MIA > Archive > Heinrich Brandler
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 40 [22], 31 May 1923, pp. 378–379.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2021). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
The policy of civil peace between the German social democracy and the German bourgeoisie was introduced in 1914 with the aid of some dramatic stage-effects. In the year 1914, before the outbreak of the war, Hermann Müller and his companions travelled to Belgium and France, to confer on war against war with their Entente comrades of the 2nd International. In Paris, in Vienna, in Brussels, in Berlin, and in many provincial cities, there were mighty mass demonstrations against war, before war was declared. On July 10th, there were still international protests and manifestos against the imperialist piratical war, but none the less the declaration of civil peace was made in the German Reichstag on August 4.
During four long years of bloodshed and starvation the leaders of social democracy and trade unionism pursued tins policy. They continued to pursue it until the collapse of the war. The leaders of the 2nd International in France, England, and Austria, followed the glorious example shown by Germany.
In almost all the warring countries this policy led to an ideological split in the social democratic ranks, and in most cases to an actual split also. In Germany the schism in the social democracy brought about the formation of the so-called Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany. These Independents, however, were only distinguished from the Majority Party of the social democrats by the fact that they nagged and scolded at the policy which the Majority social-democrats pursued with enthusiasm; in actual practice their policy remained the same.
After the collapse of the war the two social democratic parties – happily re-united in the year 1922 – refused to overthrow what was already falling, to learn the lesson of their mistaken policy, to separate the working class from the decaying bourgeoisie, to have done with the capitalist order of society, and to gather the sound proletarian forces together and lead them into battle tor the re-construction of society and economics according to the principles of socialism.
Again it was the fear of a struggle with the bourgeoisie which induced the social democrats to ding to the policy of civil peace and collaboration, it was, and still is, the lack of faith in the strength of the proletariat; it was, and still is. the superstition that capitalism is impregnable, which during and after the war, drove the social democrats into the camp of the bourgeoisie, into the camp of the counter-revolution, and has kept them there.
After the war they promised peace, liberty, and bread, all of which they hoped to obtain by the reconstruction of capitalist economics in co-operation with the bourgeoisie. As they could not raise the strength or courage to tight against the bourgeoisie, they rejected the fraternally extended hand of the victorious workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Soviet Russia, and whined to Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George for a bearable peace. Die result of their foreign politics was the peace treaty of Versailles.
But the reconstruction of capitalist economics, for which they have put forth their efforts from lack of courage to fight for socialist economics, has proved a failure; instead of reconstruction we observe collapse and the further decay of capitalism.
Instead of fighting against the predatory treaty of Versailles, they adopted the helpless policy of fulfilment. But they had neither the strength for combatting their own bourgeoisie in order actually to execute their fulfilment policy, nor had they the strength required to fight against the victorious imperialist powers. Here again bankruptcy, complete collapse, as demonstrated by the occupation of the Ruhr.
Whom the gods wish to destroy, they strike with blindness. And thus the “united” social democrats, confronted by Poincaré’s predatory raid into the Ruhr area, could see before them no other course than a return to the civil peace policy of 1914! Only in 1914 it was a tragedy, while today it is a farce. And they can also see no other solution to the problem of the Ruhr occupation than a policy of civil peace and collaboration with the bourgeoisie. The quintessence of all wisdom, as concentrated in the Reichstag speeches of the social democratic spokesmen Hermann Muller and Rudolf Breitscheidt, is a capitalist understanding between the German and French bourgeoisies at the expense of the German and French proletariats. The end of this policy can be nothing else than a fresh catastrophe, such as we experienced upon the collapse of the war.
During the war, the want and misery suffered by the working class revolutionized the proletariat. But only a small vanguard could be organized into a real party, clear of purpose, self-sacrificing, prepared to fight – the Communist Party, today, when the misery attendant on the post-war policy of the civilly pacific social democrats has been profoundly realized by the people, the revolutionary proletariat has become a powerful factor in Germany. The disintegration of the United Social-Democratic Party of Germany has led to the revolutionizing of broad strata of the working population, and to their affiliation with the Communist Party. The fighting tactics adopted by the Communist Party against French imperialism, and against German Fascism – this most dangerous fruit of the social democratic civil peace policy will win for the C.P. of Germany the confidence of the broad fighting masses of the German working population. Beneath the flag set up by Karl Liebknecht in 1914 in the German Reichstag, the German Communist Party will lead the German working class to victory over the German bourgeoisie and its civil peace accomplices.
Last updated on 12 October 2021