29.01.2009

SPD and the swamp

This previously untranslated article, 'After the Jena congress', by Rosa Luxemburg is of particular interest. A cool analytical summation of the Jena congress of German Social Democracy in September 1913, it sounds a warning against the new alignment of the party's centre and right against the left. In a sign of things to come, the Leipziger Volkszeitung - one of the many local SPD newspapers - refused publication1

What distinguishes our party’s last congress in Jena² from previous congresses is not so much that theoretical or practical revisionism no longer took centre stage, but rather the emergence of two new problems - both born of new situations. As long as we had to waste most of our time and energy at congresses with Bernsteinite ‘misunderstandings’ on theories of immiseration and catastrophe or with South German budget approvers and participants in monarchist rallies - that is, more or less every congress from 1898 to 1910 - the results led merely to the defence of the old status quo of the party.

Of course, those conflicts were no coincidence, but rather a symptom of the powerful growth of the movement amongst the broad masses, leading a section of party comrades into doubts about the old revolutionary principles. Of course, those debates were also of great use and, in addition to this, were of absolute necessity if the party did not want to abandon its proletarian class-struggle character.

However, this periodic necessity of repeatedly defending the old theoretical clarity and solidity of principle created the impression that we were not going anywhere, which had a tiring and depressive effect on wide circles of the party. On top of this, for the mass of our comrades the theoretical disputes often appeared to be nothing more than empty academic discussions about splitting hairs.

It was different at this year’s congress. Two purely practical problems were up for discussion; problems which every informed worker, whether active politically or in a trade union, was able directly to approach and grasp; problems which were not thought up by a mad theoretician in his study, or which came about by a surprise revelation of infidelity by one of our south German parliamentarians. It was the change in the general conditions of our struggle that imposed on us in Jena both the debate on the mass strike and the debate on the question of taxation.³

Of course, on the question of the mass strike this year’s congress was only taking up an item that had already been up for discussion and voting in 1905 and 1906. Seemingly, the problem had already been solved through the acceptance of the mass strike in principle and, since nobody was considering the immediate proclamation of the mass strike in Germany, the discussion might seem pointless. At least, this is how the party executive and its theoreticians presented the matter - a pointless argument about words, and a damaging one at that, which reveals our current impotence to the enemy. This is how the spokesmen of the majority characterised the debate on the mass strike at the congress.

Yet nothing is better than this view in proving how much the resolution on the matter of the mass strike carried at Jena in 1905⁴ has remained a dead letter - both for our practical and theoretical ‘authorities’. It also proves just how necessary a new debate was and how necessary it remains in order gradually to move this letter of law into the party’s living bloodstream.

The Jena resolution of 1905 had been passed under the immediate influence of the Russian Revolution and its victorious expansion. It came in a period of great struggles, revolutionary mood and a general advancement of the proletarian army in Europe. In the January of the same year, the German public was already deeply stirred by the giant struggle of the miners in the Ruhr.⁵ In Austria, the fight for general and equal suffrage, likewise under the influence of the Russian Revolution, made the greatest waves of all.⁶

Revolutionary determination and the belief in the power of the working class - a lively sentiment that back then penetrated the whole working class movement - provided the inspiration for the mass strike resolution at Jena. One only needs to read Bebel’s⁷ great speech at the congress in order to feel the strong, reverberating note of revolutionary determination, of the greatest revolutionary tradition, which permeated the discussions and the resolution itself: “There we have Russia, there we have the battle of June, and there we have the commune! With the spirits of these martyrs, should you not starve yourselves a few weeks to defend your highest human rights?”⁸ This was the glowing fire of the greatest idealism in which the first resolution on the mass strike was created.

It would, however, be a fateful error to imagine that this mood was shared by all circles of the workers’ movement later on, or even at the time itself. Let us not forget that a few months before the Jena congress, in May 1905, the trade union congress in Cologne had passed a resolution regarding the mass strike which was in direct contradiction to the Jena resolution. The mass strike was rejected on the grounds that it was a useless, and indeed harmful, weapon - not merely making propaganda for it, but even discussing it was forbidden, as it was seen as playing dangerously with fire!

