"All Power to Independent Social Democracy": the possibilities of 1918

[Die Neue Zeit]

Where's the concept of working-class power? I know DNZ has an idea of a centrally-commanded party-movement monolith which would coup or somehow be elected in and then institute socialism by blueprint and schematic from the top-down upon the silly stupid workers who might legislate fancy haircuts [...] Therefore you conjure up some Master Plan and hope to propagandize and rote it into enough activists and workers that maybe someday the Central Committee will from its lofty bridge navigate the ship of state to socialism.

Although I've noted before the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html), I did not state back then that a similar event today would not be a coup d'etat relative to the working class if a worker-class party-movement commanding and retaining majority political support from that class by various means (including that most reliable means that is honest party-movement citizenship - signifying economic support, commitment, etc.) comes to power and shuts down spontaneous councils and left sects external to the party-movement.

What made the Bolsheviks' anti-soviet closures in 1918 coups d'etat were two things: loss of political support and the earlier slogan "All Power to the Soviets!"

Now let's turn to the situation in Germany during 1918 and the USPD:

Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/unabhaengige-sozialdemokratische-partei-t95038/index.html)
USPD vs. KPD: lessons for organizing today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-vs-kpd-t103415/index.html)
USPD: tendencies, the KPD question, and lessons for today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-tendencies-kpd-t118549/index.html)

With regards to the German Revolution, had the very ultra-left formation of the KPD not occurred and had the renegades in the USPD been given the boot, I'm sure the MSPD-USPD experiences in parliamentarism, cabinet coalitions (through the Rat der Volksbeauftragten, or Council of People's Representatives) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_People's_Deputies), and the Arbeiterrate ("Workers Councils") would have prompted a USPD with majority working-class political support to simply claim "All Power to Independent Social Democracy!"

Arbeiterrate be damned.

[Jose Gracchus]

"If only", "if only"...if only your babies weren't scab sell-outs.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That "outstanding role model for left politics today" that was the USPD wasn't a "scab sell-out." At the time of the ultra-left growth of the KPD, the then-USPD left that didn't leave for the earlier (and equally ultra-left) formation of the KPD were in the majority.

At best, the USPD after seizing power could have governed the new workers polity alone. At worst, it could have done so with a much more principled KAPD splinter as a junior coalition partner.

[Zanthorus]

KAPD... coalition partner.

:laugh:

You have lost touch with reality completely if you think the KAPD would ever have been in the business of participating in a governmental coalition for the management of a bourgeois state.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You yourself discussed the possibility of a united front between a purged USPD and the KAPD splinter. It's like the left SRs and various anarchist groups coalescing in the Bolshevik-led coalition.

[Jose Gracchus]

Why do you pollute the forum with this garbage? You make good faith discussion impossible. I swear you're becoming the History-Theory counterpart to Rosa formerly in Philosophy. Why is this in history? This shit doesn't meet the Late Harry Turtledove level of empty alt-hist imagining. There is nothing resembling a historical case that the USPD in some like four-point "what if" would "be prompted" to carry-out some political program you've thought up in your head in the last twelve months. You just spam the forum hoping to hock your crap to unsuspecting kids poking around to learn something about the left, like a Mormon missionary.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is nothing resembling a historical case that the USPD in some like four-point "what if" would "be prompted" to carry-out some political program you've thought up in your head in the last twelve months.

I'm stating the facts, and every poster here with more political education has an agenda. The USPD had more members and outside support than the initial ultra-left KPD splinter and, during that fatal Halle congress that sealed its fate (370,000 USPD leftists bolting out in an ultra-leftist manner instead of using their majority and working with an additional 58,000 pro-party USPD leftists to boot out 340,000 renegades and pro-MSPD bootlickers), had more members and outside support than even the MSPD.

[Jose Gracchus]

But that doesn't mean there was anything like majority political support in the sense of the program you advance, and nothing like a will to power for a USPD single-party state. For one, no one imagined your demarchy, so how even formally would anything like democracy be conceivably retained under a power grab by the USPD?

Better yet, where's any evidence whatsoever that this has jack-shit to do with the real historical USPD?

[Die Neue Zeit]

But that doesn't mean there was anything like majority political support in the sense of the program you advance, and nothing like a will to power for a USPD single-party state. For one, no one imagined your demarchy, so how even formally would anything like democracy be conceivably retained under a power grab by the USPD?

I didn't address demarchy in this thread because that's irrelevant to the topic. The USPD retained the Erfurt Program, and for its time that may have been sufficient. More workers trusted the USPD over the MSPD to implement this program.

