If The German Revolution of 1918 had suceeded?

[RedMarxist]

If the German Revolution of 1918-1923 had succeed, would this, in ending the isolation of Russia from the rest of the world, allow for more democracy under Lenin(Can't remember but were the soviets(councils) still around in 1918?)

If I recall from my rather hazy recollection of this period of history, Lenin took drastic measures after the isolation following the above mention revolution's failure, refusing to allow democracy and suppressing the soviets???(I have a lot on my mind, so it's hard to recall exactly what he did)

That is not to mention the Hungarian, Italian, and other possible revolutions that could have succeed in Europe at this time.

Or is this just wishful thinking. Was Russia doomed to authoritarianism from the start because of Vanguardism(which I have a hard time dealing with even though I lean towards Lenin's ideas more.)

don't be rude. I've only just began formulating my own ideas on socialism and really am trying to figure out just what form of communist ideology(leninism, council communnism etc.) I fit in.

[JustMovement]

Who can tell what would have happened? I would say that we should stick to analysing what did happen, because then we can know how to avoid it in the future.

It should be noted though that eventually half of Germany did enter to SU sphere of influence, and the East stagnated in GDP terms compared to the West.

There is no doubting that the SU was in a tricky situation, but an enormous part of the globe was at least claiming they were socialist throughtout half of the 20th C. and this did not stop capitalist restoration. This leads me to think that there was something fundamentally wrong with the organisational model adopted by these countries.

[A Marxist Historian]

Who can tell what would have happened? I would say that we should stick to analysing what did happen, because then we can know how to avoid it in the future.

Plausible, but you then go ahead and violate your own advice.


It should be noted though that eventually half of Germany did enter to SU sphere of influence, and the East stagnated in GDP terms compared to the West.

There is no doubting that the SU was in a tricky situation, but an enormous part of the globe was at least claiming they were socialist throughtout half of the 20th C. and this did not stop capitalist restoration. This leads me to think that there was something fundamentally wrong with the organisational model adopted by these countries.

Now that's really ahistorical. There was a huge amount of water that went under the bridge between 1918 and 1945.

East Germany was, first of all, the less industrialized half of Germany, and moreover had just been the scene of a war, military defeat, and large scale destruction. And while the US, the great victor in WWII, was rebuilding Western Europe under its control through the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union was compelled to do the reverse, and extract resources from Eastern Europe to rebuild itself, and especially from East Germany.

And that's just the pure economics. Not even considering the immense difference between Soviet Russia under Lenin and the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Was there something fundamentally wrong with the organizational model in the Soviet Union under Stalin, China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. Of course. There's a name for it. It's called "Stalinism."

Answering the original question, would things have been different in the Soviet Union if Germany had gone communist in 1918? You bet your ass they would.

The classic Leninist slogan of the time was "Russia is the spark, Germany will be the flame." If Germany had gone communist in 1918, it not the Soviet Union would have been the dominant country in the Soviet bloc, and instead of people calling themself "Leninists" they'd be calling themselves "Luxemburgists" or "Liebknechtists." Certainly if Lenin had anything to say about it.

And a successful revolution in Germany would have spread like lightning over Europe, and by now we'd almost certainly be living in a socialist world.

However, Germany going communist in 1918 wasn't too likely, as the Spartacusbund was just too small and poorly organized. You really can't have a successful revolution without a serious revolutionary party.

So a much better question is, what would have happened if a German Revolution had succeeded in 1923, the year of the great crisis, during which the German Communist Party according to many historians was briefly the most popular party in the country?

Hard to say, but I think one could assume that history would be very different, and people like Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt would be obscure Wikipedia footnotes.

-M.H.-

[OhYesIdid]

"Russia is the spark, Germany will be the flame."

great, now I'm sad for the day.
However, in order for the revolution to have succeeded, I think you would have to fundamentally change the history and culture of Germany, because the real one has always been plagued by division and sectarianism. Secondly, didn't Rosa Luxembourg heavily criticize Lenin? Could they really have worked together?

[RedMarxist]

she criticized his brutality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Red Guard/Bolshevik people shot a bunch of workers in one of the Soviets cause Lenin did not get reelected? I think this happened in St. Petersburg?

Rosa's German revolution had potential for genuine proletarian democracy-too bad it failed.

[Pretty Flaco]

Threads like this are dumb. Everything anyone could say at best would be critical speculation and at worst some historical fiction communist jerk fest.

[A Marxist Historian]

great, now I'm sad for the day.
However, in order for the revolution to have succeeded, I think you would have to fundamentally change the history and culture of Germany, because the real one has always been plagued by division and sectarianism. Secondly, didn't Rosa Luxembourg heavily criticize Lenin? Could they really have worked together?

