IT IS A NOTORIOUS myth that there has never been a socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist west. There has. In November 1918, 75 years ago this month, the German workers rose up and created soviet power - the power of elected workers councils - all over Germany. PHIL HEARSE draws some political conclusions. THE NOVEMBER 1918 uprising came at the end of more than a year of increasing turmoil in Germany, as the defeat of the German army at the front became obvious and the privations of the workers at home became unbearable.
In April 1917 there were mass strikes against food price increases, and then in January 1918 came a mass political strike against the annexations being demanded by the German government at the Brest Litovsk peace negotiations with the Soviet government.
Fifty thousand workers were sent to the front as a reprisal.
The world war had led to a split in the mass German workers party, the SDP (Social Democrats).
The anti-war left wing had been expelled in January 1917, and in April of that year formed the Independent Social Democrats (USPD). This party had hundreds of thousands of members, in the main revolutionary-minded workers.
The Spartakusbund of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was the extreme left wing of the USPD, but only had a few thousand followers.
Collapse
At the end of September 1918, with the German armies on the point of collapse, the General Staff officers visited the Kaiser, and demanded the handing over of power to a 'democratic' government (led by Prince Max von Baden) - as the only way to prevent 'anarchy'.
But before this government could be stabilised, the sailors of the Kiel naval base mutinied on November 4. To prevent the sailors being crushed, the USPD leaders in Kiel decided to seize power in the town.
That evening a Workers and Sailors Council was formed to administer the local area. The signal for revolution had Spartakusbund leader Karl Liebknecht addresses workers' demonstration been given.
In the following days the revolution spread all along the northern coast. Hamburg rose on 5 November; Bremen, Altona, Rendsberg and Lockstedt on the 6th; Cologne, Munich, Hanover and Braunsweig on the 7th. In each of these places, workers, and soldiers councils declared themselves the legitimate power.
The focus of events now moved to the capital, Berlin. The key forces here were the USPD left wing, led by Spartacists Liebknecht and Meyer, and the powerful Social democracy, when the crunch comes, will always side with the brutal repression of the workers, rather than with socialist revolution. revolutionary shop stewards movement, the non-party Obleute.
The Obleute decided to wait for 11 November to act, but Liebknecht pre-empted them with a call for action on the 8th. The indecision about the date was immaterial: the workers rose on the 9th. Thousands rushed to the Reichstag, the parliament building. It was now that the right wing leaders of the 'old party' - the Social Democrats (SPD) intervened, and a fatal blow was struck against the revolution.
As the workers besieged the Reichstag, at 2pm one of the two main SPD leaders, Schiedemann, rushed out and "proclaimed' a republic - and his support for the workers. The SPD was taking the leadership of the movement in order to head it off.
At 4pm Karl Liebknecht arrived at the Reichstag to proclaim the socialist republic - but some of his thunder had been stolen by the SPD leaders.
Now the question of government - who was to lead the revolution - was posed. The SPD, led by Ebert and Scheidemann, proposed a coalition SPD-USPD government based on • all power to the workers' councils • socialisation of industry Their proposal was for three ministers from each party. After painful indecision, the USPD accepted this proposal.
Counter-revolution had been brought into the heart of the leadership of the revolution. Instead of taking all power themselves, the USPD allowed a government to be formed which, with three SPD and two from the right wing of the USPD, gave effective control to the SPD.
It was a fateful mistake.
A crucial conflict now developed between SPD leaders and the left. tional congress of workers' and soldiers' deputies was due to be held in Berlin on December 30/31.
The SPD leaders decided to propose the election of a 'constituent assembly'. This body was clearly going to be counterposed to the power of the workers' councils - in effect it would be a bourgeois parliament which would be used to crush the councils.
While the Spartacist left demanded all power to the councils, the USPD leaders wavered.
At the congress itself, which the SPD packed with its supporters, and to which Luxemburg and Liebknecht were unable to gain admittance, some USPD delegates voted both for the resolutions in favour of 'all power to the councils' and for national elections to a constituent assembly. In consequence Ebert and Schiedemann won the day. National elections were called: the "democratic counterrevolution' was under way. Frustrated by the government's paralysis and capitulation to the right wing, the USPD withdrew from the government on 29 December, leaving the SPD in power alone. The Spartacist left of the USPD, exasperated by the compromises of the party leadership, left the party, to declare an independent Party. Capitalising on their victory at the congress of workers councils, the SPD leaders now moved to provoke the left and inflict a further defeat on it. On 4 January 1919, the Berlin police chief, a USPD member called Eichhorn, was dismissed.
Eichhorn's dismissal was met by demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them armed.
In this situation, sections of the USPD, Spartacists and revolutionary shop stewards decided to try to seize power.
The revolutionaries in Berlin were intoxicated by the sight of tens of thousands of armed workers demanding that the government be got rid of.
But they over-estimated the relationship of forces. The workers outside Berlin were not yet ready for armed insurrection.
The Russian Bolshevik leader Karl Radek - secretly in Germany co-ordinating with the Spartacists - was firmly against the uprising. Rosa Luxemburg also saw the uprising as an ultra-left ad- OUR HISTORY Vellue.
Civil war
The January uprising initiated civil war. Fifty thousand workers lost their lives in the struggle. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were killed by counterrevolutionary troops with the connivance of the Social Democrats. It was March before the workers uprising was quenched throughout Germany.
The crushing of the uprising by the army's bullets signalled the end of the revolution, and the establishment of a bourgeois republic.
It also, together with further defeats in the 1920s, opened the path for Hitler's victory, the second world war and an historic setback for the workers movement.
The defeat of the 1918-19 revolution showed that social democracy, when the crunch comes, will side with the brutal repression of the workers, rather than with socialist revolution.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 52, November 13 1993, Page 14 cities in allied bombing raids.