Heinrich Brandler: The Session of the Central Committee of the CP of Germany (23 August 1923)

 

Heinrich Brandler

In the International

The Session of the Central Committee
of the CP of Germany

(23 August 1923)


From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 57 [35], 23 August 1923, pp. 618–619.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2022). 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.


This session of the Central Committee was a demonstration, in all its discussions and resolutions, of the growth and increasing consolidation of the German CP.

As representative of this power, the session was able to formulate clear resolutions on the points of the agenda after a brief and concentrated discussion. The opposition shown at this Central Committee meeting was merely an echo of personal discord. There were no serious antagonisms. The Party is united and agreed. This fact was perhaps best formulated by the spokeswoman of the opposition, Comrade Ruth Fischer. For she formulates the facts, as seen from the standpoint of the opposition, as follows: “The Party, in view of the rising tide of activity among the masses, has, since the Party Congress in Leipzig,developed in the direction of the wishes of the opposition. The danger of opportunism and degeneration is not yet past, but has been reduced to a minimum.” We of the Party majority have less occasion than anyone else to start a quarrel as to “who wasin the right”. For us the fact is decisive that the dangerous strain in Party relations is removed. That nine of the comrades belonging to the opposition abstained from voting at the division on the political situation, but did not move any amendments, maybe taken, according to the declarations made by the opposition comrades themselves, as being merely a protest against Comrade Brandler’s firm handling of the opposition. With this attitude the opposition abandons its role as such, and has reached a stage of personal feeling invoking no further danger to the Party.

All the other resolutions were accepted unanimously. This fact expresses the unity of the Party.

In view of the dangerous situation, this unity is indeed an imperative necessity. The Central Committee heard with approval the report on the Enlarged Executive Session. The letter of the Executive to the Central Committee went unchallenged. The opposition expressly declared itself in agreement with this letter. The differences on the Saxon question were thereby settled. The opposition was against the support of a left radical government in Saxony by our Party. After this question had been settled by the decision of the Comintern Executive at the conciliation conference, it was still feared by the opposition that our comrades in Saxony would not succeed in separating themselves in good time from the inadequate Zeigner government. The Party in Saxony was, as a matter of fact, not very successful at first, when the Zeigner government showed its weakness in the question of the recall of the Leipzig police president, Eleissner, who had ordered workers to be fired on, in drawing a sharp and clear line between itself and the government. And the disgrace attaching to Ehrhardt’s flight,for which the cowardice of the Zeigner government is to blame, has up to now not been sufficiently exposed by our Saxon comrades. The fact that the Zeigner government has employed security police against workers fighting for higher wages, because the workers compelled the employers to pay wages in some degree adequate, has, however, made it extremely easy for the Party to draw the necessary dividing line between itself and the government. The not entirely unfounded misgivings of the opposition have therefore been rendered superfluous by the actual course of events. It was, however, made perfectly evident, at the Central Committee session, that opportunist vacillations had never for a moment been the cause of the weak attitude adopted by our Saxon comrades, but that this was solely to be attributed to a certain sluggishness in the capacity for adaptation of the Party. The Central Committee adopted an unequivocal attitude with regard to Saxon policy. Differences do not exist any longer on this score.

The Central Committee also plainly expressed its view of the failure of the Communist Party of Bulgaria. It condemnsthe attitude of our Bulgarian comrades, and calls upon them toreturn to a communist policy with all speed and without reserve.

The resolution on German Fascism attempts a characterization of Fascism, and formulates the tasks incumbent on the CP of Germany for combatting the Fascist movement. These tasks are of a twofold nature. To combat the menace of Fascist bands financed, armed, and led by industrial, agrarian, and finance capital, the resolution demands the organization of defence, above all the increased formation of defence units in the factories. Besides thus combatting Fascism with its own weapons, the resolution draws attention to the necessity of carrying on the ideological struggle for the support of the petty bourgeois and small peasants.

The resolution on the political situation formulates quite openly the strategy of the revolutionary defensive struggle. The CP of Germany openly develops its program of struggle, thus differing from the bankrupt social democracy and trade union bureaucracy, which veil their inactivity behind the foolish phrase that the plans of defence must not be betrayed to the adversary. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is not one which can be prepared and executed in secret conclave. The sole means of victory for the working class is the mobilization of the broadest masses of the toiling population, and this cannot be achieved by secret meetings and secret plans. The political resolution is based on the incontestable fact that the twice revealed bankruptcy of German bourgeois politics has greatly aggravated the class antagonisms, and that these will be fought out by the mediums of civil war.

The resolution draws from this premise the conclusion that the working class, in view of the preparations of the bourgeoisie for civil war, is obliged to make similar preparations itself, if itis not to suffer defeat. Only one means is left of preventing civil war: the fighting alliance of the CP, USP of Germany and the trade unions, for the overthrow of the bourgeois government and the establishment of the workers’ and peasants’ government. As the trade union bureaucrats and the United Social-Democratic Party leaders sabotage this alliance, the working masses, led by the CP of Germany, must fight without and against these traitors. The attempt being made by finance, industrial, and agrarian capital to use the petty bourgeoisie, grown rebellious through the bankruptcy of the petty bourgeois policy,for the purpose of crushing the proletariat, sets the CP of Germany the task of overcoming as rapidly as possible the split in the working class brought about by the policy of the USP leaders, and of creating a proletarian united front capable of opposing these armed bands by the resolute defence of the proletariat.

And, on the other hand, the fact that the large bourgeoisie has succeeded in capturing the petty bourgeoisie for its own projects again sets the German CP the task of depriving the large bourgeoisie of the leadership of the 9–11 millions of the German middle class.

To win over the petty bourgeois strata to active cooperation, or at least Io benevolent neutrality, in the proletarian class struggle, is no mere tactical manoeuvre, but absolutely necessary strategy. It is no alliance with Fascism, but an alliance against Fascism. The petty bourgeoisie, which lives economically between the two classes, and is unable to realize its old class ideals (for the days of the “golden middle class” are over for ever), can now only fight either with the bourgeoisie or with the proletariat. If it fights in the camp of the bourgeoisie, it not only accelerates its decay as an antiquated class, as a relic of feudalism within the capitalist economic order, it accelerates at the same time the annihilation of the physical existence of the petty bourgeois. It it fights in the camp of the proletariat, it participates, it is true, in the work of sweeping away the petty bourgeoisie as an antiquated relic of past times, but it helps to save the physical existence of the actual members of the middle class as members of the working population, and bring about their economic and political emancipation from capitalist exploitation.

The slogan of the workers’ and peasants’ government, the slogan of the seizure of real values, the slogan of the disarming of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the arming of the proletariat, and the slogan of alliance with Soviet Russia – these are the slogans which signify the emancipation of the middle class, while they are at the same time the fighting slogans of the proletariat for its own liberation.

The Central Committee, in unanimously issuing these plain slogans, and in discussing ways and means by which the Party may realize them through increased energy and work, has adequately fulfilled its task.



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