Of course, this ban was not pronounced from the heart of the broad mass of the comrades in the unions - these comrades are, after all, identical to the mass of the party comrades who soon after cheered both the Jena resolution and Bebel’s speech across the whole of the country. But the Cologne trade union conference had clearly shown where the main opposition to the idea of the mass strike is to be found: in the bureaucratic conservatism of the leading union circles. The Jena party resolution was adopted explicitly against the leaders of the trade unions, and Bebel’s speech was for the most part a clear polemic against the rationale of the Cologne congress.

Yet the hostile position of the trade union leaders towards the mass strike did not disappear with this speech. Faced with the decisive position of the party and the revolutionary atmosphere in the country, it did not dare to come to the surface. That it still exists as a silent, passive resistance was shown with quite admirable clarity by the official representative of the general commission of the trade unions, comrade Bauer,⁹ in his talk on the issue at this year’s congress. It was also shown by comrade Scheidemann’s¹⁰ reference to the fact that ‘willingness to take action’ had been culled from the executive committee’s resolution on the mass strike - evidently on the behest of the other instrumental authority, the very same general commission of the trade unions.

The same point is continuously proven by statements of trade union leaders when they are reporting on the Jena congress at party meetings. The typical example was delivered at the general meeting in Bochum, in which Leimpeters and other happy people reduced their wisdom to the old formula that a ‘general strike is general nonsense’ and with this thought to have said everything necessary on the question.

With the acceptance of the mass strike in principle in 1905, the question was thus dealt with to such a limited extent that today we are facing the same principled resistance that we did eight years ago. And nobody should have known this better than our executive committee. In producing the failed resolution in cooperation with the trade union leaders, they should have been able to see at close range just how much the Jena resolution has remained a dead letter to them.

However, even in party circles the zest of 1905 had markedly evaporated. For he who only looks at the surface and only appreciates tangible success, the defeat of the Russian Revolution had brought about a deep depression. The defeat of the miners’ movement in the Ruhr region had equally discouraging effects. On top of this, in 1907, our party suffered its first electoral defeat for decades.¹¹ Together, all these conditions led to an ebb in general confidence and fighting spirit, something that is from time to time unavoidable in the living historic pulse of the workers’ movement.

Only since 1910, under the pressure of the course of imperialism, has class pugnacity gradually been growing again, and a return to fiercer methods of struggle been noticeable. The debates on the insufficiency of our party’s activity against the advance of imperialism defined our congress in 1911.¹²

And it was essentially not merely, and definitely not primarily, the result of the Prussian state parliament elections,¹³ but rather the effect of the immense military bill¹⁴ and the recognition of the general intensification of the situation which so forcefully put the matter of the mass strike on the party’s agenda in the last few months.

Objective conditions now worked towards once again giving the resolution adopted eight years ago living force and increasing strength. Now, conditions prevailed which were gradually instilling the decision taken eight years ago by 400 party members into the minds of millions.

This year’s conference was called to signal this shift in the situation and this heightening of contradictions in the face of imperialism and to call out to the masses: Equip yourself with the sharpest weapons, for only from your inner intellectual and political maturity can - when necessary - the decisiveness of action and the certainty of victory be born.

Yet it was precisely here that the transformation of our own ‘authorities’ manifested itself. Instead of purposefully expressing the party’s will, as Bebel and the Jena conference of 1905 had done, the current executive, unnerved by the unions’ resistance, saw its mission in giving in to the union authorities, in bringing about a common resolution stripped of everything that would encourage practical determination, and in cohering an entire front in the debate - not against the unruly trade union leaders, but against party comrades who were pushing forwards.

