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From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution by Ottle Ruhle (1924)

Part 2 of 3

4 PARLIAMENT AND PARTIES

The character, content and results of laws always correspond to
the dominant economic interests of a given time, more specifically
to the definitive economic interests of the ruling class. In the
bourgeois epoch this class is the bourgeoisie. Parliament therefore
had the task of revising old laws according to the needs of the
bourgeoisie or abrogating them in favour of new laws suited to
the problems of the time.

As early as the last period of the feudal epoch, a kind of parliament
had already existed: the convocation of Estates. In the struggle with
the estates first the nobility, later especially the world of finance
and trade, to whose material aid he had to turn the prince had drawn
or selected representatives of the different orders and occupations
and convened them in a corporate body. But this body was only to
express wishes, make suggestions, furnish opinions: this meeting
of estates was not competent to enact and promulgate laws itself.
Eventually a second body partly joined the assembly of estates,
coming more from the people and even sometimes elected, so that
a distinction was drawn between a first and second chamber (Lords
and Commons). But the competences of both chambers were still very
limited by the power of the princes. Real parliaments with full
legislative power, proceeding from open election, everywhere
formed one of the achievements of the bourgeois revolution.

As we know, the bourgeois class stood for the principle of
liberalism in its state-political ideology and the principle
of democracy in its state-political organisation. It was,
then, for freedom and equality. But only for freedom as it
saw it, namely as far as it regarded the interests of its
economy of profit, and for equality only insofar as it could
be expressed in paragraphs on paper, not to be confirmed and
realised through equality of social conditions. Not even in
dreams did it occur to them to respect and practice freedom
and equality in relation to the proletariat, still less did
they let the principle of brotherhood carry any weight for it.

At the same time, bourgeois society is by no means a monolithic class.
Rather it contains many layers, groups and professional categories,
and therefore a lot of different economic interests. The wholesaler
has different interests from the retailer, the houseowner from the
tenant, the tradesman from the farmer, the buyer from the seller.
But all the different groups and categories want to and ought to
be taken into account in the legislature. Each has more prospect
of consideration the larger the total of representatives of its
interests in parliament. On this account every layer or group tried
to collect as many votes as possible for its candidates in parliamentary
elections. To make their agitation vigorous and lasting, they combined
in election associations from which the parties emerged with firmer
organisations and more definite programmes. Whatever these parties
called themselves, whichever programmes they put forward, whatever
high and holy virtues they stood up for, whatever fine phrases and
slogans they used their struggle, to the extent that it strove
for political influence, was always concerned with quite definite
economic interests. Thus the conservative party, which wanted the
preservation (i.e. conservation) of the old traditional state form,
distribution of power, and ideology, formed the rallying point for
the feudal caste of big landowners. The big industrialists with an
interest in the national state, who embraced the liberalism of the
capitalist era, formed the party of the national liberals. The
petty bourgeois, to whom freedom of opinion and equality before
the law seemed achievements worth striving and being thankful
for, were found in the democratic and radical parties.

At first the workers had no party of their own, for they had not
yet grasped that they were a class on their own with their own
interests and political aims. So they let themselves be taken
in by the democrats and liberals, or even the conservatives, and
formed the faithful herd of voters for the bourgeois parties.
In proportion, however, as the workers' class consciousness was
jolted awake and strengthened, they went over to forming their
own parties and sending their own representatives to parliament,
with the mission of securing for the working class as many and
as large advantages as possible during the construction and
completion of the bourgeois state. Thus, in the Erfurt Programme
of the Social-Democratic Party, the many practical demands of
the movement are laid down alongside the great, revolutionary
final goal, reflecting its parliamentary life and orientation
towards the immediate present. These demands had nothing to do
with socialism, but derived mainly from bourgeois programmes;
only they were never carried out by bourgeois parties, in fact
had never been seriously wanted. It is not to be denied that
the representatives of social democracy did hard and sincere
work in parliament. But their effectiveness and success remained
limited. For parliament is an instrument of bourgeois politics,
tied to the bourgeois method of making politics, and bourgeois
too in its effect. In the last analysis, the real advantage of
parliamentarism accrues to the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois, i.e. parliamentary method of carrying on politics
is closely related to the bourgeois method of carrying on economics.
The method is: trade and negotiate. As the bourgeois trades and
negotiates goods and values in his life and office, at market and
fair, in bank and stock exchange, so in parliament too he trades
and negotiated the legislative sanctions and legal means for the
money and material values negotiated. In parliament the representatives
of each party try to extract as much as possible from the legislature
for their customers, their interest group, their 'firm'. They are also
in constant communication with their producers' combines,
employers' associations cartels, special interest associations or
trade unions, receiving from them directions, information, rules
of behaviour or mandates. They are the agents, the delegates, and
the business is done through speeches, bargains, haggling, dealing,
deception, voting manoeuvres, compromises. The main work of
parliament, then, is not even done in the large parliamentary
negotiations, which are only a sort of spectacle, but in the
committees which meet privately and without the mask of the
conventional lie.

