The Spartakusbund and the German Working Class Movement, 1914-1919

423 Pages·1988·18.674 MB·English

by  William A. Pelz

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THE SPARTAKUSBUND
AND
THE GERMAN
WORKING CLASS
MOVEMENT
1914-1919
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William A. Pelz
Studies in German Thought and History
Volume 1
The Edwin Mellen Press
Lewiston/Queenston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pelz, William A.
The Spartakusbund and the German working class
movement, 1914-1919.
(Studies in German thought and history ; v. 1)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Spartakusbund (Germany) 2. Germany-Politics
and government-1888-1918. 3. Communism-Germany-
History. I. Title. II. Series.
DD228.8.P36 1987 322\2’0943 87-5637
ISBN 0-88946-355-7 (alk. paper)
This is volume 1 in the continuing series
Studies in German Thought 8c History
ISBN 0-88946-355-7
SGTH Series ISBN 0-88946-351-4
Copyright © by William A. Pelz
All rights reserved. For information contact:
The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press
Box 450 Box 67
Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario
USA 14092 LOS 1L0 CANADA
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION......................................................................vii
CHAPTER 1.....................................................................................1
THE MAKING of the GERMAN WORKING CLASS
MOVEMENT
CHAPTER II................................................................................39
THE TWO SOULS of GERMAN SOCIALISM:
REFORMIST versus REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS
CHAPTER III...............................................................................65
THE KAISER S WAR and the POPULAR RESPONSE
CHAPTER IV.............................................................................123
THE KAISER GOES, the SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
REMAIN: THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT in
GERMANY, NOVEMBER—DECEMBER, 1918
CHAPTER V................................................................................161
THE BIRTH of GERMAN COMMUNISM:
LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT and the founding
of the KPD
CHAPTER VI.............................................................................203
PROVOCATION and ASSASSINATION—
BERLIN’S JANUARY DAYS: THE MURDER of
LUXEMBURG and LIEBKNECHT
CHAPTER VII...........................................................................245
THE WAR for WORKERS’ MINDS: IDEOLOGICAL
HEGEMONY and the GERMAN REVOLUTIONARY
LEFT
CHAPTER VIII..........................................................................269
THE SOCIAL BASE of the SPARTAKUSBUND:
RABBLE or WORKERS?
CHAPTER IX.............................................................................297
HAMMER OR ANVIL BE: THE LEGACY of the
SPARTAKUSBUND
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES
A. BOOKS...................................................................314
B. ARTICLES and ESSAYS......................................315
II. PRIMARY SOURCES
A. PERIODICALS.....................................................316
B. COLLECTIONS of DOCUMENTS................:.. 316
C. BOOKS...................................................................319
D. ARTICLES and ESSAYS......................................330
III. SECONDARY SOURCES
A. DISSERTATIONS.................................................335
B. BOOKS...................................................................339
C. ARTICLES and ESSAYS......................................369
INDEX...........................................................................................403
TABLES
I. Index of Real Wages in Germany, 1887-1914 ................................... 53
II. German Losses in the First World War............................................82
III. Food Rations as a Percentage of Peacetime Consumption,
1916-1918 .............................................................................................88
IV. Index of Child Mortality.....................................................................89
V. Index of Real Wages and the Cost of Living....................................93
VI. Index of National Per Capita Production.........................................94
VII. Index of Proletarian Wages Relative to Production........................94
VIII. Strikes in Germany During World War One...................................107
IX. Unemployed Relief Recipients, 1918-1919.....................................207
X. Gross Real Wages, 1914-1920...........................................................208
XI. Membership in Trade Unions, 1913-1920.......................................209
XII. Ages of Revolutionary Victims........................................................262
XIII. Changes from 1913 in Numbers of Industrial Workers..................278
INTRODUCTION
..a scientific consciousness, which
for its sympathies and antipathies -
open and undisguised - seeks support in
an honest study of the facts, a
determination of their real
connections, an exposure of the causal
laws of their movement. That is the
only possible historic objectivism, and
moreover, it is amply sufficient, for
it is verified and attested not only by
the good intentions of the historian,
for which only he himself can vouch,
but the natural laws revealed by him of
the historical process itself.
-Leon Trotsky*
•Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution,
trans. Max Eastman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1932), p. xxi.
Within 19th century German society developed a
large and often militant workers' movement. World War I
divided this movement, and the resulting schism was
never reconciled during the post-war years.1 The
Spartakusbund, as the most radical wing of German labor,
sought to overthrow the old order and establish a
socialist republic. Although this group was to develop
into the powerful German Communist Party, its signifi­
cance has often been overlooked or even denied.^
Given the highly politicized nature of most scho­
larship on the subject, it is not surprising that one­
sided interpretations, often based on gross errors of
