MIA > Archive > Paul Frölich
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 55 [33], 9 August 1923, pp. 584–585.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2022). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Germany is passing through a severe governmental crisis, differing essentially from all former crises. The whole German people is in the midst of a process of disintegration. The whole of the middle classes have drifted from their moorings, they vacillate in their wishes and fears from one day to another, from the extreme right to the extreme left. The social democratic party, which has lasted out the Noske regime, and which has again and again succeeded in retaining its hold over broad masses of the proletariat, and in winning over adherents from the indifferent and petty-bourgeois masses, is now shaken to its foundations. Months ago a mass flight of members set in, and this assumes ever-growing proportions. Even the leaders are in a ferment. The fight of the social democratic leaders from the ranks of the Noske party is perhaps only, a sporadic phenomenon at the present time, but the indignation against the handful who shape the official policy is exceedingly great. This indignation was expressed at a conference held by the opposition a few days ago at Weimar, under the leadership of Paul Levi, and which is regarded as the introduction to a split in the social democratic party. In actual fact this party is confronted by the choice; split or absolute decay. And even then it is doubtful whether a split will leave any section possessing vitality enough for continued existence.
The Communnst Party is, however, now reaping the fruits of its years of tenacious enlightenment work among the proletariat. Its organizations are growing, its influence even more. One example only: During the last two months the circulation of the Rote Fahne has increased by 50,000 copies; the editions printed of the 40 odd other Party papers has increased in the same proportion. The last elections held by the metal workers’ union, the average for the whole country being taken, yielded the Communist Party 40% of the mandates to the union conference, and 53% of the total number of votes. Sympathy with the Communist Party reaches far beyond the confines of the working class.
These are the broad outlines of the symptoms of the present crisis, what are its causes?
According to the bourgeois and social democratic press, the fundamental cause is the Ruhr war. And in a certain sense this is right. But if is not so much the French invasion itself which has brought Germany her present disastrous position, as the criminal policy pursued by German capital before and during the Ruhr war. The 3½ years of coalition policy carried on by the German social democracy have placed in the hands of big capital an enormous political power, the possibility of pillaging not only the proletariat, but the whole people. Relying on the possession of power, big capital established its own government under the leadership of the manager of the Hamburg-American Line, Cuno. This was going to be a government of experts replacing the government of dilettantes which had preceded it, a government of strong men after a government of national weakness. This boasted expertness has proved to be complete incapacity to save the state; the government of national strength has paved the way to national impotence.
The first task confronting the Cuno government was to conduct the Ruhr war. Here it showed an unfathomable incapacity such as no single individual in Germany had expected. For Germany, the idea of passive resistance signifies the concentration of all economic forces, the direction of the whole policy of the government to the duty of self-defence. It appears that the government never even thought of drawing up a strategic financial plan. The result was that the separate governmental authorities plunged forward blindly, and that within a very short time the whole government experienced disaster after disaster. Tremendous sums of money have been squandered, and the powers of resistance of the German people have been undermined. The government was absolutely impotent against the sabotage of the Ruhr front by big industry. It did not even venture to take steps against the sale of chemical patents to French capital. It did nothing to prevent mining capital from forcing workers to work at the point of French bayonets. It tolerates the fraternization of Stinnes and Krupp with French and English big capitalists, which means a preparation for capitulation in the Ruhr. And the whole capitalist press, from the Vorwärts onwards, deliberately suppresses the publication of these traitorous plans. The government and its officials have not even shrunk from lending aid to French militarism, or from accepting its assistance for the bloody suppression of the working class. Thus the path pursued by the Cuno government has inevitably been the path of capitulation to Poincaré.