In the pre-revolutionary period, parliament also had its
justification for the working class in that it was the
means of securing for it such political and economic
advantages as the power relations of any given moment
allowed. But this justification was null and void the
instant that the proletariat arose as a revolutionary
class and advanced its claims to take over the entire
state and economic power. Now there was no more negotiation,
no putting up with greater or lesser advantages, no
compromises now it was all or nothing. The first
revolutionary achievement of the proletariat would
logically have had to be the abolition of parliament.
But it could not fulfil this achievement because it
was itself still organised in parties, and so bound up
with organisations of a basically bourgeois character
and consequently incapable of transcending bourgeois
nature, i.e. bourgeois politics, economy, state order
and ideology. A party needs parliamentarism, as
parliament needs parties. One conditions the other,
in mutual sustenance and support. The maintenance of
the party means maintenance of parliament and with it
the maintenance of bourgeois power.

After the model of the bourgeois state and its
institutions, the party too is organised on authoritarian
centralist principles. All movement in it goes in the form
of commands from the top of the central committee down to
the broad base of the membership. Below, the mass of the
members; above, the ranks of party officials at local,
regional, country and national level. The party secretaries
are the NCOs, the MPs, the officers. They give the
orders, issue the watchwords, make policy, are the
higher dignitaries. The party apparatus, in the form
of offices, newspapers, funds, mandates, gives them
power to prescribe for the mass of members, which none
of the latter can avoid. The officials of the central
committee are, so to speak, the party Ministers; they
issue decrees and instructions, interpret the decisions
of party congresses and conferences, determine the use
of money, distribute posts and offices according to
their personal policy. Certainly the party conference
is supposed to be the supreme court, but its composition,
sitting, decision-taking and interpretation of its decisions
are thoroughly in the hands of the highest holders of power
in the party, and the zombie-like obedience typical of
centralism takes care of the necessary echoes of subordination.

The concept of a party with a revolutionary character
in the proletarian sense is nonsense. It can only have
a revolutionary character in the bourgeois sense, and
then only during the transition between feudalism and
capitalism. In other words, in the interest of the
bourgeoisie. During the transition between capitalism
and socialism, it must fail, the more so in proportion
to how revolutionary had been its expression in theory
and phraseology. When the world war broke out in 1914,
i.e. when the bourgeoisie of the whole world declared
war on the proletariat of the whole world, the Social
Democratic Party should have replied with the revolution
of the proletariat of the whole world against the
bourgeoisie of the whole world. But it failed, threw
away the mask of world revolution, and followed bourgeois
policy all along the line. The USP should have issued
the call to revolution when the peace treaty of Versailles
was concluded. Its bourgeois nature, however, forced it
to a western instead of eastern orientation; it agitated
for signing and submitting. Even the KPD, hyper-radical
as its pose is, on every critical question is constrained
by its bourgeois-centralist authoritarian character to
serve the bourgeois politicians as soon as it comes to
the crunch. It sits in parliament and carried on
bourgeois politics; in the Ruhr in 1920 it negotiated
with the bourgeois military; it fought on the side of
Stinnes in the Ruhr action against France by means of
passive resistance; it falls victim to the cult of
bourgeois nationalism and fraternizes with fascists;
it pushes itself into bourgeois governments in order
to help further Russia's policy of capitalist
construction from there. Everywhere bourgeois
politics carried out with typically bourgeois means.
When the SPD says it does not want a revolution, there
is a certain logic in this because it, as a party, can
never carry out a proletarian revolution. But when the
KPD says it wants the revolution, then it takes into
its programme far more than it is capable of performing,
whether in ignorance of its bourgeois character or out
of fraudulent demagogy.

