MIA > Archive > Thalheimer
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 63, 29 September 1923, p. 704.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Drama of Revolution has begun in Germany. At the given signal the white front is assemble. With a stroke of the pen, Ebert (as the representative of the Social Democracy) has removed the democratic-parliamentary drop scene. General Seeckt, his officers, his Reichswehr, and his Fascist bands now occupy the stage. Social Democracy has now abdicated in favour of the white generals. The bourgeois republic and the bourgeois republicans are at an end. Now it is simply a question of saving the Capitalist Order and with it the social democratic leaders. It is true that the workers, the members of the Social Democracy, the defenders and saviours of the bourgeois republic in the days of the Kapp Putsch, are the only republicans in Germany, but they are already wanting the socialist republic, they are already gliding into the anus of Communism. Did not the social democratic workers, only yesterday, demand the heads of Gessler and Seeckt, are they not calling for the seizure of real values, do not they insist that the bourgeoisie shall bear the costs of the Ruhr defeat? Therefore, no proletarian defenders of the republic. Therefore, no defence of the republic! The sword of military dictatorship of the white generals shall be over it! Let the monarchists save the Bourgeois Order, for the republicans are enemies of the bourgeois Order.
What matters the republic when the sacred Order of Capitalist Robbery is threatened? After the defeat of the Hohenzollern Monarchy in 1918, the bourgeoisie sought salvation in the bourgeois republic. After the defeat of the bourgeois republic— it flies to the monarchist army. And with it the whole gang of reformist party and trade union leaders The circle is complete.
The mustering of the Hitler-Ludendorff forces in Bavaria had to serve as the pretext for the military dictatorship. The Bavarian monarchists had made use of this, on their side, to have their dictatorship proclaimed by the government. The government of Knilling appoints the tool of the Crown Prince Rupprecht, and of the peasants' leader Heim, Dr, Kahr, as General Commissioner or the state, as dictator over Bavaria, over all the authorities in Bavaria; even the officials of the republic (Railways, Post und Telegraph) are to be subordinate to him.
This is the first cautious step to the separation of Bavaria from the Republic.
The great coalition replies to this by ceding to Kahr and to General Lossow the exercise of dictatorship on behalf of the republic in Bavaria.
It thereby recognizes de facto the first step of Bavaria towards separation. It formally invites the Bavarian monarchists to seek the unity of Germany by means of a monarchist coup throughout the rest of Germany. It provokes Kahr to set Ludendorff and Hitler on the march against red Saxony and red Thuringia and to encircle red Berlin from the West (Westphalia), East and North.
The white front from Ebert to Kahr plays into the hands of the Fascist front, whereby at the same time, each partner thinks himself able to outdo the other.
Both fronts, however, will strike at the proletariat. The capitulation to Poincaré, the carrying out of the Stinnes program demand this.
Where is the German proletariat?
Where are the fifteen million town and country proletarians?
The communists are at their post. They call for the formation of the united front against the dictatorship of force. They are preparing for the mass strike. They are rallying the social democratic and non-party workers around them. The so-called left social democratic leaders are conspicuous by their absence. Party unity! (That is a more important thing than the dictatorship of the sabre!) They require time for consideration, one must not be too precipitate ...
The advance of the proletariat finds them in the rear with the baggage.
The advance of the masses will come in spite of them. The first shots have already been fired in the Saxon Erzgebirge.
By the time these lines come before the eyes of the reader, perhaps the machine guns of Hitler, and Ludendorff, as well as those of Gessler and Kahr, will have already torn away the veil which prevents the workers from seeing the possibility of the proletariat united front.
Last updated on 2 May 2023