Groucho Marxism

We are currently seeing a rise of right-wing population across the Western world. In the UK, Reform, an openly racist party, is leading in the opinion polls; and in the US, populist president Donald Trump seems to be attempting to act like a medieval king. It’s not all bad news though. In the UK, the announcement of a new left-wing party has created a wave of optimism and the party has already attracted over 700,000 members despite not yet having a name. And in France and Germany, young people are increasingly turning to Melanchon and Die Linke respectively. This bifurcation in political views has clear parallels with the situation in Europe around a century ago, which raises the question of what we can learn from looking back at that period. In this blog post I will focus on lessons from the failed German revolution of 1918-1923.

Germany was unified as a nation relatively recently, in 1871. After unification, German industrial production grew enormously and a mighty industrial proletariat was created, with Germany soon rivaling Great Britain as an industrial power. However, as imperial Britain and France carved up the world, Germany was offered crumbs from the table. This led to tensions between Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other which eventually lead to the breakout of war in 1914. WWI was a capitalist war driven by profit, and as such was generally opposed by the left. However, the left-wing German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had an official position opposing imperialism, sided with the capitalist parties in the German parliament and supported the war.

In response, anti-militarist socialists convened a conference in Zimmerwald in 1915, where the majority of delegates called for peace. However, a certain Vladimir Lenin was at the conference, and he and other left-wing delegates called for turning the capitalist war into a class war to take power from the bourgeoisie and end capitalism. This eventually led to the Russian Revolution of 1917, which had an enormous effect on German workers and troops. By that point the war was going very badly for Germany: hundreds of thousands had been killed with no obvious path to victory in sight. Dissatisfaction with the war and awareness of what was happening in Russia led to increasing calls for a socialist revolution in Germany.

The SPD, still officially a Marxist party, used its authority to try to strangle the developing revolution, even going as far as murdering revolutionaries. But the German workers could not be crushed. The Bolsheviks in Russia saw a revolution in Germany as key both to breaking the isolation of the Russian revolution and to fermenting a wave of further revolutions across Europe, and lent their support to the German proletariat. In September 1918, there was an uprising of sailors in Kiel, Hamburg, and other cities, who refused to fight against the superior British fleet. Officers of the German navy had wanted a last sortie against the British even though the war was all but over, but the sailors took control of the fleet and flew red flags from the ships. Revolution was in the air!

The sailors’ revolt sparked mass uprisings across Germany. In fact the German revolutionary movement was arguably stronger in 1918 than the Russian movement had been in 1917. Workers’ councils (soviets) were set up and cities were controlled by revolutionaries. This led to several opportunities for workers to seize overall control of the German state between 1918 and 1923. In 1919, for example, there was an uprising in the capital, Berlin, during which 500,000 came out on strike. Ultimately, though, none of the opportunities were taken. If any of them had been, Germany could have linked up with the otherwise isolated Russia to create a Europe-wide revolution. Instead, the failure of the German revolution led to civil war and famine in Russia, and ultimately to the consolidation of bureaucracy around Stalin.

So why didn’t the revolution succeed in Germany as it had done in Russia? One obvious reason was the malign influence of the SPD. Trade unions were controlled by the SPD and union leaders acted as a reactionary brake on revolution. Another reason was the lack of a centralized revolutionary party with a program to take power. Although a centralized communist party was formed in 1920, this came only after a series of defeats and was a case of too little too late. It wasn’t all bad: the capitalist class, fearing revolution, granted an 8 hour working day, women’s suffrage, and release of political prisoners. But in the final reckoning, the German revolution must go down as a failure which ultimately led to the rise of Nazism and to WWII.

There are many lessons we can learn from this failure. One lesson is to be wary of established left-wing organisations that often act against the interests of the people they purport to represent. Another lesson is to make sure a centralized revolutionary party is in place well before a revolution is likely to occur. A third lesson is that although a failed revolution may bring concessions from the capitalist class, a revolution needs to succeed fully in order to bring about the necessary transformation of society. A fourth lesson is that a successful revolution must take place across and not just within countries. And the final and probably most important lesson is that unless there is a successful international revolution, we are likely to again slide into fascism and war – and who knows what horrors that might unleash.