1931

Background

From International Socialism (1st series), No.38/39, August/September 1969, pp.11-13.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

The elections of 1930 had failed to produce a majority for any government. Brüning was only able to continue in office by ruling most of the time by presidential decree without reference to parliament. He was not, however, able to offer any solution to the crisis. In foreign affairs an attempt to form a customs union with Austria so as to alleviate some of the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles had to be abandoned under pressure from France. In July two major banks failed. Unemployment continued to grow. Unable to solve the crisis in any way, the government reduced wages, cut social security payments, curtailed the rights of parliament and the press. Among the mass of the population it was the ‘most hated government’. Both Nazis and Communists spoke of the ‘Hunger Chancellor’. Yet Brüning was able to survive for two years. On the one hand he had the support of the major sections of big business and the army; on the other the mass Fascist opposition on the right and the mass Communist opposition of the left effectively balanced to form an unstable equilibrium.

The Nazi support continued to grow. By the end of 1930 there were more than 100,000 in the para-military SA struggling for control of the streets. The few leading industrialists (notably the coal baron Kirdorf and the head of the steel trust, Thyssen) who had previously supported Hitler, were now joined by many more, although some influential figures still held back.

The Social Democrats were aware of the danger threatening them, but hardly made an adequate response. They had their own para-military organization, the Reichsbanner. They also through their control of the Prussian government controlled the police force responsible for two thirds of Germany. This had 80,000 members, armed with machine guns, armoured cars, tear gas, grenades etc. The intention in the event of a coup by the fascists or Reichswehr was to use these to arm the Reichsbanner. Thus the defensive strategy was to rely upon Prussia as a Social Democratic fortress. At the same time the Social Democrats ‘tolerated’ the Brüning government. However unpopular it was. they argued it was the ‘lesser evil’ to the fascists. But even had this strategy provided a means of physical defense, it did not begin to offer any solution to the social and economic problems that were driving the millions to support the fascists. All the Social Democratic leaders could do was to wait and hope that the crisis would pass of its own accord. This might seem a good policy to the estimated three or four thousand members of the huge bureaucracies under Social Democratic control (in the SPD or the free trade unions, working for Social Democrat-controlled provincial governments, etc.), but could offer no way out to the unemployed and poverty stricken masses.

A section of the SPD became increasingly impatient with this sit-and-wait attitude. After fighting for a leftward turn in party policy throughout 1931, these split under the leadership of the MP Seydewitz to form a left socialist party, the SAP. This failed, however, to gather mass support around it.

The inability of the Social Democrats to deal with the crisis presented huge opportunities to the KPD. Yet it too hardly seemed capable of taking advantage of them. The line imposed from Moscow made it incapable of dealing with the situation. For it still defined the ‘social fascists’, not the Nazis, as the major danger. Thus when whole sections of the Social Democratic workers were beginning to have serious doubts about the policies of their leaders, Thälmann called the demand they were making for a defensive united front of Social Democrats and Communists as ‘the latest manoeuvre of social fascism’. [5] The worst ‘social fascists’, he argued, were those who had gone so far as to break from the SPD to the left.

But the worst example of this fatal Moscow inspired sectarianism was the so-called ‘red referendum’. For some time the Nazis and extreme nationalists (united in the ‘Harzburg Front’) had been trying to remove the Social Democratic regime in Prussia as an obstacle in their path to power. It was clear that the Nazis would be the chief beneficiaries of any new elections. Therefore they attempted to use a clause in the constitution that would enable a referendum to be held on whether the Prussian government should remain in office. The immediate response of the entire KPD leadership was to oppose the referendum. They argued vigorously in this direction until only three weeks before the day of voting. Then suddenly, under Comintern directions, the whole line changed. The referendum was supported and the whole energies of the party used in that direction. A united front with the ‘social fascists’ was ruled out by Stalin, but not apparently with the real fascists. Nevertheless, the referendum was defeated by the refusal of the mass of workers to support it.

During this period, the KPD often attempted to win support from the Nazis by outbidding them using their own phraseology. It spoke of ‘people’s revolution against the Treaty of Versailles’ and fraternised with extreme nationalist officers, such as Schleringer and Count Sternback-Fermoy.

There was, however, little consistency to its policy. Thus it did briefly suggest a United Front to Social Democrat leaders in July 1931, but upon receiving a refusal reverted immediately to its previous line of denouncing any united front ‘from above’. It favoured only a ‘united front from below’ in which Social Democrat supporters marched behind Communist banners.

To justify this whole policy various arguments were used. The most notorious was that a Nazi victory would be short lived, and by destroying Social Democratic influence prepare the way for a Communist one. As Remmele put it in the Reichstag:

‘once they (the Nazis) are in power, then the united front of the proletariat will be established and it will make a clean sweep of everything ... We are not afraid of the fascist gentlemen. They will shoot their bolt quicker than any other government’. [6]

The Communist Party remained the force that could have altered the situation. Its members were prepared to fight in the present, not in some hypothetical future. But it continued to fight ineffectually, without clear direction. Its leaders, under direction from Stalin’s Comintern apparatus, continued to insist that Hitler was not the main danger. Thälmann warned of ‘an opportunist exaggeration of Hitler Fascism.’ [7] In the earlier period the natural hatred felt by militant Communist leaders towards the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, etc. no doubt played an important part in making such a line acceptable. Now however, it was Known that to accept any alternative line would lead to removal from office by Moscow. Of the three major KPD leaders, one, Heinz Neumann did call for a modification of policy; he was immediately ordered by the Comintern apparatus to leave Germany for Spain.

Trotsky wrote Germany: Key to the International Situation in November 1931. Because of shortage of space we have had to cut out some of the early paragraphs. These deal with the overall international situation, touching for instance, upon the overthrow of the monarchy in Spain, the tempo of development in France and Britain, problems facing Russia. This selection is taken from the second English edition published by the RCP in 1944.

What Next? was written in the first part of 1932. In it Trotsky is chiefly concerned with examining the various forces that exist within the working-class movement and arguing that they can still fight successfully if the right strategy is accepted. This leads him into a long, and still very relevent, discussion on the question of the united front.

Because of space we are only able to reproduce certain chapters of What Next? In the main what we have not reprinted deals with political formations that had only a transitory existence and long ago faded into obscurity or with questions that are dealt with in other readily accessible writings of Trotsky (e.g., his view of the nature of the Russian bureaucracy at this time.) We print here Chapters 1-8, the first half of 13, and 14-15 [1*], from the translation by Joseph Vanzler published in the United States in 1932.