Both in his speech and his summing up, comrade Scheidemann adopted a completely opposite position to that of Bebel in 1905. Whereas Bebel spoke sharply and with bitter mockery against the fear of publicly discussing the mass strike and against the bloody spectres which were being painted as the consequences of the mass strike, Scheidemann summoned up all of his oratory skills to oppose the discussion of the mass strike, playing with politics and painting bloody spectres on the wall!

In one word: if Bebel’s approach in 1905 was an advance of the party in order to force the unions to the left, then the party executive’s strategy in 1913 consisted in allowing itself to be forced to the right by the union authorities and to serve them as a battering ram against the party’s left wing.

Now, if the party debates had forced a clear and direct rejection of the mass strike from the representatives of the general commission, and if they subsequently forced the party executive, by way of Scheidemann in his closing speech, finally to veer from this standpoint and to stress more strongly the will to action, then this exposure of the situation in front of the whole party was an inestimable success.

That the debate on the mass strike took place at the congress in spite of all the resistance; that as a result it will be taken up again in all party meetings; that the masses are dealing with the question; that they have experienced what they have to expect from their leaders on both sides; that they had the opportunity to see how necessary it is to get things going through their own political pressure if the party’s methods of struggle are to advance - these are all unquestionable achievements of the party minority, which from its point of view has been successful, despite its resolution¹⁵ being rejected by the majority.

Because of recent imperialist developments, the question of taxation, just like the question of the mass strike, has become a current issue for the party. After all, what has been expressed by this ‘new era’ of the property tax in Germany? Nothing more than the fact that in its advance, German militarism has even abandoned its convoluted indirect taxation system and now demands that the bourgeoisie is partially drawn in to cover its costs.

Thus, taxation of property, which has long been a reality in England, appeared before our parliamentarians as a totally new fact and initially caused quite a lot of confusion amongst them. It is likely to be the perception of most comrades that the party congress did not dispose of this confusion, but rather that this confusion was made into the common property of the party both in the way the question was discussed and the subsequent motion that it adopted.

Indeed, hardly any serious theoretical and practical matter has been treated in such a completely inadequate manner at a German party congress as the question of taxation. It has been on the agenda for four years - sufficient time, it would seem, to prepare a thorough discussion of the material. Yet it was precisely in this field that the scientific review of the party appointed to deal with such issues, Die Neue Zeit, failed. Instead of introducing the discussion, Die Neue Zeit did not even publish any arguments from the quills of the editors themselves - editors who had already entered the debates with a very pronounced position at the Leipzig conference,¹⁶ albeit one which is the opposite of their current one.

Left high and dry from this side, the party was dependent on the daily press with all its insufficiencies in large and complicated problems. In party meetings the question was barely discussed at all. Furthermore, one of the speakers published his theses and resolutions less than a month before the congress, and the other one did not publish his at all. This is how the party congress came into the position of deciding on a new, highly important and complex question and to determine the party’s tactics for the coming period, without being in the slightest factually prepared for this responsible role. And just to compound the insufficiency of this situation, everything at the party congress was geared towards allowing one side to speak at great length, whilst the other side was hardly allowed to speak at all.

That a decision made under such unprecedented conditions bears all the signs of ‘tentativeness’ and a ‘botch job’ is not surprising. Wurm’s¹⁷ resolution did not decide the question of taxation for the party, but for the first time curtailed it. Amongst other things, we need complete and systematic work in the press in order to disentangle what was frilly and unclear, and to shed light on what was improvised and left unanswered by the majority, especially by comrade Wurm, in the field of tactics around taxation at the party congress. Furthermore, we need a systematic discussion of the question of taxation in party meetings in order to make the mass of the comrades aware of the complicated economic and political context of the problem, so that they can become aware of all the fatal and unforeseeable consequences of our tactics, to which Wurm’s botched resolution will necessarily lead.