Every bourgeois organisation is basically an administrative
organisation which requires a bureaucracy in order to
function. So is the party, dependent of the administrative
machine served by a paid professional leadership. The leaders
are administrative officials and as such belong to a bourgeois
category. Leaders, i.e. officials, are petty bourgeois, not
proletarians.

Most party and trade union leaders were once workers, perhaps
the most sound and revolutionary. But as they became
officials, i.e. leaders, agents and makers of business,
they learned to trade and negotiate, to handle documents
and cash; they undertook mandates, began to operate within
the great bourgeois organism with the aid of their
organisational apparatus. To whom God gives office,
he also gives understanding. Anyone who is leader in
a bourgeois organisation, including parties and trade
unions, does so not on the strength of his intellectual
qualifications, his insight and excellence, his courage
and character, but he is leader on the strength of the
organisational apparatus, which is in his hands, at his
disposal, endowing him with competence. He owes his
leadership role to the authority arising from the position
he occupies in the organisational mechanism. Thus the party
secretary obtains his power from the office in which all
the threads of the administration converge, from the paper
work of which he alone has exact knowledge; the editor
obtains his from the newspaper which he has in his
intellectual power and uses as his instrument; the
treasurer from the funds he manages; the MP from the
mandate which gives him an inside view of the apparatus
of government denied to ordinary mortals. An official
of the central leadership may be much more limited and
mediocre than an under-official, and yet his influence
and power are greater, exactly as an NCO can be smarter
than a Colonel or General without having the great
authority of these officers. Ebert is certainly not
the ablest mind in his party, yet it has installed him
in the highest office it has to give; he is certainly
not the ablest mind in the government either but why
does he occupy that position? Not on the basis of his
personal qualifications but as the random representative
of his party, a centralist, authoritarian organisation,
in which he has climbed to the highest rung of the ladder.
And why does the bourgeoisie put up with this Ebert? Because
the bourgeois method of his politics has brought him to
this position and because he conducts himself politically
throughout as the advocate and counsel of these bourgeois
politics. A bourgeois leader in this position would be
neither better nor worse than he.

Here a word must be said about leadership in general.

There will no doubt always be people who in their knowledge,
their experiences, their ability, their character are superior
to others whom they will influence, advise, stimulate in
struggle, carry away with them, lead. And so there will
always be leaders in this sense. A good thing too, for
cleverness, integrity of character and ability should
dominate, not stupidity, coarseness and weakness. Anyone
who, in his rejection of the paid professional leadership
that gets its authority from the organisational apparatus,
goes so far as to repudiate all and every leadership
without considering that superiority of mind and character
is a quality of leadership not to be repudiated but worthy
of welcome, oversteps the mark and becomes a demagogue.
That goes too for those who inveigh and rage against the
intellectuals in the movement, or as has occurred even
against knowledge. Naturally bourgeois knowledge is always
suspect and usually questionable, bourgeois intellectuals
are always an abomination in the workers' movement, which
they misuse, lead astray, and often enough betray to the
bourgeoisie. But the achievements of bourgeois learning can
be re-cast for the working class and forged into weapons,
exactly as the capitalist machines will one day perform
useful services for the working class. And when intellectuals
in the interest of the proletariat attend to the important
process of the scientific assimilation and reworking of
intellectual works, they deserve recognition and thanks for
it, not abuse and inculpation. In conclusion, Marx, Bakunin,
Rosa Luxemburg and others were intellectuals, whose scientific
labours have rendered the most valuable services to the
liberation struggle of the proletariat.

The paid professional leaders of the bourgeois organisations
deserve mistrust and are to be rejected as agents of a
bourgeois administrative apparatus. Their bourgeois activity
generates in them bourgeois living habits and a bourgeois
style of thinking and feeling. Inevitably they take on the
typical petty-bourgeois leadership ideology of the party
and trade union apparatchniks. The secure appointment, the
heightened social position, the punctually paid salary, the
well-heated office, the quickly learnt routine in the
carrying out of formal administrative business, engender a
mentality which makes the labour official in no way
distinguishable from the petty post, tax, community or
state official as much in his work as in his domestic
milieu. The official is for correct management of business,
painstaking orderliness, smooth discharging of obligations;
he hates disturbances, friction, conflicts. Nothing is so
repugnant to him as chaos, therefore he opposes any sort
of disorder; he combats the initiative and independence
of the masses; he fears the revolution.

