Martha has always claimed that she was a Social Democrat. For a long
time I thought I understood what that meant, in at least a vague way,
and thought I understood what it meant to Orwell. Turns out I didn't.
It turns out that Social Democrats had and made difficult decisions in
difficult and chaotic times, against violent minorities. I wonder if
Social Democrats like Martha and Orwell would have stood with their
Social Democratic brothers and sisters, who by choosing order over
chaos created a constitutional republic in Geramnay in 1919.
On January 19, 1919, five days after the article below was written,
the Social Democrats (SPD) recieved roughly 40% of the vote in
nationwide elections. The Indepedent Socialists(USPD) who had broken
off, recieved only 5%. The communists (KDP) sat out the elections.
In the assembly the seats were as follows.
(Note the sources give slightly different numbers and often combine
parites - still the general outlines are clear.)
423 - Total
166 - Social Democrats (The percentage is about the same as 2002)
90 - Catholic Center Party
75 - Liberal Democrats (DDP) - (progressive middle class)
38 - People's Party (conservatives)
22 - reactionary Nationalsts
22 - Independent Socialists (USPD)
Approximately 5% (5% wins about 22 seats) of the electorate boycotted
the election, including the Communists and the far right.
It is this election that the "revoltion" ignored, when it continued to
create unrest and chaos (for example striking and taking over ports
and refusing to allow food from the Hoover Commmission to be unloaded
to feed starving Germans). It is this election that instituted the
reforms that the Socialists had been fighting for for many years.
The government that crushed the "revolution" after January 1919 was
largely an elected Social Democratic one.
It is true that in the next election of 1920, the Social Democrats
lost much of their support to the Independent Socialists (102 seats to
84) though they were still the largest party. (I'm not sure yet how
each party modified their positions in reaction to 1919.) In addition,
many of the more moderate non-socialists moved towards the right.
As Bobby has pointed out, reading the history of Weimar make you feel
very fortunate. It also make you realize how important it is to
identify the real enemies.
**
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm
Rosa Luxemburg
Order Prevails in Berlin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: January 14, 1919
Source: Gessemelte Werke
Publisher: Dietz Verlag
First Published: Rote Fahne, 14 January 1919
Translated: Marcus
Online Version: marxists.org 1999
Transcription: Andy Lehrer/Brian Basgen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[The following editorial is the last known piece of writing by Rosa
Luxemburg. It was written just after the Spartacus uprising was
crushed by the German government and in the hours prior to the arrest
and murder of her and Karl Liebknecht by the Friekorps.–A.L.]
"Order prevails in Warsaw!" declared Minister Sebastiani to the Paris
Chamber of Deputies in 1831, when after having stormed the suburb of
Praga, Paskevich's marauding troops invaded the Polish capital to
begin their butchery of the rebels.
"Order prevails in Berlin!" So proclaims the bourgeois press
triumphantly, so proclaim Ebert and Noske, and the officers of the
"victorious troops," who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob
in Berlin waving handkerchiefs and shouting "Hurrah!" The glory and
honor of German arms have been vindicated before world history. Those
who were routed in Flanders and the Argonne have restored their
reputation with a brilliant victory -- over three hundred
"Spartacists" in the Vorwarts building. The days when glorious German
troops first crossed into Belgium, and the days of General von Emmich,
the conqueror of Liege, pale before the exploits of Reinhardt and Co.
in the streets of Berlin. The government's rampaging troops massacred
the mediators who had tried to negotiate the surrender of the Vorwarts
building, using their rifle butts to beat them beyond recognition.
Prisoners who were lined up against the wall and butchered so
violently that skull and brain tissue splattered everywhere. In the
sight of glorious deeds such as those, who would remember the
ignominious defeat at the hands of the French, British, and Americans?
Now "Spartacus" is the enemy, Berlin is the place where our officers
can savor triumph, and Noske, "the worker," is the general who can
lead victories where Ludendorff failed.
