actions, easy to put down, which weaken and undermine revolutionary preparations. But doubtless the Hamburg Communists did fight on the barricades put up by unemployed, strikers and starving people who couldn’t wait any longer… These disturbances in Hamburg had a major significance. A whole section of the German proletariat is running out of patience. About six million men can no longer go on living—and they don’t want to let themselves die of hunger. We know what price is paid by militants of the workers’ parties who urge them not to fling themselves into premature actions. This active army of the German revolution wants to go into the firing line.

  Strikes in the port of Bremen (October 23), where the workers’ hundreds are occupying various public buildings. Food riots at Szczecin. The landowners in the area around this town are refusing paper money, and demanding that their potatoes be pai
d for in gold-based currency. Riot at Erfurt. The police open fire—one dead. Attempts at looting at Brunswick and Munich. Munich also is without bread (the same day).

  On the single day of October 24: disturbances at Brunswick, Frankfurt-am-Main, Cologne, Kiel, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Oppeln, while bloody battles continue in the streets of Hamburg.

  The Ruhr industrialists (Stinnes, Klöckner, Vögler) in their negotiations with the Franco-Belgian engineers’ commission are refusing to pay the arrears of the tax on coal. “It’s beyond their means.” They cannot even guarantee the payment of wages! There is a conflict: since the Franco-Belgian commission will not yield, work cannot resume in the mines and factories. German industrialists and French engineers are accusing each other “of full responsibility for possible complications…” Sickening hypocrisy. This clash of interests between German and Allied capitalists is causing unemployment for half a million workers whose hunger, despair, anger and blood ready to flow have become arguments for bargaining across the table of a boardroom…

  Inflation to cure inflation

  The value of the dollar doubles almost every day; all prices likewise. What is left for a worker, three days later, of the wages he collected on Saturday? His paper billions have automatically undergone three consecutive reductions by half. I know workers who, on October 19, got five billion for their week’s wages. Four days later it would no longer buy a loaf. All the groups who stay arguing in the streets until midnight come to the same conclusion: “It’s time to put an end to it!”

  The ADGB, the cumbersome machine of the reformist unions, has begun to move. It has demanded of the Great Coalition government—which the SPD entered months ago on condition that wages be stabilized—that wages be paid immediately in paper with a real value. Herr Stresemann “satisfied their demand” straightaway. An official statement to the press has announced that as of this week small denomination notes from the gold loan will be put in circulation. Eight million a day will be printed… moreover, the Rentenmark160 will be launched… What a lot of new paper in prospect. “Let us expect,” shrewdly writes the Berliner Börsenzeitung (the paper of the Berlin Stock Exchange), “a new inflation…” But where will its true value be?

  This is so true that even before its use as current money has been generalized, the gold loan haZs already fallen in value. This false German dollar was quoted in Berlin, on the evening of October 24, at sixty-three billion while the dollar—pure and simple!—was worth ninety-five billion! The gold loan has already lost nearly 30 percent of its face value.

  The gold loan has not produced results. Its failure is quite clear. Can you create real value by marking on a bit of colored paper that this is “the real one, the true one,” that it is worth gold?

  The bonds issued by the big firms will enable them to engage in profitable financial schemes; but their value will correspond to traders’ prices, which in turn are determined by the general level of inflation…

  There remains the Rentenmark, resulting from the combined plans of Herr Hilferding, a social democrat, and the monarchist landowner Helfferich. The Rentenmark has been issued by a new bank to be managed by a board of directors comprising representatives of finance, commerce, industry, agriculture, in short of the oligarchy which is battening on Germany and exploiting it. The value of the Rentenmark is guaranteed by a 4 percent mortgage on the goods of the said oligarchy; a mortgage, that is a convention, a piece of paper; the goods remain in their possession. As from April 1, 1924, property owners commit themselves to pay to the state 6 percent on the part of their goods that is not mortgaged; and this 6 percent must be reimbursed to them out of the bank’s profits. Quite a complex scheme from which it emerges that the oligarchy of property owners:acquires control over the Reich’s finances;

  issues paper money which, to put it bluntly, is guaranteed only by its word;

  will lend nothing tangible to the state before April 1, 1924.

  There is no example of currency being issued in this way since the memorable and sad experience of the territorial warrants of the Directory.161

  The creation of real values depends on two conditions—real backing, really at the disposal of the state; and the confidence of the community. The Reich’s treasury is empty. The wealthy classes do not give and do not want to give to the state. They have no confidence in it and they are afraid of the proletariat which may, soon, find itself the master of the state. The middle and lower classes no longer have any confidence in the word of the rich… No resources, no reserves, and no confidence. The government of capitalist Germany cannot relieve bankruptcy except by schemes which all more or less come down to reckless speculation on public credulity.