But the revolution comes. Suddenly it is there, rearing up.
Everything is convulsed, everything turned upside down. The
workers are in the streets, pressing for action. They set
themselves to casting down the bourgeoisie, destroying the
state, taking possession of the economy. Then a monstrous
fear seizes the officials. For God's sake, is order to be
transformed into disorder, peace into unrest, the correct
management of business into chaos? Not that! Thus 'Vorwarts'
on 8 November 1918 warned of 'agitators with no conscience'
who 'had fantasies of revolution'; thus the newsletter of
the trade unions combatted the 'irresponsible adventurers'
and 'putschists'; thus the parliamentary party sent
Scheidemann even at the last minute into the Wilhelmite
Cabinet, so that 'the greatest misfortune the revolution
might be avoided.' And during the revolution, wherever
workers wanted to go into action they were eagerly countered
every time by party and trade union officials with the
call: 'Not too violent! No bloodshed! Be reasonable! Let
us negotiate!'

As negotiations were resorted to, instead of grabbing the
enemy and throwing him to the ground, the bourgeoisie was
saved. Negotiation is after all their method of carrying
on politics, and on their fighting terrain they are at
their most secure. Wanting to carry on proletarian politics
in the home of the bourgeoisie and with their methods means
sitting down at the capitalists' table, eating and drinking
with them, and betraying the interests of the proletariat.
Treachery to the masses from the SPD to the most extreme of
the KPD need not arise from base intention; it is simply the
consequence of the bourgeois nature of every party and trade
union organisation. The leaders of these parties and trade
unions are in fact spiritually part of the bourgeois class,
physically part of bourgeois society.

But bourgeois society is collapsing. It is more and
more falling victim to ruin and decay. Its legislature
is ridiculed and despised by the bourgeoisie itself.
Laws on interest rates and currency are promulgated,
and no-one gives a damn. Everything that not long ago
was regarded as sacred church, morality, marriage, school,
public opinion is exposed, soiled, made mock of, distorted
into caricature. In such a time the party, too, cannot go on
existing any longer; as a limb of bourgeois society it will
go down with it. Only a quack would try to preserve the hand
from death when the body lies dying. Hence the unending
chain of party splits, disturbances, dissolutions of the
collapse of the party which no executive committee, no party
congress, no Second or Third International, no Kautsky and
no Lenin can now stop. The hour of the parties has now come,
as the hour of bourgeois society has come. They will still
hold out, as guilds and companies from the middle ages have
held out until today: as outlived institutions with no power
to form history. A party like the SPD, which gave up all the
achievements of the November uprising without a struggle,
in part even wilfully played into the hands of the
counter-revolution, with which it is tied up and sits
in governments, has lost every justification for
existence. And a party like the KPD, which is only a
West European branch of Turkestan and could not maintain
itself for a couple of weeks by its own strength without
the rich subsidies from Moscow, has never had this
justification for existence. The proletariat will transcend
them both, untroubled by party discipline and the screeches
of the apparatchniks, by resolutions and congress decisions.
In the hour of downfall it will rescue itself from asphyxiation
by strangling bourgeois power of organisation.

It will take its cause into its own hands.

5 THE TRADE UNIONS

What has been said about parties, party leaders and party tactics goes
even more for the trade unions. In fact, they show us the typical petty-bourgeois tactics of compromise between capital and labour. The
trade unions have never proclaimed the elimination of capitalism to
be their goal and mission. Never have they engaged themselves in any
practical way to this end. From the beginning the trade unions
reckoned with the existence of capitalism as a given fact. Accepting
this fact, they have engaged themselves within the framework of the
capitalist economic order to fight for better wages and working
conditions for the proletariat. Not, then, for abolition of the
wage system, not for a fundamental rejection of the capitalist
economy, not a struggle against the whole. That, said the trade
unions with bourgeois logic, is the business of the political party.
Therefore they declared themselves non-political; made a big thing
of their neutrality, and rejected any party obligation. Their role
was that of compromise, mediation, curing symptoms, prescribing
palliatives. From the start their whole basic attitude was not
only non-political but also non-revolutionary. They were reformist,
opportunist, compromising auxiliary organs between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.

