The Policy of the Independents

In the decisive parliamentary group meeting before the outbreak of war, some members of the parliamentary group declared themselves against the approval of the war credits and thus also against the war. Haase was among them. In the decisive plenary session of the Reichstag on August 4, the entire parliamentary group, with the exception of Kuhnert, who was not present, voted for the war credits and thus for the war. And Haase was the spokesman. This ambivalent attitude of the opposition members characterized the entire subsequent policy of the later Independents. They voted for the loans out of party discipline. Out of party discipline, they remained in the ranks of the Social Democrats even when, in December 1915, they opposed the approval of the loans for the first time and formed the Working Group faction in the spring of 1916. Another year had to pass before the official Social Democrats forced the opponents to form their own party. From that moment on, they called themselves Independents.

The Independents rejected the war credits. In doing so, they expressed their opposition to all other parties in the Reichstag. This rejection was supposed to be a declaration of opposition to the war. But rejecting the war presupposes that one rejects national defense. What was the situation in the ranks of the Independents? Haase had declared on August 4, 1914: "In the event of danger, we will not abandon the fatherland. When it came to the second war loan, the opposition side of the parliamentary group still did not oppose this argument. Geyer's declaration in the December 1915 session was a direct commitment to national defense. Ledebour declared: "When the French are on the Rhine and the Russians on the Oder, we will defend the fatherland. Bernstein wrote more than ten times that no one would think of rejecting national defense. In all the declarations and proclamations of the Independents there is not a single word of rejection of national defense. And to this day, the Independents have not clarified this issue. So why reject the war credits? What was the point? It was merely a parliamentary action intended as a formal demonstration. As long as the Independents did not deny the national defense in the imperialist war, the rejection of the war credits was no danger to the government. For so long it remained a parliamentary demonstration; only political action was feared.

On the question of peace, the Independents were no different from the Social Democrats. Both strove for the peace of understanding; both held the view that there would be no victors and no vanquished in this gigantic war; both opposed annexations and contributions. Both wanted to shift the emphasis of future international decisions to the courts of arbitration. Both advocated the demand for disarmament. Both demanded the right of peoples to self-determination. They pursued this policy in the face of the defeat of Tsarism, the first great conqueror, in the face of the trampling of Belgium, Serbia, Greece, the first victims of the tyranny of the great capitalist military power, in the face of the peace of Brest-Litovsk, which was a fist blow to the demands of non-annexation, the right to self-determination and the renunciation of war reparations. The Independents and the Social Democrats stuck to their policy and their pacifist ideals of disarmament even when America entered the war with its gigantic armaments.

Today the world war is over. Where have the ideals of the Independents gone? Will the victorious Entente renounce annexations, such as Alsace-Lorraine? Will it renounce war reparations? Will it give the Germans the right to self-determination? Will it disarm, as it still sees itself fighting with countless powers within and outside its own ranks? Will it renounce being seen as the victor and acting as the victor? The policy of the Independents has been put under the most serious pressure by the course of events.

After Liebknecht's conviction, the Independents were the only opposition group in the Reichstag. We see that they did not differ from the Social Democrats on essential points of their policy: If the Social Democrats basically went along with the war policy, the Independents did not fundamentally oppose this war policy.