"The first global crisis of humanity" (WTO, April 2009);[1] a recession which is "the most profound and the most synchronised in the memory of man" (OECD, March 2009)![2] From the very words of these great international institutions, the present economic crisis is of an unprecedented gravity. In order to face up to it, all the forces of the bourgeoisie have been mobilised for months. The ruling class is doing all it can to hold back the world economy's descent into hell. The G20 is without doubt the strongest symbol of this international response.[3]
At the beginning of April, all capitalist hopes turned towards London, the city holding the summit of salvation that had the task of "re-launching the economy" and "raising the moral standards of capitalism". And to believe the declarations from the different leaders of the planet, this G20 was a real success. "It's the day that the world came together in order to fight the recession" stated the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. "It has gone beyond what we could have imagined" the French President Nicolas Sarkozy said emotionally. "It is a historic compromise for an exceptional crisis", was the opinion of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And for Barak Obama, this summit was a "turning point".
Clearly the truth is elsewhere.
These last months, the economic crisis has been stirring up international tensions. Firstly, there has been a drift towards protectionism. Each state has been trying more and more to save a part of its economy, using subsidies and national grants to fight off foreign competition. This, for example, was the case for the support plan for the automobile industry in France decided on by Nicolas Sarkozy, a plan sharply criticised by his European "friends". Then, there's the growing tendency to undertake recovery plans in dispersed order, in particular when it comes to rescuing the financial sector. Finally, the United States, epicentre of the financial earthquake, hit by the full force of the economic storm, has numerous competitors trying to take advantage of the situation so as to weaken American leadership still more. This is the real meaning of the appeals to "multilateralism" from France, Germany, China, and some countries of Latin America.
This London G20 was thus a tense one, and in the corridors the debates were really stormy. But appearances were maintained and the catastrophe for the bourgeoisie of a chaotic G20 was avoided. The bourgeoisie hadn't forgotten how the absence of international coordination and the frenzied turn towards each for themselves had contributed to the disaster of 1929. At that time, capitalism was confronted with the first great crisis of its period of decadence,[4] and the ruling class didn't know how to react to it. First, the states did nothing. From 1929 to 1933, almost no measures were taken, while the banks collapsed one after the other in their thousands. World trade literally collapsed. In 1933, a first reaction was sketched out: it was the first New Deal[5] of Roosevelt. This recovery plan contained a policy of public works and state debt, but also a protectionist law, "Buy American".[6] From there, every country launched themselves into the protectionist current. World trade, already in a bad way, again suffered a shock. Through these measures, the bourgeoisie ended up aggravating the world crisis in the 1930s.
Today, all the bourgeoisies want to avoid a repetition of the vicious circle of crisis-protectionism-crisis... They are conscious that they must do everything to avoid repeating the errors of the past. It was of the utmost necessity that this G20 displayed the unity of the great powers against the crisis, in particular when it came to supporting the international financial system. The IMF even made a specific point of it in its preparatory "Work document" prior to the G20 to warn against the danger of each for themselves.[7] Thus Point 13 was entitled "The spectre of commercial and financial protectionism is a growing preoccupation" and it went on: "Notwithstanding the engagements made by the countries of the G20 (those of November 2008) not to resort to protectionist measures, worrying backslidings have taken place. The lines are vague between public interventions aiming to contain the impact of the financial crisis on sectors in difficulty and inappropriate subsidies to industries whose long term viability is questionable. Certain policies of financial support also lead the banks to direct their credit towards their country. At the same time, there is growing risk that some emerging countries confronted by external pressures on their accounts try to impose capital controls." The IMF has not been alone in issuing such warnings: "I fear that if this does not happen, a return to generalised protection would become likely, as a way for deficit countries, such as the US, to strengthen demand for domestic output and employment.... This is a time of decision. Choices must be made between outward-looking and inward-looking solutions. We tried the latter in the 1930s. This time we should try the former" (Martin Wolf, in front of the US Senate Commission for Foreign Affairs, March 25, 2009).[8]
The G20 heard the message: the leaders of the world have been able to present an appearance of unity and wrote in their final communiqué: "Not to repeat the errors of the past". What followed was a real international cry of relief. As the French economic journal, Les Echos, wrote on April 3rd "the first conclusion to be drawn about the G20 that took place yesterday in the British capital, is that it hasn't failed, and that is already a lot. After the tensions of these last weeks, the twenty great economies on the planet have displayed their unity".
Concretely, the different countries undertook not to put up barriers, including on financial flows, and have mandated the WTO to scrupulously verify that this engagement is respected. Moreover, 250 billion dollars will be put at the disposal of export support agencies or investment agencies so as to aid the recovery of international trade. But above all, the growth of tensions has not spoilt this summit by turning it into an open fight. Appearances have been maintained and here's the real success of the G20. This is obviously only a temporary success because the crisis will inexorably continue to stir up international disunity.
Since the summer of 2007 and the famous "sub-prime" crisis, recovery plans have followed one another in a frantic rhythm. The first time that a massive injection of billions of dollars was announced there was a momentary breeze of optimism. But today, as the crisis has got worse and worse, each new plan is welcomed with more and more scepticism. Paul Jorion, a sociologist specialising in economics (and one of the first to announce the economic catastrophe) had this to say about the whole spiral of setbacks: "One moves indifferently from the small push of 2007 from a mounting figure in millions of euros or dollars to the big shove at the beginning of 2008, then to the enormous push at the end of the year numbering hundreds of billions. As to 2009, it's the year of the "colossal" push, to amounts this time expressed in "trillions" of euros or dollars. And despite the Pharonic ambition, still not the least glimmer at the end of the tunnel!" [9]
And what does the G20 propose? A new raising of the stakes that is just as ineffectual! 5,000 billion dollars will be injected into the world economy from here to 2010.[10] The bourgeoisie has no other "solution" to put forward and thereby reveals its impotence.[11] The international press is not mistaken about it: "The crisis is in effect far from being finished and one would be naive to think that the decisions of the G20 will change everything" (La Libre Belgique), "It has failed at a time when the world economy is about to implode" (New York Times), "The recovery left the G20 summit unmoved" (Los Angeles Times).
The estimates of the OECD for 2009, as optimistic as they are as usual, leave hardly any doubt about what's going to hit humanity in the coming months, with or without the G20. According to these calculations, the United States will undergo a recession of 4%, the euro-zone 4.1% and Japan 6.6! The World Bank, for its part, affirmed on March 30th that for 2009 it was anticipating "a contraction of 1.7% of world GDP which constitutes the strongest retreat in global production ever recorded". The situation will certainly become more aggravated in the months to come, and the crisis is already worse than that of 1929. The economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke have thus calculated that the fall of world industrial production over the last nine months was as violent as in 1929, that the fall of stock markets was twice as rapid, and the same for the shrinkage of world trade.[12]
All these figures have a very concrete and dramatic reality for millions of workers around the world. In the United States, the top world power, 663,000 jobs have been destroyed in March alone, which brings the total to 5.1 million jobs destroyed in two years. Today, every country is being hit hard by the crisis. In Spain, for example, unemployment will go past 17% in 2009!
But this policy is not simply ineffectual today; it also prepares still more violent crises for the future. In effect, all these billions are created by massive recourse to debt. But one day, not too far into the future, an attempt must be made to repay them. Even the bourgeoisie says so: "It is clear that the consequence of this crisis is that it will be necessary to pay the bill: there will be a loss of wealth, losses of inheritance, of revenues and jobs; and it would be demagogic to say that nobody in the world will not pay part or all of this bill" (Henri Guanino, special advisor to the President of the French Republic, 3rd April).[13] By accumulating these debts, capitalism is putting its economic future in hock.
And what did the journalists, who were pleased with its new found importance, say about the IMF? Its financial means have been tripled by the G20, to 750 billion dollars and further, we have seen the authorisation of the issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDR)[14] for 250 billion dollars. One can understand why its president, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has stated that this is "the greatest coordinated recovery plan ever decided upon". The mission given to him is to "aid the weakest", particularly the countries of the east who are on the edge of bankruptcy. But the IMF is a strange last hope. The - justified - reputation of this organisation is to impose draconian austerity in exchange for its "aid". Restructurings, redundancies, unemployment, suppression of health spending, pensions... such are "the IMF effect". For example, this organisation went to the sick bed of Argentina in the 1990s and continued prescribing its medicine up to... the collapse of this economy in 2001!
Not only has this G20 not at all cleared the capitalist sky but it has given us a glimpse of still more gloomy tomorrows.
Given the patent incapacity of this G20 to propose real solutions for the future, it was quite difficult for the bourgeoisie to promise a rapid return to growth and radiant tomorrows. But there is among the workers a profound disgust for capitalism and a growing reflection on the future. The ruling class has been quick to respond to this questioning. With drums and trumpets, this G20 promised a new capitalism, better regulated, more moral, more ecological...
The manoeuvre is so gross that it's ridiculous. As a gesture towards the ‘moralisation' of capitalism, the G20 is turning its gaze on a few ‘tax havens', threatening sanctions that it will consider from now to the end of the year (sic!) against countries not making the effort to achieve "transparency". They have pointed the finger at four areas that make up the "black list": Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay. Other nations have been lectured and classified on the "grey list". Included here are Austria, Belgium, Chile, Luxemburg, Singapore and Switzerland.
In other words, the main tax havens are missing from the list! The Cayman Islands and its hedge funds, the dependent territories of the British Crown (Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man), the City of London, American states such as Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming... all these are officially as white as snow (and thus figure on the white list). The G20's classification of tax havens is just like the pot calling the kettle black.
Full of hypocrisy, only a few days after the London summit, the OECD - responsible for this classification - announced the withdrawal of the four countries from the black list, in exchange for promises to try to be transparent!
There's absolutely nothing astonishing about all this. How can these big capitalist leaders, real gangsters without faith or honour, how can they "moralise" about anything?[15] And how can a system based on exploitation and the search for profits be more "moral"? What's more, nobody is seriously expecting to see a "more human capitalism" come out of the G20. That does not exist and the political leaders talking about it are like parents telling their children about Father Christmas. On the contrary, this time of crisis will reveal, still more cruelly, the inhuman face of this system. Almost 130 years ago, Paul Lafargue wrote: "capitalist morality (...) curses the body of the worker; it takes as its ideal the reduction of the worker to the smallest minimum of needs, to suppress his joys and passions and condemn him to the role of the machine delivered up to work without truce or mercy",[16] or rather, we can add, the sole truce possible being unemployment and poverty. As the economic crisis strikes, the workers are sacked and thrown on the streets like useless objects. Capitalism is and will always be a brutal and barbarous system of exploitation.
But the grossness of the manoeuvre is itself revealing. It demonstrates that there's really nothing more to offer, that capitalism no longer brings any good to humanity, just more misery and suffering. There is no more chance of seeing the birth of an "ecological capitalism" or a "moral capitalism" than of seeing alchemists turning lead into gold.
If this G20 showed one thing, it's that another capitalist world is not possible. It is probable that the crisis will undergo highs and lows, with sometimes punctual moments of a return to growth. But, fundamentally, capitalism will continue to founder economically, sowing misery and engendering wars.
We can expect nothing from this system. The bourgeoisie with its international summits and its recovery plans are not part of the solution but part of the problem. Only the working class can change the world, but for that it is necessary for it to have confidence in the society that it can give birth to: communism!
Mehdi (16th April 2009)
[1]. Declaration by Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organisation
[2]. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development "Economic Outlook - Interim Report" March 2009. Available online at https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/1/42443150.pdf [1]
[3]. The G20 is composed of members of the G8 (Germany, France, United States, Japan, Canada, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia), to which can be added South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and finally the European Union. A first summit was held in November in the midst of the financial storm
[4]. Read our series "Understanding the decadence of capitalism" in International Review n° 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60 and online at https://en.internationalism.org/series/304 [2].
[5]. A myth abounds today, according to which the New Deal of 1933 allowed the world economy to pull out of the economic swamp. The logical conclusion today is to call for a "New New Deal". But in reality, the American economy of 1933 to 1938 remained particularly flat; it was the second New Deal, that of 1938, which allowed a real recovery of the machine. But, this second New Deal was nothing other than the beginning of the war economy which prepared the Second World War. You can understand why this isn't talked about much!
[6]. This law imposed the buying of goods produced on US territory for purchases directly made by the American government.
[7]. Source : contreinfo.info/prnart.php3?id_article=2612
[8]. Martin Wolf is a British economic journalist. He's the Associate Editor and economic commentator in chief for the Financial Times.
[9]. "The Age of the Colossal Shoves", a blog published April 7th.
[10]. In reality, 4,000 billion will come from dollars earmarked for recovery plans already announced these last few months
[11]. In Japan, a new recovery plan of 15,400 billion yen (116 billion euros) has just been decided upon. It's the fourth recovery plan elaborated by Tokyo in the space of a year!
[12]. Source : voxeu.org
[13]. On the role of debt in capitalism and its crises, read our article in the previous issue of International Review: "The most serious crisis in capitalism's history".
[14]. The SDR are a basket of money made up of dollars, euros, yen and pound sterling. China has particularly insisted on these SDRs being used. These last weeks the Middle Empire has multiplied its official declarations calling for the creation of an international currency that could replace the dollar. And numerous economists throughout the world have relayed this message, by warning of the inexorable fall of the US currency and the economic tremors that would follow. It's true that the weakening of the dollar, as the American economy sinks into recession, is a real danger for the world economy. As an international reference point, it is one of the pillars of capitalist stability since the war. On the contrary, the emergence of a new money reference (be it the euro, the yen, the pound sterling or the IMF's SDR) is totally illusory. No power will be able to replace the United States; none can play its role as international economic stabiliser. The weakening of the American economy and its money thus signifies a growing monetary disorder.
[15]. Lenin described the League of Nations, another international institution, as a "den of thieves".
[16]. The Right to be Lazy
Throughout the world, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth (12th February 1809), and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication (24th November 1859) of his first fundamental work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has been declared "Darwin Year" by both scientific institutions and media and publishing houses. We thus find ourselves confronted with a multitude of conferences, books, magazines and TV programmes dealing with Darwin and his theories. While these sometimes allow us to get a better idea of both, they often tend to surround them in a fog where it can be difficult to find one's way.