  The legal exchange rate has been re-established; in Berlin there is a ban on publishing rates of exchange from foreign stock exchanges…

  By the last week in October the revolutionary opportunity had gone by. On October 29 the Reichswehr overthrew the workers’ government in Saxony. Serge, writing in the public press of the Comintern, put the blame, with considerable justification, on the right and left of the SPD; the KPD’s self- criticism would come later.

  The failure of the left Social Democrats

  Correspondance internationale, November 2, 1923

  For a second time since the August general strike, the SPD has just saved the stakes of the German bourgeoisie. At the beginning of last week, a major proletarian offensive was possible, seemed on the point of being launched, indeed, I’m prepared to say it was inevitable. General von Lossow and Bavaria had gone into open rebellion against the Reich. A whole current of radical opinion was emerging in favor of a bloc of republican parties around red Saxony: the journalists Georg Bernhardt and von Gerlach supported this position. The Rhineland separatists acted; their initiative brought out the full extent of the danger to German unity posed by reactionary intrigues. Meanwhile the Reichswehr moved into red Saxony. There, anger and indignation were expressed energetically at the workers’ conference in Chemnitz.162 The left social democrats, in Berlin and Dresden, had committed themselves to refusing to accept any armed attack on Saxony. Food riots were stirring up crowds of unemployed outside every town hall in Germany.

  At this point, a general strike, coming up head-on against the bans of the military dictatorship, would have drawn in all the working masses and won the sympathy of all republican elements. It could have had clear slogans, fitting the aspirations of the majority of workers and of the middle classes:

  “Bread!” “An end to martial law!” “Peace for workers’ republican Saxony!” “Unity of the Reich!” “Disarm the Bavarian reactionaries!” “Workers’ government!”

  This mass movement did not take place.

  The KPD was ready. A large and vigorous minority of hungry workers were ready to fight if necessary. Rather than attacking bakeries, the unemployed of Germany would have very happily fought for a workers’ government. Democratic opinion, that of the middle classes, would have understood workers’ action at that moment. What element of inertia prevented it?

  Two things. The determination of the social democrats in the government to persevere with their treachery at all costs. And the indecisiveness of the left social democrats.

  The former, to tell the truth, is a counter-revolutionary factor. As for the latter, many of us do not as yet know the full extent of it. The left social democrats are only reluctant revolutionaries; they still all too often treat the likes of Ebert, Wels, Robert Schmidt and Sollmann, not as deserters who are infinitely dangerous to the working class, but simply as party comrades who happen to belong to a different tendency. But it’s not a question of tendencies! In disintegration, social democracy has preserved, within the framework of its formal unity, two hostile parties condemned to fight to the death every day. This party once again includes, side by side, Spartacists and Noske’s soldiers. But to become conscious of themselves, to become genuine revolutionaries, the former still have to shake off the influence of the traditions of the old social democracy,
the fetishism of unity, some remaining republican illusions. As for the latter, they have long been genuine counter-revolutionaries.

  The lost opportunity may recur, perhaps even very soon. But we should observe that the failure of the left social democrats, in the third week of October, has done the German bourgeoisie a service that is more or less equivalent to that rendered by the official SPD in August, when it joined the Great Coalition.

  In the last week, the positions of the German capitalists in the social war have in fact been significantly strengthened. Fifty thousand men of the Reichswehr have entered red Saxony. Though it is bluff and fraud at the beginning of a new financial tactic, the appearance of “real value” paper money will give some relief to the middle classes and to small traders. The conflict with Bavaria has become chronic and is returning to normal. The negotiations with the Reparations Commission finally seem about to begin… The time now seems right for a bourgeois offensive: we have just learned that it has taken place against red Saxony.

  Never yet have the power of class consciousness and the effective value of the revolutionary spirit been so clearly visible in Germany as today, where the rule of the bourgeoisie endures only thanks to the treachery of the leaders of the social democracy and thanks to the failure of the advanced masses in their party.

  The ultimatum to Zeigner

  The underhand comedy between Munich and Berlin is still going on. Von Kahr seemed to be reverting to a more favorable attitude towards Herr Stresemann; the Reichsrat, arbitrating the difference, gave its approval to Stresemann; von Kahr thanked Stresemann for his loyalty during the Palatinate incident; then suddenly, on October 25, von Kahr declared that he no longer wished to discuss with a Berlin government “under Marxist influence.” He called on Stresemann to resign. Berlin replied with a sharp note, holding over the head of the Munich dictator the “censure of the German people.” And…