Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  There is a precise, material danger, unfortunately worse than that which is facing the SPD, confronting the betrayed proletariat. Red Saxony is a demolished citadel. There remains Thuringia, on the road to Berlin, between Bavaria and the red capital of Germany. The Sozialistische Parlementarische Korrespondenz (Socialist Parliamentary Correspondence) has revealed what sort of a plot is being hatched against Thuringia, where there is still a workers’ government.

  The fascist organization Bavaria and Reich166 is watching the Thuringian frontier. At Coburg, Kronach and Bamberg illegal detachments were already gathering their forces on October 22. Hitler and Ehrhardt had their headquarters at Coburg. The fol-lowing illegal units were there: nine companies of Ehrhardt’s naval brigade, three companies of shock troops from the National Socialist party, three from the Oberland, a battery of four cannon, a train equipped with two radio transmitters and various groups from the Young German Order.

  The infantrymen wore helmets. The former Duke of Coburg-Gotha was present at the maneuvers. Cannon were seen at Fechheim (three), at Weissenturm (two) and at Burg (also two). A division similar to that occupying Coburg was concentrated at Kronach. At Bamberg, the Reichsflagge organization was deploying its forces; an area was reserved for artillery and machine guns. Aeroplanes could be seen bearing the fascist swastika. “These troops are paid in Austrian crowns and French francs.” (Vorwärts).

  They are threatening the industrial regions of central Germany. When General Müller and the SPD ministers in the Fellisch government have sufficiently demoralized and disarmed red Saxony, when Herr Stresemann has extracted from citizens Robert Schmidt, Sollmann and Radbruch all the possible low tricks that will benefit the bourgeoisie, then the gangs of Hitler and Ehrhardt, duly backed up by the Reichswehr, will take their turn on the stage.

  In the Social Democracy: The wave of nausea

  The Socialist President Ebert has had the workers’ government of Dresden dissolved. The Socialist leaders Wels and Dittmann have formed the Fellisch government at Dresden. The masses of the party, represented by their officials—who represent them badly!—are disgusted.

  In this respect the meeting of SPD office-holders in Berlin of October 31 was significant. A woman militant, Wurm, declared to applause from the entire hall that “if the Communists are wrong, they still want to serve the proletariat,” while others pretend to be mistaken in order to serve reaction. A delegate from Freiberg (Saxony) described the appalling massacre of October 27. The Reichswehr attacked unarmed crowds. It sent artillery into action against the unemployed. Armoured cars, patrolling through quiet streets, responded to the throwing of a stone by machine-gun fire that left sixteen people dead. Fire was opened on workers’ stretcher-bearers who were picking up the dead and wounded; their Red Cross flag was riddled with bullet holes. In total, twenty-seven dead, twenty-two seriously wounded and fifty others injured. For the first time voices were heard calling so clearly and strongly for civil war. By an overwhelming majority the meeting associated itself with the decision by the SPD office-holders in Leipzig to demand the expulsion of citizen Ebert from the party… The brief resolution ended with the words: “This meeting finds it unnecessary to give reasons for this demand.”

  The SPD leadership and its parliamentary fraction have nonetheless attempted (today, November 1) a final effort to remain in power after long discussions in the course of which it was observed that “the SPD is far from exercising within the government the influence which it has a right to”(!)… The social democratic ministers of the German bourgeoisie will only keep their portfolios:if a civil state of emergency replaces martial law (Gessler, von Seeckt, Müller, Reinhardt, etc. remain at the head of the Reichswehr)

  if there is energetic action with regard to Bavaria (has there ever been anything else?!)

  if the police alone has the responsibility for maintaining order in Saxony… (at last…)

  A hundred SPD deputies out of 130 have voted for this moderate and belated “ultimatum” to Herr Stresemann.

  The avalanche

  While these sad comedies are being enacted on the political stages of Munich, Berlin and Dresden, the revolution is advancing like a slow but sure and powerful avalanche. The extent of the financial bankruptcy—and the indescribable suffering it involves—is sufficient proof.

