MIA > Archive > Paul Frölich
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 24, 8 March 1923, pp. 183–184.
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 Ruhr war has called forth the first international action of the communists. The Communist parties of Germany and France are the immediate participators. That which the socialist parties of the 2. and 2½. Internationals cannot accomplish, fettered as they are by their attachment to their respective national bourgeoisies, is now being tested by the Communist International, namely, the capacity for united action on the basis of international proletarian interests. French and German communists are co-ordinating their struggles, in both countries, and striving towards a common goal. In the Ruhr area they are actually fighting side by side.
Both parties are fighting on the same front, and it is their duty to comprise in this lighting front the whole proletariat of France and Germany. The different sections of the front have their special tasks. At the French front we have the slogan: Fight against Poincaré and the Comité des Forges, against French imperialism! But at the German front we hear: right against French imperialism, and against Cuno and the German industrial magnates! Why this fight in Germany against both bourgeoisies at war with one another?
The fight against Poincaré and the powers backing him is necessitated by the violent measures taken by French Imperialism against the German proletariat.
The fight against Poincaré is called for, because French imperialism is the mainstay of the Versailles treaty, which initiates new world wars under the sham flag of peace.
The fight against Poincaré is called tor because bourgeois France is the most powerful military force on the European continent. It has created hotbeds of strife in every quarter of Europe by the separation of nationalities; it has created a number of small powerless dependent states, and has established a hegemony in Europe whose sole object is to plunder the continent, and whose weapon is brutal violence.
The fight against Poincaré is called for, because the France of today, the country of the 14 July and of the Marseillaise, is now the stronghold of reaction, the strongest fortress of counter-revolution, despite Noske and Mussolini. Only Poincaré has the Ruhr firmly in his power, his next step will be civil war against the revolutionary miners and iron workers. Is not French Imperialism the most hostile, the most irreconcilable enemy of Soviet Russia? Has it not sent one expedition after another against revolutionary Russia, whipped up one people after another against the Red East? Did it not declare a permanent counter-revolution in Russia, by financing and equipping every school of bandits, from the Social Revolutionaries to Wrangel, – who are still on its pay roll? Poincaré, who is official France, is the strongest enemy of the international proletariat. Therefore he is to be fought.
But the fight must, at the same time be directed against the rule of the German bourgeoisie, against Cuno.
The fight against Cuno is a necessity, because he represents the dominion of heavy industry over the German working class. Cuno’s regime is the consequence and the embodiment of all the weaknesses and defeats of the German proletariat. It is only by fighting against Cuno, and by overthrowing him, that the German proletariat can rescue itself from the profound misery of its present existence, and from sinking ever deeper into this misery.
The fight against Cuno is a necessity, because his policy serves those same imperialists and conquering heroes who, for the sake of their wretched profits, sent the German workers to their death in thousands, for four and a half long years. All these adventurers must be fought from the field. They have been clever enough to cast all the burdens of their own defeat onto the proletariat and to reap advantages from the general collapse, to enrich themselves shamelessly, and to extend their power. They have thrown all taxation onto the proletariat, and made even taxation, a medium for increasing their wealth. They have condemned the German workers to an existence of slow starvation, and introduced an era of mass mortality. And with the unprecedented cheap German labor they have taken up a cut-throat competition against the whole world, sapping the vital power of the German people and undermining world economy.
The fight against Cuno is a necessity, because his clique is still misusing the misery of the nation, as during the world war, for plundering the people; is still pursuing a mad price policy ano increasing starvation to an intolerable point; Cuno & Co., has invested its milliards abroad and has itself fed with fresh milliards by the state; is utilizing the pressure of French Imperialism for its own purposes of extortion, with the object, of laying its hands on the railroads, thereby gaining absolute control of German economy.
The fight against Cuno is called for, because he is pursuing a policy which is inevitably leading to catastrophe. No attempt was made to prevent the occupation of the Ruhr area; on the contrary, it was provoked. It is a policy devoid of realism, – a pure game of chance.
Not a single measure was taken to counteract the frightful consequences for the Ruhr area, or to alleviate the sufferings of the broad masses. Cuno’s is a catastrophic policy, because from its initiation, and onwards until the notorious action for stabilizing the mark, it has been a policy of frivolous waste of the financial resources of the Reich, of violent precipitation into bankruptcy, of dirty corruption and enrichment of the great capitalists. After us the deluge – is Cuno’s motto.
The fight against Cuno is called for, because he represents the traitors of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yesterday Stinnes and Company were prepared to drive the German people into slavery under foreign capital. Stinnes offered himself as overseer over the German workers, for the English capitalists. As early as 1920, at Spa, Stinnes was anxious for the separation of the Ruhr area. The aniline magnates have earned milliards by selling trade secrets to the “hereditary enemy”; have struck bargains with the fruits of that German science which has to go begging today. All these industrial magnates, who speak to-day of “defending the Vaterland”, are ready to sell this same Vaterland tomorrow.
If Cuno remains in power, then the Ruhr war may end as it will, the proletariat will pay the costs. There will be no taxation reform, no sacrifice of property. The proletariat will be plundered more than ever, subjected to greater oppression. Wages will experience an unheard of reduction, the eight hour day will be abolished, the hours of slavery lengthened. The rigid to strike will be done away with, the proletariat rendered defenceless.
Cuno signifies the rule of trust capital over the working class, the victory of the monarchy over the republic Fascismo is already impudently raising its head, encouraged and financed by heavy industry. Today it is officially recognized by the “Federal Court for the Protection of the Republic”. Tomorrow it will be employed to attack the working class. Cuno’s government signifies civil war against the proletariat.
Fight against Cuno and Poincaré. They themselves tell us the reason why we have to fight them. Let us hear what the social-democratic renegade Lensch has to say on the occupation of the Ruhr, in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Stinnes’ newspaper:
“Not only military and national interests are at work here, but above all, the material interests of a handful of extremely powerful and influential men: the heavy industrial magnates of France. These people have placed their employees in the highest state positions; above all Millerand, who has been active in his capacity of legal representative for this company, and Poincaré, who has also placed his activity as solicitor, at the service of these interests. One of these is president, the other prime minister. And these are of course surrounded by the swarms of a lesser chorus of paid agents: journalists, deputies, ministers, generals, and their like.”
The Temps, the organ of the Comité des Forges, speaks in similar terms of Cuno and his policy. They are both right. And because they are both right we must fight them both with the utmost determination.
The fight against Poincaré is to be carried on by systematic sabotage in the Ruhr district, as a proletarian action, and by the revolutionary permeation of the imperialist army. Against Cuno – by combatting nationalism as an ideology, by taking advantage of the present situation to lead the working class in its defensive struggles, and to mobilize the masses for the general strike.
The French and German proletariats, in their joint struggle against the common enemy, are passing through a maturing process. The more rapid and thorough this process, the greater the prospect of a common victory.
Last updated on 9 August 2021