This is partly because many of the authors, speakers, and journalists who are presented as "experts on Darwin" knew nothing about him a year ago; for them and their employers, the Darwin Year is above a good opportunity to increase their income and their notoriety on the basis of a quick dip into Wikipedia. But there is another reason for the fog surrounding Darwin's ideas: ever since they were first put forward in The Origin of Species, they have been the object of bitter political and ideological contention, in particular because they dealt a severe blow to the religious dogma of the day, but also because they were immediately put to use by various bourgeois ideologues. And these issues are still alive today, in all the various falsifications and interpretations to which Darwin's theory continues to be subjected. To allow our readers to get a clearer idea for themselves, we are republishing in two parts Anton Pannekoek's pamphlet on Marxism and Darwinism, written in 1909 on the occasion of the centenary of Darwin's birth, and which remains largely relevant today. Marxism has always taken an interest in scientific development, partly because it is part and parcel of the development of society's productive forces, but also because it considers that the communist perspective must be based not simply on a moral demand for justice, as was the case for many of the "utopian socialists" in the past, but on a scientific understanding of human society and of the natural world from which it springs. This is why in June 1873, long before the publication of Pannekoek's pamphlet, Marx himself dedicated a copy of his major work Capital to Charles Darwin. Indeed, Marx and Engels had already recognised the methodological similarity between Darwin's approach to the study of living organisms and their own historical materialism, as we can see in these two extracts of their correspondence:
"This Darwin I am now reading, is quite sensational (...) No one has ever made an attempt on such a scale to demonstrate the existence of a historical dynamic in nature, at least never with such success."[1]
"...it is in this book that the historico-natural foundations of our theory can be found".[2]
Pannekoek's text is written with great simplicity and gives us an excellent summary of the theory of the evolution of species. But Pannekoek was not only a learned man of science (he was a renowned astronomer). He was above all a marxist and a militant of the workers' movement. This is why his pamphlet Marxism and Darwinism aims to criticise any attempt to apply Darwin's theory of natural selection schematically and mechanically to the human species. Pannekoek clearly highlights the analogies between Darwinism and marxism, and shows how the theory of natural selection was used by the most progressive fractions of the bourgeoisie against the reactionary remnants of feudalism. But he also criticises the bourgeoisie's fraudulent exploitation of Darwinism against marxism, notably in the variants of "Social Darwinist" ideology developed in particular by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer (and revived today by the ideologues of free-market liberalism to justify capitalist competition, the law of the jungle, the war of each against all and the elimination of the weak).
Faced with a return to obscurantist ideas dredged up from the dawn of time and in particular with "creationism" and its avatar "intelligent design", according to which the evolution of living organisms (and the appearance of man himself) corresponds to a pre-ordained "plan" established by a divine "superior intelligence", it is up to marxists to reassert the scientific and materialist nature of Darwin's theory and to emphasise the immense step forward that it represented for natural science.
Obviously, Pannekoek's pamphlet must be placed in the context of the scientific knowledge of his day, and some of the ideas developed in the second part (which we will publish in the next issue of the Review [4] ) have been somewhat outdated by a century of scientific research and discovery (notably in the fields of genetics and palaeontology). But his text nonetheless remains for the most part a valuable contribution to the workers' movement.[3]
There can hardly be two scientists who have marked the thought of the latter half of the 19th century as much as Darwin and Marx. Their teachings revolutionised the masses' conception of the world. For decades their names have been on every tongue, and their teachings have become the lynchpin of the intellectual struggles which accompany the social struggles of today. The cause of this lies primarily in the highly scientific content of their work.
The scientific importance of marxism as well as of Darwinism consists in their following out the theory of evolution, the one in the domain of the organic world, of things animate; the other, in the domain of society. This theory of evolution, however, was in no way new; it had its advocates before Darwin and Marx: the philosopher, Hegel, even made it the central point of his philosophy. It is, therefore, necessary to look more closely at the achievements of Darwin and Marx in this field.
The theory that plants and animals have developed from one another is met with first in the nineteenth century. Formerly the question, "Whence come all these thousands and hundreds of thousands of different kinds of plants and animals that we know?", was answered: "At the time of creation God created them all, each after its kind." This primitive theory was compatible with experience and with the best available information about the past. According to available information, all known plants and animals had always been the same. Scientifically, this experience was expressed thus: "All kinds are invariable because the parents transmit their characteristics to their children."
There were, however, some peculiarities among plants and animals which gradually made a different conception necessary. These were nicely arranged into the system first set up by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus. According to this system, animals are divided into phyla, which are divided into classes, classes into orders, orders into families, families into genera, each of which contain a few species. The greater the similarity between living beings, the closer they are in this system, and the smaller is the group to which they belong. All the animals classed as mammals show the same general characteristics in their body structure. The herbivorous animals, and carnivorous animals, and monkeys, each of which belongs to a different order, are further differentiated. The body structures of bears, dogs, and cats, all of which are carnivorous animals, have much more in common with each other than they do with horses or monkeys. This similarity is still more obvious when we examine varieties of the same species: the cat, tiger and lion resemble each other in many respects where they differ from dogs and bears. If we turn from the class of mammals to other classes, such as birds or fishes, we find greater differences between classes than we find within a class. There still persists, however, a general similarity in the formation of the body, the skeleton and the nervous system. These features first disappear when we turn from this main division, which embraces all the vertebrates, and turn to the molluscs (soft bodied animals) or to the polyps.
The entire animal world may thus be arranged into divisions and subdivisions. Had every different kind of animal been created entirely independently of all the others, there would be no reason why such orders should exist. There would be no reason why there should not be mammals having six paws. We would have to assume, then, that at the time of creation, God had taken Linnaeus' system as a plan and created everything according to this plan. Happily we have another way of accounting for it. The likeness in the construction of the body may be due to a real family relationship. According to this conception, the similarity of particular characteristics shows how near or remote the relationship is, just as the resemblance between brothers and sisters is greater than between remote relatives. The animal classes were, therefore, not created individually, but descended one from another. They form one trunk which started with simple foundations and which has continually developed; the last and thinnest twigs are the species existing today. All species of cats descend from a primitive cat, which together with the primitive dog and the primitive bear, is the descendant of some primitive type of carnivorous animal. The primitive carnivorous animal, the primitive hoofed animal and the primitive monkey have descended from some primitive mammal, etc.
This theory of descent was put forward by Lamarck and by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. It did not, however, meet with general approval. These naturalists could not prove the correctness of this theory and, therefore, it remained only a hypothesis, a mere assumption. When Darwin came along, however, his major work on The Origin of Species struck like a thunderbolt; his theory of evolution was immediately accepted as a strongly proved truth. Since then the theory of evolution has become inseparable from Darwin's name. Why so?
Partly this was due to the fact that through experience ever more material had been accumulated which went to support this theory. Animals were found which could not very well be placed into the classification, such as oviparous mammals[4], fishes with lungs, and invertebrate animals. The theory of descent claimed that these are simply the remnants of the transition between the main groups. Excavations revealed fossil remains which looked different from animals living now. These remains have partly proven to be the primitive forms of our animals, and have shown that the primitive animals have gradually developed into existing ones. Then the theory of cells was formed; every plant, every animal, consists of millions of cells and has been developed by incessant division and differentiation of single cells. Having gone so far, the thought that the highest organisms have descended from primitive beings having but a single cell no longer seemed so strange.
All this new experience could not, however, raise the theory to a strongly proved truth. The best proof for the correctness of this theory would have been to have an actual transformation from one animal kind to another take place before our eyes, so that we could observe it. But this is impossible. How then is it at all possible to prove that animal forms are really changing into new forms? This can be done by showing the cause, the propelling force of such development. This Darwin did. Darwin discovered the mechanism of animal development, and in doing so he showed that under certain conditions some animal species will necessarily develop into other species. We will now make clear this mechanism.
Its main foundation is the nature of transmission, the fact that parents transmit their peculiarities to children, but that at the same time the children diverge from their parents in some respects and also differ from each other. It is for this reason that animals of the same kind are not all alike, but differ in all directions from the average type. Without this variation it would be wholly impossible for one animal species to develop into another. All that is necessary for the formation of a new species is that the divergence from the central type should become greater and that it should continue in the same direction until the divergence has become so great that the new animal no longer resembles the one from which it descended. But where is the force that could call forth such ever-growing variation in the same direction?
Lamarck declared that such variation could be attributed to the usage and intense exercise of certain organs; that, owing to the continuous exercise of certain organs, these become ever more perfected. The lion acquired its powerful paws and the hare its speedy legs in the same way that the muscles of men's legs get strong from much running. Similarly, the giraffes got their long necks because in order to reach the tree leaves which they ate, their necks were stretched so that a short-necked animal developed to the long-necked giraffe. To many this explanation was incredible and it could not account for the fact that frogs should have acquired the green colour which serves them as camouflage.
To solve this puzzle, Darwin turned to another field of experience. The animal breeder and the gardener are able artificially to raise new races and varieties. When a gardener wants to raise from a certain plant a variety having large blossoms, all he has to do is to kill before maturity all those plants having small blossoms and preserve those having large ones. If he repeats this for a few years in succession, the blossoms will be ever larger, because each new generation resembles its predecessor, and our gardener, having always picked out the largest of the large for the purpose of propagation, succeeds in raising a plant with very large blossoms. Through such action, done sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally, people have raised a great number of races of our domesticated animals which differ from their original form much more than the wild kinds differ from each other.
If we should ask an animal-breeder to raise a long-necked animal from a short-necked one, it would not appear to him an impossibility. All he would have to do would be to choose those having longer necks, have them inter-breed, kill the young ones with shorter necks and again have the long-necked inter-breed. By repeating this process with every new generation the neck would as a result become ever longer and he would get an animal resembling the giraffe.
This result is achieved because there exists a definite will with a definite object, which, to raise a certain variety, chooses certain animals. In nature there is no such will, and all the deviations will tend to be attenuated by interbreeding, so that it is impossible for an animal to keep on departing from the original stock and keep going in the same direction until it becomes an entirely different species. Where then, is that power in nature that chooses the animals just as the breeder does?
Darwin pondered this problem at length before he found its solution in the "struggle for existence." In this theory we have a reflex of the productive system of the time in which Darwin lived, because it was the capitalist competitive struggle which served him as a picture for the struggle for existence prevailing in nature. This solution did not come to him through his own observation, but by his reading of the works of the economist Malthus. Malthus tried to explain that in our bourgeois world there is so much misery and starvation and privation because population increases much more rapidly than the existing means of subsistence. There is not enough food for all; people must therefore struggle with each other for their existence, and many must go down in this struggle. By this theory capitalist competition as well as the existing misery were declared to be an unavoidable natural law. In his autobiography Darwin declares that it was Malthus' book which made him think about the struggle for existence.
"In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work."
It is a fact that animals' birth rates outpace the available food supply. There is no exception to the rule that all organic beings tend to increase so rapidly that our Earth would soon be overrun by the offspring of a single pair were some of these not destroyed. This is why a struggle for existence must arise. Every animal tries to live, does its best to eat, and seeks to avoid being eaten by others. With its particular peculiarities and weapons it struggles against the entire antagonistic world, against animals, cold, heat, drought, floods, and other natural events that may threaten to destroy it. Above all, it struggles with the animals of its own kind, who live in the same way, have the same peculiarities, use the same weapons and live on the same diet. This struggle is not a direct one; the hare does not struggle directly with the hare, nor the lion with the lion - unless it is a struggle for the female - but it is a struggle for existence, a race, a competitive struggle. Not all of them can reach adulthood; most of them are destroyed, and only those who win the race remain. But which ones win the race? Those which, through their particularities and their physical structure are best able to find food or to escape an enemy; in other words, those which are best adapted to existing conditions will survive. "Because there are ever more individuals born than can remain alive, the struggle as to which shall remain alive must start again and that creature that has some advantage over the others will survive, but as these diverging peculiarities are transmitted to the new generations, nature itself does the choosing, and a new generation will arise having changed peculiarities."
Here we have a different schema whereby to understand the origin of the giraffe. When grass does not grow in some places, the animals must nourish themselves on tree leaves, and all those whose necks are too short to reach these leaves must perish. In nature itself there is selection, and nature selects only those with long necks. Referring to the selection carried out by the animal breeder, Darwin called this process "natural selection."
This process must necessarily produce new species. Because too many are born of a certain species, more than the existing food supply can sustain, they are forever trying to spread over a larger area. In order to procure their food, those living in the woods go to the plain, those living on the ground go into the water or climb into the trees. Under these new conditions, an aptitude or a variation often proves appropriate where before it was not. The body organs change along with the mode of life. They adapt to the new conditions and a new species develops from the old. This continuous movement of existing species branching out into new ones brings into existence thousands of different animals which will then differentiate still further.
Just as the Darwinian theory thus explains the general descent of animals, their transmutation and formation out of primitive beings, it also explains the wonderful degree of adaptation throughout nature. Formerly this wonderful adaptation could only be explained through the wisdom of God's intervention. Now, however, this natural descent is clearly understood. For this adaptation is nothing other than adaptation to the means of life. Every animal and every plant is exactly adapted to existing circumstances, for all those less well adapted are exterminated in the struggle for existence. The green frog, having descended from the brown frog, must preserve its protecting colour, for all those that deviate from this colour are found sooner by their predators and destroyed or find greater difficulty in obtaining their food and perish.
It was thus that Darwin showed us, for the first time, that new species continually formed out of old ones. The theory of descent, which until then was merely a hypothesis inferred from many phenomena that could not be well explained in any other way, gained the certainty of the necessary functioning of definite forces that could be proved. Here lies the main reason that this theory had so quickly dominated scientific discussions and public attention.
If we turn to marxism we immediately see its great similarity with Darwinism. As with Darwin, the scientific importance of Marx's work consists in this, that he discovered the propelling force, the cause of social development. He did not have to prove that such a development was taking place; every one knew that from the most primitive times new social forms had always displaced older ones, but the causes and aims of this development were unknown.
In his theory Marx started with the information at hand in his own time. The great political revolution that gave Europe its present aspect, the French Revolution, was known to everyone to have been a struggle for supremacy, waged by the bourgeoisie against nobility and royalty. After this struggle new class struggles emerged. The struggle carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists against the landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class revolted against the bourgeoisie. What were all these classes? How did they differ from each other? Marx proved that these class distinctions were due to the various functions each one played in the productive process. It is in the productive process that classes have their origin, and it is this process which determines to which class one belongs. Production is nothing other than the social labour process by which men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. It is the production of the material necessities of life that forms society's basic structure and that determines political relations and social struggles.
The methods of production have changed continuously with the progress of time. Whence came these changes? Ways of working and productive relations depend on the tools with which people work, on technical development and upon the means of production in general. Because in the Middle Ages people worked with crude tools, while now they work with gigantic machinery, we had then small trade and feudalism, while now we have capitalism; it is also for this reason that at that time the feudal nobility and the small bourgeoisie were the most important classes, while now it is the bourgeoisie and the proletarians which are the main classes.
It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social development. It goes without saying that people are always trying to improve these tools to make their labour easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools leads them in turn to develop and perfect their thinking. Owing to this development, a technical progress takes place more or less quickly, which at the same time changes the social forms of labour. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes. At the same time social, i.e. political struggles arise. Those classes predominating under the old process of production try artificially to preserve their institutions, while the rising classes try to promote the new process of production; and by waging class struggle against the ruling classes and by conquering them they pave the way for further unhindered technical development.
Marxist theory thus revealed the driving force and the mechanism of social development. In doing so it has proven that history is not something irregular, and that the various social systems are not the result of chance or haphazard events, but that there is a regular development in a definite direction. It also proved that social development does not cease with our system, since technical development always continues.
Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and of Marx, the one in the domain of the organic world and the other in the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science.
In doing so they made the theory of evolution acceptable to the masses as the basic conception of social and biological development.
While it is true that for a theory to have a lasting influence on the human mind it must have a high scientific value, this in itself is not enough. It has often happened that a theory was of the utmost importance to science, and yet has evoked no interest whatsoever outside a limited circle of scholars. Such was the case, for instance, with Newton's theory of gravitation. This theory is the foundation of astronomy, and it is owing to this theory that we have our knowledge of heavenly bodies, and can foretell the arrival of certain planets and eclipses. Yet, when Newton's theory of gravitation made its appearance, its only adherents were a few English scientists. The broad masses paid no attention to this theory. It first became known to the masses by a popular book by Voltaire written half a century later.