  From October 11 to 20, Reich expenses rose to 324,117,027,000,000,000 marks: 324 quadrillion. Income, on the other hand, reached the total of 2.5 quadrillion (to be precise, 2,456,918,405 million), that is less than one percent of expenditure. On October 20, the floating debt of the Reich reached 407 quadrillion… But then the dollar was worth only about twenty billion; today it is worth 200—and I am a trillionaire just like everyone else, which I assure you isn’t much fun… Banknotes for a trillion marks have appeared. It seems that every day paper money worth over 500 trillion marks is being issued. It is regretted that it is not yet possible to issue a quadrillion per day, for want of paper. They are also printing, night and day, the new “real value” paper, the gold loan: 3,000,000 in paper gold dollars have already been put into circulation! and have already lost between 30 percent and 50 percent on the black market…

  According to the official cost of living index, the general increase in prices between October 22 and 29, has reached a peak of 349 percent. In the last few days, with an official exchange rate of about 65 million marks to the dollar, the prices of foodstuffs and other essential articles correspond to a rate for the dollar of between 200 and 300 billion. And this difference was mainly paid by poor people who have no dollars…

  By early November the Stresemann cabinet was in disarray; the SPD

  ministers withdrew on November 2, 1923. Meanwhile the right wing threat

  from Bavaria was growing ever stronger.

  Two anniversaries: November 7 and 9

  Correspondance internationale, November 10, 1923

  This year, the proximity of these two revolutionary anniversaries will force itself on all minds in Germany with pitiless rigor.

  November 7, 1917 (October 25 in the Julian calendar): led by the Bolsheviks the proletarians of Petrograd seized the Winter Palace; the proletarians of Moscow entered the Kremlin… An era of unspeakable suffering opened for the Russian people: but it was also an era of heroism, of victory, of resurrection. Russia, reduced during some dark days to a territory no bigger than the Grand Duchy of Muscovy in 1500, went on to extend once more from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic to the Black Sea. In four years of bitter warfare, the great capitalist powers would not succeed in defeating it. It finally imposed on them respect, peace and trade. It was to remain an invincible revolutionary stronghold, the place of asylum and refuge for all defeated revolutionaries: it would give itself new laws, boldly reform its ways of life and persevere—by the harshest paths, doubtless, but freely—on the road to socialism.

  November 9, 1918: the efforts of the sailors at Kiel and Cuxhafen brought down the façade of the German Empire. For a year, until the tragic days of January 1919, when Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg died, the German social democracy, allied to the volunteer corps of the bourgeoisie, Noske allied to Ehrhardt, was to build on the corpses of proletarians the edifice of a democratic republic. It constantly threatened the crowds inspired by the Russian example with famine, with foreign intervention, with an outburst of reaction… At the end of five years of social democratic democracy, Germany, powerless, is observing French intervention in the Rhineland and the Ruhr; its twenty million proletarians and its ten million people in humble circumstances are hungry; armed reaction is striding towards power… Because it postponed the final struggle for five years, the German proletariat merely has greater difficulties to overcome. Today, as in 1919, when the Spartacists showed it to them, there is only one road to salvation: the one where the revolutionaries have gone before them

  Two anniversaries; one great confrontation in the eyes of history between reformist and revolutionary methods.

  For a right wing dic
tatorship

  “They are complementary,” I wrote recently about Stresemann and von Kahr. Just take a look. Remember that about a week before the social democrats left the Great Coalition (November 2) Herr von Kahr had made known his intention to have no further dealings with a Reich government “under Marxist influence,” that is, containing social democrats. On this point too Herr Stresemann satisfied the Bavarian reactionaries—enough to encourage them, not enough to disarm them: that is his role.

  So citizens Robert Schmidt, Radbruch and Sollmann are unceremoniously sacked from the Reich government. It would be the right time for the SPD to draw up a balance sheet of its collaboration with the bourgeois parties, which has cost working-class Germany the incredible poverty of recent days, the dollar at one and a half trillion marks, the dictatorship of the generals, the daily murder of workers, some two to three hundred corpses of those who have died of hunger piled up at the feet of Ebert’s presidential chair. But in the drab manifesto published in Vorwärts on November 4, the SPD blames the Communists for the bloodshed—in Hamburg—in order once more to reject their proposal for a united front… And without containing a single robust word, this document ends with an appeal to the unity and steadfastness of the party, powerful guarantees of the security of the German republic, the only ground on which the struggle for socialism is possible.

