Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  And Berlin sent an ultimatum to the workers’ government in Dresden (October 28). Berlin demanded the withdrawal of the Communist ministers whose attitude was “anti-constitutional.” The ultimatum expired the next day, Sunday, at noon. If Herr Zeigner resisted, “serious measures will be taken.”

  While this ultimatum was being drawn up in Berlin, the Reichswehr was shooting on a threatening but unarmed crowd at Freiberg (Saxony), killing twelve workers and wounding a hundred! The third murder of workers in red Germany in less than five days. With reference to the previous incident (October 24, Pirna, one dead!) the commander of the Reichswehr has had notices posted proclaiming that “the troops will not discuss nor hesitate to make their orders respected; they are not the police, they must act in all circumstances, they will act, with pitiless rigor…” As in wartime; as in enemy territory.

  Red Saxony is enemy territory. All the social democratic and trade union organizations in Saxony (SPD, ADGB, AfA163, League of Civil Servants’ Unions) have appealed to working-class Germany for assistance. “Saxony has been handed over to sixty thousand Reichswehr troops. At Pirna the brutality of the soldiers has been so repugnant that National German municipal councillors have associated themselves with the general protest. At Dresden they have arrested the police chiefs—social democrats—in the exercise of their functions…” For his part, Herr Gessler has officially denied that the Reichswehr entered Saxony to defend the country against a possible Bavarian aggression; it was simply a question of restoring order.

  The most outrageous part of all this is the attitude of the SPD ministers in the Reich government—Robert Schmidt, Sollmann, Radbruch. In the cabinet meeting, they voted for the ultimatum sent to Zeigner!—In the opinion of even moderate social democrats, this means suicide for the Great Coalition. “After that, they have to leave!” From all parts of the country indignant protests are reaching the SPD central leadership, which claims not to know what has being going on. It was traveling. It will discuss it… Vorwärts says Herr Stresemann and citizen Robert Schmidt were right; all the faults are on the side of the Saxon Communists who “weren’t able to take on the role of a governmental party” (!!!) Vorwärts can say what it will; its whole party understands that the social democratic ministers—so subservient in the face of von Kahr—have made themselves impossible: useless to the bourgeoisie, detestable to the proletariat and even to the republican element in central Germany.

  This is their second major squalid trick within a week: on October 24 the printers in Berlin threatened to suspend the printing of all bourgeois newspapers and banknotes if the Communist paper Die Rote Fahne was not given permission to reappear. For the newsagents’ windows are overrun with Hitler’s Völkischer Beobachter, Fridericus, Die Weisse Fahne (The White Flag) and the Deutsche Zeitung. But the whole Communist press has been stifled. In the face of this strike threat, presented by a trade union majority, despite all the urgings of the reformist officials, the government and the military command in Berlin have responded (October 26) by banning strikes in the capital!

  Whatever path we have taken, we are now at a turning point. The bourgeoisie is going onto the offensive. The Great Coalition has probably had its day. What next? After this there can only be a dictatorship, not a constitutional one this time, not constitutional at all. But which?

  It’s a trial of strength.

  Buchrucker and Thorell

  The trial of the fascists who, a few weeks ago, tried a surprise attack on the Küstrin fortress, began on October 22 at the Cottbus court, behind closed doors. The chief accused, retired commander Ernst Buchrucker (a former participant in the Kapp putsch, who distinguished himself at the time by shooting Cottbus workers) was sentenced to ten years in a fortress on a charge of high treason. With one exception, his twelve fellow accused were all sentenced to periods of less than two years imprisonment (October 26). The preliminary investigation had lasted several weeks.

  For the insurgent workers of Hamburg three days investigation was enough. As early as October 28 the court-martial at Hamburg pronounced its first death sentence. The condemned man is a young Communist worker age twenty-two, called Thorell, who fired at a policeman (without killing him), which earned him first of all six years in prison, then death on a charge of high treason. Thorell was so badly treated after his arrest that he lost an eye…

  The same court sentenced an unemployed man with no means of support whatsoever to ten months in jail for stealing a loaf.

  High treason for the worker Thorell: a firing squad, unless citizen Ebert exercises his presidential right of pardon (which is doubtful). And even if he is pardoned, the revolver shot of the classic “while trying to escape” still remains possible…

  Ministerial Marxism

  Herr Stresemann does not have the slightest concern about lightening the burden of his colleagues and collaborators, the SPD ministers. Tired of being reproached, by Herr von Kahr, for concessions to Marxism which he has never made, on October 24 he got the National-Liberale Korrespondenz, the official organ of his party, to publish a detailed response to the Bavarian dictator. Herr von Kahr will certainly not be convinced by it. But I’d give a lot to see the faces that the SPD ministers must have made while sampling this off-the-record prose.

  Is it Marxism, enquires Herr Stresemann’s paper, to repeal the last economic constraints, imposed by the state? As for the repeal of decrees dating from the time of demobilization at the end of the war concerning the protection of labor; the repeal of the tax on coal; the renunciation of parliamentary formalities and the enabling act giving exceptional powers; the founding of the new bank to issue Rentenmarks; the temporary suspension of the eight-hour day; the ending of export controls—is all that Marxism? Do not all these measures have as their aim the reconstruction of the capitalist economy?

