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Crisis in Germ. Comm.
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 21, 1 April 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Two days before the German Reichstag elections forty thousand Fascist storm troops, preceded by two hundred armed “auxiliary police” in Nazi uniform, marched through the streets of central and western Berlin. They were greeted by most of the Schupos (German police) with the Fascist salute. It was effective election propaganda, but more than that, it was an attempt to put force behind the Fascism claim that they are the “masters of Berlin”. To the extent that one can speak of weight of election figures, the claim appeared to have been confirmed two days later; though the real contest is yet to come. The streets of Berlin will undoubtedly witness some serious aspects of this contest.
Out in the West End the brown-shirted paraders were greeted by Fascist flags from practically every window. In that section of the big and petty bourgeoisie they could return the greetings to their friends, not excluding the rich Jews. But in Berlin North, the working class section which includes Wedding, on that very same day the whole section was isolated by a strong police cordon and every house ransacked while the terror and the arrests were mounting. To have horny hands is sure grounds for suspicion and almost proof of guilt.
Such is now the normal procedure of expressions of everyday life not only in Berlin but throughout Germany. The contest for final and complete assertion of power is on and increasing in intensity even though, compared to what is to tome, this is mere guerrilla warfare.
The election results expressed a serious setback to the revolutionary vanguard. Not even the screaming and empty boasts of victory made by the Moscow Pravda can hide that fact nor does this in the least change the reaction to these results within the disorganized ranks of the practically annihilated vanguard. The setback weighs heavy upon them. During these years of growing Fascist danger the Stalinist leadership of the official Communist party tried to combat Fascism and social democracy as two sections of the same camp – Fascism and social Fascism. That was the official policy of the Stalinized Comintern.
At the eleventh Comintern plenum held in April 1931, that is after the German Reichstag elections of September 1930 in which the Fascists recorded their first great forward sweep, Thaelmann, reporting on the German situation, said:
“After September 14, after the sensational successes of the National Socialists, its supporters throughout Germany nourished great expectations. We did not at that time permit ourselves to be misled by the panicky sentiment which partly existed within the whole working class and at any rate within social democracy. That there were even within our own ranks certain comrades who not only signalized but also overestimated the great danger of this development of Fascism, that is known to most comrades. But we (Thaelmann and fellow bureaucrats – A.S.) declare soberly and serenely that September 14 was in many respects Hitler’s best day which will be followed not by better days but by worse.”
Thaelmann in his report recognized that the social democratic workers have a different ideology of civil war from that of the Fascists, and that he proceeded to state the essence of the Stalinist view as follows:
“On the other hand we will witness that the Social Democrats will succeed also in Germany, as they are now already in a measure succeeding, to form terror groups for the civil war from their mass supporters, which will surely in the future fight side by side with the Fascists against us on the other side of the barricade.”
Up until the very last moment, that is to the actual establishment of the Hitler government, on January 30 of this year, the Stalinists maintained that the main attacks must be concentrated upon the “social Fascists. What are the results of this policy?
The actual results are that the criminally false policy of the incompetent party leaders has so far saved the social democratic bureaucracy. As a party, the S.P. held its own in the elections. The votes cast for a workers party in Germany indicate conscious support for its policies. According to this there are today seven million workers still under social democratic influence and following the social democratic leaders. Perhaps one may reduce the number by about one million, allowing that many for various functionaries, trade union, co-operative and what is left of social democratic local governmental officials. Its former petty bourgeois support in general has already gone to Hitler. This leaves nevertheless the conscious support of six million workers, the solid section of the proletariat, workers engaged in industry, in the main employed workers with the tools of production in their hands. That is yet a formidable strength.
The social democratic bureaucracy has been saved because it was not at all put to the test in action before the eyes of these six million workers. They can now continue to prate about opposition to Fascism and sabotage action. Would it not have been far better to put them to the test and inevitable exposure so as to be recognized in their true light in front of these six million workers? Is it not now clear that a real Communist pressure for a united front in its genuine sense with social democracy, would not only have united the working class but would also have forced the hands of this treacherous bureaucracy? But it is precisely the fatally wrong policy pursued of centering the attacks against “social Fascism” instead of a united front with social democracy which has permitted the Fascist hordes to terrorize the working class in the streets, to sweep the elections and to sit in the government claiming the imposing support of seventeen million votes to be used as a preparation for the final coup d’état. This is the catastrophic record of the policies pursued by the Stalinist leadership to date.
In increasing measure the Fascist bands roam the streets exercising themselves, training themselves for the big battles in assassinations upon the workers. One look at a Nazi storm troop reveals its makeup. Speaking in a political sense it is the rag tag and bob tail of society. Their appearance is in general that of roaming bandits. Its ranks contain primarily petty bourgeois elements to a large extent recruited from the declassed section, those impoverished by the inflation and the crises. The slum proletariat which go to make up part of its ranks is generally recruited from those who as a regular part of their lives are down on the lowest step of the social ladder, and the shady elements. But it recruits also other more or less demoralized proletarian elements. For example in Germany of today there are about two to three million workers who have been unemployed so long that they have lost practically all semblance of unemployment insurance. A frightful demoralization results. These elements divide mainly between the C.P. and the Fascists, the most conscious going to the former.