  The same issue of Vorwärts comments on strange rumors emanating from Munich. On Saturday, November 3, a fresh coup was reported in Bavaria, the removal of the Knilling government by von Kahr—though it had caused so little trouble—and the sending of an ultimatum to Berlin demanding the immediate establishment of a right wing dictatorship. If this did not happen, Bavarian troops would march on the capital. This news is now denied, but in a confused manner, accepted as half or two-thirds true.

  The DNVP and the Bavarian minister of justice, Doctor Gürtner, have in fact voted a resolution in this sense, and have, moreover, demanded Ebert’s resignation. On the borders of Thuringia, fascist troops continue to mass, not without incidents; several times in the last few days the Thuringian police have been shot at… Hitler, in hysterical speeches, is telling his people to be ready to march on Berlin (Munich, October 31) in order to “raise the old black, white and red flag over the imperial palace.” Ludendorff, who writes leading articles for the Völkischer Beobachter, is currently named as one of the leaders called on to direct the coming military operations.

  For a long time there has been the greatest confusion as far as information is concerned: there is no serious news item which is not successively announced off the record, then denied, restated, modified and finally confirmed. Lies, false information, the official denial of true facts, and false “off the record statements” are the means used daily and methodically by the mainstream press and by the state to prepare public opinion, to deceive it, mislead it, or surprise it, as the situation requires. The military offensive against Saxony was announced by Stinnes’ newspaper eight days before it officially began. General von Lossow’s revolt was kept silent for three days before being made public. Bavaria’s categorical refusal to dismiss von Lossow and put the Reichswehr back under the command of Herr Gessler was almost completely ignored. The “denials” made today do not explain why, on Saturday, November 3, Herr Stresemann, after a discussion with the Bavarian ambassador von Preger, hurriedly left the cabinet during a meeting in order to confer with the president of the Republic and the Reichswehr minister.

  Fascist Bavaria is strong and armed. The Reich government is weak and disarmed. In Berlin, even von Kahr has the unconditional support of the landowners’ German National People’s Party and of heavy industry. Either he will dictate his will or he will try to impose it by force. Besides, German fascism is in a dilemma: the fact that it is now fully armed, its political successes, the weakness of the social democracy, repeated promises of a prompt liquidation of the regime born on November 9, 1918, and finally the interests of the capitalist groups which are financing it—but don’t intend to finance it indefinitely without visible results—everything is pushing it to take action in order not to be discredited.

  In the last days of October, when the attack on the workers’ government in Dresden was beginning, other significant rumors were circulating in “informed circles.” There was talk of a reconciliation between von Kahr, Ludendorff and Hitler: it was announced that a Reich government would be proclaimed in Munich… Let’s remember this idea at a time when a nationalist campaign is being launched against Ebert “under whose presidency one cannot imagine a national government” according to the Deutsche Zeitung, whose sentiments are endorsed by the Kreuzzeitung (Gazette of the Cross) and by the landowners’ Deutsche Tageszeitung.

  We should take satisfaction in this vigorous clarity of the reactionary offensive. We need even more to shake social democracy from its unbelievable inertia. On the day when a man like von Kahr finally decides go beyond threats and to take action, it may well be that all the working masses and a good half of the ruined middle classes will stand up against him, led by the party of the revolutionary proletariat.

  (A detail, indicative of the impotence of Herr Stresemann and Herr Gessler towards the Bavarians. A decree issued by Herr Gessler, dated October 30 and published after five days delay, has just banned until further notice the Völkischer Beobachter on all the territory of the Reich, except Bavaria…)

  The financial muddle

  I would say that the “financial chaos has reached its peak,” but the old cliché would be inaccurate: every day, in the endless realm of bankruptcy, new records are set in order to be broken the following day.