Well, Russia was even worse plagued by division and sectarianism. That's what everybody starting with Rosa in Germany always called Lenin, "the great sectarian." Trotsky too, if anything even more so. But things worked out better than in Germany. Certainly for Jews at any rate.

Yes, she heavily criticized Lenin, and vice versa. She changed her mind about a lot of things through the actual *experience* of the German Revolution of 1918, but not about everything. She had some definite doubts about the founding of the Communist International. Her thoughts were still going through a process of change, we'll never know how far that would have went.

What we do know is that all her followers in Germany became enthusiastic about joining the Communist International and considering themselves both Luxemburgists and Leninists at the same time, though nobody would have used words like that, no personality cults back then. The experience of the German Revolution made a lot of things the Bolsheviks did in Russia make more sense to German and Polish revolutionaries. Iron Felix got there first, but just about everyone else followed.

Later you had a divergence, when the Spartacusbund lawyer, Paul Levi, about the only one of the old leadership of the Spartacusbund who wasn't murdered by the Freikorps and the Social Democrats, invented something called "Luxemburgism," but that's another story.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

she criticized his brutality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Red Guard/Bolshevik people shot a bunch of workers in one of the Soviets cause Lenin did not get reelected? I think this happened in St. Petersburg?

Nah. There are bunches of threads about this here already, so I'll leave it at that. I already wrote some stuff about this, also some good stuff from a poster named Znamya, and plenty others too.


Rosa's German revolution had potential for genuine proletarian democracy-too bad it failed.

Truer words rarely spoke.

-M.H.-

[Zanthorus]

She had some definite doubts about the founding of the Communist International.

I think this might be a mistake. Luxemburg died on January 15th whereas the inviation to the first world congress on MIA is dated January 24th. I know that they started the first congress with a silence in memory of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

[Rafiq]

The Revolution would have spread and we'd be living in socialism today.

[bietan jarrai]

Who knows? You could figure out 100 hundred ways it could have worked out, it just worked out badly in reality. It couldn't work out other way because it worked out this way, you can't say it would be this and that, because you don't know, because it worked out how it worked out. It's pointless to think about it.

[tbasherizer]

This kind of speculation flies in the face of materialism. The Germany in which Rosa sent dudes to smash Ebert's head in is completely different from the Germany that actually existed. It would rely on nonsensical rearrangement and conjuring of historical events and memetic trends. It's not even a good thought experiment.

[A Marxist Historian]

I think this might be a mistake. Luxemburg died on January 15th whereas the inviation to the first world congress on MIA is dated January 24th. I know that they started the first congress with a silence in memory of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

Naturally, it would be politically convenient for supporters of Bolshevism to claim that she was all for the Communist International and already a 100% Leninist when she died, but that would not be true, and truth comes first.

Yes, she died before the official invitation was sent out, but she knew it was coming, Hugo Eberlein had already been selected to go as the KPD representative, and she had urged him to oppose the foundation of a new Third International as premature.

When he got there he was caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment and ignored what she had told him.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

East Germany was, first of all, the less industrialized half of Germany, and moreover had just been the scene of a war, military defeat, and large scale destruction. And while the US, the great victor in WWII, was rebuilding Western Europe under its control through the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union was compelled to do the reverse, and extract resources from Eastern Europe to rebuild itself, and especially from East Germany.

And that's just the pure economics. Not even considering the immense difference between Soviet Russia under Lenin and the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Was there something fundamentally wrong with the organizational model in the Soviet Union under Stalin, China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. Of course. There's a name for it. It's called "Stalinism."

Resources weren't exactly extracted from Eastern Europe after Stalin died. How was East Germany comparatively less industrialized many years after Stalin's death?

[Jose Gracchus]

I don't know that the German Revolution could have succeeded. Is there any convincing scenario for that?

Even if it had, it would've been 1919 or later, by which time the soviets had shriveled up and the a single party state had already been consolidated.

[A Marxist Historian]

Resources weren't exactly extracted from Eastern Europe after Stalin died. How was East Germany comparatively less industrialized many years after Stalin's death?

Correct, it was *before* Stalin died that considerable resources were extracted from East Germany to help rebuild the Soviet Union. By the time Stalin died, the reconstruction of war damage in the Soviet Union was more or less complete, and a number of reforms were undertaken by Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev.

East Germany was *historically* less industrialized than West. Prussia was a feudal backwater until it received large parts of the Rhineland after the Napoleonic Wars. Relatively speaking East Germany tended to catch up with West in the post-WWII period.

Though the way it was industrialized, the so-called "department store economy" attempting to build everything in East Germay with relatively little use of division of labor between different COMECON countries (less than in Western Europe with the EEC and EU!) was open to question.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't know that the German Revolution could have succeeded. Is there any convincing scenario for that?

Even if it had, it would've been 1919 or later, by which time the soviets had shriveled up and the a single party state had already been consolidated.