But big capital, supported by the Cuno government, has simultaneously seized the opportunity of pillaging the German people on a scale as extensive as it is disgraceful. When Cuno took over the government, the dollar cost about 6,000 German marks. Now it has risen to 1,125,000 (at the present moment to over 5 million. Ed.) The secret of this whole piratical raid is concealed behind these figures. The whole of great industry and finance capital has been dominated by the wildest bear speculation. The government has made this possible. It has thrown immense credits into the maw of the industrialists, with the alleged object of enabling the Ruhr war to be carried on; wages credits, credits for carrying on emergency work, tax moratorium to an extent horrifying to those able to judge. These credits not only throw an enormous burden on the finances of the country, but further encourage bear speculation; for the greater the depreciation of the mark, the less the real value of the borrowed money to be repaid. We must realize what this really means. At the beginning of the Ruhr occupation the dollar cost about 7,500 marks. When the dollar had reached 75,000 marks, the capital borrowed in January, and now to be repaid, was only worth a tenth of its original value. When the dollar reached 750,000 marks, the debt had sunk to a hundred the part, and by now it has sunk to the hundred and fiftieth part. Those who received a credit of one milliard in January have to pay back this milliard, but in actual comparison with the then value of the currency the milliard is only worth about 65 million marks. The 935 millions are the gain of the debtor. Nobody knows how much money has been squandered in this manner. And to this must be added the mighty credits which have been granted by the Reichsbank, on the same basis, on bills of exchange and goods. The fabulous sums thus wrung from the population have served, in part, for the improvement of the technical apparatus of private enterprises; in part, for the concentration of German undertakings into the hands of a few magnates; and, in a very great part, these enormous amounts have flowed into the secret treasuries of German capitalists as well as the pockets of foreign capitalists.
This pillaging of the German people, and the squandering of the country’s revenues, has been substantially promoted by the various actions undertaken by the government and the Reichsbank in support of the mark. These have been carried out in such a dilettante manner that we had to ask ourselves again and again: Incapacity or crime?
The consequences of plundering the resources of the country were bound to follow. The standard of life of the working class has been reduced to a wretched starvation level. The prices have been screwed up to such a dizzy height – and continue to rise, no longer merely from day to day, out from hour to hour – that the “stabilization of wages” promised by the trade unions, and “carried out” by means of the collaboration policy, has proved a gigantic swindle which has aroused intense indignation in the working class. The German workers, accustomed as they are to bear much, are now in the very depths of want and misery.
And it is not only the working people who have to suffer so frightfully. The past half year has been a war of extermination against the so-called middle class. Whilst all big capitalists could insure themselves against the depreciation of 1he mark by means of stable value payments, the small craftsmeu and small dealers have bad to bear, together with the workers, the whole risk of the fall in the rate of exchange. Many have already been crushed by the burden. The despair and indignation among these classes is indescribable. Many are the members of these classes who are cured of nationalism and everything pertaining to it, and who now declare; rather communism than such misery!
To all this must be added the frightful shortage of food, enhanced by the government’s insane dealing in securities, and the criminal speculation of the junkers and big capitalists. Hunger revolts have already broken out in various towns, and again the proletariat has had to pay the price of many victims.
In this situation the Communist Party began its propaganda for the Anti-Fascist Day of July 29. The Party had planned great demonstrations all over the country. It was to be a review of the army of the working class. The government was anxious to utilize the opportunity to administer a blood bath to the proletariat, in order to gain a breathing space for itself. It prohibited the demonstrations in the expectation that the result would be collisions, and it mobilized the whole of its legal and illegal forces to be ready for the occasion. For the Party to bold the demonstrations would have signified the taking up of the fight for power, and at this juncture to do so would have been to invite defeat. It consequently abstained from holding the demonstrations, except in Thuringia and Saxony, where they were not forbidden – for at the last moment the Cuno government did not feel itself strong enough for a general prohibition – and in a number of towns in which the Party felt itself strong enough to defy the prohibition. In view of the mobilization of the enemy, the day was a gigantic success for the Party. The bourgeois press, which wrote of a fiasco, estimated the number of participators in the Berlin meetings alone at 160,000. The number all over the country amounted to millions. The Communist Party proved itself to be the recognized leader of the working class.
The destruction of national wealth the general indignation, the advanoe of the communists all this has undermined the ground beneath the Cuno government. It is done for. That it has not resigned is solely because there is no substitute for it as yet. To judge from the general situation, and the attitude of the social democrats, we may now expect the Great Coalition, ranging from lbe parly of the large capitalists down to the social democrats. But it can be plainly seen beforehand that this can save nothing. It is doomed to perish even more rapidly and lamentably than its predecessor. For it is not merely Cuno who is bankrupt, but capitalist policy as a whole.
Germany is facing a decisive struggle.
Last updated on 2 September 2021