  We have, or are on the point of having, in circulation ten different sorts of paper money, of which four apparently have no real value, since the other six are called “real value.”

  1: The paper mark, of which the billion is now the smallest unit.

  2, 3, 4: The paper marks issued by towns (the states of the Reich, the directors of the railways).

  5 The gold loan (Goldanleihe) or German dollar.

  6 The Rentenmark with “real value.”

  7 Vouchers with real value, issued by banks and commercial firms.

  8 9, 10: Paper with real value issued by towns, states and railways. I’m not sure this is all.

  Who profits from this variety of paper money? It serves only the speculation of financiers, who have all become very questionable. And at whose expense does this profitable speculation take place? At that of the state and the mass of workers.

  The gold loan is the object of scandalous gambling made even easier by the official—and artificial—rate of the dollar on the Berlin Stock Exchange and by the conspicuous ineptitude of the Reichsbank. On the one hand, they have striven to give the gold loan a rate higher than that of the dollar; on the other hand, they haven’t been able to satisfy the demands of the public to whom the possession of any foreign currency remains forbidden. The result is a further fall in value of the paper mark—which we suggest should be called the wages-mark—scandalous losses for the Reichsbank, scandalous gains for a few profiteers. Here are the details, according to Vorwärts:

  A shrewd banker has bought 2,000 “German dollars” at the rate of 65 billion marks, that is, for 130 trillion. The Reichsbank delivers the notes to him only after a long delay; it remains understood that the banker should pay the Goldanleihe on the day of delivery at the rate of the day when he subscribed. The Reichsbank, in exchange for its 2,000 German dollars, receives in paper marks only the value of 200 dollars. The banker has gained 1,800 dollars; the Reichsbank has lost them. These abuses have been widespread for weeks. There is now talk of remedying the situation by making people pay for the gold loan at the rate of the delivery date… “This scandal,” says the social democratic paper, “goes far beyond that of credits in paper marks…” Worse and worse, isn’t it?

  But since the gold loan has no real backing, it will be subsequently exchanged for Rentenmarks. The new bank issuing Rentenmarks opens a credit of 900 mil
lion for the Reich this year, well below the real needs of the nation. If the 500 million of the gold loan have to be deducted from this credit, what will remain for the state? The gold loan will have brought it nothing but losses; the Rentenmark will just slip through its fingers. The state will have submitted itself to the financial control of big capitalism without deriving the slightest profit.

  Another disastrous aspect of things. The rates quoted on the New York Stock Exchange in some sense regularize those of the black market in Berlin itself. At New York, on November 2, the dollar was quoted at 1,428 billion marks. The same day, in Berlin, the dollar and the gold loan were officially worth 625 billion. On November 3, the dollar was worth 1,219 billion at New York and only 418 billion at Berlin. The unconvertible rate of the paper mark is decreed at the rate of a billion for a gold pfennig. Germany has become the country where the dollar can be bought most cheaply. Will not international speculators take substantial advantage of this in order to siphon off what real values are left in the country?

  Prices in Germany are fixed by the rates on the New York Stock Exchange, so that the artificial fall in the dollar, solely profitable to international gamblers, is achieved at the expense of the masses of consumers.

  The purchasing power of the gold pfennig has fallen in staggering proportions. In 1914 a rye loaf cost 14 gold pfennigs; on October 31, 1923 it cost 18; likewise, rice has gone from 25 to 32 pfennigs; sauerkraut from 8 to 13; beans, from 20 to 38; beef, from 85 to 142; pork, from 75 to 330; bacon, from 95 to 464; butter, from 125 to 181; sugar, from 25 to 40; fish, from 30 to 90; an egg, from 7 to 19; coal (a hundred bricks of compressed coal) from 100 to 178.5. These figures give us a simplified measure of the cost of living. We should recall these facts, while the representatives of workers and employers are discussing (since October 31), in meetings chaired by the labor minister Brauns, the fixing of wages to gold values. The invariable argument of the employers is that there can be no question of a return to peace-time wages; “current wages must be in proportion to general impoverishment.” Herr Brauns adds that they could not be paid in real values except “to some extent” and “after some time.”