The Enemy as Teacher

One should learn from one's enemies. This general proposition is especially important for the fighting proletariat, which must work its way up from a weak force to power and strength in battle. Its means of struggle are not to be chosen arbitrarily according to abstract principles; they can no more be determined from a general theory than a campaign can be determined in advance. They must be based on what the enemy does. This is not to say that tactics should not be decided in advance and that everything should be left to chance. For the enemy's tactics are not based on chance; they are rooted in his economic and political interests and can therefore be recognized, understood and predicted in their main features with the help of theory. This is the purpose of theory, after all, to derive the firm line of their tactics, and therefore also of our tactics, from their deepest permanent interests, beyond the momentary currents of practice and the cover-up maneuvers of the enemy. But where these theoretical conclusions meet with doubt, because they seem to contradict the illusions of daily practice, it is good that the enemy now and then reveals his cards and confirms those conclusions with an unambiguous statement of his intentions.

Therein lies the significance of the excerpt from General von Bissing's1 circular read out by Comrade Limbertz2 at the Magdeburg Party Congress. No Social Democrat was in any doubt that the ruling classes would be prepared to resort to any kind of military despotism if their rule had to be defended against the onslaught of the proletariat. But it was good that this readiness should show itself for once in all its crude, anti-popular and brutal character. It is significant to select only the passage where it is emphasized that the immunity of the Reichstag deputies should not be observed. That all workers' complaints are simply suppressed without reason, that blameless workers are to be deprived of their freedom at the whim of the military authorities, against all law, simply because they are regarded as “leaders”, that skilled marksmen and machine guns are to be deployed against the people, the liberal heroes regard all this as a minor matter. They are only concerned that the sanctity of parliamentarians might be violated. Brutalities and acts of bloodshed against the people leave them cool; they are only upset that the illusion that Germany is a parliamentary country could melt away like vapor in the face of sabre violence. Pfannkuch3 rightly shouted between the cries of indignation at this sentence: “Did you doubt it?” No, we never doubted that the ruling military power would trample on paper parliamentary rights. The cries of indignation were only meant to emphasize the military's open declaration that it will respect the constitutional rights of parliamentarians as little as other popular rights.

For us, the importance of this circular lies less in the confirmation of our theoretical views than in the practical consequences it has for our tactics. The moment when Limbetz read it out, at the beginning of the electoral rights debate, already points to these consequences, and he drew them out himself in the most succinct way when he said after reading it: “It is precisely these preparations that prove how necessary it is to train the masses, because attempts are being made to snatch the leaders away from them”.

In the German labor movement, there are two main opposing views of the political mass strike. One has developed primarily within the party, initially in response to the question of what we intend to do if a coup d'état is attempted against Reichstag suffrage. It imagines a sudden ignition of the masses, perhaps triggered, but not simply brought about by an appeal from the party leadership. Where it is a response to some act of bloodshed by the ruling powers, it will be able to break out spontaneously even without such an appeal. The revolutionary situation, which unleashes a tremendous political passion and energy in the masses, is the main moment here, and the events of the Russian Revolution provided the great examples of such mass strikes.

Of course, the Russian example cannot easily be applied to Germany. Not so much because absolutism reigns there and parliamentarism here, for German pseudo-parliamentarism serves only as a fig leaf for absolutism, but because the German proletariat is highly organized. Through long trade union practice, organized action has become second nature to German workers. Therefore, mass action here can only occur from the outset as the action of the large mass organizations, the trade unions.

The other view of the mass strike, which can be found above all among leading trade unionists, is based on this line of thought. According to this, the political mass strike is a trade union action decided by the leaders, the general commission together with the party executive committee, and carried out by the masses on their instructions. This is not in itself a foolish idea; it follows directly from the trade union practice of ordinary strikes. Just as here, the leaders decide the beginning, scope and end, they direct the whole movement, they direct the negotiations, and any spontaneous, i.e. undisciplined, action by the masses must be strictly ruled out.

This view also underlies the Mannheim Resolution, according to which the Party Executive Committee, if it deems a political mass strike necessary, contacts the General Commission to take all measures necessary to carry out the action successfully. But most of the comrades who agreed with her at the time will probably not have taken this in such a strange sense as was most strongly expressed in Magdeburg by Comrade Leinert:4 “Comrade Luxemburg speaks of the possible headlessness of the masses. This proves her ignorance of the organization. If we had to carry out the mass strike in 24 hours and if the appointed body were united, then nobody would be headless”. Here the organization becomes a machine whose individual parts need not have a head, but are simply set in motion from above.

In itself, detached from time and space, a mass strike staged in this way would not be inconceivable. Where there is complete freedom of movement in all directions, such a political mass strike decided and led from above is very possible and it has actually already happened. It even offers an almost uplifting sight as a picture of well-managed, organized mass action. The impossibility of such a mass strike lies in the practical reality of the particular German situation. Because the proletariat is surrounded by cruel enemies who lie in wait for any opportunity to attack it and do not shy away from violence, it is not offered any opportunity for such a struggle.

This is why von Bissing's circular comes at just the right time to warn against the mechanical conception of the mass strike. If it is linked to the repeated conservative statements about the mass strike, there can be no doubt that the ruling class is prepared to commit any unlawful act of violence against mass strikes. But if all the leaders and the entire press are immediately eliminated, there will be nothing left of such top-down action. And what will it be like if the mass strike does not break out immediately, but only as a protest against previous acts of bloodshed by the military? Then it could be that there are no leaders left to decide and lead it.

Bissing's circular signifies the collapse of the view of the mass strike that prevailed among many trade unionists. It was born out of trade union practice and as such had its justified core. However, it was not compatible with the political character of the German military state. It will have to be supplemented by an understanding of the necessity of independent, spontaneous action by the organized masses if it is to be sustainable. That is the lesson that the enemy offers us.

• 1 Moritz von Bissing (1844-1917), raised to the Prussian baronial rank in 1858, was a Prussian colonel general in the First World War.
• 2Heinrich Wilhelm Limbertz (1874-1932); German SPD politician and member of the Reichstag.
• 3Wilhelm Pfannkuch (1841-1923); German SPD politician and trade unionist; member of the Reichstag from 1898 to 1907 and 1912 to 1918.
• 4Robert Leinert (1873-1940); German SPD politician.