If on the question of the mass strike a concession was made to the conservative resistance of the union leaders by adopting the executive’s resolution,¹⁸ then the adoption of Wurm’s resolution and the endorsement of the tactics of the majority faction represent a much more significant concession to parliamentary opportunism - to the Südekums, the Davids and the Noskes.¹⁹

Now elevated to the point of a principle, the ‘lesser evil’ slogan (in the sense that the abandonment of the principled rejection of militarism is the ‘lesser evil’); the acceptance in principle of approving credits for military purposes, ‘if the military bill has already successfully been decided upon’ - all this opens the door to the very same revisionist tactics which the overwhelming majority of the party had, until now, brusquely defeated, year after year.

Yet Wurm’s cleverly contrived formula, that we approve military funds once it can be demonstrated that they can be represented as the sole means of avoiding the placing of a burden on the people through more adverse taxes, is a carte blanche for all budget approvals, as, of course, no budget can be perceived which could not be portrayed as the ‘prevention’ of another, more adverse one.

It is enough to keep these consequences in mind in order to see that the revision of the casual work done on the question of taxation in Jena is an urgent task for one of our next party congresses, and one to which systematic preparation both in the press and in party meetings must be dedicated.

And yet, in looking at the decisions on the mass strike and the question of taxation, it would, in our opinion, be an error to draw the conclusion that the Jena congress highlights a hefty shift to the right, with the revisionist wing gaining a two-thirds majority. Such a rapid growth of the right wing, which up until the last party congress represented a mere third of the party, would be an inconceivable phenomenon, and indeed it has not happened at all.

On the question of taxation, at least half of the victorious majority did not commit conscious revisionism - it was the lack of understanding about the true consequences and the true character of the decision reached which influenced a great number of the delegates. And on the question of the mass strike, it was clear that the party executive was obliged to do its utmost to the very last moment to pull together a majority for its resolution.

Accordingly, we have no reason to assume that the usual revisionist third of party congresses, as represented by the conscious and consistent spokesmen of opportunism, has somehow increased at this party congress. Those who formed the majority alongside the revisionist third were the indecisive and vacillating layer of the centre. Back in Dresden, following the well-known description of the convention of the great French Revolution, Bebel referred to these forces as the “swamp”:

“It is forever the same old struggle - the left here, the right there, and between them the swamp. These are the elements who never know what they want, or rather, never say what they want. They are the ‘wise guys’ who always ask: what’s going on here, what’s happening there? They always feel where the majority is, and then go with them.

“We have these types in our party too. In these proceedings, a whole number of them has come into the light of day. We have to denounce these comrades. [Heckle from the audience: ‘Denounce?’] Yes! Denounce them, I say, so that the comrades know what semi-people they are. At least I can struggle with the man who defends his position openly - I know where I am with him. Either he wins or I do, but the lazy elements who always suppress themselves and go out of the way of every clear decision, and always say that we are all united and are all brothers - these elements are the worst of all! These are the ones I combat the most.”²⁰

The role of this “swamp” is - in spite of the indecisiveness of the opinions of each of its members - quite a decisive one in every political body, and not least in our party. During the whole of the last period of the struggle against revisionism, the swamp supported the left wing of the party and together with it formed a compact majority against revisionism and brought about one sensational defeat of revisionism after the other.

What motivated it to do so was the seemingly conservative factor, which it considered necessary to defend. After all, ‘the old tried and tested tactics’ had to be protected in the face of revisionist innovations. And what sanctified this defensive struggle in the eyes of the centre elements was that the highest and most respected authorities stood at the head of this struggle. The party executive, the scientific central organ of the party, such well-known names as [Paul] Singer, [Wilhelm] Liebknecht, Bebel, [Karl] Kautsky,²¹ fought it out in the front row. That the traditional and established elements found themselves on this side provided the calming guarantee that the swamp needed.

