The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 9 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement Revolution is a dramatic and oscillating historical process, marked by brutal accelerations, sudden freezes, and deceptive moments of dead calm. Hence the need to develop the party in the preceding years, so that it can act consciously as a vanguard rooted in the masses — as the premise for the revolutionary process rather than the result . Arrigo Cervetto wrote in his article “The General Task” , now in Opere, vol. 2 : If the party does not want to fall into adventurism, it cannot regulate its conduct on accelerated and unexpected movements but must always continue in its systematic work of organisation and education of the proletariat. The more the party is able to work according to this plan [...] the more it will have the possibility of not being caught off guard by the turn of events . In G...

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 8 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement In Germany, following the events of Christmas 1918, the Independent (USPD) ministers left the Ebert government. Gustav Noske, Rudolf Wissell, and Paul Löbe took their place. With even the mild scruples of people like Haase, Dittmann, and Barth now removed, the Social Democrats showed the face of repression more explicitly. Noske stated his mission without any pretence: One of us must act as executioner . The leaders’ indecision On December 29th, a crowd accompanying to the cemetery the coffins of the sailors who had been killed, held a banner on which was written: We charge Ebert, Landsberg, and Scheidemann with the murder of sailors . On the same day, the SPD organised a counterdemonstration with the watchword: Down with the Spartacus League’s bloody dictatorship . Both sides were preparing for civil war. The masses were in ferment, but w...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 7 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement After November 9 th , 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 ...

Internationalism No. 82, December 2025 Page 6 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The role of soldiers in the German Revolution must also be considered from the perspective of the relative stability of the German State compared to the Russian one. Lenin emphasised this on several occasions: in Germany, bourgeois rule was much more firmly established than in Russia, because capitalism was more advanced and the State rested on stronger economic and social foundations. In Germany, therefore, the class party was confronted with the unprecedented task — which remains so even today — of seizing power in a mature imperialist metropolis. The German Revolution brought about the collapse of the Hohenzollern empire, but the rupture was accompanied by bourgeois forces safeguarding class dominance thanks to political forms more suited to the imperialist era. First among these forces was the Social Democratic ...

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 10 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement In the Publisher’s Introduction to the writings by Paul Frölich, Rudolf Lindau, Albert Schreiner, and Jakob Walcher collected in Rivoluzione e controrivoluzione in Germania ( Revolution and counter-revolution in Germany ) [Pantarei, 2001], three fundamental themes characterising the German revolution are identified. The first theme focuses on the counterrevolutionary role of Social Democracy , and the counterrevolutionary awareness of men such as Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske, and other members of the government , who initially acted to appease the revolutionary attempt and then, when that proved insufficient, to crush it in bloodshed. The second theme is that of the generous energies expressed by the German proletariat . Here, the emphasis is on the spontaneous nature of the revolutionary wave, which er...