  From our side we can add:

  And martial law directed exclusively against the working class? And the never-ending indulgence of Berlin towards the arrogant fascism of Munich? And the military occupation of Saxony? And finally the ultimatum of October 27 to the workers’ government in Dresden?—in a word the dictatorship of the generals? Is that Marxism? But why bother?

  More and more the social democrats in government seem, to the bourgeois parties for whom they are dishonoring themselves, to be inferior and contemptible allies, in dealing with whom anything is permissible…

  Besides, I think they are about to leave, driven out by an outburst of anger and disgust on the part of their own party…

  “Real value” paper and wages

  For some days everyone has been talking about paper money with “real value.” On Saturday, October 27, the first small denomination notes of the Reich gold loan have been put into circulation, while we await the Rentenmark. Municipalities, and even large industrial firms, are authorized to issue paper money with real value guaranteed by a deposit of securities from the gold loan… The problem is solved.

  Oh yes. Inflation, bankruptcy, the billion mark—it was all nothing, and now it’s all over; recently the most optimistic estimates set the total real value of all German paper money in circulation at 120, 150 million gold marks. We think this estimate is greatly exaggerated. And they’ve just put into circulation, on the very first day, ten million dollars worth of small denomination notes for the gold loan—a hundred million in paper money at real value. Be patient; in a few weeks we shall have a billion worth. That’s how easy it is to stave off national bankruptcy.

  Think about it for a moment. First of all, if it was that easy, why not do it earlier? Secondly, if the gold loan is covered, if it has been a success, why didn’t they say so? And finally, is a stable currency the main thing when you’re in the position that capitalist Germany has reached?

  It’s possible to find an answer to the last two questions. The gold loan has not been a success; it hasn’t given the state much; the individuals who contributed to it mainly got more worries: their complaints have filled the economic pages of the main newspapers. It
is far from having adequate backing; whenever its price has not been artificially supported, it fell below the dollar: by 15 percent on October 1 and 3, by 25 percent on October 10. The issuing and putting into circulation of the small denomination notes of the gold loan constitute both a return to inflation and a speculation on the confidence—which in any case is non-existent!—of the public. The gold loan is quoted at a rate noticeably lower that the true rate of the dollar (today, October 26: dollar at New York, 80 billion marks; gold loan at Berlin, 65 billion) which stock exchange stratagems have diminished by 30 to 40 percent on the Berlin Exchange (today, October 26: New York 80, Berlin 52.6) and already the big stores will accept it only at a rate which is 10 to 15 percent lower than the official rate.

  The Rentenmark will have no real value unless industry, commerce, agriculture and the banks want it to; and they will not want it unless it is in their interests, that is, if their economic and political plans triumph, which for the moment is very dubious. But even if we admit the possibility that tomorrow Germany will have paper money with real value, does it follow that the two million unemployed will get enough dole to live on? That the five million workers on short time will get enough to live on? That in general wages will meet the needs of workers? For it isn’t enough for a worker to get something other than counterfeit money every Saturday; his pay has to guarantee bread for every day of the week. The most real values, if they only permit him to live three days out of six, are not much use to him.

  A dole payment of two gold marks per day, to 1,500,000 unemployed, would cost Germany ninety million gold marks a month. No financial scheme can procure such a phenomenal sum. The unemployed will therefore carry on dying of hunger.

  Without sacrificing all its profits, which it will never agree to do, German industry cannot proceed to any increase in wages. Already the prices of its goods are higher than world market prices; its competitiveness has been abolished, and no longer being able to reduce salaries, it thinks only of lengthening the working day. Wages paid in “real values” are possible, if not probable (and hasn’t a start already been made?) The printing of paper marks continues. In any case, the payment of benefits and wages in banknotes that may possibly be worth something will not bring any significant improvement to the condition of German workers. Perhaps a little less at the mercy of daily speculation, they will nonetheless remain hungry!

  They are complementary

  To judge by appearances, the conflict between Berlin and Munich, Stresemann and von Kahr, seems irreconcilable. In reality, the conflict scarcely exists. Two years ago Herr Stresemann professed the opinions which today Herr von Kahr is vigorously proclaiming. As “republicans” they are birds of a feather, in the service of the same social class and are carrying out two different aspects of what is essentially the same policy, in two different contexts. They are not in conflict; they are complementary.

  For the last three months we have seen in Germany, every day more marked and more daring, the general offensive of reaction, that is to say, of large-scale industry and the big property owners, against the working classes. Initially reaction attempted to take dictatorial power by a coup; faced with the dangers of civil war, it hesitated, withdrew, allowed the re-establishment of a Great Coalition cabinet; then another road to power presented itself; it took that route and persevered methodically; the job is to achieve dictatorship without too sudden a shock, by making important gains each day in a form which could be described as legal.