There is nothing surprising about this. Science has become a specialty for a certain group of educated men, and its progress concerns these men only, just as smelting is the smith's specialty, and an improvement in the smelting of iron concerns him only. Only that which all people can make use of and which is found by everyone to be a vital necessity can gain adherents among the broad masses. When, therefore, we see that a certain scientific theory stirs up zeal and passion in the masses, this can be attributed to the fact that this theory serves them as a weapon in the class struggle. For it is the class struggle that engages almost all the people.
This can be seen most clearly in marxism. Were marxist economic teaching of no importance in the modern class struggle, then none but a few professional economists would spend their time on it. But because marxism serves the proletarians as a weapon in the struggle against capitalism, scientific struggles are focused on this theory. It is owing to this service that Marx's name is honoured by millions who know even very little of his teaching, and is despised by thousands that understand nothing of his theory. It is owing to the great role that marxist theory plays in the class struggle that his theory is diligently studied by the large masses and that it dominates the human mind.
The proletarian class struggle existed before Marx for it is the offspring of capitalist exploitation. It was only natural that the workers, being exploited, should think about and demand another system of society where exploitation would be abolished. But all they could do was to hope and dream about it. They were not sure of its coming to pass. Marx gave a theoretical foundation to the labour movement and socialism. His social theory showed that social systems were in continuous movement, and that capitalism was only a temporary form within this movement. His studies of capitalism showed that owing to the continuous development of perfection of production techniques, capitalism must necessarily develop to socialism. This new system of production can only be established by the proletarians struggling against the capitalists, whose interest it is to maintain the old system of production. Socialism is therefore the fruit and aim of the proletarian class struggle.
Thanks to Marx, the proletarian class struggle took on an entirely different form. Marxism became a weapon in the proletariat's hands; in place of vague hopes he gave a positive aim, and by clearly highlighting the process of social development he gave strength to the proletariat, and at the same time laid the foundation for working out correct tactics. On the basis of marxism, the workers can demonstrate capitalism's transitory nature, and the necessity and certainty of their victory. At the same time marxism has done away with the old utopian views that socialism would be brought about by the intelligence and goodwill of all wise men, who considered socialism as a demand for justice and morality - as if the object were to establish an infallible and perfect society. Justice and morality change with the productive system, and every class has different conceptions of them. Socialism can only be gained by the class whose interest lies in socialism, and the question is not one of bringing about a perfect social system, but of a change in the methods of production leading to a higher step, i.e., to socialised production.
Because the marxist theory of social development is vital to the proletarians in their struggle, they try to make it a part of their inner self; it dominates their thoughts, their feelings, their entire conception of the world. Because marxism is the theory of social development, in the midst of which we stand, marxism itself stands at the central point of the great mental struggles that accompany our economic revolution.
It's well known that marxism owes its importance and position to the role it takes in the proletarian class struggle. With Darwinism, however, things seem different to the superficial observer, for Darwinism deals with a new scientific truth which has to contend with religious prejudices and ignorance. Yet it is not hard to see that in reality Darwinism had to undergo the same experiences as marxism. Darwinism is not a mere abstract theory which was adopted by the scientific world after discussion and objective tests. No, immediately after Darwinism made its appearance, it had its enthusiastic advocates and passionate opponents; Darwin's name, too, was either highly honoured by people who understood something of his theory, or despised by people who knew nothing more of his theory than that "man descended from the monkey," and who were surely unqualified to judge from a scientific standpoint the validity or otherwise of Darwin's theory. Darwinism, too, played a role in the class struggle, and it is owing to this role that it spread so rapidly and had enthusiastic advocates and venomous opponents.
Darwinism served the bourgeoisie as a tool in their struggle against the feudal class, against the nobility, the prerogatives of the church and of feudal lords. This was an entirely different struggle from the struggle now waged by the proletarians. The bourgeoisie was not an exploited class striving to abolish exploitation. Oh no. What the bourgeoisie wanted was to get rid of the old ruling powers standing in their way. The bourgeoisie wanted to rule themselves, basing their demands upon the fact that they were the most important class, the leaders of industry. What argument could the old class, the class that became nothing but useless parasites, bring forth against them? They relied on tradition, on their ancient divine rights. These were their pillars. With the aid of religion the priests held the great mass in subjection and ready to oppose the demands of the bourgeoisie.
It was therefore in their own interests that the bourgeoisie were in duty bound to undermine the "divine" right of rulers. Natural science became a weapon in their opposition to faith and tradition; science and newly discovered natural laws were promoted; it was with these weapons that the bourgeoisie fought. If the new discoveries could prove that the priests' teaching was false, then the "divine" authority of these priests would crumble and the "divine rights" enjoyed by the feudal class would be destroyed. Of course the feudal class was not conquered by this only, as material power can only be overthrown by material power, but intellectual weapons can become material ones. This is why the bourgeoisie relied so much on natural science.
Darwinism came at the right moment: Darwin's theory that man is descended from a lower animal destroyed the entire foundation of Christian dogma. As soon as Darwinism made its appearance, the bourgeoisie thus took it up with great zeal.
This was not the case in Britain. Here we see once again how important the class struggle was in spreading Darwin's theory. In Britain the bourgeoisie had already ruled for several centuries, and in their majority had no interest in attacking or destroying religion. Thus although this theory was widely read in Britain, it did not stir anybody; it merely remained a scientific theory without great practical importance. Darwin himself considered it as such, and he purposely avoided applying it immediately to men for fear that his theory might shock prevailing religious prejudice. It was only after numerous postponements and after others had done it before him, that he decided to take this step. In a letter to Haeckel he deplored the fact that his theory must offend so many prejudices and encounter so much indifference that he did not expect to live long enough to see it overcome these obstacles.
But in Germany things were entirely different, and Haeckel rightly answered Darwin that in Germany the Darwinian theory had met with an enthusiastic reception. When Darwin's theory first appeared, the bourgeoisie was preparing to undertake a new attack on absolutism and Junkerism. The liberal bourgeoisie was headed by the intellectuals. Ernst Haeckel, who was both a great and an audacious scientist, immediately drew the most daring conclusions against religion in his book, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte ("Natural Creation"). So, while Darwinism was enthusiastically received by the progressive bourgeoisie, it was also bitterly opposed by the reactionaries.
The same struggle took place in other European countries. Everywhere the progressive liberal bourgeoisie had to struggle against reactionary powers. These reactionaries either held power, or were trying to gain it with religious support. Under these circumstances, even scientific discussions were carried on with the zeal and passion of a class struggle. The writings that appeared for and against Darwin have therefore the character of social polemics, despite the fact that they bear the names of scientific authors. Many of Haeckel's popular writings, when looked at from a scientific standpoint, are very superficial, while the arguments and protests of his opponents show an unbelievable foolishness whose equal is only to be found in the arguments used against Marx.
The struggle carried on by the liberal bourgeoisie against feudalism was not fought to its finish. This was partly because everywhere socialist proletarians made their appearance, threatening all ruling powers, including the bourgeoisie. The liberal bourgeoisie cooled down, while the reactionary tendencies gained the upper hand. The old zeal for combating religion disappeared entirely, and while it is true that the liberals and reactionaries were still fighting among themselves, in reality they drew together. The interest once shown in science as a weapon in the class struggle had completely disappeared, while the reactionary Christian tendency, which wanted the masses to stick to religion, became ever more powerfully and brutally pronounced.
Esteem for science has also undergone a change, which matches the change in the need for it as a weapon. Previously, the educated bourgeoisie founded a materialistic conception of the universe in science, wherein they saw the solution of the riddle of the universe. Now mysticism has gained the upper hand; all that science has succeeded in explaining is seen as very trivial, while everything that remains unsolved appears as very great indeed, encompassing life's most important questions. A sceptical, critical and doubting frame of mind has replaced the former jubilant spirit celebrating science.
This could also be seen in the stand taken against Darwin. "What does his theory show? It leaves the riddle of the universe unsolved! Whence comes this wonderful nature of transmission, whence comes the ability of animate beings to change so appropriately?" Here lies the mysterious riddle of life that could not be overcome with mechanical principles. What then is left of Darwinism in the light of later criticism?
Of course, the advance of science began to make rapid progress. The solution of one problem always brings new problems to the surface to be solved, which were hidden beneath the theory of transmission. This theory, which Darwin had had to accept as a research hypothesis, continued to be studied, and heated discussion arose over the individual factors of development and the struggle for existence. While some scientists directed their attention to variation, which they considered due to exercise and adaptation to life (following the principle laid down by Lamarck) this idea was explicitly rejected by scientists like Weissman and others. While Darwin only assumed gradual and slow changes, De Vries found sudden and leaping cases of variation resulting in the sudden appearance of new species. All this, while it went to strengthen and develop the theory of descent, in some cases gave the impression that the new discoveries had torn asunder Darwin's theory, and so every new discovery that had this effect was hailed by the reactionaries as showing the bankruptcy of Darwinism. This social conception had its influence on science. Reactionary scientists claimed that a spiritual element is necessary. The supernatural and the mysterious, which Darwinism had thrown out the door, came back in through the window. This was the expression of a growing reactionary tendency within that very class which had at first been the standard bearer of Darwinism.
Darwinism has been of inestimable service to the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the old powers. It was therefore only natural that the bourgeoisie should use it against its new enemy, the proletariat; not because the proletarians were opposed to Darwinism, but the reverse. As soon as Darwinism made its appearance, the proletarian vanguard, the socialists, hailed Darwin's theory, because in Darwinism they saw a corroboration and completion of their own theory; not as some superficial opponents believe, that they wanted to base socialism upon Darwinism but in the sense that the Darwinian discovery - that even in the apparently stagnant organic world there is a continuous development - is a glorious corroboration and completion of the marxist theory of social development.
Yet it was natural for the bourgeoisie to make use of Darwinism against the proletarians. The bourgeoisie had to contend with two armies, and the reactionary classes know this full well. When the bourgeoisie attacks their authority, they point at the proletarians and caution the bourgeoisie to beware lest all authority crumble. In doing this, the reactionaries mean to frighten the bourgeoisie into abandoning any revolutionary activity. Of course, the bourgeois representatives answer that there is nothing to fear; that their science only refutes the groundless authority of the nobility while it supports them in their struggle against enemies of order.
At a congress of naturalists, the reactionary politician and scientist Virchow assailed Darwin's theory on the ground that it supported socialism. "Be careful of this theory," he said to the Darwinists, "for this theory is very closely related to the theory that caused so much dread in our neighbouring country." This allusion to the Paris Commune, made in the year famous for the hunting down of socialists, must have had a great effect. What shall be said, however, about the science of a professor who attacks Darwinism with the argument that it is not correct because it is dangerous! This reproach, of being in league with the red revolutionists, greatly annoyed Haeckel, the defender of this theory. He could not stand it. Immediately afterwards he tried to demonstrate that it is precisely Darwin's theory that shows the untenable nature of socialist demands, and that Darwinism and socialism "endure each other as fire and water."
Let us follow Haeckel's contentions, whose main lines recur in most authors who base their arguments against socialism on Darwin.
Socialism is a theory which presupposes natural equality between people, and strives to bring about social equality; equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments. Darwinism, on the contrary, is the scientific proof of inequality. The theory of descent establishes the fact that animal development goes in the direction of ever greater differentiation or division of labour; the higher or more perfect the animal, the greater the inequality existing. The same holds also good in society. Here, too, we see the great division of labour between vocations, class, etc., and the more society has developed, the greater become the inequalities in strength, ability and talent. The theory of descent is therefore to be recommended as "the best antidote to the socialist demand of complete egalitarianism."
The same holds true, but to a still greater extent, of the Darwinian theory of survival. Socialism wants to abolish competition and the struggle for existence. But Darwinism teaches us that this struggle is unavoidable and is a natural law for the entire organic world. Not only is this struggle natural, but it is also useful and beneficial. This struggle brings an ever greater perfection, and this perfection consists in an ever greater extermination of the unfit. Only the chosen minority, those who are qualified to withstand competition, can survive; the great majority must perish. Many are called, but few are chosen. The struggle for existence results at the same time in a victory for the best, while the bad and unfit must perish. This may be lamentable, just as it is lamentable that all must die, but the fact can neither be denied nor changed.
We wish to remark here how a small change of almost identical words serves as a defence of capitalism. When Darwin spoke of the survival of the fittest, he meant those that are best fitted to conditions. Seeing that in this struggle those that are better organized conquer the others, the conquerors were called first the fittest, and later the "best". This expression was coined by Herbert Spencer. In thus winning in their own domain, the conquerors in the social struggle, the large capitalists, proclaimed themselves the best.
Haeckel retained and still upholds this conception. In 1892 he said:
"Darwinism, or the theory of selection, is thoroughly aristocratic; it is based upon the survival of the best. The division of labour brought about by development causes an ever greater variation in character, an ever greater inequality among individuals, in their activity, education and condition. The more advanced human culture, the greater the difference and gulf between the various classes. Communism and the demands put up by the Socialists in demanding an equality of conditions and activity is synonymous with going back to the primitive stages of barbarism."
The English philosopher Herbert Spencer already had a theory on social growth before Darwin. This was the bourgeois theory of individualism, based upon the struggle for existence. Later he brought this theory into close relation with Darwinism. "In the animal world," he said, "the old, weak and sick are ever rooted out and only the strong and healthy survive. The struggle for existence serves therefore as a purification of the race, protecting it from deterioration. This is the happy effect of this struggle, for if this struggle should cease and each one were sure of procuring its existence without any struggle whatsoever, the race would necessarily deteriorate. The support given to the sick, weak and unfit causes a general race degeneration. If sympathy, finding its expressions in charity, goes beyond its reasonable bounds, it misses its object; instead of diminishing, it increases the suffering for the new generations. The good effect of the struggle for existence can best be seen in wild animals. They are all strong and healthy because they had to undergo thousands of dangers wherein all those that were not qualified had to perish. Among men and domestic animals sickness and weakness are so general because the sick and weak are preserved. Socialism, having as its aim to abolish the struggle for existence in the human world, will necessarily bring about an ever growing mental and physical deterioration."
These are the main contentions of those who use Darwinism as a defence of the bourgeois system. Strong as these arguments might appear at first sight they were not hard for the socialists to overcome. To a large extent, they are the old arguments used against socialism, but wearing the new garb of Darwinian terminology, and they show an utter ignorance of socialism as well as of capitalism.
Those who compare the social organism with the animal body neglect the fact that men do not differ like various cells or organs, but only in the degree of their abilities. In society the division of labour cannot go so far that all abilities perish at the expense of one. What is more, anyone who understands something of socialism knows that the efficient division of labour does not cease with socialism; that a real division of labour will be possible for the first time under socialism. The differences between the workers, their ability, and employment will not disappear; all that will disappear is the difference between workers and exploiters.