[Well, maybe an unmodified Erfurt program was still insufficient, but at least they didn't go overboard and cry "All power to the Arbeiterrate" like various RSDLP(B) program revision drafts (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch04.htm) and Rosa Luxemburg's What Does the Spartacus League Want? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm) did. A somewhat longer max-min program that incorporated the Parti Ouvrier's political and economic demands, democratic rights within the military, plus the two key Paris Commune demands re. recallability and average skilled workers' wages, would have been better.]

[Jose Gracchus]

But if the party seized all power for itself, than there would remain no meaningful mechanism by which the workers could possibly run candidates against those of the Central Committee. You're basically saying the USPD should have proclaimed an "advance" to the Stalin Constitution of 1937 and associated substantive political freedoms.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ As demonstrated by the existence of rightist, leftist, and centrist tendencies, the USPD had tendencies that could duke things out. I'm certain also that there was at least some extent of recallability. Don't forget that the USPD also had some form of workers-only voting membership policy. However, yes indeed the absence of demarchy would have still posed the danger of the USPD's own proto-nomenclature-and-job-slot system degenerating into privileged clientele connections, including those based on tendencies.

[Jose Gracchus]

Which is exactly why the role of workers' councils, which broadly bring in the working class as a class, are essential.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ The Arbeiterrate were by no means immune to the problem of privileged clientele connections. This is demonstrated by the very presence of political parties within them. In fact, those connections tend to be stronger because of closer links to the workplace (whereas the bourgeois connections come in the form of electoral districts).

[Jose Gracchus]

Surely they were not perfect. Of course, I'm expected to take this seriously from someone who advocates with a straight-face, the CPSU-system, which was made up completely, brick-by-brick, of corrupt clientelism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm expected to take this seriously from someone who advocates with a straight-face, the CPSU-system, which was made up completely, brick-by-brick, of corrupt clientelism.

A USPD single-party state would have meant class-conscious workers not being divided into too many fractious, bickering parties, each already with multiple tendencies, and if party-movements outside workers councils each with competing alternative cultures (a really bad thing which would have resulted in the same amount of clientelism as the historical CPSU).

[RED DAVE]

^^^ The Arbeiterrate were by no means immune to the problem of privileged clientele connections. This is demonstrated by the very presence of political parties within them. In fact, those connections tend to be stronger because of closer links to the workplace (whereas the bourgeois connections come in the form of electoral districts).Are you saying that workers councils represent "privileged clientele connections"?

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

You see Dave, a worker-delegate's responsibility to, and origin within, a factory floor, is actually a bunch of corrupt clientelism. Obviously.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Are you saying that workers councils represent "privileged clientele connections"?

It's clientelism in favour of workers on the factory floor over everyone else in the (productive) workforce, not to mention working-class pensioners. Also, worker-class alternative culture must be fully united.

[Tim Finnegan]

It's clientelism in favour of workers on the factory floor over everyone else in the (productive) workforce, not to mention working-class pensioners.
Is there anything that would prevent the formation of pensioners' councils? :confused: There's nothing to say that geographically-based councils of pensioners, stay-at-home parents, and so forth, would not be feasible, if they would be unlikely to form as quickly or as effectively as those based directly in the workplace.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Nothing to prevent such, comrade, just that, inherently, there's indeed the problem of speed and effectiveness, both addressed more adequately in the local branches of a worker-class party-movement.

[Jose Gracchus]

When the USPD MASTERS COME OUT AND TELL YOU ITS REVOLUTION YOU PLEBES

[Die Neue Zeit]

Gotta thank comrade Q for suggesting "coaching"; you don't get on the ice or some other playing surface unless the game rules and coaching staff give you the green light. ;)

[BTW, I'm paying close attention to that politics thread on the People's Assemblies in Greece.]

[RED DAVE]

Nothing to prevent such, comrade, just that, inherently, there's indeed the problem of speed and effectiveness, both addressed more adequately in the local branches of a worker-class party-movement.You really need to consider a career as (a) a standup comic or (b) a party bureaucrat. Or maybe both.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

You really need to consider a career as (a) a standup comic or (b) a party bureaucrat. Or maybe both.

I like principled party bureaucrats (i.e., revolutionary careerists) with a sense of humour (lacking amongst academics and tred-iunionisty), without the standup comic antics. :)

[RED DAVE]

I like principled party bureaucratsI'll bet you do.


party bureaucrats ... with a sense of humourA contradiction in terms.

