The Curse of Compromise

The worst danger is never the determined opponent, but one's own compromise. In the end, every cause fails because of giving in and making pacts, conceding and comparing oneself. People were young and surrendered with unconditional faith. Until one experienced, for example, how the whole world was able to come to terms with religion. Or how the ultimate consequences of erotic demands were dealt with, that the event withers away in sufficiency and vapid satisfaction betrays originality. And in the same way one became accustomed in the end to serving every experience with half-measures and skillfully turning off the sharpest sense. The anti-militarist conceded to the military the right to exist as the protection of his own country. The socialist got along with the exploiter who made him earn his own money and played with the dream of his own ascent to capitalism. The opponent of war conceded the right to reserve for the war of defense and in his heart of hearts meant the “victorious” war par excellence. The insurgent revolted only for better conjunctures, always nicely within the framework of the usual security of his reservations. Instead of completely abolishing the existing powers, he contented himself with being allowed to participate in them, before the final consequence: to make possible a world without rulers and ruled, without command and obedience, he saved himself with a shift in power that opened up better places in the sun for his party. Instead of committing himself to the ultimate commandment, which is based on the willingness to give oneself. Instead of professing the utmost commandment, which is to solve mutual happiness from the willingness to sacrifice oneself, one stabilized one's own advantage as a value and made securing it a cardinal question. Once again, the compromise thwarted a radical success in the upward movement of humanity as a whole. The revolution failed because of it, the world revolution because of the German Compromise. What was to be done as an advance against the military resulted in a consolidated militarism of German republican coloration. For the anti-national did not want to enter these skulls even for a moment of exalted insurgent play. Rather, on the basis of the new “Free State”, the “Germany, Germany above all!” roars all the more loudly and the presumption swells as “Germany in freedom ahead!” Once again, every opportunity to cleanse thoroughly was missed. Those who wanted to go to the end were called misguided or criminal, subordination to participation won out so disastrously that the uncompromising, purposefully vehement, steadfastly persevering, the real revolutionary, who passionately strives with body and soul to the point of “all or nothing”, was called the wicked villain. Today the revolution ends with the revolutionary principle once again being regarded as the evil principle and the revolutionary manifestation as a curse.

All the horrors of July 1914 are repeated, and in an intensified form. The soldiers dominate the circulation with the scornful gesture of raw superiority, vehicles are stopped, the individual is subjected to physical interventions at every turn, and once again the indignant “... will be shot!” hovers over every head, but no one is outraged — on the contrary! The citizen participates approvingly in the spectacle. They call it “creating peace” and repeat all the newspaper lies about the Spartacus genocide to justify these unacceptable conditions. But I didn't notice anything of the alleged anarchy that preceded it; the few instances of looting and the like that may have occurred are insignificant when you consider that there had been four years of war. Moreover, only a humanity contaminated by the plague of our journalism can be so perversely narrow-minded as to chalk up any misunderstandings and degenerations and every bad act in general to an intellectual will, a political principle. But this is how sensationalism, the lust for bloodthirsty tingling, celebrates its orgies. The “battles” over the newspaper castles were enjoyed with a secret thrill (a tactical coercive measure, which need not have caused physical harm to anyone, was first hyped up by the prose rulers of power and their rabble into a state action and saintly legend, then retaliated and destroyed with a bloody method of warlike barbarism). Vengefulness smoldered ever more cruelly in the hunt for the misguided. Just as in 1914 the rage was diverted to the wrong objects: for example, the British were made out to be the cause of the misery, now Liebknecht and his own were denounced as the demons of all that one suffers from. And once again the most brutal tendencies felt confirmed, mean-spiritedness felt like a merit when it was used against the “wrongdoers. A spartacist rape that had only existed in the imagination (how can something that lacks the compact means of power commit rape! ) has been replaced by the lowest de facto rape: now there is maltreatment of the individual who expresses a different opinion by the brave many; a popular festival of home ravages: “Now let's dig up a Spartacus nest!”, whereupon the workroom of some “suspiciously” lonerish brainiacs or unfortunate Russian girls is demolished. The clumsy majority power does cartwheels, the citizen knows again where to parry and gratefully salutes the enormous persuasive power of the hand grenade and rifle butt arguments: “Noske, he's got something, he's really taking the brothers down!” (Namely, the wonderful love word “brother” has been infamed into a disgraceful term in this regulars' table red falsification).

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Most recently, the militaristic brutalization of the German people committed its most obvious abomination with the murder of Liebknecht and Mrs. Luxemburg. The most atrocious rage of arbitrary warlike violence has been transferred to our own country. Now, German, feel in your own body the rod that you created for others! Just as Florian Geyer and his people were once at the mercy of the beastly arrogance of the privileged and assassinated the leader, so too was this hot flame of bestiality trampled out. The most instinctive, most elemental rebel and the freest, most secure spirituality of German political life in general was sacrificed to the compromise of the sabre regiment. For real, final freedom remains suspect to the German. Without the definite footstep of the rule he is helpless. He wants to be roughly commanded and wants to be empowered to brutality against the defenseless 'enemy'. In the compromise with crudeness, this mutual bargain, he receives his final crowning as what he is: the compromiser par excellence — until the fatal outcome!