MIA > Archive > Thalheimer
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. I No. 8, 15 November 1921, p. 65.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The social-democratic Premier of the new Prussian coalition government, in which the German People’s Party, the party of “big business” and finance, has entered, has delivered his inaugural speech. At the same time, industry and high finance are making an attempt on a large scale to deprive the German government of the last remnants of its power. The reparations demands, the next instalment of which, 500,000,000 gold marks, falls due on January 15th, have plunged the state finances into a serious crisis. The deficit of the German state is variously estimated at from 120,000,000 to 130,000,000 milliard paper marks. The value of the mark, measured by its exchange value as against the dollar, has sunk so low that the quotation of the dollar fluctuates around 300. The representatives of the municipalities have recently declared that, under present circumstance, they are not even able to satisfy their most elementary needs. Hand in hand with this state of affairs industry is experiencing a period of feverish prosperity. German goods are able, on account of the low exchange quotation of the mark, to defy all competition. And, since wages and salaries have in no way risen in a degree corresponding to the depreciation of the mark, the fall of the mark has proved to be a source of enormous extra profits for industry and finance, obtained by means of an automatic reduction of the real wage. The country is becoming poorer and poorer. Finished and semi-finished products are flowing out of the country; a veritable selling out of Germany is in progress; the state finances are becoming more and more disorganized; and a small clique of financiers and manufacturers, under the leadership of the well-known captain of industry, Stinnes, are getting hold of the diminishing riches of the country. “Big business” and high finance have systematically worked at depriving the state of its chief power – the right of taxation. They have brought the petty-bourgeoisie-social-democratic government to its knees by the employment of the most severe measures, and now, under the pressure of the financial need of the government, they have ventured a step which means nothing less than the unreserved subjection of the state and the masses of the people to the rule of finance capital.
The National Association of Industry demands as conditions for the extension of credits for the government the surrender of the state railways, the post office and the other government-owned enterprises to private capital, the abolition of all government control and restrictions of industry and commerce, a retrenchment in the number of public employees, etc., etc.
At the same time, the freeing of finance and industry from any real taxation is demanded in disguised statements. The government bureaucracy has already yielded in some respects to the manufacturers by the drafting of laws, designed to abolish the eight-hour day and to paralyze the workers’ right to strike. The Wirth government had originally planned the taxation, even if in limited measure, of the real capital value of industry. The various stages of the capitulation of the petty-bourgeois democracy to “big business” in financial and economic questions is very clearly pictured by the commercial correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, Dr. Pinner, as follows:
“Originally the German government planned to obtain the gold necessary for the reparations payments by a special, so-called real ‘Confiscation’ of the hitherto untaxed real capital of the productive strata. Then the general confiscation of real capital turned into a voluntary credit action mainly because the government did not proceed in the matter of the taxation of real capital with sufficient unanimity or energy. And now this voluntary credit assistance is only to be granted if, instead of an intervention of the government in private ownership, an encroachment of private ownership in the economic domain of the government takes place. In a really genial manner and according to the precedent established when the ‘big business’ program of coal socialization was offered as a substitute for the propositions of the Socialization Commission a short time ago, Messrs. Stinnes and Silverberg have turned the tables. There is no doubt that they would not have made their proposals had they not been of the opinion that in the giant undertakings which they desired to lift from the state’s shoulders, and which they considered as a burden and not in the least as an asset for the state, they would be able to make sufficient profit.”
The situation is here clearly described. The diffident start of the petty-bourgeois democracy’s attempt to compel the participation of big industry in taxation and reparations has resulted in Capital’s ruthless dictation of its conditions to “Democracy”, which lead to an open dictatorship of the clique of big manufacturers and financiers.
This situation three years after the November Revolution marks the complete bankruptcy of the social democracy, of the revolution within the limits of bourgeois democracy. But it means more than the bankruptcy of the revolution. It means the unconcealed, clear and naked putting of the question of the proletarian-socialist revolution in Germany. The great mass of the population stands face to face with the small capitalist clique led by Stinnes. It is now a question of whether this clique expropriates the state and takes over its control or the masses compel the state to expropriate these robbers and to place industry and finance under a thorough control.
In this struggle which of necessity must flame up and which the Communist Party is preparing to energetically lead, the social democracy is chained to the destiny of Capital. In Prussia, it has entered into a direct coalition with the party of “big business” and it is manifest that it leaves the masses in the lurch in all the economic conflicts rendered necessary by the increase in prices. The Independent Party has rendered lip-service to this struggle but it is closely bound to the majority socialist trade-union bureaucracy, one of the decisive factors in this struggle, and that paralyzes a priori its will to combat, let alone that its leaders are thoroughly impregnated with a faith in the superior strength of capitalism and the helplessness of the working class.
The workers and officials of the railways were the first to raise a sharp protest against the surrender of the state railways to private capital. The government seems to be ready to put through some sort of compromise. However the first stages of this controversy may turn out, they must inevitably lead to an intensification and extension of the class struggle.
It is extremely probable that the Stinnes group has undertaken its large scale offensive in conjunction with various groups of English capitalists. It is an open secret that the various capitalistic groups and governments in Germany are today nothing but the puppets of one or another Entente government. Germany today is merely a colony of the Entente.
The first to take the offensive against Stinnes’ attempted dictatorship are the German workers. But in order effectively to carry on this struggle they require the assistance of the proletariat of the Entente countries through an inflexible struggle against the continued predatory plundering of Entente capital, called “Reparations”. The fight against the oppression of the German working masses by a robber band of capitalists must be carried on from the interior and the exterior simultaneously. The economic and financial collapse and the enslavement of its working class means a substantial and immediate peril for the proletariat of the Entente countries. It is the fantastic “Yellow Peril” of Europe, the danger of the reduction of the working classes of the Entente countries to the level of the German coolies.
Last updated on 5 September 2019