The trade unions grew out of the journeyman's associations of the
old artisan guilds. They were filled with the spirit of the modern
workers' movement when capitalism, through the great crisis of the
1860s, impressed with particular harshness on the consciousness of
the proletariat the pitfalls and horrors of its system. Under this
economic pressure, which greatly swelled the workers' movement
throughout Europe, the first trade union congress was convened by
Schweitzer and Fritzche in 1868. Fritzche characterised very aptly
the trade union organisations and their duties when he explained: 'Strikes
are not a means of changing the foundations of the capitalist mode
of production; they are, however, a means of furthering the class
consciousness of the workers, breaking through police domination
and removing from today's society individual social abuses of an
oppressive nature, like excessively long working time and Sunday
work.' In the following period the activity of the trade unions
consisted in agitating the proletariat, moving it towards co-ordination,
winning it to the idea of class struggle, protecting it against the
worst rigours of capitalist exploitation, and constantly grabbing
momentary advantages whenever possible from the ever-changing
situation between labour and capital. The entrepreneur, formerly
all-powerful master of the house, soon had the strongly centralised
power of the organisation against him. And the working class,
heightened in consciousness of its value in the process of production
by co-ordinated action, and schooled from strike to strike and
conflict to conflict in the development of its fighting energy,
soon constituted a factor with which capitalism had seriously to
reckon in all calculations of profit.

We can never seriously think of denying the great value the trade
unions have had for the proletariat as a means of struggle in the
defence of workers' interests; no-one will dare to belittle or
dispute the extraordinary services the trade unions have performed
in advocating these interests. But all this is today, unfortunately,
testimonials and claims to fame which belong to the past.

In the struggle between capital and labour the entrepreneurs, too,
very soon recognised the value of organisation. To be able to
confront the workers' combinations, they combined themselves into
powerful associations, at first by trade categories or branches
of industry. And as they had greater financial resources, had the
protection and favour of public officials on their side, knew how
to influence legislation and jurisdiction, and could apply the most
rigorous methods of terror, harassment and contempt to any boss
who did not grasp their class interests quickly enough and so did
not take the required interest in the association their organisations
were soon stronger, more effective and more powerful than those of
the workers. The trade unions saw themselves pushed from the offensive
to the defensive by the employers' associations. Struggles became
more violent and bitter, were successful increasingly seldom, usually
resulted in exhausting the central funds, and so needed more and
more lengthy pauses for rest and recovery between the struggles.
Finally it was recognised that the questionable half-successes were
usually bought too dear, that the compromises (at best) resulting
from the rounds of struggle could be won more cheaply if a readiness
to negotiate was shown right from the start. So they approached
further struggles with reduced demands, with readiness to negotiate,
with the intention of making a deal. Instead of struggling openly,
each side tried to out-manoeuvre the other. Offering to negotiate
was no longer considered as a fault or as weakness. They were
adjusted to compromise. As a rule, agreement not victory formed
the conclusion of wage movements or conflicts over hours. Thus,
in time, an alteration in tactics, in the method of struggle,
came about all along the line.

