EXTREME POLITICS

World Socialist may get a lot of flak for being a dogmatic propaganda rag, but the quality of articles — and insight — is high. Even if you’re a right-winger, you can derive useful knowledge from the pulse of their analysis, because they take a larger perspective on history and so show us trends beyond the immediate through the immediate.

Case in point:

We are, in fact, holding this congress in the midst of a major turning point in world history. The collapse of the US housing and credit bubble has rapidly developed into what is widely acknowledged to be the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Governments, central banks and economists can only guess how cataclysmic the consequences of the US financial meltdown will be. But they are forced to recognize that, in the best-case scenario, the world is in for a protracted period of economic stagnation and financial volatility. Whatever the short-term outcome-which must include as a real possibility a financial panic that plunges the world into a new Depression-the current crisis has dealt a massive blow to the credibility of American capitalism, both internationally and, above all, within the United States itself.

The events of the past year have revealed in the starkest manner the vast decline of the United States. Suddenly, before the eyes of the world, the outcome of a decades-long process of internal decay has broken through the surface and revealed a level of financial parasitism and criminality with no historical precedent. Such events deeply penetrate the consciousness of the masses and inevitably lead to profound changes in their political orientation. The rapidity and violence of such changes must have a proportional relationship to the scale of the myths that are being shattered and the scope of old illusions. As the ruling class that most persistently preached the gospel of free markets, private enterprise and individual self-reliance scrambles to bail out Wall Street giants to the tune of trillions of dollars-while millions lose their homes and poverty, unemployment, ill health and illiteracy increase-it becomes impossible to conceal the class divisions that dominate American society.

The ruling class and its ossified two-party system lack any perspective for addressing these problems in a rational and progressive way. Their central concern remains the ever-greater enrichment of a wealthy elite. Elections have been reduced to ritualized and demagogic contests between two right-wing parties of big business, in which the masses of people are effectively disenfranchised. The ruling class does have a response to the crisis of American capitalism: an unending series of wars of conquest and plunder.

World Socialist

While I think the bloviation on the current recession is overblown — it’s a transient issue, brought on by the policies of the 1990s and the consequent over-valuation of America’s “knowledge industry,” and the market is going to undertake a correction for a few years — they have a point: people who thought technology and industry were a firm footing are now opening their eyes to other possibilities.

One-and-a-half years after the Third Congress of the Comintern the conflicts within the German Communist Party (KPD) were not really resolved. After the occupation of the Ruhr by the French army, the conflict between the leadership majority and the left opposition erupted once again in full force. Differences emerged over the support given by the KPD to a left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) government in Saxony and the course to be adopted in the occupied Ruhr.

The party was now led by Heinrich Brandler, a founding member of the Spartakusbund. While many former lefts had turned sharply to the right, a new left-wing faction had formed under Ruth Fischer, Arkadi Maslow and—to a lesser extent—Ernst Thälmann. Fischer and Maslow were both young intellectuals who had joined the movement after the war. They had the majority of the important Berlin organisation behind them. Thälmann was a worker who joined the KPD through the Independent SPD (USPD). He was the leader of the KPD in Hamburg.

On January 10, the SPD government in Saxony fell and the KPD conducted a campaign for a united front and a workers’ government. While the majority of the SPD favoured a coalition with bourgeois parties, a left minority was for an alliance with the KPD. The KPD developed a vigorous agitation and published a “workers’ program,” which included among its demands: confiscation of the property of the former royal family; arming the workers; a purge of the judiciary, the police and the administration; calling of a congress of factory councils and control of prices by elected committees.

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In Germany, the extreme right had previously been limited to remnants of the imperial army and small anti-Semitic parties. But in 1923 it started to grow and win a social base, even though it was much smaller than Hitler’s social base in the 1930s. Agitation against the “November criminals,” Jews and foreigners found a hearing amongst declassed petty-bourgeois elements and some impoverished workers affected by the impact of inflation. In the Ruhr, members of the extreme right presented themselves as heroic fighters against the French occupation.

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In the following days and weeks there were numerous discussions and continuous correspondence with the leaders of the KPD, who frequently travelled to Moscow. Financial, logistical and military support was organised to arm the Proletarian Hundreds, which had been set up over the previous months. In October, Radek, Pyatakov and Sokolnikov were sent to Germany to assist the uprising.

World Socialist

Fascinating account of a part of history we don’t hear much about. Germany had several abortive Communist and Socialist uprisings, in 1918 and throughout the 20s and 30s.