a) Germany 1923
Germany’s precarious stability was shattered in January 1923 when French troops occupied the Ruhr industrial area to extract, at gunpoint, the “war reparations” which the German imperialists were being forced to pay as the price of their defeat in the World War. The German economy slumped. Inflation, already skyrocketing during 1922, reached astronomical proportions.

The living standards of workers and the middle class collapsed. The working class swung sharply to the left. Factory councils sprang up in opposition to the reformist union leaders. The KPD (Communist Party of Germany) grew by tens of thousands. Workers’ militias were formed. In two states, Saxony and Thuringia, left-wing SPD governments were in power, relying on KPD support.

On August 11 a general strike brought down the right-wing Cuno government in Berlin. Germany was in a revolutionary crisis. But the workers’ leadership was unprepared. The KPD leadership was divided between the “centre”, “left” and “right” factions, with the cautious Brandler at its head. Hesitation and uncertainty marked its policy throughout.

The Comintern was increasingly affected by the struggle in the Soviet party. The conservatism and short-sightedness of the bureaucracy, transmitted through the leadership of the Soviet party, was beginning to prevail. The Comintern representative in Germany, Radek, gave his full backing to Brandler. As late as July Stalin advised that “the Germans should be restrained and not spurred on”.

Only with the fall of the Cuno government did the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI) accept Trotsky’s argument that a struggle for power was on the agenda in Germany, and that political and organisational preparations for armed insurrection urgently needed to be made. But tragically, this policy was not followed through.

The triumvirate was incapable of intervening and instilling a bold revolutionary understanding of the situation in the KPD leadership. As a document written for the Founding Conference of the ‘Fourth International’ later explained, “When the German bourgeoisie at last gathered its forces, proclaimed a state of siege, proceeded to take the offensive, the [KPD] capitulated without a struggle.

The failure of the KPD leadership cost the German working class, and the European revolution, the chance of a victory that would have changed the course of world history. Instead, the KPD was declared illegal for some months. With massive US aid, the German economy was stabilised and capitalism pulled back from the brink.

A few months earlier the mass Bulgarian Communist Party had been smashed after its leaders, dogmatically, refused to enter a united front with the Peasant Union government against a right-wing military coup. Also, in Poland the workers, inspired into action by the German events, were defeated.

These setbacks had a critical effect on the inner-party struggle in Russia. Germany in particular had always been seen as the key to the European revolution. Now it became clear that no relief could be expected from Western Europe in the months or years ahead.

A vicious cycle was set in motion. The increasing grip of the bureaucracy on the Soviet party (and through it, on the Comintern) was becoming a serious obstacle to the development of revolutionary policies and leadership internationally. The setbacks resulting from this, in turn strengthened the currents of demoralisation and conservatism which the bureaucracy thrived on. Less politicised workers began to lose confidence in the Marxist perspective of international revolution. To backward layers, the scepticism and cynicism of the bureaucracy began to look like the only ‘realistic’ policy.

b) ‘Lessons of October’

Trotsky summed up the mistakes made in Germany in his ‘Lessons of October’, published in 1924:

“Circumstances may arise where all the prerequisites for revolution exist, with the exception of a far-seeing and resolute party leadership grounded in the understanding of the laws and methods of the revolution. That was exactly the situation last year in Germany”. (Full text )

“So long as the slogan of the insurrection was approached by the leaders of the German Communist Party mainly, if not solely, from an agitational standpoint, they simply ignored the questions of the armed forces at the disposal of the enemy. … It seemed to them that the constant rising revolutionary flood tide would automatically solve the military question. But when the task stared them in the face, the very same comrades who had previously treated the armed forces of the enemy as if they were non-existent, went immediately to the other extreme. They placed implicit faith in all the statistics of the armed strength of the bourgeoisie … and so obtained a compact mass force armed to the teeth and absolutely sufficient to paralyse their own efforts”.

“No doubt the forces of the German counter-revolution were much stronger numerically and, at any rate, better organised and prepared than our own Kornilovites [in Russia 1917]. But so were the effective forces of the German revolution. The proletariat composes the overwhelming majority of the population in Germany. In our country, the question – at least during the initial stage – was decided by Petrograd and Moscow. In Germany, the insurrection would have immediately blazed in scores of mighty proletarian centres. On this arena, the armed forces of the enemy would not have seemed nearly as terrible as they did in statistical computations in round figures”.

“This passive fatalism is really only cover for irresolution and even incapacity for action, but it camouflages itself with the consoling prognosis that we are, you know, growing more and more influential; as time goes on our forces will continually increase. What a gross delusion! The strength of a revolutionary party increases only up to a certain moment, after which the process can turn into the very opposite. The hopes of the masses change into disillusionment as the result of the party’s passivity, while the enemy recovers from his panic and takes advantage of this disillusionment. We witnessed such a decisive turning point in Germany in October 1923”.