The German Revolution of 1918 failed because the workers, who completely dominated the scene, were defeated in detail by the outnumbered but well-organized reactionaries in the Freikorps one city at a time, with crucial assistance from the German Social Democracy, and wavering ineffectiveness of the centrist Independent Social Democrats (USPD), who had the support of most of the workers.

The Freikorps, a pretty small force, gathered itself together and went after one city at a time in succession. The only way they could have done it. If there had been a well-organized revolutionary party well rooted in the workers organizations , it could have crushed them like bugs.

Unfortunately, Rosa Luxemburg did not understand well enough the need for a disciplined, centralized, well organized revolutionary party. Instead the Spartacusbund, which did not even split from the USPD until a month before the revolution broke out, was not really able to put forward an independent revolutionary program. All sorts of inexperienced anarchistic revolutionaries flooded into the abruptly founded German Communist Party, and outvoted Rosa and Karl with their ultraleft notions at the founding convention, calling for boycotting elections, abandoning the trade unions and so forth.

So the KPD was not able to present a cool, clearheaded leadership during the revolution, but just went with the flow of all momentary popular enthusiasm.

Which is exactly why the revolution was defeated, and why the KPD, based on this experience, turned so enthusiastically to Leninist methods.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

Which is exactly why the revolution was defeated, and why the KPD, based on this experience, turned so enthusiastically to Leninist methods.
Wait, I thought that the majority of the KPD ended up leaving to form the council communist KAPD, based on the prominent role that workers' councils played in the revolution. That doesn't sound like a ubiquitous enthusiasm for Leninist strategy. :confused:

[Jose Gracchus]

TMH is just like a robotic printer that produces ortho-Trot/Spart boilerplate on every possible historical point.

IF ONLY WE'D HAD THE IDEAL BOLSHEVIKS. Too bad the Bolshevik party of late 1917 was not a disciplined, centralized, well organized revolutionary party in the boilerplate Spart sense. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html)

[A Marxist Historian]

Wait, I thought that the majority of the KPD ended up leaving to form the council communist KAPD, based on the prominent role that workers' councils played in the revolution. That doesn't sound like a ubiquitous enthusiasm for Leninist strategy. :confused:

Mostly 'cuz the then party leader, Paul Levi, the inventor of "Luxemburgism," kicked 'em out quite undemocratically. Lenin and even Zinoviev were horrified, spent the next year trying to get them back in.

The KAPD was exactly what Lenin was talking about with his pamphlet on left wing communism an infantile disorder. He was hoping they would grow up and get over it. They didn't. And Levi ended up rejoining the Social Democrats.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

TMH is just like a robotic printer that produces ortho-Trot/Spart boilerplate on every possible historical point.

IF ONLY WE'D HAD THE IDEAL BOLSHEVIKS. Too bad the Bolshevik party of late 1917 was not a disciplined, centralized, well organized revolutionary party in the boilerplate Spart sense. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html)

The author of the above article, judging by a 15 second glance at least, seems to be answering the usual caricature of Bolshevism, which is just as wrong as Comrade Informative's caricature of Spartacism.

Yes, that's right, the Bolsheviks were an open mass highly democratic party of hundreds of thousands of people. They were also disciplined and centralized, and pretty well organized, at least a hell of a lot better organized than Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacusbund. At the same time.

Or, putting it another way, they were a democratic centralist party. The democracy part is just as important as the centralism part.

And, by the way, the Spartacists are pretty big on internal democracy too. Had a faction fight a year or two ago, after which the minority ended up on the Central Committee because the majority insisted, even though the minority didn't want to be! Just a wee bit different from the way other so-called Trotskyists operate, to say nothing of our "Marxist-Leninists" here.

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

You've obviously never read Rabinowitch. Or the article you're replying to (which you admit you only examined for '15 seconds'). How can one say the "centralism" and "discipline" of the Bolsheviks is responsible for 1917, when Lenin had to break with the CC and repeatedly threaten to resign in order for his lines to carry the day? Or how much of the initiative and political development spread from the bottom upward, and that there were quite autonomous and free-wheeling regional and local party organs, which continued to exert autonomy even during the Civil War.

Furthermore, if you read Wade, it is clear that support for the Bolsheviks was often manifested as a rather broad and vague support for "more revolution" or "radicalism", and even where Bolshevik support in of itself has been read into older sources, it seems clear today it was a broad revolutionary bloc including (admittedly predominating) the Bolsheviks (at this time) allies in the Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, SR Maximalists, syndicalists, and anarchists. Just examine Rex Wade's conclusions at the end of Russian Revolution, 1917.

I don't know why you call yourself "The Marxist Historian," when I am quite surprised when you give specific examples, and it seems to me you are loathe to ever give a source or author for your claims.