The policy of signing labour contracts arose. On the basis of
agreements and conciliation, contracts were signed in which
the conditions of work were regulated in paragraphs. The contracts
were binding for the whole organisation of both sides in the branch
of industry for a longer or shorter period of time. In the form of
a compromise, they represented a kind of truce until further notice.
The boss gained significant advantages through the conclusion of
labour contracts: he could make more accurate business calculations
for the duration of the contract; he could sue in a bourgeois court
for compliance with the terms of contract; could reckon with a
certain stability in his management and rate of profit; and, above
all, he could concentrate his strength in greater peace for years
in order to put that much more pressure on the work-force when
the next contract was being concluded. In contrast to the boss,
the worker only got disadvantages from the labour contract: bound
by the contract for long periods, he was unable to make the most
of favourable opportunities as they arose to improve his position;
his class consciousness and will to struggle were lulled with time,
and he was conditioned to inactivity; so fell more and more into
the atmosphere, fatal for the class struggle, of 'harmony between
capital and labour' and 'community of interests between work-giver
and work-taker'; thus succumbed completely to petty-bourgeois
hopeless opportunism, which lives from hand to mouth and makes
even the most practical reforms and 'positive achievements' more
dubious and worthless the longer it goes on; and in the end becomes
entirely the duped victim of a narrow-minded, circumscribed, and
often unscrupulous clique of officials and leaders whose main
interest has long since been not the good of the worker but the
securing of their administrative positions. In fact, as the policy
of labour contracts became predominant, the worker's participation
in the life of the unions grew more dormant; meetings were sparsely
attended, participation in elections fell off sharply, dues had to
be collected almost by force, terror in the factories got the upper
hand along with the bureaucratisation of the administrative
apparatus both means to maintain the existence of the organisation,
which had become an end in itself. The introduction of national
contracts for large categories of workers effected an even greater
increase in centralism and the power of officials and at the same
time, too, an ever-growing split between leaders and masses,
greater alienation of the organisation from its original character
as a means of struggle, and from the objective of struggle, and
deeper degradation of the workers into insignificant, will-less
puppets, only paying dues and carrying out instructions, in the
hands of the association's bureaucracy.

Another factor was added. In order to chain the worker to the
organisation through all his interests, which derive from his
permanent situation next to the bread line, the unions developed
an extensive and complicated system of insurance, carrying out a
sort of practical social policy. Apparently for the benefit of
the worker, certainly as his expense. There is insurance against
sickness, death, unemployment, moving and travelling to a new job;
a whole social welfare apparatus with little plasters and powders
and all sorts of palliatives for proletarian misery. The worker
collects insurance policy after insurance policy, pays premium
after premium, develops an interest in the liquidity of the union
treasury, and waits for the opportunity to call on its help.
Instead of thinking about the great struggle, he gets lost in
calculations over pennies. He is strengthened and maintained
in his petty-bourgeois way of thinking; he gets bogged down, to
the disadvantage of his proletarian emancipation, in the
constraints and narrow-mindedness of the petty-bourgeois
concept of life, which cannot give anything without asking
what is to be had in exchange; gets used to seeing the value
of organisation in the random and paltry material advantages
of the moment, instead of holding his sights on the great goal,
freely willed and selflessly fought for the liberation of his
class. In this way the class struggle character of the organisation
is systematically undermined and the class consciousness of the
proletarian irretrievably destroyed or devastated. Into the
bargain the poor devil carries on his back the costs of a system
of social benefits and welfare which basically the state should
pay out of the wealth of society as a whole, lightening the
burden on the financially weak.

Thus the trade unions have become, over time, organs of petty-bourgeois
social quackery, whose value to the worker has shrunk to nothing
anyway, since under pressure of the devaluation of money and the
economic misery the solvency of all welfare funds has sunk to nil.
But more than this: in logical consistency with their tendency
toward community of interests between capital and labour, the
trade unions have developed into auxiliary organs of bourgeois-capitalist
economic interests, and so of exploitation and profitmaking. They have
become the most loyal shield-bearers of the bourgeois class, the most
reliable protective troops for the capitalist money-bag. At the
outbreak of war they came out in favour of the duty of national
defence without a moment's hesitation, made bourgeois war policy
their own, recognised the civil peace, subscribed to the war loan,
preached the imperative of endurance, helped to enact the law on
auxiliary service, and frenziedly suppressed every movement of
sabotage or revolt in the weapons and munitions industry. At the
outbreak of the November Revolution they protected the Kaiser's
government, flung themselves against the revolutionary masses,
allied themselves with big business in a working association,
let themselves be bribed with offices, honours and incomes in
industry and in the state, clubbed down all strikes and uprisings
in unity with police and military, and thus shamelessly and
brutally betrayed the vital interests of the proletariat to its
sworn enemy. In the building up of capitalism after the war, in
the re-enslavement of the masses through capital organised in
trusts and connected internationally, in the Stinnes-isation
of the German economy, in the struggles over Upper Silesia and
the Ruhr, in the retrenchment of the 8-hour day, the demobilization
orders, the forced economy, in the elimination of the workers'
councils, the factory committees, control commissions, etc.,
during the terror against syndicalists, unionists, anarchists
always and everywhere they stood ready to help at the side of
capital, as a praetorian guard ready for the lowest and most
shameful deed. Always against the interests of the proletariat,
against the progress of the revolution, the liberation and
autonomy of the working class, they used and use the far greater
part of all accretions to funds to secure and materially provide
for their existence as boss-men and parasites, which as they
well know stands and falls with the existence of the trade union
organisation that they have falsified from a weapon for the
workers into a weapon against the workers.

