Charles Rappoport
Source: The Communist Review, May 1921, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain
Transcription/HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2006). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Extracts from a Manifesto of the E.C. of the United German Communist Party.
“The Brutes of ‘order’ triumph. The strike is crushed.
“Hundreds of proletarians are assassinated. Thousands are persecuted.
“The profiteering bourgeoisie triumphs.
“The working class party that is still led by Majority Socialists and Independents is yet at the period of hesitation.
“A year ago the workers banished the partisans of Kapp only to replace them by the Eberts and the Noskes thirsting for proletarian blood. They saved them their places, and what were the results? A provocation of the workers by one of their chiefs, Hoersing, the aim being to crush Red Saxony. The Government desired an argument to justify the Orgesch before the Entente. The Orgesch are the armed police of Capitalist reaction. The Schiedemanns and Hilferdings declared war on the workers, accusing Moscow of provoking massacres. The duty of Communists was to summon the workers to the fight. The moment was favourable.
“The German bourgeoisie is going through a terrible crisis. Instead of profiting from this crisis, the Majority, and Independent leaders have stabbed the Proletariat in the back. They have accepted the arguments of the ruling caste as they did during the war. They have lied to the working class. The police have joined in. With individual attempts they have sought to provoke a state of pogrom-rule in exciting the masses against the Communists. The ‘Vorwaerts’ and the ‘Freiheit’ have helped. As during the war, the leaders have played a counter-revolutionary rôle.
“After Halle, the Independents have fallen into the arms of the Majorities. The Communists alone can conquer in the world-revolution. The United Communist Party has proved its will to fight. A million-and-a-half to two million proletarians responded to the call of the Communist Party.
“They were crushed with honour beneath the weight of the Westarp-Hilferding Coalition. In spite of their defeat, the Communists are proud of having fought. The workers are trained by the fight. They will profit from the faults made. The partisans of the Majorities and the Independents will open their eyes beneath the blows of the reaction. After this lost battle we maintain that the situation calls for new combats.”
The appeal is also addressed to the workers adhering to the Social-Democratic and Independent Parties, calling upon them to fight the feeble and the treacherous, and to form a single revolutionary block.
Above extracts, with comments by Charles Rappoport, were reproduced in l’Humanité, April 7th, 1921.