While it is certainly true that in the struggle for existence those animals that are strong, healthy and well survive, this does not happen under capitalist competition. Here victory does not depend upon perfection of those engaged in the struggle, but in something that lies outside of their body. While this struggle may hold good with the small bourgeois, where success depends upon personal abilities and qualifications, with the further development of capital success does not depend upon personal abilities, but upon the possession of capital. Whoever has a larger capital at command as will soon conquer the one who has a smaller capital at his disposal, although the latter may be more skilful. It is not the personal qualities, but the possession of money that decides who shall be the victor in the struggle. When the small capitalists perish, they do not perish as men but as capitalists; they are not weeded out from among the living, but from the bourgeoisie. They still exist, but no longer as capitalists. The competition existing in the capitalist system is therefore something different in its demands and its results from the animal struggle for existence.
Those people that perish as people are members of an entirely different class, a class that does not take part in the competitive struggle. The workers do not compete with the capitalists; they only sell their labour power to them. Owing to their being without property, they have not even the opportunity to measure their great qualities and enter a race with the capitalists. Their poverty and misery cannot be attributed to the fact that they fell in the competitive struggle on account of weakness, but because they were paid very little for their labour power. This is why, although their children are born strong and healthy, they perish in droves, while the children born to rich parents, although born sick, remain alive by means of the nourishment and care that is lavished on them. The children of the poor do not die because they are sick or weak, but because of external causes. It is capitalism which creates all these unfavourable conditions by means of exploitation, reduction of wages, unemployment crises, bad housing, and long hours of employment. It is the capitalist system that causes so many of the strong and healthy to succumb.
Thus the socialists prove that unlike the animal world, the competitive struggle between men does not bring forth the best and most qualified, but destroys many strong and healthy ones because of their poverty, while those that are rich, even if weak and sick, survive. Socialists prove that the determining factor is not personal strength, but something outside of man; it is the possession of money that determines who shall survive and who shall perish.
(End of part 1) Anton Pannekoek
[1]. Engels to Marx, 12th December 1859.
[2]. Marx to Engels, 19th December 1860. It is worth pointing out that shortly afterwards, in another letter to Engels dated 18th June 1862, Marx's opinion of Darwin was more critical: "It is remarkable to see how Darwin recognises in the animals and plants his own English society, with its division of labour, its competition, its opening of new markets, its ‘inventions', and its Malthusian ‘struggle for life'. It is the bellum omnium contra omnes [the war of all against all] of Hobbes, which reminds one of Hegel in the Phenomenology, where civil society appears as ‘the fleshly realm of the spirit', whereas with Darwin, it is the animal realm that takes the form of civil society". Engels was later to repeat Marx's criticism in Anti-Dühring (Engels refers to Darwin's "Malthusian blunder") and in Dialectics of Nature. In the next issue of the International Review we will return to what can only be considered as an incorrect interpretation of Darwin's work by Marx and Engels.
[3]. The following translation is based on the 1912 English translation by Nathan Weiser, checked for accuracy against the Dutch original.
[4]. Egg-laying mammals like the platypus (translator's note).
The defeat of the proletarian revolution in Germany was a decisive turning point in the 20th century because it also meant the defeat of the world revolution. In Germany, the establishment of the Nazi regime, built upon the crushing of the revolutionary proletariat, marked the acceleration of Germany's march towards the Second World War. The particular barbarism of the Nazi regime would very soon serve as a justification for the anti-fascist campaigns aimed at dragooning the proletariat of the "democratic" imperialist camp for the impending war. According to anti-fascist ideology, democratic capitalism was a "lesser evil" which could to some extent protect the population from all the worst in bourgeois society. This mystification, which still has a harmful effect on the consciousness of the working class, is given the lie by the revolutionary struggles in Germany: they were defeated by social democracy, which unleashed a reign of terror against them and so paved the way for fascism. This is one of the reasons why the ruling class likes to cover these events in a thick blanket of silence.
On the evening of January 15th 1919, five members of the armed bourgeois vigilante committee of the well-to-do district of Wilmeersdorf in Berlin, among them two businessmen and a distiller, gained access to the apartment of the Marcusson family, where they discovered three members of the central organ of the young Communist Party of Germany (KPD): Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Wilhelm Pieck. "Conventional" history books still say that the KPD leaders were "arrested". In reality, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Pieck were kidnapped. Although the activists of the "citizens army" were convinced that their prisoners were criminals, they did not hand them over to the police. Instead they brought them to the luxurious Hotel Eden, where, only the same morning, the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division (GKSD) had established its new headquarters.
The GKSD had been an elite unit of the Imperial Army, originally the body guards of the Emperor himself. Like its successor in World War II, the SS, it sent "shock" units to the battle front, but also had its own espionage and security systems. As soon as news of the outbreak of the revolution reached the western front, the GKSD marched homewards to assume the leadership of the counter-revolution, reaching the Berlin area on November 30th. There it led the "Christmas Eve" attack against the revolutionary sailors in the Imperial Palace on December 24th, employing artillery and gas grenades in the middle of the city.[1]
In his memoirs, the commander in chief of the GKSD, Waldemar Pabst, recalled how one of his officers, a Catholic aristocrat, after hearing a speech of Rosa Luxemburg, declared her to be a "saint", and asked him to allow her to address their unit. "At this moment", Pabst declared, "I recognised the extent of the danger represented by Mrs. Luxemburg. She was more dangerous that all the rest, including those with arms".[2]
The five intrepid defenders of law and order from Wilmersdorf, when they reached the paradise of Hotel Eden, were handsomely rewarded for their services. The GKSD was one of three organisations in the capital offering considerable financial rewards for the capture of Liebknecht and Luxemburg.[3]
Pabst has given us a brief account of his interrogation of Rosa Luxemburg that evening. "Are you Mrs. Rosa Luxemburg?" he asked. "Please decide for yourself" she replied. "To judge by the photos, you must be". "If you say so". She then took out a needle and began to sow her skirt, the rim of which tore when she was arrested. She then began reading one of her favourite books - Goethe's Faust - ignoring the presence of her interrogator.
As soon as news of the arrival of the captured "Spartakists" spread, a pogrom atmosphere broke out among the guests of the elegant hotel. Pabst, however, had plans of his own. He called in lieutenants and officers of the navy, highly respected men of honour. Men, whose "honour" had been wounded in a particular manner, since their own subordinates, the sailors of the imperial fleet, deserted and began the revolution. These gentlemen proceeded to swear a man's oath, a vow of silence for the rest of their lives concerning what was now to follow.
They were concerned to avoid a trial, a "martial rule execution" or anything else which would make the victims appear as hero's or martyrs. The "Spartakists" should die a disgraceful death. It was agreed to pretend to take Liebknecht to prison, fake a car breakdown in the city centre park, the "Tiergarten", and shoot him "on the run". Since such a "solution" would hardly seem credible regarding Rosa Luxemburg with her well known hip ailment that made her limp, it was decided that she should appear to fall victim of a civilian mob. The role of the mob was assigned to navy lieutenant Herman Souchon, whose father, Admiral Souchon, in November 1918, as governor of Kiel, had suffered the disgrace of being obliged to negotiate with the revolutionary workers and sailors. He was to wait outside the hotel, run over to the car taking Rosa Luxemburg away and shoot her in the head.
In the course of the execution of this plan, an unforeseen element appeared in the person of a soldier called Runge, who had arranged with his captain, a man called Petri, to stay on duty after his 11 p.m. knocking off time. They were determined to get the main reward for the liquidation of these revolutionaries for themselves. While Liebknecht was being taken to a car outside the hotel, Runge gave him a tremendous blow on the head with the butt of his rifle - an act which was to considerably discredit the story that Liebknecht had been "shot on the run". In the consternation caused by this act, nobody thought of removing Runge from the scene. When Rosa Luxemburg was brought out of the hotel, Runge, in full uniform, knocked her unconscious, using the same means. As she lay on the ground, he delivered her a second blow. After she had been flung, half dead, into the waiting car, another soldier on duty, von Rzewuski, inflicted another blow. It was only then that Souchon ran forward to execute her. What followed is well known. Liebknecht was shot in the Tiergarten. The corpse of Rosa Luxemburg was dumped into the nearby Landwehr canal.[4] The following day, the murderers had their photograph taken at their celebration party.
After expressing shock and condemnation in the face of these "atrocities", the Social Democratic government promised a "most rigorous investigation" - which it placed in the hands of the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division (GKSD). The leader of the investigation, Jorns, who had gained a reputation through the cover up of a colonial genocide by the German army in "German South West Africa" before the war, set up his office in Hotel Eden, where he was aided in his "inquiries" by Pabst and one of the accused murderers, von Pflugk-Harrtung. The plan to play for time and then bury the idea of a court case was foiled however by an article published in the Rote Fahne, the paper of the KPD, on 12th February. This article, which came remarkably close to what has been established as the concrete historical truth of these murders, triggered off a public outcry.[5]
The trial thus began on May 8th 1919. The court house was placed under the protection of armed forces of the GKSD. The appointed judge was another representative of the imperial fleet, Wilhelm Canaris, a personal friend of Pabst and of von Pflugk-Harrtung. He went on to become the commander in chief of the espionage of Nazi-Germany. Again, almost everything went according to plan - except that members of the Eden hotel staff, despite the fear of losing their jobs and of being put on the hit list of the military killers squads, truthfully testified what they had seen. The cleaning girl Anna Belger recounted hearing the officers speaking of the "reception" they had in store for Liebknecht in the Tiergarten. The waiters Mistelski and Krupp, both 17 years of age, identified Runge and revealed his connection to Petri. Despite all of this, the court unquestioningly accepted the "shot on the run" version, acquitting the officers who had shot. As far as Rosa Luxemburg was concerned, the conclusion was that two soldiers had tried to kill her, but that there was no known murderer. Nor was the cause of her death known, since her body had not been found.
On May 31st 1919, workers at a canal lock found the body of Rosa Luxemburg. On hearing that "she" had reappeared, the SPD minister of the interior, Gustav Noske, immediately ordered a news blackout on the issue. It was not until three days later that an official announcement was published, claiming that the remains of Rosa Luxemburg had been found, not by workers, but by a military patrol.
In defiance of all regulations, Noske delivered the corpse to his military friends, into the hands of Rosa's murderers. The authorities responsible could not help pointing out that Noske had infact stolen a corpse. Obviously, the Social Democrats were terrified even of the dead body of Rosa Luxemburg.
The vow of silence taken in Hotel Eden held for decades. But it was finally broken by Pabst himself. He could no longer stand not getting public credit for his deed. In the years after World War II, he began dropping heavy hints in interviews with news magazines (Spiegel, Stern) and became more explicit in discussions with historians and in his memoirs. In the democratic West German Federal Republic, the "anti-Communism" of the Cold War period offered favourable circumstances. Pabst recounted that he telephoned the Secial Democratic minister of the interior Noske on the evening of January 15th 1919, for advice about how to deal with his illustrious prisoners. They agreed on the need to "bring the civil war to an end." On the means to this end, Noske declared: "Your General should take the decision, they are your prisoners".[6] In a letter to Dr. Franz in 1969 Pabst wrote: "Noske and I were in complete agreement. Naturally Noske could not give the order himself." And in another letter Pabst wrote: "...these German idiots should drop to their knees and thank Noske and me, streets and squares should be called after us![7] Noske at the time was exemplary, and the Party (except for its half Communist left wing) was without fail. The fact that I could never have taken this action without the consent of Noske (with Ebert in the background), and that I had to protect my officers, is clear."[8]
The years 1918 to 1920 in Germany were not the first time in history when an attempted proletarian revolution or insurrection was met with a horrible massacre, costing up to 20,000 proletarian lives. Similar scenes were witnessed in Paris in the July Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. And whereas the victorious October Revolution of 1917 was almost bloodless, the civil war, which international capital imposed in response, cost millions of lives. What was new in Germany was the employment of a system of political murder, not only at the end of the revolutionary process, but from the very onset.[9]
Concerning this question, after Klaus Gietinger, we call on another witness: Emil Julius Gumbel, who published a famous book entitled Four Years of Political Murder in 1924. Like Klaus Gietinger today, Gumbel was not a revolutionary Communist. Infact he was a defender of the bourgeois republic established at Weimar. But he was above all a man in search of the truth, ready to risk his life in the process.[10]
For Gumbel, what characterised developments in Germany was the transition from "artisan murder" to what he called a "more industrial" method.[11] This was based on death lists compiled by secret organisations and "worked through" by hit squads comprised of officers and soldiers. These death squads not only peacefully co-existed alongside the official organs of the democratic state - they actively cooperated. A key role in this strategy was played by the media, which prepared and justified the assassinations in advance, and in the aftermath robbed the dead of all that remained to them: their good reputation.
Comparing the pre-war left-wing, mainly individual terrorism[12] with the new right-wing terror, Gumbel wrote: "The unbelievable clemency of the courts towards the perpetrators is well known. It is thus that the present political murders in Germany distinguish themselves from earlier ones common in other countries through two moments: Their scale and the extent to which they are not punished. In earlier times political murder after all did require a certain strength of decision. A certain heroism was not to be denied. The perpetrator was risking life and limb. It was extraordinarily difficult to flee. Today the culprit risks nothing at all. Mighty organisations with representatives throughout the country offer lodgings, protection and material support. ‘Well meaning' civil servants, heads of police provide the necessary papers to go abroad where necessary.... You are put up in the best hotels where you can live it up. In a word, political murder has gone from a heroic act to an everyday deed, virtually to an easy source of income."[13]
What went for individual murder applied no less to a right wing Putsch, used in order to kill on a massive scale - what Gumbel called "semi-organised murder". "If the putsch succeeds, all the better. If it fails, the courts ensure that nothing happens to the murderers. And they have made sure. Not a single murder from the right was ever really atoned for. Even those murderers who owned up to their crimes were let off on the basis of the Kapp-Amnesty".
A great number of such counter-revolutionary organisations were set up in Germany in response to the outbreak of the proletarian revolution.[14] And when they were banned in the country as a whole, when martial law and the extraordinary courts system were lifted, all of this was maintained in Bavaria, making Munich the "nest" of the German (and Russian exile) extreme right. What was presented as "Bavarian particularism" was in reality a division of labour. The main bearers of this "Bavarian Fronde" were Ludendorff and his supporters from the former military headquarters, who were not Bavarians at all.[15]
As we noted in the second part of this series, the legend of the "knife in the back", the Dolchstosslegende, was invented in September 1918 by General Ludendorff. As soon as he realised that the war was lost, he called for the formation of a civilian government which would sue for peace. His original idea was to make the civilians take the blame and save the reputation of the armed forces. The revolution had not yet broken out. Once it did, the Dolchstoß won a new importance. The propaganda that a glorious armed force, never defeated in the field of battle, was robbed of its victory at the last moment by the revolution, was aimed at crazing society, the soldiers in particular, with a burning hatred of the revolution.
When the Social Democrats were originally offered a place in such a civilian "government of disgrace", within the SPD leadership the clever Scheidemann, recognising that it was a trap, wanted to turn down the offer.[16] He was overruled by Ebert, who pleaded for putting the good of the Fatherland above "party politics".[17]
When, on the 10th of December 1918 the SPD government and the military high command marched a mass of troops returning from the front through the streets of Berlin, the intention was to use these forces to crush the revolution. To this end, Ebert addressed the troops at the Brandenburg Gate, greeting the army "never beaten in the field of battle". At this moment, Ebert made the Dolchstoßlegende an official doctrine of the SPD and of his government.[18]
Of course, the "stab in the back" propaganda did not literally blame the working class for Germany's defeat. Nor would this have been wise at a moment when civil war was beginning, i.e. when it is necessary for the bourgeoisie to blur class divisions. Minorities had to be found who had manipulated and misled the masses, and who could be identified as the real culprits.
