The Stahlhelm Democracy

The “Reich Front Soldiers' Day” on May 8, 1927, once again brought the question of whether Germany was developing into a second Mussolini to the fore. Large masses of the proletariat, especially the supporters of the KPD, answered this question in the affirmative and saw the Stahlhelm parade as the first practical attempt to shape Germany's internal political conditions along Italian lines. So what are the real circumstances? Is Germany's political development really going in the direction suggested? Is the ground really there in this country on which a Mussolini-type rule can rise?

One thing is certain: Germany's numerous fascist groups, with their programs based on their diverse social structure, have always been and will continue to be at the forefront of the counter-revolution when it comes to putting down rebellious proletarians. They are the most loyal chain dogs of capitalism and are primarily called upon to protect it, because, despite all the anti-capitalist phrases, they do not touch the economic basis of the bourgeois social order. But the fascists recruited from the most reluctant elements of the Wilhelmine military, economically uprooted petty bourgeoisie, communist-enthusiastic peasants' sons and completely indifferent industrial workers are, despite all this, nothing more than tolerated executioners at the mercy of capital and only have political freedom of movement up to a certain limit. The Bavarian November Putsch of 1923 showed clearly enough when the bourgeoisie calls an imperious halt to its fascist darlings. When the “national renewal of Germany” was to begin and the “injustice to the ancestral ruling house was to be made good” and Ludendorff wanted to “carry the black-white-red cockade across the Rhine”, not only the industrial magnates but also the “national” agricultural capital pulled away their protective hands and mercilessly whistled back their national lackeys with Reichswehr trumpets. For the guardians of the bourgeoisie, for reasons of their general class interests, simply could not take the grave risk of destroying the internal and foreign policy preconditions of vital capitalist reconstruction themselves by tolerating the realization of völkisch plans.

Since that national tragicomedy in the Munich “Bürgerbräu” almost three and a half years ago, the iron course of political development has left only a pitiful remnant of the fascists' monarchist hopes. The republican form of government is more secure than ever thanks to the social-democratic executioner's work in defeating revolutionary proletarians; formal democracy is precisely the most favorable framework for the implementation of capitalist construction. Even the black-white-red German nationalists, for reasons of foreign policy and especially under the economic pressure of the post-war conditions, placed themselves on the ground of the facts created in November 1918 in order to pursue a Realpolitik that counted among its first advocates Walter Rathenau, who was shot by his own friends. The völkisch illusions were destroyed by the storm of the deflation crisis and fragmented the fascist movement into a bunch of competing associations that looked at each other with disdain. As far as their claims to political power are concerned, the “national conquerors” are now condemned to go about as muzzlers who are only taken seriously by political children.

After all, Germany is not Italy; Mussolini's march to Rome cannot be arbitrarily imitated. Germany, with its industrial capitalism concentrated in giant trusts, is no longer the socially favorable terrain for a fascist military coup, like the industrially more backward Italy. The Italian Black Shirts had strong allies in the agrarian provinces and therefore met with no serious resistance in the cities, while the German swastikas faced an extremely powerful industrial bourgeoisie that no longer had the social need to place its economic and political rule under the suzerainty of a Seldte or Ehrhardt. Of course, this in no way means that the capitalist class is deathly hostile to the völkisch racket opposition. On the contrary: the bourgeoisie is happy to give the fascist gangs sufficient political freedom of movement within the framework of formal democracy in order to have a counterweight to organized labour, and moreover the resurgent German imperialism naturally wants to retain the swastika associations as reliable cadres for its future League of Nations wars.

The “national conquerors” of the swastika are therefore restricted by Germany's capitalist development, which they cannot overcome on their own. It is therefore ridiculous to rage against the fact that the capitalist rulers grant the fascists the same right to demonstrate as the red front fighters. The Stahlhelm parade on May 8, like every previous meeting, was really not an action that violated the Weimar constitution; it reflected all too clearly the powerlessness of the proletariat within the fascist black-red-yellow citizens' republic. But despite all this, fascism is not a figment of the German working class's imagination, but a brutal reality! The real fascism, which is breathing down the proletariat's neck like a vampire, is not the völkisch racket brothers — it is the system of capitalism, which has become an obstacle to social progress! Today, the bourgeois order is at a stage of development where it is gradually undermining the existence of the proletarian class. It is becoming increasingly obvious that capitalist “reconstruction” does not mean advancement, but the progressive impoverishment of the working class. Rationalization has long since proved to be the scourge of the exploited: it opens up new sources of profit for entrepreneurship and drives the working proletarians into the yoke of the most ruthless human drudgery and the superfluous wage slaves into the starvation tower of slowly murdering permanent unemployment. The capitalist hunger offensive has already reached a stage where it is mobilizing capitalist class justice against striking proletarians and preparing the planned dismantling of so-called “social policy” with unemployment insurance. Formal democracy, which politically represents the most modern form of bourgeois class rule, is completed in the economic sphere by the iron arbitration dictatorship of the capitalist state for the unrestricted exploitation of the wage slaves. The systematic enslavement of the working masses is carried out bloodlessly, with the dry guillotine of capitalist legality, and tens of thousands of proletarian victims of rationalization are condemned to die of hunger on the altar of profit. On the shield of the bourgeoisie does not sit the Mussolini of the swastika, the Stahlhelm flag does not fly over the German government palaces — but the black-red-yellow democracy with its merciless war of impoverishment against the proletariat is a Stahlhelm democracy, a fascist republic in its social character!

The proletariat must take action against the devastating capital offensive, which is supported by the Parliamentary-Trade Union organizations through their reformist illusionary policies, if it wants to save its life as a class. Revolutionary struggle for power against bourgeois society and its Stahlhelm democracy is the slogan under which alone black-red-yellow fascism can be defeated!