[A Marxist Historian]

You've obviously never read Rabinowitch. Or the article you're replying to (which you admit you only examined for '15 seconds'). How can one say the "centralism" and "discipline" of the Bolsheviks is responsible for 1917, when Lenin had to break with the CC and repeatedly threaten to resign in order for his lines to carry the day? Or how much of the initiative and political development spread from the bottom upward, and that there were quite autonomous and free-wheeling regional and local party organs, which continued to exert autonomy even during the Civil War.

Furthermore, if you read Wade, it is clear that support for the Bolsheviks was often manifested as a rather broad and vague support for "more revolution" or "radicalism", and even where Bolshevik support in of itself has been read into older sources, it seems clear today it was a broad revolutionary bloc including (admittedly predominating) the Bolsheviks (at this time) allies in the Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, SR Maximalists, syndicalists, and anarchists. Just examine Rex Wade's conclusions at the end of Russian Revolution, 1917.

I don't know why you call yourself "The Marxist Historian," when I am quite surprised when you give specific examples, and it seems to me you are loathe to ever give a source or author for your claims.

Yes I have read two books by Rabinowitch. Great books. The Bolsheviks, as I tried to explain to you but you weren't paying attention, had *both* centralism and discipline where it was needed, *and* democracy and spontaneous mass initiative where it was needed, at the same time. Rabinowitch was polemicizing against the Bolsheviks as conspiratorial robots argument, and perhaps bent the stick a little too far here and there, something I can sympathize with, having had to do the same here in the other direction, arguing with people like you.

I'm all in favor of Lenin where it was necessary breaking party discipline, because it was necessary. Revolutionary party discipline is a good thing, centrist party discipline imposed by a Zinoviev or a Kamenev or a Stalin in fall 1917 would have been a bad thing indeed.

I don't quote sources all the time because, frankly, I've read almost too damn many books on such subjects, and my posts are often too long already. Haven't read Wade, as it happens, one day I will no doubt.

My original point was that the Bolsheviks had the *needed* amount of organization, centralization and discipline to win, and that Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacusbund did not. I think that is almost inarguable. I was not arguing for Stalinist methods, quite the contrary.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

...
I don't quote sources all the time because, frankly, I've read almost too damn many books on such subjects, and my posts are often too long already. Haven't read Wade, as it happens, one day I will no doubt...
-M.H.-

Now here's an example of cogniive dissonance. You meant *Rex* Wade's wonderful book, Red Guard and Worker's Militia in the Russian Revolution?

Your take on it was so different than mine that I thought you were talking about somebody else altogether.

An excellent description of how spontaneous workers' initiative and revolutionary discipline and centralism evolved together. *Any* military organization has to have discipline, organization and leadership to function at all. And that most certainly included the Red Guards and workers' militias that arose spontaneously in the course of the Revolution, and naturally evolved into the strongest arm of Bolshevism.

They were the basis of the Cheka, as Wade points out, which was before Stalin took the reins not an oppressive Stalinistic dictatorial phenomenon but a product of workers' spontaneous revolutionary initiative.

In military affairs, opposition to centralism was the province of the Military Opposition of 1919-20, whose behind the scenes leader was ... Stalin.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

Huh, just want to say thanks for the posters in this thread. I always thought that the leninist, not marxist leninist, view on the vanguard was more centralised than democracised, but as I see now it actually was a mass workers party.

[cb9's_unity]

Another question is what would have happened if Bavaria had stayed red. I know that it had some pretty goofy leadership initially, but if it had stabilized and organized it could have also become a potential spark for German revolution.

I also tend to think that Luxemburg and Lenin would have been able to work together just fine. The debate between them that I've read always seemed to be respectful and intellectual. As much as Luxemburg criticized the specifics of the Russian revolution, she saw the bolsheviks as a great revolutionary force to be respected.

[A Marxist Historian]

Another question is what would have happened if Bavaria had stayed red. I know that it had some pretty goofy leadership initially, but if it had stabilized and organized it could have also become a potential spark for German revolution.

I also tend to think that Luxemburg and Lenin would have been able to work together just fine. The debate between them that I've read always seemed to be respectful and intellectual. As much as Luxemburg criticized the specifics of the Russian revolution, she saw the bolsheviks as a great revolutionary force to be respected.

The initial leaders in Bavaria were a bit on the goofy side, but Eugen Levine, though a bit of an ultra leftist, was arguably the best leader the German Communists had. He is the one who made the famous statement at his trial that "Communists are only dead men on leave." Before they hanged him. His bio by Sebastian Haffner I think it was is one of the great German Revolution books of all time.

Trouble is, Bavaria was the most right wing corner of Germany, and probably Radek was right when he said Levine should have just headed for the hills instead of trying to rescue the situation when the "coffee house Soviet regime" collapsed.

-M.H.-