From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement
After November 9th, 1918, two powers were competing in Germany, the Council of People’s Deputies and the Berlin Executive Council. The Spartacus League fought to make the latter the Petrograd Soviet
of the German revolution. Since the body was largely made up of SPD majoritarians and independents, Jacques Droz notes in his Histoire générale du socialisme, a real paradox is observed: the Spartacists demand total power for an institution that is clearly satisfied with a strictly reformist program
.
In truth, even the Bolsheviks in April 1917 launched the slogan All Power to the Soviets
when these were dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and Mensheviks. The difference was in the reluctance of German revolutionaries to equip themselves with the organisation to steer that outcome.
Centrist spontaneity and Bolshevism
The paradox lay therefore in the Spartacist paracentrism
, which refused to break with the USPD. Pierre Broué, in The German Revolution 1917-1923, notes that nowhere did the Spartacists form an organised faction, nowhere did they undertake systematic work to build their faction or even an organised tendency [...] On the other hand, the League held to its conception of revolutionary agitation and moving the masses into action, and worked to mobilise the broad masses of workers whose spontaneous action it hoped to enlighten and inspire. To this effect it organised many meetings and demonstrations
.
The main organ of Spartacist propaganda was the daily newspaper Die Rote Fahne, which, after publishing two issues on November 9th and 10th, began regular publication on November 18th.
Since the betrayal of August 4th, 1914, the Bolsheviks had been urging a break from the SPD and the formation of an independent class party. However, up to the end of 1918, Rosa Luxemburg opposed breaking with opportunism, fearing that the revolutionary movement, disconnected from the masses, who were being organised by the SPD and later the USPD, would drift towards sectarianism.
It is essential to fully understand the extreme difficulty faced by German revolutionaries, suddenly deprived of the organisation and rooting of the great Social Democratic Party. As Karl Liebknecht wrote to a comrade on January 18th, 1915: On August 3rd and 4th, everything went at breakneck speed: we found ourselves having only a few hours — indeed a few minutes — and we suddenly, in a single blow, were gripped by fear, facing the total collapse of the left wing
. The attempt to rebuild the class party from scratch, in a very short time, amid the imperialist war, and in competition with the large social democratic apparatus, may seem like a wishful undertaking that could lead to sectarianism. Perhaps for this reason Luxemburg increasingly leant towards spontaneity, relying on the movement of the masses.
On the contrary, the Bolsheviks indicated that the degeneration of the SPD and its centrist offshoot, USPD, was by then definitive: a break with opportunism was necessary to preserve the strategy and prevent the working class in Germany from being orphaned by the party — the decisive link between masses and strategy.
As for Luxemburg’s concerns regarding sectarianism separated from the masses, the attempt at a party based on the Bolshevik model, anchored strategically to the real movement, could have been the true antidote to sectarianism and extremist drifts. As would be seen, spontaneity and the belated break with opportunism, marked by the late creation of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), forced the Spartacists to chase events and increased the risk of wishful, unorganised actions disconnected from real forces.
The illusion of the masses
Faced with the provocations and violence orchestrated by the government and military leaders to create incidents and pretexts for the anti-Spartacist campaign, the disorganisation of the revolutionary camp prevented a disciplined response. Ambiguous elements, often alien to the proletariat, found occasion for acts of violence and harmful incidents.
More generally, within sectors of the working masses, a revolutionary impatience existed that the Spartacists were unable to control. Large demonstrations fed the spontaneist illusion, and gave the leaders and the participants alike a false impression of their power
, reports Broué: Liebknecht might get the impression from the crowds which applauded him that he ruled the streets, when, for lack of a real organisation, he was not master even of his own troops, especially when they were intoxicated with their numbers and their shouting
. To these impatient, hard men who had come out of the war
the Spartacists could not offer the scientific order and organisational discipline of the Bolshevik party.
On December 6th, the men of Berlin city commander Otto Wels opened fire during a demonstration, killing fourteen people. The following day, the military occupied the headquarters of the newspaper Die Rote Fahne.
Bloody Christmas
The most serious incident, known as Bloody Christmas
, involved a clash between government forces and the People’s Navy Division. These sailors had been transferred from Kiel to Berlin as law enforcement officers, to occupy the castle and stables. However, the division, organised among others by Heinrich Dorrenbach, a friend of Liebknecht, sympathised with the Spartacists and took part in their December 21st march. The government then demanded the reduction of the division from 3,000 to 600 men and its withdrawal from the castle, while Wels refused to pay wages due. The sailors agreed to the evacuation in exchange for their salaries, but, as the money did not arrive, they occupied the Chancellery and marched on the Kommandantur (military headquarters
). Wels’ men then opened fire, causing three deaths and numerous injuries. The sailors took Wels hostage. Dorrenbach convinced them to evacuate the Chancellery and fall back to the stables.