Yet the imperialist period, the sharpened relations of the last years, confronts us with a new situation and new tasks. The necessity of imbuing the party in all its massive broadness with a greater mobility, quick-wittedness and aggressiveness; of mobilising the masses and the party majority to use its victories in crucial questions and to throw its full weight onto the scales of history - all this requires more than the desperate adherence to ‘tried and tested tactics’. Namely, it necessitates the understanding that this old and proven revolutionary tactic now needs new forms of mass action and that these tactics also have to be upheld in new situations: for example, when it comes to the introduction of the property tax for German militarism.

This is where the “swamp” first fails. As a conservative element, it now resists the forward thrust of the left in exactly the same way that, until now, it resisted the backward drag of the right. Yet through this it transforms itself from a protective barrier of the party against opportunism into a dangerous element of stagnation, in whose tepid waters the very same opportunism which has until now been suppressed can sprout like a weed.

It is not merely the decision on the question of taxation that shows, at a closer look, how the victorious swamp unconsciously organised a triumph for the very same parliamentary opportunism against which it had been fighting at dozens of party conferences. The whole nature of struggle against the left; the whole manner of arguing, while systematically distorting the other side’s arguments; and the persistent ‘misunderstandings’ on the apparent underestimation of legwork, underestimation of parliamentarism and cooperatives, putschist tendencies and other nice products of their imagination - this whole apparatus is truly taken from the revisionist wing’s arsenal of weaponry. In the fight against the left, the swamp is now making use of literally the same arguments that the right has been hurling at it for years.

And the thing that finally determines the swamp’s attitude is that the ‘authorities’ are turning on the left. The party executive, having fought under Bebel’s leadership against the right for years, now accepts the right’s support in order to defend conservatism against the left.

Finally, since 1910, the scientific review Die Neue Zeit has also gone through this change alongside the party executive. Amongst its circle of friends, the popular expression of the ‘Marxist centre’ has recently been used. More precisely, this supposed ‘Marxist centre’ is the theoretical expression for the current political function of the swamp.

Propped up by the swamp and in alliance with the right, the party executive and the party majority have gained victories on the crucial questions at the Jena congress. And Kautsky, crowing over the victory of the ‘old tried and tested tactics’ in Jena, has forgotten to reflect on this strange situation, where the likes of Südekum, David, Noske and Richard Fischer²² are on his side - people against whom he had defended those tactics for over a decade!

This new constellation is no coincidence: it is the logical development of the shifts in the external and internal conditions of our party life, and we would do well to look out for the continuation of this constellation maybe for a couple of years, if external events do not suddenly accelerate the course of developments.

However unpleasant the situation may seem to some comrades, there is not the slightest reason for pessimism and despondency. This period must, just like every other historically conditioned period, be endured.²³ On the contrary, the more clearly we look into things, the more energetically, vigorously and merrily we can continue our struggle.

The next task that emerges from the Jena congress is systematic action against the “swamp” - that is, against the intellectual conservatism in the party. Here too, the only effective way to do this is through the mobilisation of the broad mass of the comrades, the shaking up of opinion by carrying the discussion on the questions of the mass strike and taxation (with all tactical differences) into party meetings, union meetings and into the press.

Every day, the course of events itself is leading with historic necessity towards increasingly vindicating the tactical endeavours of the left, and if this development itself leads to the overpowering of the elements of stagnation in the party, then the minority of the Jena congress can look towards the future with good spirits. That the Jena congress has brought about clarity on the reciprocal power relationship in the party, and led for the first time to a self-contained left opposed to the bloc of the swamp and the right, is a pleasant beginning to further development which can only be welcome.