One of these culprits was the Russians and their agent, German Bolshevism, representing a savage, Asiatic form of socialism, the socialism of famine and a bacillus menacing "European civilisation". Under different terms, these themes were a direct continuation of the anti-Russian propaganda of the war years. The SPD was the main and most debased spreader of this poison. The military was actually more hesitant here, since some of its more daring representatives temporarily toyed with what they called "National Bolshevism" (the idea that a military alliance of German militarism with proletarian Russia against the "Versailles powers" might also be a good means to morally destroy the revolution both in Germany and in Russia).
The other culprit was the Jews. Ludendorff had them in mind from the start. At first glance, it would appear as if the SPD did not follow this lead. In reality, its propaganda basically repeated the filth spread by the officers - except that the word "Jew" was replaced by "foreigner", "elements without national roots" or "intellectuals". Terms, which in the cultural context of the day meant the same thing. This anti-intellectual hatred of the "book worms" is a well known characteristic of anti-semitism. Two days before Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered, Vorwärts, the daily paper of the SPD published a "poem" - in reality a pogrom call - The Mortuary, regretting that only proletarians were among those killed, whereas the "likes" of "Karl, Rosa, Radek" escaped.
Social Democracy sabotaged the workers struggles from within. It led the arming of the counter-revolution and its military campaigns against the proletariat. By defeating the revolution, it created the possibility for the later victory of National Socialism, unwittingly preparing its way. The SPD did even more than its duty in defending capitalism. By helping to create the unofficial mercenary armies of the Freikorps, by protecting the officers' death squads, by spreading the ideologies of reaction and hatred which were to dominate German political life for the next quarter of a century, it actively participated in the cultivation of the milieu which helped to produce the Hitler regime.
"I hate revolution like sin" declared Ebert piously. This was not the hatred of the industrialists and military, who feared losing their property, and for whom the existing order seemed so natural that they could not but combat everything else; the sins Social Democracy hated were the sins of their own past, their involvement in a movement alongside convinced revolutionaries and proletarian internationalists - even if many of them had never themselves shared such convictions. It was the hatred of the renegade towards the cause betrayed. The leaders of the SPD and the trade unions believed that the workers' movement was their own property. When they ganged up with the imperialist bourgeoisie at the outbreak of world war, they thought that this was the end of socialism, an illusory chapter they had now decided to close. When the revolution raised its head only four years later, it was like the re-appearance of a dreaded ghost from the past. Hatred of the revolution was also fear of it. Projecting their own emotions onto their enemies, they feared being lynched by the "Spartakists" (a fear shared by the officers of the deathsquads).[19] Ebert was on the brink of fleeing the capital between Christmas and New Year 1918. All of this crystallised itself in relation to the principle target of their hatred: Rosa Luxemburg. The SPD had become a concentration of everything which was reactionary in putrefied capitalism. Thus, the very existence of Rosa Luxemburg, because of her loyalty to principles, her courage, her intellectual brilliance, the fact that she was a foreigner, of Jewish origin and a woman was a provocation to them. They called her "Red Rosa": a woman with a rifle, blood-thirsty and out for revenge.
We must bear this in mind when examining one of the striking phenomenon of the revolution in Germany: the degree of servility of Social Democracy towards the military, which even the Prussian officer caste found disgusting and ridiculous. Throughout the period of collaboration of the officers corps with the SPD, the former never ceased declaring in public their intention of chasing the latter "to hell" as soon as they no longer needed it. None of this could shatter the dog like loyalty of the SPD. This servility was of course not new. It had characterised the attitude of the trade unions and the reformist politicians long before 1914.[20] But now it was combined with the conviction that only the military could save capitalism and thus the SPD itself.
In March 1920 right wing officers revolted against the SPD government the Kapp Putsch. On the side of the Putschists we find all the collaborators of Ebert and Noske in the double murder of January 15th 1919: Pabst and his General von Lüttwitz, the GKSD and the above mentioned Lieutenants of the navy. Kapp and Lüttwitz had promised their troops a handsome financial reward for overthrowing Ebert. The coup was foiled, not by the government (which fled to Stuttgart), nor by the official military command (which declared itself "neutral") but by the proletariat. The three conflicting parties of the ruling class, the SPD, the "Kappists" and the military command (no longer neutral) got together again to defeat the workers. All's well that ends well! Except for one thing: What about the poor mutineers and their hoped for reward for toppling Ebert? No problem! The Ebert government, back in office, itself paid out this reward.
So much for the argument (advanced for instance by Trotsky before 1933) that Social Democracy, although integrated into capitalism, might still rise against the authorities and prevent Fascism - to save its own skin.
In fact, the military was not so much opposed to Social Democracy and the trade unions as to the existing party political system as a whole.[21] Already, pre-war Germany had not been governed by political parties, but by the military caste, a system symbolised by the monarchy. Step by step, the ever more powerful industrial and financial bourgeoisie was integrated into this system, though unofficial structures and, in particular the Alldeutsche Verein (the "All-German-Club") which effectively ruled the country before and during the World War.[22]
Against this, the parliament in Imperial Germany (the Reichstag) had almost no power. The political parties had no real government experience and were more lobby groups for different economic or regional factions than anything else.
What originally was a product of the political backwardness of Germany turned out to be an enormous advantage once the world war broke out. Coping with the war and with the revolution which followed, made the dictatorial control of the state over the whole of society a necessity. In the old western "democracies", in particular in the Anglo-Saxon countries with their sophisticated two party systems, state capitalism evolved through a gradual merger of the political parties and the different economic factions of the bourgeoisie with the state. This form of state capitalism, at least in Britain and the United States, proved to be extremely effective. But it took a relatively long time to emerge.
In Germany, the structure for such dictatorial state intervention already existed. One of the main "secrets" of the capacity of Germany to hold out for over four years during the war against almost all the other major powers of the world - who had the resources of their colonial empires behind them - lies in the efficiency of this system. This is also why the western allies were not just "playing to the gallery" when they demanded the liquidation of "Prussian Militarism" at the end of the war.
As we have already seen in the course of this series, not only the military but also Ebert himself wanted to save the Monarchy at the end of the war, with a pre-1914 style Reichstag. In other words they wanted to maintain those state capitalist structures which had proven themselves during the war. This had to be abandoned in the face of the danger of revolution. The whole arsenal and pageantry of party political democracy was needed to ideologically derail the workers.
This was what produced the phenomenon of the Weimar Republic: a host of inexperienced and ineffective parties largely incapable of cooperating together or of integrating themselves in a disciplined way into the state capitalist regime. No wonder the military wanted to get rid of this! The only real bourgeois political party existing in Germany was the SPD.
But if the maintenance of the state capitalist[23] war regime was made impossible by the revolution, the plan of Britain and the USA in particular to liquidate its military-social base was also made impossible by the revolution. The western "democracies" had to leave the nucleus of the military caste and its power intact in order to crush the proletariat. This did not remain without consequences. When in 1933 the traditional leaders of Germany, the armed forces and big industry, ditched the system of Weimar, it regained its organisational advantage over its western imperialist rivals in the preparation of World War II. At the level of its composition, the main difference between the old and the new system was that the SPD had been replaced by the NSDAP, by the Nazi Party. The SPD had been so successful in defeating the proletariat that its own services were no longer required.
In October 1917 Lenin summoned the party and the soviets in Russia to insurrection. In a resolution to the Bolshevik central committee, written "with the gnawed end of a pencil on a sheet of paper from a child's notebook ruled in squares" (Trotsky)[24] he wrote: "The Central Committee recognises that the international position of the Russian revolution (the revolt in the German navy which is an extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of the world socialist revolution; the threat of peace by the imperialists with the object of strangling the revolution in Russia) as well as the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co. to surrender Petrograd to the Germans), and the fact that the proletarian party has gained a majority in the Soviets - all this, taken in conjunction with the peasant revolt and the swing of popular confidence towards our party (the elections in Moscow) and, finally, the obvious preparations being made for a second Kornilov revolt... - all this places armed uprising on the order of the day."[25]
This formulation contains the whole Marxist vision of the world revolution of the day, and of the pivotal role of Germany in this process. On the one hand the insurrection in Russia must come in response to the beginning of the revolution in Germany, which is the signal for the whole of Europe. On the other hand, unable to squash the revolution on its own territory, the Russian bourgeoisie intends to entrust this task to the German government, the gendarme of the counter-revolution on the European continent (handing over Petersburg). Lenin thundered against the opponents of insurrection within his own party, those who declared their solidarity with the revolution in Germany, and in so doing called on the Russian workers to wait for the German proletariat to give the lead.
"Just think of it: under devilishy difficult conditions, having but one Liebknecht (and he in prison) with no newspapers, with no feeedom of assembly, with no Soviets, with all clases of the population, including every well-to-do peasant, incredibly hostile to the idea of internationalism, with the imperialist big, middle, and petty bourgeoisie spelndidly organised - the Germans, ie the German revolutionary internationalists, the German workers dresssed in sailors jackets, started a mutiny in the navy with one chance in a hundred of winning.
"But we, with dozens of papers at our disposal, freedom of assembly, a majority in the Soviets, we, the best situated proletarian internationalists in the world, should refuse to support the German revolutionaries by our uprising. We ought to reason like the Scheidemanns and Renaudeks, that it is most prudent not to revolt, for if we are shot, then the world will lose such excellent, reasonable, ideal internationalists! "[26]
As he wrote in his famous text The Crisis Has Matured, (September 29, 1917) those who would postpone insurrection in Russia would be "triators to the cause, for by their conduct they would be betraying the Germany revolutionary workers who have started a revolt in the navy".[27]
A similar debate took place within the Bolshevik party on the occasion of the first political crisis which followed the seizure of power: whether or not to sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with German imperialism. At a first glance, it seems as if the front within the debate has been reversed. It is now Lenin who pleads for caution: We must accept the humiliation of this treaty. But in reality there is continuity. In both cases, when the fate of the Russian Revolution is at stake, the perspective of the revolution in Germany became the focus of debate. In both cases, Lenin insists that everything depends on what happens in Germany, but also that the victory of the revolution there will take longer and be infinitely more difficult than in Russia. This is why the Russian Revolution must take the lead in October 1917. This is why, at Brest-Litovsk, the Russian bastion must be prepared to make a compromise. It has the responsibility to "hold out" in order to be able to support the German and the world revolution.
From the outset, the revolution in Germany was permeated with a sense of responsibility towards the Russian Revolution. To the German proletariat fell the task of liberating the Russian workers from their international isolation. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in prison in her notes on The Russian Revolution, published posthumously in 1922:
"Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an
inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism."[28]
The glory of the Russian events is that of having begun the world revolution.
"This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realisation of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labour in the entire world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘bolshevism'."[29]
The practical solidarity of the German with the Russian proletariat is thus the revolutionary conquest of power, the demolition of the main bastion of militarist and social democratic counter-revolution in continental Europe. Only this step can broaden the breach achieved in Russia into a world wide revolutionary flood.
In another contribution from her prison cell, The Russian Tragedy, Rosa Luxemburg highlighted the two mortal dangers of the isolation of the Russian revolution. The first danger is that of a terrible massacre at the hands of world capitalism, represented at that moment by German militarism. The second danger is that of a political degeneration and moral bankruptcy of the Russian bastion itself, its incorporation into the imperialist world system. At the moment she was writing (after Brest-Litovsk), she saw this danger from the side of what was to become the so-called National Bolshevik line of thinking within the German military establishment. This centred around the idea of offering "Bolshevik Russia" a military alliance as a means, not only of helping German Imperialism to world hegemony against its European rivals, but at the same time of morally corrupting the Russian Revolution - above all though the destruction of its basic principle of proletarian internationalism.
In fact, Rosa Luxemburg greatly overestimated the readiness of the German bourgeoisie at that moment to embark on such an adventure. But she was fundamentally right in identifying this second danger, and in recognising that its realisation would be the direct result of the defeat of the German and the world revolution. As she concluded:
"Any political defeat of the Bolsheviks in honest struggle against the overwhelming force and the disfavour of the historical situation would be preferable to this moral debacle."
The Russian and the German revolutions can only be understood together. They are two moments of one and the same historic process. The world revolution began on the periphery of Europe. Russia was the weak link in the chain of imperialism, because the world bourgeoisie was divided by imperialist war. But it had to be followed by a second blow, delivered at the heart of the system, if it were to have a chance of toppling world capitalism. This second blow was delivered in Germany, beginning with the November Revolution of 1918. But the bourgeoisie was able to deflect this deadly blow against its heart. This is turn sealed the fate of the Revolution in Russia. But the outcome there corresponded not to the first, but to the second hypothesis of Rosa Luxemburg, the one she feared most. Against all the odds, Red Russia defeated the invading white counter-revolutionary forces. A combination of three main factors made this possible. Firstly the political and organisational leadership of the Russian proletariat, which went through the school of Marxism and the school of the revolution. Secondly the sheer size of the country, which had already helped to defeat Napoleon, which would contribute to defeating Hitler, and which here too was to the disadvantage of the counter-revolutionary invaders. Thirdly the confidence of the peasants, the vast majority of the Russian population, in the proletarian revolutionary leadership. It was the peasantry which supplied the lion's share of the troops of the Red Army under Trotsky.
What followed was the capitalist degeneration of the isolated revolution from within: a counter-revolution in the name of the revolution. Thus, the bourgeoisie has been able to bury the secret of the defeat of the Russian revolution. All of this is based on the ability of the bourgeoisie to keep secret the fact that there was a proletarian revolutionary upsurge in Germany. The secret is that the Russian Revolution was defeated, not in Moscow and Petersburg, but in Berlin and the Ruhr. The defeat of the German revolution is the key to understanding the defeat of the Russian revolution. The ruling class has hidden this key. A great historical taboo which all the responsible circles abide to. In the house of the hangman, the noose is never mentioned.
In a sense, the existence of revolutionary struggles in Germany is more of a problem than in Russia. This is precisely because the revolution in Germany was defeated in an open struggle by the bourgeoisie. Not only the lie that Stalinism equals socialism, but also the lie that bourgeois democracy, that social democracy is antagonistic to fascism, depends to a large degree on the German struggles being forgotten.
What remains is embarrassment. A discomfort which is concretised above all in relation to the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, which has become the symbol of the victory of the counter-revolution.[30] Indeed this crime, which stands for tens of thousands of others, is the epitome of the ruthlessness, of the unconditional will to victory of the bourgeoisie in defence of its system. But was this crime not committed under the leadership of bourgeois democracy? Was it not the joint product of social democracy and the extreme right? Were its victims, not its perpetrators, the incorporation of all that is best, most human, most representative of what could be a bright future for our species? And why, already at the time, and again today, do those who feel responsible for this future of society, feel so deeply troubled by these crimes, and so attracted to those who were its victims? These swaggering crimes, which helped to save the system 90 years ago, may yet prove to be a boomerang.
In his study of the system of political murder in Germany, undertaken in the 1920's, Emil Gumbel makes a connection between this practise and the individualist, "heroic" vision of the defenders of the present social order, who see history as the product of individuals. "The right is correspondingly inclined to believe that it can wipe out the left opposition, which is carried by the hope of a radically different economic order, by liquidating its leaders."[31] But history is a collective process made and experienced by millions of people, not only by the ruling class which tries to monopolise its lessons.