Meanwhile, since Berlin Police Chief Emil Eichhorn of the USPD refused to attack the sailors, Friedrich Ebert sought help from high command, which sent the Lequis Division. For two hours Captain Pabst shelled the stables. The cannon fire attracted the workers of Berlin, who moved towards the centre. Just as Pabst thought he had achieved his objective and granted the sailors a 20-minute truce, he was attacked from behind by the crowd. Many soldiers abandoned their weapons or were disarmed. The officers narrowly escaped lynching. The government had to pay the sailors and withdrew the Lequis Division from Berlin. Wels was forced to resign, and Anton Fischer succeeded him. The climate of civil war was intensifying, to which the Spartacus League would arrive unprepared.
The KPD and the Third International
The Bloody Christmas
was decisive for the split of the Spartacus League from the USPD and therefore for the founding of the Communist Party of Germany. But the break occurred with considerable delay, imposed by events, in an atmosphere of political confusion. The KPD also absorbed the left radicals
, who on November 23rd gathered in Bremen under the name of International Communists of Germany
(IKD).
At the Spartacus League conference, convened on December 29th (followed on the 30th and 31st by the congress, attended by 83 Spartacist delegates and 29 delegates from the IKD), the first topic was the name of the new party. The discussion reveals Luxemburg’s stance on the broader issue of the Third International: she maintained distrust towards the Russian experience and intended to adopt a centrist position between the Bolsheviks and the West. Hugo Eberlein, in the 1924 article Spartacus and the Third International
, summarised Luxemburg’s thesis as follows: The Russian Communist Party is still the only one in the International. [...] The chasm separating it from the socialist parties of the West [...] is deep: it is up to us, German revolutionaries, to build a bridge between the revolutionaries of Eastern Europe and the still reformist socialists of the West. [...] We will better fulfil our task as a ‘socialist party’
. Luxemburg’s proposal, however, was rejected by four votes to three and the party was called communist
.
The victory of extremism in the KPD
On the crucial issue of Constituent Assembly or Councils
, the Spartacist leaders’ willingness to strengthen the latter and make them the pivot of revolutionary power did not exclude the tactical flexibility of using the parliamentary platform.
Luxemburg was convinced that the German revolution was only beginning. In Our Program and the Political Situation
of December 31st, she stated that the formation of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils was the motto [...] in this revolution
, but that the first phase, since November 9th, had been characterised by illusions on all sides
. This explains the uncertain character, the inadequacy, the half-heartedness, the aimlessness of this revolution
, which was as naive and unconscious as those of a child groping its way without knowing where it is going
. But the blood shed on December 6th and 24th and the strikes
which had broken out spontaneously
opened the second phase of the revolution, that of consciousness among the masses. The struggle for socialism
— she indeed asserted in spontaneist tones — has to be fought out by the masses, by the masses alone, breast to breast against capitalism, in every factory, by every proletarian against his employer. Only then will it be a socialist revolution
.
Paul Levi stated that the victory of the proletariat would lead to the overcoming of the National Assembly but, citing the example of the Russians who participated in elections for the Assembly before dissolving it, he added: nevertheless, we propose not to stand aside in the elections for the National Assembly
, participating in them as a platform for the masses.
The majority of delegates, however, replied that power was in the streets
: they rejected a tactic that allowed room for manoeuvre if forced to retreat, urged preventive action against the elections, and pursued the illusion that socialism was within reach, in a matter of days or weeks, through a coup. The extremist current manifested itself within both Spartacus and the IKD. The Spartacist leaders were outvoted on the issue of participation in the elections.
In this regard, Arrigo Cervetto specified that the examples given by Lenin in his 1920 writing against extremism — the use of the parliamentary platform, the involvement in trade unions — were secondary. The essential thing was the method, the strategy
[Complete Works, vol. 7]. The real problem of the centrist-extremist conception
, which prevailed at the founding of the KPD, as well as that of the centrist-Luxemburgist
version, was the denial of the direction of a combined strategy on various types of revolution at different stages of capitalist development
. Ultimately, it was the problem of the type of party organisation
and the rejection of a type of direction closely linked to a precise strategy
.
Luxemburg, in turn, invoking the example of the Russians, admitted her bitterness in the face of the majority’s extremism
, the tendency to neglect the necessary seriousness, calm, and reflection
. When Lenin received news of the congress, he was unaware of its tendency towards extremism, which he would later condemn as “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder. For the moment, in his Letter to the Workers of Europe and America
, he welcomed the definitive break of Spartacus with opportunism, however belated, and highlighted its international implications: It became a fact when the Spartacus League changed its name to the ‘Communist Party of Germany’. Though it has not yet been officially inaugurated, the Third International actually exists
.