  This is Stresemann’s aim in Berlin and von Kahr’s in Munich. Behind both of them there are the same sources of money. Each advance by Bavarian fascism allows the federal chancellor to display simultaneously his powerlessness to impose respect for democracy, the weakness of democracy and the political insignificance of the SPD. Each retreat by Stresemann encourages, stimulates and strengthens the reactionaries in Munich. The rulers in Berlin have as their obvious task to discredit the republican regime, to delude the proletariat for a little longer—just long enough to disarm it—in short, to prepare the way for a right wing dictatorship, for which the rulers in Munich are preparing an army and setting up a center of organization and influence, and to which they are giving great prestige.

  Is this game conscious or not? In the minds of the majority of right wing politicians, there can be no doubt that it is envisaged with the greatest lucidity. Only the SPD and the center parties are doing their best not to recognize it. And even for them it has become difficult.

  Fascist Bavaria has given the dictatorship to an anti-Semitic monarchist, has suppressed Communist organizations and press, bullied the social democrats, openly armed hundreds of thousands of reactionaries, confiscated part of the Reich’s gold reserves, repealed various Reich laws, broken with the “legal dictator” in Berlin, Herr Gessler, stripped the Reich of part of its army, and taken under its protection a general in revolt against his superiors and placed him at the head of its army. But, “in the differences which have emerged between Berlin and Munich, it would be very wrong to see any attack on the constitutional order of the Republic”; these are the very words of an off-the-record statement a few days ago.

  As for Saxony, it set up a workers’ government and formed workers hundreds for the defense of the republic… An impermissible attack on the constitution!

  And Germania (Catholic Center) remarks naïvely: “The Saxon government, which has responded to all the formal demands of the constitution, has been dismissed by the Reich government, which is not entitled to act thus by any paragraph of the constitution.”

  One more betrayal

  Let’s remember the facts. A press campaign—which was so dishonest that the (bourgeois) DDP denounced its odious nature in a telegram to Herr Stresemann—informed Germany that “Communist terror” was being established in Saxon. These were the “new Tartars.” General Müller clashed with Herr Zeigner. There were rumors that General Müller would be dismissed (Bavaria rebels against Berlin, the von Lossow incident). “Easing of the situation in Saxony.” Meanwhile, over fifty thousand Reichswehr troops invaded Saxony. The first murders of proletarians went unpunished. Left social democracy showed itself to be much less determined, less combative than had been believed on either side of the barricade. “Relaxation of tension with Bavaria”: Berlin accepted the accomplished fact. On Saturday, October 28,164 an ultimatum from Stresemann to Zeigner: the workers’ government must resign or the Communists must leave it within twenty-four hours. On October 29, the Zeigner cabinet refused to back down. On October 30, Dr. Heinze, the Reich commissioner for the “free state of Saxony” went to Dresden. Troops, led by a military band, occupied the ministries. Squads of infantrymen, with bayonets fixed to their guns, drove the workers’ ministers out of their offices. Zeigner left his office surrounded by loaded guns ready for firing. General Müller banned the Landtag from meeting. The workers’ government declared itself to be the only legal government; the ADGB and the unions of civil servants and white-collar workers, the SPD and the KPD issued calls for a three-day general strike in protest. The publication of these calls was banned.

  Was this the great class battle we have all been waiting for for months? October 30…

  The next day, Germany learned that a right wing socialist government (Fellisch) had been formed at Dresden. Social democrats had accepted, from the hands of Herr Heinze, the ministerial portfolios which had been brutally snatched from their party comrades. Bowing and scraping to the Man of Order, they entered the ministries, which were still occupied by troops. Smirking officers saluted them. The general strike no longer had any meaning. A strike for what? For whom? Socialists had regained power. Virtually nothing had happened, after all! Vorwärts explained that you really couldn’t leave the Communists in power in Saxony… Herr Stresemann was right. All the blame lay with the Communists.

  The right wing press exclaimed along with the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung: “At last!” The whole democratic press condemned the chancellor’s coup against red Saxony. For having critic
ized “Herr Stresemann’s putsch” too severely, the Berliner Volkszeitung (DDP) has been suspended.

  Only Vorwärts considered that there was no doubt as to the legality of the decisions of citizen Ebert and Herr Stresemann.

  Not that it approved them completely; on the contrary, it was very grieved. The SPD ministers explained that it was only under protest that they endorsed the measures against Saxony; moreover, if they didn’t walk out, they didn’t actually vote for them either… There is nothing so ambiguous, so disloyal, so pathetic, so confused as the explanations of the central leadership of the United Social Democratic Party.165 “Do not be so quick to judge us… We are going to consider… We shall explain to you… We shall act…” These men feel that reaction is playing with them, is dishonoring them. They have just stuck a dagger in the back of the German revolution, but the deed was done very clumsily: their whole party saw the criminal act and can see the depth of the wound…

  The bourgeoisie has just given this debased and apathetic social democracy the humiliation it deserves. The Berlin Deutsche Zeitung of October 30 declares: “Social democracy has been overpowered. It has bowed down right to the ground in the hope of avoiding the blow. According to all the rules of tactics, this is the moment for its enemies to strike. Now or never!” The more it degrades itself, the more its masters despise it. The more it retreats, the more it is in danger. It’s an object lesson.

  The threat against Thuringia