A goodly portion of these elements are attracted by the socialistically colored demagogy of the Fascist movement. However as it nears the pinnacle of power the movement changes its program and its whole structure likewise undergoes a change. The petty bourgeois elements begin to recede toward the background and the movement assumes its real role of championing and defending the big bourgeoisie – the last defenders of the capitalist system. This change is already in the making in Germany.
The Stahlhelm on the other hand makes quite a different impression, not less reactionary but still different. They represent the old Prussian soldier type. They love to cover themselves with the decorations of war days, especially the iron cross. When they meet they click their heels and salute in the stiffest military fashion. In composition the Stahlhelm is made up of bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie of the more solid layers especially from the rural towns, and even workers from the Prussian landed estates. At its inception it was for the republic and democratic. Today its ideology is reactionary. In the recent elections it had a common ticket with the German nationalists. Jointly they express the political organization of the von Papen-Hugenburg-Seldte section of the Harzburg united front. The differentiation between this section and its bigger and much more turbulently violent half-brother, the Nazi, is still to come. And it may have some serious reverberations.
The common goal of destruction of the working class movement found them easily united. To the reactionary bourgeoisie the brown hordes promised something which it had never enjoyed before – complete security against strikes. They embody its hopes of doing away with the hated and troublesome working class demands. Their ravaging fury, worked up on high and heavy promises, is therefore unleashed first of all and most directly against the Communists. But. the aim is much broader, as the many repressions against the social democrats show, yes, even going beyond to any section suspected of being allies to the working class parties. The broad aim is, of course, necessary if the Fascists are to realize their hope of conquest. But within it, also the the dangers of complications for the reactionary camp. Because of this it will surely yet have to make its retreats. Thus in more ways than one are the possibilities of difficulties in the Fascist path apt to become breathing spells for the proletariat, openings under the heavy attacks which it can utilize the better to gather its forces.
Meanwhile this heavy pall hangs over the working class, weighing upon it like an alp. The burden is carried in silence. But it is a grim silence foreshadowing serious events. It is something unnatural to witness German workers looking at a swaggering Fascist storm troop with eyes which express recognition of the enemy and then speaking their thoughts to one another in a careful whisper not destined for outside ears. No semblance of freedom of expression exists. For a long time all working class meetings and demonstration of any kind are totally prohibited. The same is the fate of the press, social democratic practically as well as the Communist.
The Left Opposition organ Die Permanente Revolution has been banned until the end of May.
There have been no mass demonstrations in Berlin since the mighty Reichsbanner meeting in the Lustgarten on Sunday, February 19. It was estimated well above 150,000. The Reichsbanner troops formed a solid gigantic square in the center. But they listened to their just re-elected leader Karl Holtermann proclaim the empty phrase previously coined by the Stalinist Remmele: “We come after Hitler”. Then the demonstration dispersed. Such an event leaves a distinct impression of gigantic forces at hand but not being utilized.
On February 27, the social democrats of Berlin had engaged the Sportpalast for a commemoration of the fiftieth year of the death of Karl Marx. The commemoration speech was made by Friedrich Stampfer, the editor in chief of the Vorwaerts. But he had no more than commenced saying: “To be a Marxist requires a great knowledge, whereas to be an anti-Marxist one does not need to know anything”, than the police found sufficient grounds to call a halt. The meeting was broken up. Moreover, it is now reported as a common opinion in capitalist political circles that when the newly elected Reichstag opens in the Potsdammer garrison church there will be admission for neither Communist nor social democratic deputies.
In Germany the highly developed technology has been accompanied with a thoroughgoing industrial discipline. In turn this has produced deep-rooted working class organizations and possessed the workers with a remarkable quality of collectivity and organizational discipline. The highly socialized production has produced in the German working masses its high degree of social consciousness and of class consciousnes as an inevitable result of a social system based upon class divisions. The German workers live practically the whole of their social lives within workers’ organizations, in the political, economic and social spheres. They have their own workers political parties, trade unions. consumers co-operatives, workers sports organizations (Friends of nature, football, anglers, etc.), workers freethinker associations, esperanto or chess players clubs; they come together in the huge people’s house, existing in every city, in workers’ movies and theatres and so forth. The German workers are born into organizational institutions and mostly receive their burial from them also. Broadly speaking, that is, excluding the C.P. and its auxiliaries, all these organizations are distinctly of a social democratic ideology and under social democratic leadership. As usual the Socialist party bureaucracy permits a wide latitude of opinion within these organizations, so long as its own direction and control is not seriously threatened,
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