MIA > Archive > Paul Frölich
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 16, 15 February 1923, pp. 123–124.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2021). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
“The situation is best characterized by Stinnes’ utterance in the State Economic Council: ‘We cannot form a concern with Loucheur in which Loucheur would have 60 per cent and Stinnes 40 per cent’.” (Rhenish Westphalian Periodical, January 20, 1923.)
In Germany the nationalists are shrieking themselves hoarse: The Fatherland is in danger! Forward to the national united front!
In France there is the same uproar: For the only just and sacred cause! To gaol with the communists!
It is true that the Ruhr occupation means the strangulation of the masses of the German people. And the arrest of the communists in France demonstrates the dangers threatening the French people through Poincaré’s imperialist policy: the abolition of civil liberties to the end that the French proletariat may be the better exploited.
It is also true: the German government has presented the great industrial magnates with gifts of milliards, and has failed to fulfil the Versailles treaty.
But is it a question of preserving unstained morality and eternal justice, of saving the peoples? No! It is a question of business. As in 1914! As always!
Almost simultaneously with the sending of troops into the Ruhr area, there came an invitation from Paris to Essen. The Comité des Forges (the organization of the French iron works), invited the Stinnes concern to a conference regarding closer relations between German and French heavy industries. Mr Stinnes refused to accept this invitation so long as there were French troops in the Ruhr. The organ of heavy industry Rhenish Westphalian, gave the authentic explanation of Stinnes’ attitude in the quotation given above: The Essen-Briey, Westphalian coke and Lorraine ore Trust, will come to nothing, if Loucheur is to receive 60 per cent of the booty and Stinnes only 40 per cent.
Halves first, colleague, and then let us embrace! – thus cries Stinnes, and thus the voice of justice. Halves, and then the prices may rise, then Europe may feel our power. And the Fatherland can go to the Devil!
60 per cent! Loucheur bellows back. Show your claws, Poincaré!
And in fact, this is the sole point in question. This is the real essence of the political straggles between Germany and France preceding and following 1918.
The conquest of Belgium and Northern France was the aim of the Rhenish Westphalian industrial magnates during the war, as may be seen from the pronunciamentos with which they flooded the government and the commanders of the army. For the attainment of this end they drove millions of human beings to the shambles. The sole aim and object was the control of French ore. When the defeat of Germany buried these extravagant hopes, it became the aim to come to an understanding with French heavy industry – an understanding to be paid for, if needs must, with the abandonment of the Ruhr area. If the business had failed under German supremacy, then it must be attempted under French. Stinnes’ provocative attitude at Spa in July 1920 aimed at irritating French imperialism into occupying the Ruhr district
The French heavy industrial barons, Schneider, Wendel, Loucheur, and company, thought they had ensured for themselves complete domination of the steel market by the conquest of Alsace Lorraine, and the separation of the Saar district from Germany. But it turned out that the domination could not be complete without Westphalian coke. Hence the renewed inclination for negotiations. These were taken up. The Stinnes-Lubersac agreement cleared the way, and, at the same time, assured gigantic extra profits. A preliminary agreement was reached between Stinnes and Jules Bernhard, for the formation of a trust to embrace on the one side the Stinnes undertakings Deutsch-Luxemburg, Gelsenkirchen, Elbe-Union, and on the French side the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, the Comité des Forges, and the firm of Giros and Loucheur.
But then arose the question of the respective shares in the future booty. And with this arose the conflict.
And now on both sides the call of; national united front! Here the workers are goaded forward to a general strike. There the communists are thrown into prison for high treason and anti-national agitation. Everything for the 60 per cent!
Again the Stinnes men utilize the favorable moment, as during the world war. At that time they enriched themselves by unscrupulous usury against the fatherland, they left the army in the lurch by non-delivery of supplies when they got higher prices abroad, and to-day their watchword is the same: enrich yourselves! The first act after the occupation of the Ruhr area, was to raise coal prices to a height which neither the wages nor the cost of materials justified. The second act was to grab at the state railways. The third was to demand that the government
place credits at the disposal of heavy industry. The result of this last step is not yet known. But Cuno’s government is absolutely obedient! The fourth act: Stinnes ensures for himself the business in English coal. And the natural result of all this: The price of labor power sinks and sinks: God’s blessing on us, the profits rise.
And the Exchange! It is dancing the cancan for the fatherland is in danger. It speculates à la baisse in marks; 22,000 marks are already being paid for the dollar [1]; à la hausse in industrial papers. The mining shares of the Ruhr district mount higher than all others. Between January 12 and 22 the shares of Deutsch-Luxemburg (Stinnes) rose from 25,900 to 55,000; Gelsenkirchen Mining Joint Stock Co. (Thyssen) from 26,100 to 61,500; Harpener Mine (Hamel) from 59.600 to 132,000; Phönix (Wolff) from 26,500 to 51,000; Rhine steel from 21,250 to 50,000; Bochum cast steel (Stinnes) from 23,600 to 53,000. The dance is so wild that even the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung is dizzy, and even this Stinnes crocodile is beginning to preach morality. But the Exchange does not care. Business first, then the fatherland.
How can the Temps assume such an air of morality and justice, and proclaim with calm self-confidence: “France’s cause is just. She defends the interests of all.” Just! Because she is pulling at the rope which hangs around the neck of the starving German people. Just! For she is pulling for Loucheur’s 60% per cent!
But the German working class? There was perhaps a moment’s uncertainty, the intoxicating fumes of nationalism dulled an eye here and there. But now the shop stewards of the Stinnes and Thyssen mines have decided to recall the representatives who were going to stand up for that martyr for the fatherland, Thyssen Jr. And they have further decided to convene a shop stewards’ congress for Rhenish Westphalia, to resolve on a general strike. Strike against the lie of the national united front On the basis of class war!
1. Towards the end of January, the dollar reached 50,000 marks.
Last updated on 8 July 2021