In his study of the German Revolution written in the 1970s, the "liberal" German historian Sebastian Haffner concluded that these crimes remained an open wound, and that their long term results were still an open question.
"Today one realises with horror that this episode was the really historically binding event of the drama of the German revolution. Looking back on it from a distance of half a century, its historic impact has taken on something of the uncanny unpredictability of the events at Golgatha - which, at the moment they took place, also seemed not to have changed anything". And:
"The murder of January 15th, 1919 was the beginning - the beginning of the thousands of murders in the coming months under Noske, to the millions of murders in the following decades of the Hitler era. It was the signal for everything else."[32]
Can the present and the future generations of the working class re-appropriate this historic reality? Is it possible, in the long term, to liquidate revolutionary ideas by killing those who bear them? The last words of the last article of Rosa Luxemburg before she died were spoken in the name of the revolution: "I was, I am and I will be."
Steinklopfer, May 2009.
[1]. This attack was foiled by a spontaneous mobilisation of the workers. See the previous article in this series.
[2]. Quoted by Klaus Gietinger: Eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal. Die Ermordung Rosa Luxemburgs (A corpse in the Landwehr Canal. The murdering of Rosa Luxemburg) P.17. Hamburg 2008. Gietinger, Sociologist, Author and Film Director, has devoted an important part of his life to researching the circumstances of the murdering of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. His latest book - Waldemar Pabst: Der Konterrevolutionär (The Counter-Revolutionary) - benefits from insight into historical documents found in Moscow and East Berlin to more completely prove the implication of the SPD.
[3]. The others were the monarchist "Regiment Reichstag" and the spy organisation of the SPD under the command of Anton Fischer.
[4]. Wlhelm Pieck was the only one of the three arrested to get away with his life. To this day, it remains unclear whether he was able to bluff his way out, was let off because he was not well known, or whether he was allowed to escape after betraying his comrades. Pieck was later to become president of the German Democratic Republic.
[5]. The author of this article, Leo Jogiches, was "shot on the run" a month later.
[6]. General von Lüttwitz
[7]. On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of these atrocities, the Liberal Party (FPD) in Germany poposed erecting a monument for Noske in Berlin. Pofalla, the general secretary of the CDU, the patry of chancellor Angela Merkel, described the actions of Noske as a "plucky defence of the republic". (Quoted in the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel January 11th 2009)
[8]. Gietinger: The murder of Rosa Luxemburg: See the chapter "74 Jahre danach" (74 years on).
[9]. The importance of this step taken in Germany is emphasised by the writer Peter Weiss, a German artist of Jewish origin who fled to Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. In his monumental novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance) he tells the story of the Swedish minister of the interior, Palmstierna, who in the summer of 1917 sent an emissary to Petrograd, calling - in vain - on Kerensky, the prime minister of the pro-Entente Russian government, to murder Lenin. Kerensky refuses, denying that Lenin represents a real danger.
[10]. Gumbel: Vier Jahre politischer Mord (Malik-Verlag Berlin), republished 1980 by Wunderhorn, Heidelberg.
[11]. Who can read these words today without thinking of Auschwitz?
[12]. For instance that of western European anarchists or the Russian Narodniki and Social Revolutionaries.
[13]. Gumbel ibid P. 147.
[14]. Gumbel lists "some" of these organisations in his book. We will repeat this list here, without even bothering to translate their names, just to give an impression of the scale of the phenomenon: Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten, Bund der Aufrechten, Deutschvölkische Schutz- und Trutzbund, Stahlhelm, Organisation "C", Freikorps and Reichsfahne Oberland, Bund der Getreuen, Kleinkaliberschützen, Deutschnationaler Jugendverband, Notwehrverband, Jungsturm, Nationalverband Deutscher Offiziere, Orgesch, Rossbach, Bund der Kaisertreuen, Reichsbund Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, Deutschsoziale Partei, Deutscher Orden, Eos, Verein ehemaliger Baltikumer, Turnverein Theodor Körner, Allgemeiner deutschvölkischer Turnvereine, Heimatssucher, Alte Kameraden, Unverzagt, Deutscher Eiche, Jungdeutscher Orden, Hermansorden, Nationalverband deutscher Soldaten, Militärorganisation der Deutschsozialen und Nationalsozialisten, Olympia (Bund für Leibesübungen), Deutscher Orden, Bund für Freiheit und Ordnung, Jungsturm, Jungdeutschlandbund, Jung-Bismarckbund, Frontbund, Deutscher Waffenring (Studentenkorps), Andreas-Hofer-Bund, Orka, Orzentz, Heimatbund der Königstreuen, Knappenschaft, Hochschulring deutscher Art, Deutschvölkische Jugend, Alldeutscher Verband, Christliche Pfadfinder, Deutschnationaler Beamtenbund, Bund der Niederdeutschen, Teja-Bund, Jungsturm, Deutschbund, Hermannsbund, Adlerund Falke, Deutschland-Bund, Junglehrer-Bund, Jugendwanderriegen-Verband, Wandervögel völkischer Art, Reichsbund ehemaliger Kadetten.
[15]. It was General Ludendorff, virtually the dictator of Germany during World War I, who organised the so-called beer hall putsch in Munich in 1923 along with Adolf Hitler.
[16]. Scheidemann himself was to become the target of an (unsuccessful) assassination attempt from the extreme right, who blamed him for accepting the Treaty of Versailles dictated by the western powers.
[17]. The admiration of the former chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt, for the "statesmanship" of Ebert is well known.
[18]. However, infected by the revolutionary mood in the capital, most of the troops fraternised with the population or dispersed.
[19]. After murdering Karl and Rosa, members of the GKSD expressed the fear that they would be lynched if sent to prison.
[20]. During the January 1918 mass strikes in Berlin, Scheidemann from the SPD was included in a delegation of workers sent to government offices to negotiate. There, they were ignored. The workers decided to leave. Scheidemann begged the officials to meet the delegation. His face "blazed red with joy" when one of them made some vague promises. The delegation was not received. Recounted by Richard Müller: From Empire to Republic. P. 106.
[21]. On the whole, the military greatly appreciated Ebert and Noske in particular. Stinnes, the richest man in post World War I Germany, named his yacht after Legien, the leader of the Social Democratic trade union federation.
[22]. According to Gumbel, it was also the main organiser of the Kapp Putsch
[23]. Or "state socialism", as Walter Rathenow, president of the gigantic AEG electrical concern, enthusiastically called it
[24]. Leon Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, Pluto Press P.999.
[25]. Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (B), October 10 (23), 1917. In: Lenin Collected Works, Vol.26
[26]. Lenin: Letter to Comrades, October 1917, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p.204.
[27]. Collected Works, Vol.26, p.81.
[28]. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks p. 394.
[29]. Ibid, p.395.
[30]. The dyed-in-the-wool Liberals of the FDP in Berlin suggested giving a public place in Berlin the name of Noske, as we noted above. The SPD, the party of Noske, turned down this proposition. No plausible explanation was given for this untypical modesty.
[31]. Gumbel, ibid, P. 146.
[32]. Haffner: 1918/19, A German Revolution, P. 147 and 158,
In preceding articles in this series, we have looked in detail at Marx's summation of the historical materialist method in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. We have now reached the last section of this summation:
"The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation".
We will come back later to the specific antagonisms which Marx considered to be inherent in capitalist society, and which provide the basis for his verdict that capitalism, like previous forms of class exploitation, can only be considered to be a transitory social formation. Before proceeding, however, we want to respond to a charge that has been raised against marxists who have tried to locate the ascent and decline of capitalist society in the context of the succession of previous modes of production - in other words, to use the marxist method to examine capitalism as a moment in the entire drama of human history. In discussions with elements of a new generation coming to revolutionary positions (for example in the internet discussion forum libcom.org), such an approach has been criticised for offering no more than a "metaphysical narrative", leading to essentially messianic conclusions; elsewhere in the same forum[1] our efforts to draw conclusions about the ascent and decline of capitalism from a far more general historical perspective is seen as an example of an enterprise that Marx himself repudiated: the search for a "general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical."
This quote from Marx is often taken out of context to support the view that Marx never tried to elaborate a general theory of history, but only aimed to analyse the laws of capitalism. So what was the context of this quote?
It's from a letter from Marx to the editor of the Russian journal Otyecestvenniye Zapisky (November1877), responding to "a Russian critic" who tried to portray Marx's theory of history precisely as a dogmatic and mechanical schema, in which every nation is predetermined to go through exactly the same pattern of development that Marx analysed with regard to the rise of capitalism in Europe. His critic "feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself". And indeed, this tendency was very strong among the original Russian marxists, who often tended to present marxism as a simple apology for capitalist development, and who assumed that Russia must necessarily go through its own bourgeois revolution before being able to pass over to the stage of the socialist revolution. It was this trend which resurfaced later on in the form of Menshevism.
In the letter in question, Marx actually comes to a very different conclusion:
"In order that I might be qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia to-day, I learnt Russian and then for many years studied the official publications and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclusion: If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime".
In sum: Marx certainly did not consider that his method for analysing history in general could be applied rigidly to each country taken separately, and that his theory of history was not a rigid system of "universal progress", describing a linear, mechanical process which must always lead in the same progressive direction (even if what was called marxism certainly became that in the hands of the Mensheviks and later of the Stalinists). He had reason to consider that Russia might be spared the horrors of a capitalist transformation by the conjunction between a proletarian revolution in the advanced western countries and the traditional communal forms at the basis of Russian agriculture. The fact that things turned out somewhat differently does not invalidate Marx's open-ended approach. Furthermore: his method is concrete and involves consideration of the actual historical circumstances in which a given social form appears. In the same letter, Marx gives an example of the way he works: "In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former ‘poor whites' in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical"
But what this example does not show is that Marx's theory excluded any attempt to draw out the general dynamic of social formations prior to capitalism, and that therefore any general discussion about the ascent and decadence of social systems is a nonsensical and futile enterprise. The huge amount of energy Marx put into studying the Russian "commune" and the general question of primitive communism in his later years, and the amount of space covered by the analysis of pre-capitalist social forms in the Grundrisse and elsewhere clearly counts against this proposition. The example of the letter shows that Marx insisted on studying a given social formation separately prior to making comparisons, and in this way "finding the clue" to the phenomenon in question; it does not show that Marx refused to go from the particular to the general when it came to understanding the movement of history.
Above all, the charge that attempts to locate capitalism in the context of the succession of modes of production is a "super-historical" project is refuted by the approach in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx outlines his general approach to historical evolution, and where he very clearly announces the scope of his investigation. In the previous article, we examined the passage dealing with previous social forms (primitive communism, Asiatic despotism, slavery, feudalism, etc), and showed how certain general conclusions could indeed be drawn about the reasons for their ascent and decline - to be precise, the establishment of social relations of production which acted now as a spur, now as a barrier to the development of the productive forces. In the passage we are looking at here, Marx uses a mere phrase - but one so full of significance - to underline the fact that the scope of his investigation is the whole of human history: "The prehistory of human societies ends with this formation". What exactly does Marx mean by this term?
When the eastern bloc collapsed in 1989, the ruling class in the west launched itself into a massive propaganda campaign based around the slogan "communism is dead" and exulting in the conclusion that Marx, the "prophet" of communism, had been finally discredited. The "philosophical" gloss on this campaign was supplied by Francis Fukayama, who had no hesitation in announcing "the end of history" - the definitive triumph of liberal democratic capitalism, which would, in its admittedly flawed but basically human way, bring an end to war and poverty and free mankind from the burden of earth-shattering crises. "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".[2]
The two decades that followed these events, with all their attendant military barbarism and genocides, with the growing gap between rich and poor on a global scale, with the increasing evidence that we are facing an environmental disaster of planetary proportions, soon began to undermine Fukayama's complacent thesis, which he himself began to qualify, along with his uncritical support for the ruling Neo-Con faction in the US state. And today, with the outbreak of a profound economic crisis in the very heart of triumphant liberal democratic capitalism, such claims can only be the object of ridicule - and meanwhile, Marx and his vision of capitalism as a system wracked by crisis can no longer be dismissed as a remnant of some long-past Jurassic era.
Marx himself remarked very early on that the bourgeoisie had already come to the conclusion that its system was the end of history, the pinnacle and final goal of man's striving and the most logical expression of human nature. Even a revolutionary thinker like Hegel, whose dialectical method was based on the recognition of the transience of all historical stages and expressions, fell into this trap when he saw the existing Prussian regime as the final resting place of the Absolute Spirit.
As we have seen in the previous articles, Marx repudiated the notion that capitalism, based on private property and the exploitation of human labour, was the perfect expression of human nature, pointing out that the original human social organisation had been a form of communism, and identifying capitalism as only one in a series of class-divided societies that had succeeded the dissolution of primitive communism, no less doomed to disappear as the result of its own inherent contradictions.
But capitalism was indeed the final episode of this series, "the last antagonistic form of the social process of production- antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence".
And why was this? Because "the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism".
The term "productive forces" has come to be regarded with some suspicion since Marx used it. Understandably so, because (as we explained in a previous chapter) the perversion of marxism by the Stalinist counter-revolution has given a sinister meaning to the notion of developing the productive forces, conjuring up images of Stakhanovite exploitation and the construction of a monstrously top-heavy war economy. And in the last few decades, the rapid evolution of the ecological crisis has emphasised the terrible price mankind has paid through the continuation of capitalism's frenzied "development".
For Marx, the productive forces are not to be understood as some autonomous power determining human history - that is only true in so far as they are the product of alienated labour and have escaped the hands of the species which developed them in the first place. But by the same token, these forces, set in motion by particular forms of social organisation, are not inherently hostile to mankind, as in the anti-technological nightmares of the primitivists and other anarchists. On the contrary: at a certain stage of their costly and contradictory development, they are key to the liberation of the human species from millennia of toil and exploitation, providing that mankind can reorganise its social relations to the point where the immense productive power evolved under capitalism can be used to satisfy real human need.
Such a reorganisation is indeed possible because of the existence, within capitalism, of a "productive force", the proletariat, which is for the first time both an exploited class and a revolutionary one, in contrast, for example, to the bourgeoisie, which though revolutionary in opposition to the old feudal class, was itself the bearer of a new form of class exploitation. The working class has no interest in setting up a new system of exploitation because it can only free itself by freeing humanity in general. As Marx put it in The German Ideology:
"In all revolutions up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present society".
But this also means emancipating mankind from the scars of thousands of years of class rule, and beyond that, from the hundreds of thousands of years in which mankind has been dominated by material scarcity and the struggle for survival.
Mankind thus comes to a definite point of rupture with all previous historical epochs. This is why Marx talks about the end of "prehistory". If the proletariat succeeds in overthrowing the rule of capital and, after a more or less long period of transition, in creating a fully communist world society, it will have made it possible for future generations of human beings to make their own history in full consciousness. A passage from Engels in Anti-Duhring makes this point very eloquently:
"With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history, pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom".
In such passages, Marx and Engels reaffirm the vast sweep of their historical vision, showing the underlying unity of all hitherto existing epochs of human history, and showing how the historical process, for all that has proceeded more or less unconsciously, blindly, is yet creating the conditions for a qualitative step no less fundamental than the first emergence of man from the animal kingdom.