Who is not reminded of that drunken celebration by the "law and order"
mob in Paris, that Bacchanal of the bourgeoisie celebrated over the
corpses of the Communards? That same bourgeoisie who had just
shamefully capitulated to the Prussians and abandoned the capital to
the invading enemy, taking to their heels like abject cowards. Oh, how
the manly courage of those darling sons of the bourgeoisie, of the
"golden youth," and of the officer corps flared back to life against
the poorly armed, starving Parisian proletariat and their defenseless
women and children. How these courageous sons of Mars, who had buckled
before the foreign enemy, raged with bestial cruelty against
defenseless people, prisoners, and the fallen.
"Order prevails in Warsaw!" "Order prevails in Paris!" "Order prevails
in Berlin!" Every half-century that is what the bulletins from the
guardians of "order" proclaim from one center of the world-historic
struggle to the next. And the jubilant "victors" fail to notice that
any "order" that needs to be regularly maintained through bloody
slaughter heads inexorably toward its historic destiny; its own
demise.
What was this recent "Spartacus week" in Berlin? What has it brought?
What does it teach us? While we are still in the midst of battle,
while the counterrevolution is still howling about their victory,
revolutionary proletarians must take stock of what happened and
measure the events and their results against the great yardstick of
history. The revolution has no time to lose, it continues to rush
headlong over still-open graves, past "victories" and "defeats,"
toward its great goal. The first duty of fighters for international
socialism is to consciously follow the revolution's principles and its
path.
Was the ultimate victory of the revolutionary proletariat to be
expected in this conflict? Could we have expected the overthrow
Ebert-Scheidemann and the establishment of a socialist dictatorship?
Certainly not, if we carefully consider all the variables that weigh
upon the question. The weak link in the revolutionary cause is the
political immaturity of the masses of soldiers, who still allow their
officers to misuse them, against the people, for counterrevolutionary
ends. This alone shows that no lasting revolutionary victory was
possible at this juncture. On the other hand, the immaturity of the
military is itself a symptom of the general immaturity of the German
revolution.
The countryside, from which a large percentage of rank-and-file
soldiers come, has hardly been touched by the revolution. So far,
Berlin has remained virtually isolated from the rest of the country.
The revolutionary centers in the provinces -- the Rhineland, the
northern coast, Brunswick, Saxony, Wurttemburg -- have been heart and
soul behind the Berlin workers, it is true. But for the time being
they still do not march forward in lockstep with one another, there is
still no unity of action, which would make the forward thrust and
fighting will of the Berlin working class incomparably more effective.
Furthermore, there is -- and this is only the deeper cause of the
political immaturity of the revolution -- the economic struggle, the
actual volcanic font that feeds the revolution, is only in its initial
stage. And that is the underlying reason why the revolutionary class
struggle, is in its infancy.
From all this that flows the fact a decisive, lasting victory could
not be counted upon at this moment. Does that mean that the past
week's struggle was an "error"? The answer is yes if we were talking
about a premeditated "raid" or "putsch." But what triggered this week
of combat? As in all previous cases, such as December 6 and December
24, it was a brutal provocation by the government. Like the bloodbath
against defenseless demonstrators in Chausseestrasse, like the
butchery of the sailors, this time the assault on the Berlin police
headquarters was the cause of all the events that followed. The
revolution does not develop evenly of its own volition, in a clear
field of battle, according to a cunning plan devised by clever
"strategists."
The revolution's enemies can also take the initiative, and indeed as a
rule they exercise it more frequently than does the revolution. Faced
with the brazen provocation by Ebert-Scheidemann, the revolutionary
workers were forced to take up arms. Indeed, the honor of the
revolution depended upon repelling the attack immediately, with
full-force in order to prevent the counterrevolution from being
encouraged to press forward, and lest the revolutionary ranks of the
proletariat and the moral credit of the German revolution in the
International be shaken.
The immediate and spontaneous outpouring of resistance from the Berlin
masses flowed with such energy and determination that in the first
round the moral victory was won by the "streets."
Now, it is one of the fundamental, inner laws of revolution that it
never stands still, it never becomes passive or docile at any stage,
once the first step has been taken. The best defense is a strong blow.
This is the elementary rule of any fight but it is especially true at
each and every stage of the revolution. It is a demonstration of the
healthy instinct and fresh inner strength of the Berlin proletariat
that it was not appeased by the reinstatement of Eichorn (which it had
demanded), rather the proletariat spontaneously occupied the command
posts of the counter-revolution: the bourgeois press, the
semi-official press agency, the Vorwarts office. All these measures
were a result of the masses' instinctive realization that, for its
part, the counter-revolution would not accept defeat but would carry
on with a general demonstration of its strength.
