23.03.1995

The German Revolution

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, March 25 1920

WHAT WILL strike anyone who has read the history of the recent Russian Revolution is the great similarity presented in the course of that revolution with the one now taking place in Germany ... The masses rise and the reaction breaks like a soap bubble...

The most striking element in the whole situation is undoubtedly the revelation of the power of the workers. The Times, writing on Saturday, says that both parties in Germany now know that it is impossible to rule without the workers, and goes on to say that “the general strike has been the greatest silent protest ever made. Its passivity is more deadly than any action.”

... The situation in the West is most satisfactory where the industrial region is in the hands of the communists - but the news from Berlin, I must confess, makes me somewhat apprehensive - of a compromise.

Our duty as English comrades is to see that our government is not allowed in any pretext to strangle the German communists - whether by blockade, or direct intervention of any sort. Let the workers here take the words quoted above from The Times to heart and make their power felt to control the policy of Great Britain. Let them ensure not only that the so-called peace treaty shall be torn up but that hands shall actually be taken off all other countries - Russia, Germany, Ireland, Egypt, India, etc, by setting up the Dictatorship of the Proletariat here.