Wanting to revolutionise these trade unions is a ludicrous
undertaking, because quite impossible to carry out and
hopeless. This 'revolutionising' amounts to either a simple
change of personnel, changing absolutely nothing in the
system but maximally extending the centre of infection,
or else it must consist in removing from the trade unions
centralism, contract-signing, the professional leadership,
the insurance funds, the spirit of compromise. . . .What is
left then? A hollow nothing!

As long as the trade unions still exist, they will remain what
they are: the most genuine and efficient of all the White
Guards of the bosses, to whom German capital in particular
owes a greater debt of gratitude than to all the guards of
Noske and Hitler put together.

Such generally harmful, counter-revolutionary institutions,
inimical to the workers, can only be destroyed, annihilated,
exterminated.

6 THE LAST PHASE OF EUROPEAN CAPITALISM

The German working class, caught in the chains of its counter-revolutionary
organisations and blinded by the phraseology of the petty-bourgeois way
of thinking, has once again rescued the bourgeoisie of its country in
situations where its existence was at stake; it has brought it to safety
on its strong shoulders, out of the dangers of the World War and the
November Revolution.

Then the bourgeoisie installed itself in the saddle again, to ride more
boldly and brutally than ever over the bodies and heads of its rescuers.
Although laden with unheard-of wealth, which it looted meanwhile, it is
still gripped by anxiety and terror: it has looked death in the face and
stood close to the abyss of its destruction.

Thus the German bourgeoisie in 1924 is no longer the one it was in 1914.
For even German capitalism has become another. It has left the national
phase of its development and has entered the international phase. This
change and progression is connected with the outcome of the World War.

If the World War originated in the drive to expansion of all the
capitalist states and had the aim of placing the whole world under
the dictatorship of one of these capitalist states or combination
of states, so the result of the World War was, for the power of
German capital, the miscarrying of this plan and the painful price
of renouncing for the future its independent existence and letting
itself be incorporated into the association of interests of the
conquering combine.

The forces of German capital are represented in the first place
by heavy industry. Germany is rich in coal but lacking in ore. On
this account, the daily morning and evening prayer of the Stinnes
and their like was already, decades ago: Dear God, give us a victorious
war with France so that we can gain possession of the rich ore deposits
of Briey and Longuy. As, on the other side, the French capitalists
implore their Lord God, in view of the scarcity of coal in their
country, for the rich coal treasures of the Ruhr region. Ore and
coal, then, also acted in the determining role in the World War,
especially in the struggle between France and Germany after world
domination had showed itself to both as an illusion.

The treaty of Versailles brought the French capitalists the Saar
region; but they remained discontented, for they claim the Ruhr
region as before. The mining industry, massively strengthened in
the ComitQ de Forges, asserts that it cannot fulfil its economic
task without the Ruhr, especially as many of its plants and
factories in Northern France had been destroyed by the German
warfare and rendered useless for years to come. Since 1918 it
has pressed the French government into the military invasion
of the Ruhr and finally achieved its occupation. German heavy
industry was desperate. Indeed their slogan also ran: Ore and
coal belong together. But they wanted the fulfilling of the
slogan in their favour. Now that it was happening in favour
of the Comit de Forges, they summoned the German government,
the German nation, the whole seething spirit of the German
people to resistance. It was useless; German heavy industry
had to surrender to French capital through treaties, for coal
will gravitate to iron, and the greater right is with the
stronger.

But still another economic power stands in the wings of the world
political theatre: petroleum.

The victory of the Entente in the World War was in the last analysis
a victory of the superior war technology of America. For the first
time oil triumphed over coal for the heating of the submarines and
ships, of the aircraft, motors, tanks, etc., was accomplished with
oil and by a technology which had undergone especially high
development in America and opposite which the German technology
was backward. After the ending of the World War, the most pressing
imperative for America, if it did not want to lose again the
hegemony won over world economic domains, was to bring the oil
production of the world into its hands in order to thus
monopolise the guarantees of its ascendancy.

