agreement, all foundations would collapse; we succeeded with this agreement to stop these elementary forces which surely would bring about the destruction of industry and the destruction of all order."
We think we need no de-coding of these words. What do these words mean from the lips of a leader of the employers' organization? Let us remind ourselves of the similar expression by the leaders of the textile, iron and metal syndicates of Russia just previous to the October revolution and let us come to the necessary conclusion. We may say, and that was the belief also of the employers, that the trade unionists saved the order, production and margin of profit, and the whole old capitalist system.
But the leaders of the reformist trade union movement accepted all this as a victory of the working class. Of course, in comparison with that which had been up till the 9th of November when the iron fist of Ludendorf and Hindenburg crushed all resistance of the workers, here, perhaps, could be seen a victory; but in comparison with those objective possibilities which have been hidden in the powerful class, this agreement was the fixing of a certain moment and the holding up since that moment the labor movement as a whole.
It is known that the German revolution started with a workers' government, the same which we are demanding at present in all countries. Immediately a government was created of Social-Democrats and Independents and the bourgeois parties stepped out.
However, this government "governed" so well that in a very short time it turned over the power to the bourgeoisie and at present is only an addition to the bourgeois parties.[1] The reformist trade union and political movements of Germany expected that by strengthening itself with an array of reforms it would be able to use the organizing and other forces of the bourgeoisie in order to raise the political and economic structure of the country to a higher level, and then to make another step ahead, etc. And in this is contained the illusion of German trade union and political movements. It imagined the change of society, we will say, in the form of gradual steps. They stopped, in the sphere of economics—at the collaborative commissions and, in politics—at the coalition government.
I happened, at the time of the Frankfort conference in March of this year (1923) in a discussion with the Social-Democrats, to compare the tactics of the Communists and the reformists and mainly in the example of the German Social-Democracy, where I approached the question from the national point of view, from, the point of view of the interest of these same Social-Democrats. I asked them: "Imagine for one
- ↑ Since this lecture was delivered the whole German working class has been delivered up to the tender mercies of the Fascist General von Seeckt, agent of German capitalism, by vote of the German Social Democratic members of the Reichstag.