RED DAVE

[Zederbaum]

The USPD wasn't in a position to take power by itself, at least democratically. It would have needed to govern in a coalition with the SPD as it did in late 1918. The alternative would have been for the SPD and USPD to reunify. This was Kautsky's and Hilferding's preferred option. Obviously this would have had the disadvantage of having to deal with Ebert and company and it's impossible to tell at this remove how it would have turned out. It certainly wouldn't have been easy to supplant them.

We do know from the various policies pushed through the workers councils of late 1918 that a large swathe of the SPD rank and file was more to the left than its leadership. Nevertheless they still retained considerable organisational loyalty and clearly a substantial section of the movement were not supportive of radical socialism. Still, reunification would have tilted the scales heavily in favour of the left. As it was, during 1919, the SPD lost considerable ground to the USPD, with the latter doubling in size to over 700,000 members and some 50 newspapers and magazines.

Obviously the Sparticists would have been horrified but since they split off anyway, there wouldn't have been any disadvantage to them isolating themselves. It's hard to see any positive result of the Sparticists forming a Communist Party. The KPD just lurched from fuck-up to fuck-up all the way to 1933. Their distinctive contribution was to render the division in the labour movement into a chasm and to throw overboard any prospect pushing towards a democratic socialism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The USPD wasn't in a position to take power by itself, at least democratically. It would have needed to govern in a coalition with the SPD as it did in late 1918. The alternative would have been for the SPD and USPD to reunify. This was Kautsky's and Hilferding's preferred option. Obviously this would have had the disadvantage of having to deal with Ebert and company and it's impossible to tell at this remove how it would have turned out. It certainly wouldn't have been easy to supplant them.

We do know from the various policies pushed through the workers councils of late 1918 that a large swathe of the SPD rank and file was more to the left than its leadership. Nevertheless they still retained considerable organisational loyalty and clearly a substantial section of the movement were not supportive of radical socialism. Still, reunification would have tilted the scales heavily in favour of the left. As it was, during 1919, the SPD lost considerable ground to the USPD, with the latter doubling in size to over 700,000 members and some 50 newspapers and magazines.

Obviously the Sparticists would have been horrified but since they split off anyway, there wouldn't have been any disadvantage to them isolating themselves. It's hard to see any positive result of the Sparticists forming a Communist Party. The KPD just lurched from fuck-up to fuck-up all the way to 1933. Their distinctive contribution was to render the division in the labour movement into a chasm and to throw overboard any prospect pushing towards a democratic socialism.

Comrade, I definitely agree with you on the last paragraph there. The KPD's formative history is one of sheer ultra-leftism of the highest magnitude.

Now, back to the beginning: why do you think it was impossible for the USPD to "take power by itself at least democratically"?

Majority political support from the working class /= majority electoral support (family traditions, politician familiarity, "brand" loyalty you mentioned above, membership shifts to the USPD that I mentioned above, etc.)

Majority political support from the working class /= majority political support from the population as a whole (certainly with regards to bourgeois radicals and petit-bourgeois elements)

According to Zinoviev, the problem with the near-WWI SPD and MSPD was that nomenclature, institutional, and other organizational power within the party was concentrated in the parliamentary fraction. Even the politically fictitious "CPSU" didn't make this mistake with respect to the CC CPSU (let alone that organ's Politburo), the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers (or its own Presidium).

How would the SPD's rank-and-file leftists, even with a USPD influx, combat the parliamentary opportunists, the tred-iunionisty rats, and so on? Oh, and by the time the VSPD came about, it adopted something that has been repeated ever since: pretentious left turns (when a later SPD Weimar coalition undertook budget cuts during the Depression).

[Jose Gracchus]

God you analyze things in the most ludicrious way possible. You act like it was some free "choice" that left the SPD at the mercy of the parliamentarians, while in the CPSU it arose from the party administrative bureaucracy. Maybe that's because the former was a party which banked institutionally on parliamentarism as a means of power and institutional aggrandizement, and the latter was the self-declared political ruling caste of an authoritarian state, and thus all power accreted to patrons responsible for advancing their clients and distributing the spoils of power.

:rolleyes:

[Die Neue Zeit]

God you analyze things in the most ludicrious way possible. You act like it was some free "choice" that left the SPD at the mercy of the parliamentarians, while in the CPSU it arose from the party administrative bureaucracy. Maybe that's because the former was a party which banked institutionally on parliamentarism as a means of power and institutional aggrandizement, and the latter was the self-declared political ruling caste of an authoritarian state, and thus all power accreted to patrons responsible for advancing their clients and distributing the spoils of power.