The richest oil field lie in Asia Minor (Mossul) and belong to
the zone of the English protectorate; the way to them leads over
Europe. American oil capital began very quickly to secure this
path for itself. Starting from France it pressed on by courtesy
of the gesture of the French statesman or the bayonet of the
French military towards Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria, as far as Turkey. The war between Greece and Turkey,
the revolution in Bulgaria, the Lausanne talks, the Balkan
incidents, the military convention between France and the little
Entente, etc., are more or less connected to the perpetual
striving of American oil capital to procure for itself a large
base of operations for the confrontation which must follow
sooner or later in the interest of world monopoly over oil
with the competitors, England and Russia. Just as the oil
trust has been at work for decades in Mexico to obtain
dominion over the Mexican oil fields through a chain of
political shocks, putsches, revolts and revolutions, so
it also leaves no stone unturned in Europe in order to take
possession of the approaches to the oil districts of Asia
Minor, against every competitor and every opposition.

Germany represented the only gap in the path. As the endeavours
to detach South Germany from North Germany and bring it under
French overlordship did not lead to the goal in spite of the
enormous sums made ready for the financing of the Bavarian
fascist movement and anti-state conspiracy and because the
interests of New York clashed here with the interests of Rome,
oil capital applied other tactics. Supported by the depreciation
of money consequent on inflation and certain stock-exchange
manoeuvres, it bought up one economic combine after another
and thus gradually brought the entire power of German capital
under its control. When the Stinnes combine, for which the
proffered quota of shared profits was not high enough, offered
resistance and opposed its conversion into the mere appendage
of an international community of exploitative interests, force
was resorted to. The military occupation of the Ruhr meant the
fulfilment of long-cherished wishes of oil capital just as much
as it was a deed after the heart of the French mining
industrialists.

Meanwhile the German capitalist class has recognised that it too
was able to benefit considerably from its dependence on Entente
and world capital. Certainly it was pledged by treaties to high
payments which would severely curtail its rate of profit, but in
return the German proletariat was handed over to it, completely
defenceless, for unrestrained exploitation. It enjoys the advantages
of tax concessions under the favour of a plutocratic fiscal
legislature; has thrown away all the burdens and fetters which,
however insignificant they might be, had been put into practice
in recent years to lessen social conflict in the interest of the
proletariat; above all it is again in full possession of the
reactionary power, as in its best times under the Wilhelmite
regime. It has secured its position with the 10-hour day,
starvation wages, the gold standard swindle, martial law,
and military dictatorship.

Germany has become a colony of the Entente. The German workers are
the enslaved natives. The German entrepreneurs represent the
privileged caste of slave-owners, who take so great a part in
the extorted and ill-gotten gains which they have to pay over
to foreign high finance that a sumptuous life-style is possible
for them. As the economic, so also the political power has gone
over completely into the hands of big capital. The 'shop stewards'
and delegates of the leading industry sit in the government, manage
high public office or hold in their hands the strings on which the
current party and government puppets hang. When in November 1923 the
establishing of a Directory was planned, Herr Minoux, the right hand
of Stinnes, was considered quite generally and as a matter of course
(as already mentioned) as the coming man. Whether in the end Minoux
or Stresemann or Schlacht, a representative of big capital, of the
industrial and banking world, will always stand at the head and
have the reins of government in his hands. The parliament is
barred from co-determination by Enabling Acts or is faced with
accomplished facts; its only remaining value is as a decorative
exhibition which is necessary to the appearance of a republic.
The preponderance of all the big decisions lies not with it, not
with the government, but with the banks and employers' combines,
the state economic council, the small circle of influential pillars
of the economy. It becomes increasingly obvious in society as a
whole that as the economic factor stands in the foreground, the
political moves more and more into the second line.

This phenomenon can perhaps be designated as an Americanisation
of politics, because it first arose in the country of the greatest
lords of capital and is typical of the way in which the trust
magnates and bank potentates are accustomed to making their politics.
The undisguised domination of the money-bag, veiled with no romance,
excused by no ethic, sanctioned by no diplomacy, justified by no
parliamentary phrase the whole direct, brutal power-politics of
the economic dictators, the Stinnes-isation of politics that is
the characteristic sign of the last phase into which German
capitalism of the post-war period has been hurled, the phase of
inter-nationality.