fact, have been common. Therefore, this study attempts
to put the Spartakusbund in a more objective historical
context by an examination of this tendency's activities
during the years of war and revolution from 1914 to
1919. Special emphasis is given to the Spartakusbund's
ideological contribution in opposition to the strongly
accepted ideas of the more conservative wing of the
labor movement.
It w ill be argued that rather than being a mere
repetition of Leninism, the Spartakusbund was able to
articulate concepts which both reaffirmed traditional
Marxism and expanded theory in a number of significant
areas. Nor were these ideas merely abstract, as the
Spartakusbund attempted to grapple with the very prac­
tical problems of achieving socialism in an industrially
advanced society. Despite crushing defeats, the project
undertaken by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and the
revolutionary movement they headed, had lasting impact.
It served to offer a model, however incomplete, for
revolutionary movements in advanced nations which was.
at the same time, a unique and creative application of
Marxist theory to specific German conditions.
Such a project, however difficult, is necessary
given the tradition of highly prejudiced discussions of
those who represented the most radical wing of the
German Revolution. For a long time, in fact, an effort
was made to deny that there ever was something «which
might be termed the German Revolution. An anecdote by
Robert F. Wheeler illustrates this problem: "A German
Revolution after the first world war? A West German
undergraduate in my German history survey indicated she
had never heard of such a thing. And until the early
1960's the same was probably true of most Western aca­
demics."3 The Revolution was alternatively ignored or
mentioned only in passing by historians. This trend was
particularly pronounced in the nation which had exper­
ienced the events itself, argues Reinhard Rürup, because
of the "anti-democratic views of history which Germany's
nationalist middle classes had largely accepted before
1933 and which, even after 1945, were only slowly and
gradually abandoned."4
If the Revolution as a whole has often been swept
under the carpet of Western historiography, the actions
of the revolutionary left, when not completely ignored,
have at times been grossly caricatured. Thus, the
Spartakusbund, the main organization within the far-
left, is dismissed as irrelevant, slandered as mere
imitators of Lenin, or both. In contrast, the present
author contends that the Spartakusbund's failure, and
that of the Revolution as a whole, to establish social­
ism was largely due to the ideological hegemony which
Germany's ruling class exercised over the masses, often
through German Social Democracy.
Before proceeding, some of the currents within the
past historiography of the German Revolution may well be
noted. As suggested before, a common view of Western or
bourgeois historians6 is to condemn or minimize revolu­
tionary movements whenever they are unable to ignore
them. The endemic nature of violence in any drastic
social transformation is stressed as opposed to detail­
ing oppressive conditions which motivated those seeking
change. Thus British academic A. J. Ryder comments on
German socialism as a project which "could be achieved
only through terror."6 This approach (and Ryder is not
alone in holding such sentiments) of equating social
revolution with terror and loss of liberty was set out
by the SPD when they accused the Spartakusbund with
"madness, treason, corruption, lack of conscience, [and]
playing with human life."^ That a political organiza­
tion should slander its opponents is understandable,
that scholars should take such slanders at face value is
incomprehensible. Yet, an ideological thread joins the
heated rhetoric of right-wing Social Democracy to the
supposed detached interpretation of certain scholars.
That thread is the anti-revolutionary bias inherent in
the capitalist world view, which both groups accept.
Commenting on this prejudice, Karl Korsch concluded:
Just as in their study of past conditions, so
in their analysis of present tendencies, bour­
geois social theorists remain tied to the
bourgeois categories. They simply cannot con­
ceive of any future changes other than those
resulting from an 'evolutionary' development,
and which reveal no breach with the funda­
mental principles of the present day bourgeois
order of society. They regard all social
X
revolutions as pathological interferences with
o
"normal" social development.
Such problems remain today, as is evident by the fact
that many academics still have a 'normal' bourgeois
bias. For example, in a Stanford University disserta­
tion, Donald B. Pryce makes a number of extreme charges
against the Spartakusbund without substantial evidence,
primarily basing his accusations on previous statements
of hostile historians. To cite but one instance, he
claims that German Communism "...had singularly poor
leadership in Rosa Luxemburg, a theoretician with no
mass following, and Karl Liebknecht, an emotionally
unstable fanatic with no ability to plan or organize
systematically."9
This interpretation is not universally accepted in
the West, particularly not in Europe. At the thirty-
fourth meeting of the German Historians' Congress,
numerous scholars not only acknowledged the Revolution
of 1918-1919, but even criticized Social Democracy for
being too frightened of civil war and allied pressure to
realize the scope and possibilities for a socialist
restructuring of so c ie ty .T h e se views are shared by a
number of historians in the United States.11 Of par­
ticular importance in recasting attitudes has been the
monumental work of British historian J.P. Nettl, whose
Rosa Luxemburg is clearly the definitive work in the
English language.12 Nonetheless, the influence of old
prejudice dies hard, particularly when the historical
establishment is firmly conservative.
Naturally, historians from the Soviet Union and
allied political parties have looked at the Spartakus­
bund through different eyes than those of their western
colleagues. Sadly, their interpretations have often
been as doctrinaire as those of the western anti-commu-