:rolleyes:

Considering the the Reichstag had very little legislative power, I'm surprised there were parliamentary illusions at all. Now, maybe in the immediate post-WWII period there could have been better attempts at justifying this, but really, lower turnout to vote for established parties does say a lot about the illusions.

The parliamentary tactic was used initially to spread the message, put uncomfortable spotlights on ministers, and little else, like what De Leon advocated.

As I said before, the latter organization by that point ceased to be a political party in any meaningful sense. Stalin's "aggravation of the class struggle" along with the transition makes sense in a twisted way; usually this is interpreted as class terror, but since every class struggle is political, the political struggles do not cease (contrary to what Lenin said about the DOTP being mere administration or something to that effect).

[A Marxist Historian]

That "outstanding role model for left politics today" that was the USPD wasn't a "scab sell-out." At the time of the ultra-left growth of the KPD, the then-USPD left that didn't leave for the earlier (and equally ultra-left) formation of the KPD were in the majority.

At best, the USPD after seizing power could have governed the new workers polity alone. At worst, it could have done so with a much more principled KAPD splinter as a junior coalition partner.

Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein's USPD was *not about* seizing power. It was a centrist party, that wanted a coalition government including both the Right, Scheidemann and Noske, and for that matter the Left too perhaps if they behaved themselves. Totally impossible.

As the USPD' own membership shortly realized. It split, and the *majority* of the USPD fused with the KPD, giving it a mass base, and enabling it to seriously compete with the SPD for leadership of the working class.

The key historical moment in Germany to consider is the great crisis of 1923, a revolutionary situation if ever such a thing has ever existed in any time or place.

If the KPD had handled things properly, which they most certainly did not, there would have been a revolution, the workers would have taken the power in Germany, and the world would have changed.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Although I've noted before the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coups-detat-t134819/index.html), I did not state back then that a similar event today would not be a coup d'etat relative to the working class if a worker-class party-movement commanding and retaining majority political support from that class by various means (including that most reliable means that is honest party-movement citizenship - signifying economic support, commitment, etc.) comes to power and shuts down spontaneous councils and left sects external to the party-movement.

What made the Bolsheviks' anti-soviet closures in 1918 coups d'etat were two things: loss of political support and the earlier slogan "All Power to the Soviets!"

Now let's turn to the situation in Germany during 1918 and the USPD:

Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/unabhaengige-sozialdemokratische-partei-t95038/index.html)
USPD vs. KPD: lessons for organizing today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-vs-kpd-t103415/index.html)
USPD: tendencies, the KPD question, and lessons for today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-tendencies-kpd-t118549/index.html)

With regards to the German Revolution, had the very ultra-left formation of the KPD not occurred and had the renegades in the USPD been given the boot, I'm sure the MSPD-USPD experiences in parliamentarism, cabinet coalitions (through the Rat der Volksbeauftragten, or Council of People's Representatives) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_People's_Deputies), and the Arbeiterrate ("Workers Councils") would have prompted a USPD with majority working-class political support to simply claim "All Power to Independent Social Democracy!"

Arbeiterrate be damned.

I received a suggestion that I look at this posting. That's why I'm going back a few weeks in this thread to comment.

Firstly on the thread referenced above on the so-called "Bolshevik coups of 1918," I think in that thread Znamya refuted this notion quite well with excellent facts. The Right Mensheviks and SRs lost support in the Soviets very rapidly, but not instantaneously and everywhere at once, and given the desperate military necessities with the Germans marching in and both the Germans and the Allies looking for Russian political proxies to do their work, it was necessary not to stand on ceremony.

And in the period of these so-called "coups" Martov's Left Mensheviks were a loyal minority *within* the Menshevik Party, whose line at the time was to collaborate with the Allies and Russian counterrevolutionaries vs. the Soviets, in the name of the "Constituent Assembly."

As for "Arbeiterrate be damned," that is to the right of Karl Kautsky, who wanted to *combine* the parliament and the Soviets into one unworkable mess, as the USPD's political blood brothers of Austrian Social Democracy actually attempted.

Indeed, what Die Neue Zeit advocates is close to what Otto Bauer etc. attempted to do in Austria. The results were disastrous there, and if the USPD had in fact followed his model, the results would have been even more disastrous in Germany, with the Freikorps on the march.

A parliamentary USPD government "in power" would have discovered that there is such a thing as a bourgeois state, and that it is not the same as government. In Germany, more brutally and quickly than the Austrians made this same discovery.

-M.H.-