This grandiose vision was reiterated by Trotsky over 50 years later, in a lecture to Danish students on 27th November 1932, not long after his exile from Russia. Here Trotsky calls on the material supplied by the human and natural sciences, in particular the discoveries of psychoanalysis, to indicate more precisely what this step implied for man's inner life: "Anthropology, biology, physiology have accumulated sufficient data to place before humanity in its full magnitude the task of its own physical and spiritual perfection and growth. Psychoanalysis, no matter how one relates to one or another of its conclusions, has undoubtedly through Freud's genius given access to the well called the psyche or, poetically, ‘the soul' of man. And what was found? Our conscious thought comprises only a fraction of the dark psychic forces at work in man himself. Research divers descend into the depths of the ocean and photograph the most obscure fish. Man's thought, having descended into the depths of his own spiritual well, must illuminate the most hidden motive forces of the psyche and subject them to reason and will. Once having gotten control over the anarchic forces of its own society, humanity will get at itself in the chemist's mortar and retort. For the first time humanity will see itself as raw material or, at the very best, as a physical and psychic half-product."[3]
In both these passages, there is a clear unity established in all epochs of history hitherto: during this immense arc of time, man is a "physical and psychical half-product" - still, in a sense, a species in transition from the animal kingdom to a fully human existence.
Capitalism alone of previous class societies could be the prelude to such a qualitative leap, because it has developed the productive forces to the point where the fundamental problems of mankind's material existence - the provision of life's necessities for everyone on the planet - can at last be resolved, allowing human beings the freedom to develop their creative capacities without limit, and to finally achieve their real, hidden potential. And here the real meaning of "productive forces" becomes apparent: the productive forces are fundamentally the creative powers of mankind itself, which have hitherto only expressed themselves in a limited and distorted manner, but which will truly come into their own once the limitations of class society have been transcended.
More than this: communism, a society without private property and exploitation, has become the only possible basis for the development of mankind, since the contradictions inherent in generalised wage labour and commodity production are threatening mankind with the disintegration of all social bonds and even the destruction of the very foundations of human life. Mankind will live in harmony with itself and with nature, or it will not live at all. Marx's assessment in The German Ideology, written in capitalism's youth, becomes far more urgent and unavoidable the longer capitalism sinks into its decay: "Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence"
Communism thus resolves the basic conundrum of human history - how do we ensure the necessities of life in order to enjoy life to the full. But unlike capitalist ideology, the communist viewpoint does not see communism as a static end point. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx certainly presents communism as the "solution to the riddle of history", but he also sees it as a starting point from which the true history of mankind can get underway: "Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society."[4]
Characteristically, Marx's summation of how he considers it necessary to look at the past ends with a step into the far distant future. And this too is entirely in line with his method, to the scandal of those who think that posing the question on such a scale inevitably ends up in "metaphysics". Indeed, it could be said that the future is always the starting point for Marx. As he explained in the Theses on Feuerbach, the standpoint of the new materialism, the basis of the proletarian movement's knowledge of reality, was not the agglomeration of atomised egos that make up bourgeois society, but "socialised humanity", or man as he could be in a really human society; in other words, the entire movement of history up till now has to be assessed from the starting point of the communist future. It is essential to bear this in mind when we go about analysing whether a social form is a factor of "progress" or a system that is holding back humanity's advance. The standpoint that considers all human epochs up till now as belonging to "prehistory" is not based on an ideal of perfection which humanity is inevitably programmed to achieve, but on a material possibility inherent in the nature of man and his inter-action with nature - a possibility which can fail to be realised precisely because that realisation is ultimately dependent on conscious human action. But the fact that there is no guarantee of success for the communist project does not alter the judgement that revolutionaries, who "represent the future in the present", need to make about capitalist society once it has reached the point where it has made the leap towards the realm of freedom possible on a global scale: that it has become redundant, obsolete, decadent as a system of social reproduction.
Gerrard, May 2009.
[1]. See for example https://libcom.org/forums/thought/general-discussion-decadence-theory-17... [8].
[2]. The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama, 1992.
[3]. Cited in Trotsky's Notebooks, 1933-1935, Writings on Lenin, Dialectics and Evolutionism, translated and introduced by Philip Pomper, New York 1998, p 67.
[4]. From the chapter "Private Property and Communism".
The main characteristic of revolutionary syndicalism is the conception that the unions are the ideal form of working class organisation on the one hand and, on the other, that after the revolution in the form of a victorious general strike, they will be the basis for a new social structure.
The trade union opposition by the "Localists" and, after 1897, the foundation of the Freie Vereinigung Deutscher Gewerkschaften (FVDG, the Free Association of German Trade Unions) formed the basis for the birth of organised syndicalism in the German workers' movement. In a manner comparable to the more important syndicalist tendencies in France, Spain and the USA, syndicalism was in its origins a healthy proletarian reaction within the German workers' movement against the increasingly reformist politics of the leadership of a powerful social democracy and its trade unions.
After the First World War, the Frei Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD, the Free Workers' Union of Germany) was founded in September 1919. As an explicitly "anarcho-syndicalist" organisation, the FAUD saw itself as the direct heir of the syndicalist movement prior to the war.
Today there are a number of anarcho-syndicalist groups who lay claim to the tradition of the FVDG and the later anarcho-syndicalism of the FAUD in the 1920s. Rudolf Rocker, as the best known "theoretician" of German anarcho-syndicalism from 1919 onwards is often seen as its political reference point.
However, syndicalism in Germany undoubtedly went through many changes following its birth. For us, the central issue is to examine whether the syndicalist movement in Germany was able to defend the interests of the working class, to provide political answers to the burning questions posed to it and to remain loyal to proletarian internationalism.
It is worth beginning by looking at the most serious challenge faced by the working class in the last decades of the 19th century in Germany: reformism. Without doing this, there is a danger of seeing syndicalism in Germany simply as a particularly radical trade union strategy or as no more than a set of ideas imported from the Latin countries like Spain or France, where syndicalism always played a more important role than in Germany.
The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was part of the Second International (1889-1914) and the most powerful proletarian organisation of the day. It served as a political compass for the international workers' movement. But the SPD is also the symbol of a tragic experience: it is the typical example of an organisation which, having been situated for years on the proletarian terrain, went through an insidious process of degeneration and ended up, during the years of the First World War, passing once and for all into the camp of the ruling class. The leadership of the SPD pushed the working class into the slaughter of war in 1914 and took on a central role in the defence of German imperialist interests.
In 1878 Bismarck imposed the "anti-socialist law" which remained in force for 12 years - up until 1890. This law suppressed the activities and meetings of proletarian organisations, and was aimed above all at any organisational links between proletarian groupings. But the "anti-socialist law" was not merely an expression of blind repression against the working class. The ruling class also tried to attract the leadership of the SPD to the idea of placing participation in the bourgeois parliament at the centre of its activities. It thus subtly encouraged the growth of the reformist tendency within social democracy.
These reformist conceptions found early expression in the "Zurich Manifesto" in 1879 and developed around the figure of Edward Bernstein. They called for parliamentary work to be the main vehicle for gradually conquering power within the bourgeois state. This thus marked an abandonment of the perspective of a proletarian revolution that destroys the bourgeois state, in favour of reforming capitalism. Bernstein and his followers wanted the SPD to be transformed from a workers' party into an organisation capable of winning the ruling class to the idea of converting private capital into a collective form of capital. The ruling class was thus to be the main instrument for going beyond its own system - a total absurdity. These conceptions amounted to a frontal attack on the proletarian character of the SPD. But more than this: the Bernstein wing was openly making propaganda in favour of supporting German imperialism in its colonial policy, approving the building of powerful ocean warships for example. At the time of the Zurich Manifesto, Bernstein's reformist ideas were clearly fought by the majority of the social democratic leadership and had not found much echo in the rank and file of the party. But history showed tragically in the decades that followed that this had been the first expression of a cancer that would gradually and relentlessly invade large parts of the SPD. It is not surprising therefore that this open capitulation to the capitalist system, which Bernstein symbolically represented in a more isolated manner but which was to gain a growing influence in German social democracy, unleashed a reaction of indignation within the working class. It is also not astonishing that in this situation a particular reaction developed precisely among the more combative workers organised in the unions.
However, even before the Zurich Manifesto, at the beginning of the 1870s, there were signs in the German workers' movement that an independent "trade union theory" was developing around Carl Hillmann. The syndicalist movement just before the First World War and above all anarcho-syndicalism afterwards continued to take him as a reference. From May 1873 there appeared a series of articles under the heading "Practical indications for emancipation" in the review Der Volkstaat,[1] where Hillmann wrote: "... the great mass of workers show a distrust towards all the purely political parties, because they are often betrayed and abused by them, and because these parties' ignorance of social movements leads them to hide the importance of the latter's political side; at the same time, the workers show a greater understanding of and a practical sense for questions about matters that are closer to their interests: a shorter working day, the elimination of offensive factory rules, etc. The permanent trade union organisation exerts a lasting pressure on lawmaking and governments, and as a result the workers' movement in this form of its expression is also political, even if only in the second place (...) The efforts of effective trade union organisations give rise to thoughts about the emancipation of the working class, and this is why these natural organisations must be put at the same rank as purely political agitation, and can be seen neither as a reactionary formation nor as a political movement".
Behind Hillmann's desire in the 1870s to defend the role of the trade unions as central organisations for the struggle of the working class, there was no intention of introducing a line of separation between the economic struggle and the political struggle, or even of rejecting the political struggle. Hillmann's "trade union theory" was mainly a sensible reaction to the tendencies emerging within the leadership of social democracy that wanted to subordinate the trade unions, and the class struggle in general, to parliamentary activities.
Engels, in the time of Hillmann, March 1875, made the same criticism of the draft programme for the unification congress of the two socialist parties at Gotha, which he considered to be "without sap or vigour"
"Fifthly, there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat's true class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris). Considering the importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party".[2]
In effect, the trade unions in a period in which capitalism was in full development were an important instrument for going beyond the isolation of the workers and assisting them to become conscious of themselves as a class. They were a school of class struggle. The way was still open for the working class to obtain lasting reforms from an expanding capitalism.[3]
Contrary to the historiography written by certain parts of the anarcho-syndicalist milieu, it was not Hillmann's intention to resist the marxists who supposedly had always underestimated the trade unions. This is an assertion you find very often but it does not correspond to reality. Hillmann linked his general conceptions to those of the International Working Men's Association, in which Marx and Engels were also active. His criticisms, at root, were directed against those who were aiming to subordinate social democracy's field of activity to the parliamentary struggle - the same elements Marx and Engels opposed in their criticisms of the Gotha programme. To talk about an "independent trade unionism" in the German workers' movement as early as the 1870s is clearly wrong. As a tangible movement within the working class in Germany it only began to form gradually around 20 years later.
But although Hillmann had a healthy and precocious proletarian reaction to the parliamentary cretinism that was slowly emerging in the German workers' movement, there is an essential difference between his approach and that of Marx and Engels: Hillmann put the whole stress on the autonomy of the unions and the workers' "sense for questions about matters that are closer to their interests". Marx, on the other hand, had already in the 1860s warned against reducing the class struggle to the struggle for higher wages: "Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wage slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements".[4]
As we have already seen, Marx and Engels insisted on the unity between the economic and political struggle of the working class, even if these had to be waged by different organisations. The ideas of Hillmann showed a great weakness in not consistently engaging in the political struggle against that wing of the SPD which was oriented exclusively towards parliament, and in withdrawing into trade union activity, thus conceding the terrain to reformism almost without a fight. This played into the hands of his enemies, since the restriction of the workers to the purely economic struggle is precisely what characterised the development of reformism within the trade union movement.
In the summer of 1890. a small opposition was formed within the SPD, the "Jungen" - the "Youngsters". What characterised its best-known representatives, Wille, Wildberger, Kapfneyer, Werner and Baginski was their call for "greater freedom" within the party and their anti-parliamentary attitude. With a very localist approach, they also rejected the necessity for a central organ for the SPD.
The Jungen were a very heterogeneous opposition; it is probably more appropriate to define them as a conglomeration of discontented elements in the SPD. However there was a real justification for their discontent, since the reformist tendency in social democracy had in no way disappeared after the abolition of the anti-socialist law in 1890. Reformism gradually grew in weight. But the criticisms made by the Jungen were not really able to identify the real problems and the ideological roots of reformism. Instead of a politically based struggle against the reformist idea of a peaceful transformation of capitalism into a classless socialist society, the Jungen simply waged a violent and very personal campaign against the various heads of the SPD. Their explanation for reformism was based on an immature and reductionist argument which focused on the problem of "the search for personal profit and celebrity" and on the "psychology of the SPD leaders". This conflict ended in the simultaneous departure and exclusion of the Jungen at the Erfurt Congress of the SPD in 1891, which led in turn to the formation, in November 1891, of the Anarchist Union of Independent Socialists (VUS). The ephemeral VUS, a completely heterogeneous grouping formed mainly by former SPD malcontents and prey to strong personal tensions, quickly fell under the control of the anarchist Gustav Landauer and disappeared three years later, in 1894.
When you read the writings of contemporary anarcho-syndicalists and the best-known books about the birth of syndicalism in Germany, what's striking is the often tortuous attempt to trace a red thread linking past organisations to the anarcho-syndicalism of the FAUD of 1919. Most of the time these writers simply juxtapose the various opposition currents inside the German workers' organisations, from Hillmann to Johann Most, the Jungen and the "Localists", then the FVDG and finally the FAUD. The mere existence of a conflict against the respective leaderships of social democracy and the trade unions is considered as a decisive point in common. But the existence of a conflict with the leadership either of the unions or the party does not in itself constitute a political continuity; if you look at things more closely, there is in fact little continuity between these organisations. With Hillmann, Most and the Jungen you can see that there is a shared aversion for the illusions in parliament which were spreading around them. But while Hillmann always remained part of the First International and of the living struggle of the working class, Most, along with Hasselmann, soon slid towards the petty bourgeois, isolated, desperate activity of "propaganda by the deed", in short, terrorism. The Jungen, with their personal attacks, lacked the political quality of Hillmann who had made a serious effort to push forward the class struggle. The Localists, and the FVDG which came out of them, also represented a real movement within the working class. In the trade union opposition which gave rise to German syndicalism, anarchist ideas prior to 1908 had a weak influence. That said, anarchism left a real mark on the German syndicalism which developed outside the framework of the social democratic unions following World War I.
An organised opposition in the ranks of the social democratic trade unions in Germany was formed in March 1892 in Halberstadt at the time of the first trade union congress after the abolition of the anti-socialist law. The General Commission of the trade union centre under the leadership of Karl Legien decreed at this congress an absolute separation between the political struggle and the economic struggle. The working class organised in the trade unions, according to this point of view, should limit itself exclusively to economic struggles while only social democracy - and above all its deputies in parliament - could be competent in political matters.
But because of the conditions imposed by 12 years of the anti-socialist law, the workers organised in professional unions were used to the fusion inside the same organisation of political and economic discussions and aspirations, and this had also developed under the constraints of illegality.
The relations between the economic struggle and the political struggle were thus already the object of one of the major debates within the international working class - and this has no doubt remained the case to this day!