Notes

1. Comintern’s magazine Die Internationale printed ‘After the Jena congress’ for the first time in 1927. This translation by Ben Lewis will also appear in a forthcoming special edition of Revolutionary History (www.revolutionary-history.co.uk) dedicated to Rosa’s life and work. The Weekly Worker is grateful to Einde O’Callaghan of the Marxist Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) for transcribing the original German text and to Paul Flewers of RH for his editorial work.
2. The congress of the German Social Democratic Party that took place in Jena from September 14-20 1913.
3. The retarded development of industry and the strength of the peasantry in southern Germany were amongst the factors that encouraged Social Democratic leaders in that region to adopt a considerably more moderate political approach than the party did in the remainder of the country. For the question of taxation, see note 14 below.
4. The Jena congress in 1905 decided to defend the general right to vote and to assembly, possibly through the mass strike, which was restricted to use for this purpose.
5. From January 17-19 1905, approximately 215,000 Ruhr miners were on strike demanding an eight-hour day, higher wages and safety provisions. The strike was called off without its demands being met.
6. A mass strike for universal suffrage rocked Austria-Hungary. In January 1907, the Austrian government presented a bill to parliament introducing the general right to vote.
7. August Bebel (1840-1913) played a key role in the formation and subsequent leadership of German Social Democracy. He had died just prior to the writing of this article.
8. Protocol of the proceedings of the SPD’s congress held at Jena during September 17-23 1905 (Berlin 1905, p305).
9. Gustav Bauer (1870-1944) chaired the general commission of the German trade unions during 1908-18. He was chancellor of Germany in 1919-20.
10. Philipp Scheidemann (1865-1939) was leader the SPD succeeding Bebel. An ardent supporter of Germany in World War I, he became chancellor in 1919.
11. The campaign led by chancellor Bernhard von Bülow for the Reichstag elections of January 25 1907 was characterised by the chauvinistic mobilisation of reaction against all opposition forces, particularly against Social Democracy, and for the continuation of the colonial war against the Hereros in South West Africa. Although the SPD gained the highest number of votes, due to a combination of constituency gerrymandering and bourgeois alliances it won only 43 seats, whereas in 1903 it had 81.
12. At the SPD congress of September 10-16 1911 in Jena, the ‘wait and see’ politics of the party executive in relation to the Morocco crisis was at the centre of the debates. In the spring of 1911, French imperialism had attempted to extend its rule to the whole of Morocco and Germany had used this to justify its decision to send warships to Agadir. Britain’s intervention in favour of France forced a retreat and a compromise was reached between France and Germany.
13. Because of the undemocratic, three-tier voting system used in the Prussian state parliament elections of June 3 1913, the SPD’s 775,171 votes (28.38%) resulted in only 10 seats. On the other hand, the 402,988 votes for the Conservatives were translated into 147 seats.
14. The military bill of March 1913 brought the greatest increases in armaments spending in German history. The SPD parliamentary fraction, despite opposition from 37 comrades, voted in favour on the grounds that some of the costs were to be covered by a wealth tax. Through this act, the maxim of ‘Not a man nor a penny for this system!’ was abandoned.
15. See ‘Motion on the political mass strike resolution’, R Luxemburg Collected works Vol 3, pp328-29.
16. A reference to the SPD congress held in Leipzig from September 12-18 1909.
17. Emanuel Wurm (1857-1920) was a journalist, and worked with Karl Kautsky on Die Neue Zeit. He subsequently joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD).
18. See ‘The party executive’s resolution on the mass strike’, R Luxemburg Collected works Vol 3, pp323-24.
19. All leading SPD rightwingers. Albert Südekum (1871-1944) was editor of its paper Vorwärts and minister of finance in Prussia from 1918-20. Eduard David (1863-1930) was minister of the interior in 1919. Gustav Noske (1868-1946) was a trade union official and, as minister of defence during 1919-20, he permitted the emergence of rightwing paramilitary forces, such as that responsible for the murder of Luxemburg in January 1919.
20. Protocol of the proceedings of the SPD’s congress, held at Dresden, September 13-20 1903 (Berlin 1903, p319).
21. Paul Singer was with Bebel the co-chairman of the SPD. Karl Kautsky (1856-1938) was at this point the editor of Die Neue Zeit and the most prominent SPD theoretician. It can be seen from this article that Luxemburg is including Kautsky in the “swamp”.
22. Richard Fischer (1855-1926) was a longstanding leading official in the SPD.
23. In the original durchfressen: literally 'eaten through'.