Here again we stand before one of the great historical laws of the
revolution against which are smashed to pieces all the sophistry and
arrogance of the petty USPD variety "revolutionaries" who look for any
pretext to retreat from struggle. As soon as the fundamental problem
of the revolution has been clearly posed -- and in this revolution it
is the overthrow of the Ebert-Scheidemann government, the primary
obstacle to the victory of socialism -- then this basic problem will
rise again and again in its entirety. With the inevitability of a
natural law, every individual chapter in the struggle will unveil this
problem to its full extent regardless of how unprepared the revolution
is ready to solve it or how unripe the situation may be. "Down with
Ebert-Scheidemann!" -- this slogan springs forth inevitably in each
revolutionary crisis as the only formula summing up all partial
struggles. Thus automatically, by its own internal, objective logic,
bringing each episode in the struggle to a boil, whether one wants it
to or not.
Because of the contradiction in the early stages of the revolutionary
process between the task being sharply posed and the absence of any
preconditions to resolve it, individual battles of the revolution end
in formal defeat. But revolution is the only form of "war" -- and this
is another peculiar law of history -- in which the ultimate victory
can be prepared only by a series of "defeats."
What does the entire history of socialism and of all modern
revolutions show us? The first spark of class struggle in Europe, the
revolt of the silk weavers in Lyon in 1831, ended with a heavy defeat;
the Chartist movement in Britain ended in defeat; the uprising of the
Parisian proletariat in the June days of 1848 ended with a crushing
defeat; and the Paris commune ended with a terrible defeat. The whole
road of socialism -- so far as revolutionary struggles are concerned
-- is paved with nothing but thunderous defeats. Yet, at the same
time, history marches inexorably, step by step, toward final victory!
Where would we be today without those "defeats," from which we draw
historical experience, understanding, power and idealism? Today, as we
advance into the final battle of the proletarian class war, we stand
on the foundation of those very defeats; and we can do without any of
them, because each one contributes to our strength and understanding.
The revolutionary struggle is the very antithesis of the parliamentary
struggle. In Germany, for four decades we had nothing but
parliamentary "victories." We practically walked from victory to
victory. And when faced with the great historical test of August 4,
1914, the result was the devastating political and moral defeat, an
outrageous debacle and rot without parallel. To date, revolutions have
given us nothing but defeats. Yet these unavoidable defeats pile up
guarantee upon guarantee of the future final victory.
There is but one condition. The question of why each defeat occurred
must be answered. Did it occur because the forward-storming combative
energy of the masses collided with the barrier of unripe historical
conditions, or was it that indecision, vacillation, and internal
frailty crippled the revolutionary impulse itself?
Classic examples of both cases are the February revolution in France
on the one hand and the March revolution in Germany on the other. The
courage of the Parisian proletariat in the year 1848 has become a
fountain of energy for the class struggle of the entire international
proletariat. The deplorable events of the German March revolution of
the same year have weighed down the whole development of modern
Germany like a ball and chain. In the particular history of official
German Social Democracy, they have reverberated right up into the most
recent developments in the German revolution and on into the dramatic
crisis we have just experienced.
How does the defeat of "Spartacus week" appear in the light of the
above historical question? Was it a case of raging, uncontrollable
revolutionary energy colliding with an insufficiently ripe situation,
or was it a case of weak and indecisive action?
Both! The crisis had a dual nature. The contradiction between the
powerful, decisive, aggressive offensive of the Berlin masses on the
one hand and the indecisive, half-hearted vacillation of the Berlin
leadership on the other is the mark of this latest episode. The
leadership failed. But a new leadership can and must be created by the
masses and from the masses. The masses are the crucial factor. They
are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be
built. The masses were up to the challenge, and out of this "defeat"
they have forged a link in the chain of historic defeats, which is the
pride and strength of international socialism. That is why future
victories will spring from this "defeat."
"Order prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your "order" is built
on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will "rise up again, clashing its
weapons," and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing:
I was, I am, I shall be!
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