At a time when the conditions for the world revolution were maturing as capitalism headed towards its phase of decadence, it became clearer and clearer to the proletariat that it had to answer political questions, in particular the question of war.
In 1892, the leadership of the German trade union movement, after being scattered into isolated professional unions for a number of years as a result of its illegal status, set up the central union confederation - but at the tragic price of the restriction of unions to the economic struggle. This was not because the years of repression under the anti-socialist law had made it necessary to give up freedom of speech and assembly on political questions, but on the basis of reformist visions and huge and spreading illusions in parliamentarism. As a healthy proletarian reaction to this policy of the union leadership around Legien the trade union opposition current known as the Localists was formed. Gustav Kessler played a key role. He had worked in the 1880s on the task of coordinating the professional unions around a system of "trusted delegates" and had participated very actively in the publication of the trade union organ Der Bauhandwerker.
To appreciate the true worth of the Localists, it is first necessary to rectify a very widespread error: the name "Localists" makes it seem at first sight that this was an opposition whose main aim was to concentrate exclusively on regional affairs and to reject any organisational relationship with the working class in other sectors or regions. This impression is often given when you read the current literature, especially that produced by today's anarcho-syndicalists.
For the most part it is difficult to judge whether this is the result of a desire to retrospectively make the Localists and the FVDG organisations mirror today's localist anarcho-syndicalism, or whether it is just the product of an ignorance of history.
The same goes for the very schematic use of the invaluable descriptions by marxists of the beginnings of syndicalism in Germany. When Anton Pannekoek wrote in 1913: "according to their practice, they describe themselves as ‘Localists' and thus express an opposition to the centralisation of the large federations their main principle of agitation",[5] he was describing a development which only took place in the German workers' movement after 1904 through the rapprochement with the idea of the "Bourses de Travail" enshrined in the French CGT's Amiens Charter of 1906.[6] But this does not apply to the period in the 1890s when the Localists first appeared.
The Localists were not formed because they saw their trade union opposition to the policies of Legien first and foremost as being based on a federalist method of waging the class struggle in a locally dispersed manner. The leading elements in the unions made use of sonorous phrases about the "strict centralisation" of the class struggle while at the same time imposing a strict political abstinence on the workers organised in the unions. To note the existence of this situation, which did gradually push parts of the Localist current towards federalist and anti-centralising ideas, is a rather different matter.
A centralisation in the sense of a common struggle of the working class, of solidarity going beyond trades, sectors and nations, was absolutely necessary. The idea of centralisation as embodied by the trade union centres, however, gave many workers the impression that it meant having organs of control in the hands of the reformist leaders. And at the heart of the approach of the Localist opposition in the mid-1890s was indignation against the decree on political abstinence for the workers.
With regard to the birth of syndicalism in Germany, it seems to us important to set the record straight on the false and sometime exclusive fixation on the question of "federalism versus centralism", by looking at the words of Fritz Kater, one of the leading members of the FVDG and the FAUD: "The effort to organise the trade unions in Germany into central confederations went along with the abandonment of any clarification in the meetings of questions of political and public affairs, and in particular of any attempt by the union to exercise any influence in this sphere, engaging solely in the day to day struggle for better wages and working conditions. It was this point which was the main reason for those who called themselves ‘Localists' to reject and combat the centralism of the confederation. As revolutionary social democrats and members of the party they had the very correct idea that the so-called trade union struggle for the improvement of workers' conditions could not be waged without affecting in an incisive manner the relationship between the workers and the state and its organs of legislation and administration"[7] (our emphasis).
Through this false representation of the Localists as a symbol of absolute federalism, the Stalinist and Trotskyist historiographers sit curiously with certain neo-syndicalist writings for whom federalism is the nec plus ultra.
Even Rudolf Rocker, who lived in Paris and London between 1893 and 1919, and who made federalism a central theoretical principle in the FAUD during the 1920s, honestly and pertinently describes the "federalism" of the Localists of 1892: "However, this federalism was not at all the product of a political and social notion as it was with Pisacane in Italy, Proudhon in France and Pi y Margall in Spain, which was later taken up by the anarchist movement in this country: it was above all the result of an attempt to get round the workings of the Prussian laws on association which were in force at that time. These laws allowed purely local trade unions to discuss political questions but denied this right to members of central confederations."[8]
In the condition of the anti-socialist laws, having grown used to a method of coordination (which can also be called centralisation) through a network of trusted delegates, it was very difficult for the Localists to take up another form of coordination which corresponded to the change in conditions after 1890. A federalist tendency was undoubtedly germinating in 1892. But the federalism of the Localists of this period can be more accurately described as an attempt to make a virtue of the system of trusted delegates. However, the Localists still remained for nearly five years in the big trade union confederations with the aim of representing a combative vanguard inside the social democratic trade unions, and were clearly understood to be a part of social democracy.
In the second half of the 1890s, and above all during strikes, open conflicts broke out more and more between the adherents of the "Localist" professional unions and the central confederations. The most violent expressions of this was among the building workers of Berlin and during the port workers' strike in Hamburg in 1896-97. In these disputes, the central question was generally the one of going on strike: could the professional unions take this decision off their own bat or did this have to have the consent of the central confederation? It is striking that the Localists drew their support from the skilled building workers (masons, tilers, carpenters, among whom there was a strong feeling of "professional pride"), and proportionally much less among the industrial workers.
Parallel to this, the social democratic leadership was, from the end of the 1890s on, inclined to accept the apolitical model of the "neutrality" of the trade unions around Legien's General Commission. With regard to the quarrels between the unions, the SPD, for different reasons, evaded the issue and only expressed itself with some reserve. Even if the Localists at the time of the Halberstadt congress in 1892 only represented a comparatively small minority of around 10,000 members (only about 3% of all the workers organised in trade unions in Germany), among them were numerous combative and experienced trade unionists with close links to the SPD. From fear of antagonising these comrades by taking up a unilateral position on the trade union debates, but above all through lack of clarity about the relationship between the economic and political struggles of the working class, the social democratic leadership stayed on the fence for a long time. It was only in 1908 that the members of the FVDG were definitely dropped by the SPD leadership.
In May 1897, with 68,000 members,[9] the first declared and independently organised precursor of the future syndicalism in Germany was born. Or, put more precisely: the organisation which in the years that followed was to take the path of syndicalism in Germany. With the foundation of this national trade union body, a historic split in the social democratic union movement had taken place. At the "first congress of locally organised trade unions in Germany" at Halle, the Localists proclaimed their organisational independence. The name "Free Association of German Trade Unions"[10] was only adopted in September 1901. Its newly founded press organ Die Einigkeit appeared up until the banning of the FVDG at the outbreak of war in 1914.
The resolution of the 1897 congress proposed by Gustav Kessler expressed most clearly the FVDG's understanding of the political struggle of the working class and its relations with social democracy:
"1. Any separation between the trade union movement and consciously social democratic politics is impossible without putting at risk the struggle for the improvement of the situation of the workers in the context of the present order;
2. Any effort, whatever its origin, aimed at weakening or breaking relations with social democracy must be seen as hostile to the working class;
3. Those forms of organisation of the trade union movement that are an obstacle to political objectives must be seen as erroneous and should be condemned. The congress sees the forms of organisation adopted by the Social Democratic Party at the Halle Congress of 1890, taking into account the existence of the law on association, as the most appropriate for pursuing all the objectives of the trade union movement".[11]
Here we see a defence of the political needs of the working class and a strong attachment to social democracy as a "sister organisation". Relations with social democracy were still seen as a bridge to politics. The foundation of the FVDG was thus, at the programmatic level, not a rejection of the spirit of the class struggle defended by Marx, or a rejection of marxism in general, but on the contrary an attempt to keep this spirit alive. The FVDG's desire to keep the "struggle for political objectives" in the workers' hands still constituted its essential strength in the years it was founded.
The debates at the "4th Congress of centralisation through trusted delegates" in May 1900 showed how firm this political attachment to social democracy was. The FVDG then had around 20,000 members. Kessler even raised the call for a possible fusion between trade unions and party, which was accepted in a resolution: "the political and trade union organisations should unify. This cannot take place immediately, since the historic circumstances for this have to be right; but we probably have the duty to prepare for this unification, by making the unions fit to be bearers of socialist thought. Whoever is convinced that the trade union and political struggle are both the class struggle, and that this can only be fought by the proletariat itself, that person is our comrade and is in the same boat as us".[12]
Despite this healthy desire to avoid being limited exclusively to the economic struggle and to maintain links with the main political organisation of the German working class, the SPD, the seeds of later confusions about syndicalism and the "unified organisation" - an idea that was to appear in Germany after 1919, not only in syndicalism but above all in the "Workers' Unions" - are nonetheless clearly visible. However, the aspiration for a common struggle between social democracy and the FVDG contained in the resolution of 1900 was to be put through a tough trial in that same year.
In 1900 the central trade union confederation in Hamburg signed an agreement with the bosses on the abolition of piece work. Some of the stonemasons were opposed to this. They went back to work, were accused of strikebreaking, and expelled from the central trade union confederation. Then these stonemasons joined the FVDG. The Hamburg SPD immediately called for the expulsion of these workers from the party, a decision that was however rejected by an SPD arbitration jury.
Not out of political proximity to the FVDG, but as part of her struggle against reformism and in particular the effort to clarify the relationship between the economic and political struggle of the working class, Rosa Luxemburg defended the jury's decision not to expel the FVDG stonemasons from the SPD. She certainly called for "a severe admonition to the stonemasons"[13] for having broken the strike, but vigorously rejected the formalist and bureaucratic viewpoint that strikebreaking was a reason for immediate exclusion from the party. The central confederation of social democratic unions had, in a number of disputes with the FVDG, also resorted to breaking strikes! The SPD should not in Luxemburg's view become a terrain for conflict between the unions. The party was not the judge of the working class.
Rosa Luxemburg understood that behind this violent dispute about the Hamburg stonemasons there were much more important questions. The same as those presented in the reports made by the FVDG regarding the "unification" between the party and the mass trade union organisation: the distinction between, on the one hand, a revolutionary political organisation and, on the other hand, the organisational form the working class needed to create in moments of open class struggle: "In practice this would lead to an amalgam between the political and economic organisation of the working class, a confusion in which the two forms of combat would lose their external separation, which would be a backward step for the division of labour which has been engendered by historical conditions".[14]
If the Rosa Luxemburg of 1900, like the workers' movement as a whole, could not at that point go beyond the horizon of the traditional trade union organisation of the working class and saw the unions as mighty organisations of the economic class struggle, this was because it was only in the years that followed that the working class would itself engage in the mass strike and create the workers' councils - a revolutionary laboratory which merged the economic and the political struggle.
The unification of the workers' class struggle, which in Germany was dispersed into all sorts of trade unions, was indeed historically necessary. But this goal could not be reached through the formal application of the party's authority, with the aim of disciplining the workers, which is what the big union confederations wanted. Neither could it be done through the idea of "unitary organisations" which underestimated the necessity for a political party, an idea that was beginning to gain ground in the ranks of the FVDG. Nor could the problem be resolved through "one big union" but only through the unification of the working class in the class struggle itself. The SPD congress at Lübeck in 1901, no doubt under pressure from Luxemburg, and probably in a formal manner, refused to play the role of arbitrating between the central union confederation and the FVDG. However it did adopt Bernstein's "Sonderbund resolution" which threatened any future union split with exclusion from the party. The SPD thus clearly began to take its distance from the FVDG.
In 1900-01, the FVDG experienced growing internal tensions, mainly turning around the question of mutual financial support for a unitary strike fund, There were very strong particularist tendencies and a lack of a sprit of solidarity in its own ranks. A characteristic example of this was the case of the union of cutlery workers and metal stampers in Solingen, who for a long time received financial support from the FVDG's administrative commission only to threaten to leave the FVDG as soon as it was itself asked to give aid to other strikes.
From January 1903 to March 1904, on the initiative of and under pressure from the SPD, secret negotiations were held between the FVDG and the central union confederation with the aim of reintegrating the FVDG into the central confederation. The negotiations broke down. Within the FVDG's commercial commission itself, these negotiations provoked violent tensions between Fritz Kater, who represented the openly syndicalist tendency that would develop later on, and Hinrichsen, who was simply giving way to pressure from the central confederations. This resulted in a great deal of confusion among the organised workers. Around 4,400 FVDG members (more than 25%) left for the central confederation in 1903-04. The failed unification negotiations had taken place in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, resulting in a tangible decline in the FVDG's numbers and represented the first chapter in its break with the SPD.
Up till 1903, the Localists and the FVDG had the merit of expressing the healthy need of the workers not to see political questions as something exclusively for the party. They thus clearly opposed reformism and the delegation of politics to the parliamentarians. The FVDG was a proletarian movement that was strongly motivated politically and very combative, but also very heterogeneous and completely restricted to the union terrain. As a loose conglomeration of small professional union organisations, it was obviously impossible for it to play the role of a political organisation of the working class. To satisfy its push towards politics, it would have had to move much more strongly towards the revolutionary left within the SPD
Furthermore, the history of the Localists and the FVGD shows that it is vain to search for the "exact hour" of the birth of German syndicalism. This was rather a process that took place over a number of years in which a proletarian minority detached itself from the orbit of social democracy and the social democratic unions.
The challenge of the question of the mass strike when posed directly to syndicalism was to open another stage in its development in Germany. The next article will look at the debates around the mass strikes and the history of the FVDG, from the latter's definitive break with the SPD in 1908 until the outbreak of the First World War.
Mario 27.10.2008
[1] Der Volkstaat was the organ of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, the so-called Eisenach tendency led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel.
[2]. Letter by Engels to A Bebel, 18/28 March.
[3]. See our pamphlet Trade Unions against the Working Class
[4]. Resolution (written by Marx)
of the IWMA, Geneva 1866: "Instructions for the Delegates of the
Provisional General Council".
[5]. Anton Pannekoek, "German Syndicalism", 1913, our translation.
[6]. Confédération Générale du Travail (General Labour Confederation). See our article in International Review n°120.
[7]. Cited by W Kulemann, Die Berufvereine, vol 2, Lena 1908 (our translation).
[8]. Rudolf Rocker, Aus den memoiren eines deutschen Anarchisten, Ed Suhrkamp p288 (our translation).
[9]. See also www.sydikalismusforschung.info/museum.htm [11]
[10]. The big central confederation of trade unions was also officially called "free trade unions" The similarity with the name "Free Association" often created confusion
[11]. Cited by W Kulemann, Die Berufvereine, volume 2, 1908, p46 (our translation).
[12]. Proceedings of the FVDG, cited by D H Muller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie und Arbeiterdelegierte, 1985, p 159. (our translation).
[13]. Rosa Luxemburg, Der Parteitag und di hamburger Gewerkschaftstrit, Gesammelle Werke, vol. 1/2, p117 (our translation).
[14]. Ibid, p 116.
Links
[1] https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/1/42443150.pdf
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/series/304
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/g20
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/137/pannekoek-darwinism-02
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/anton-pannekoek
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/charles-darwin
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/503/germany-1918-19
[8] https://libcom.org/forums/thought/general-discussion-decadence-theory-17092007
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/779/decadence-capitalism
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/15/decadence-capitalism
[11] http://www.sydikalismusforschung.info/museum.htm
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/271/revolutionary-syndicalism
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/revolutionary-syndicalism