Bela Kun
First Published: Kommunist. Ezenedel'nyi zurnal ekonomiki, politiki i obsenstvennosti. Organ Moskovskago Oblastnogo Byuro RKP (bol'sevikov) [The Communist. Weekly Magazine for Economics, Politics and Social Questions. Organ of the Moscow District Office of the RCP(B)], No. 2, April, 1918.
Source: Internationalist Communist Tendency.
Translation: Klasbatalo
Transcription/Markup: Zdravko Saveski
MILITARY FORCES ARE CURRENTLY REGROUPING inside the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: troops are being dispatched from the Italian front to Prague, Budapest and Vienna. Austro-Hungarian imperialism, having feverishly awaited the opportunity to send its armies from the eastern front to Italy, must now fight on new fronts by force of circumstance. Its capacity for aggression long gone, it fights only because it has to. The State apparatus is relinquishing its functions on the eve of its complete disintegration, with certain elements no longer acting coherently. And thus Austro-Hungarian imperialism's hands are tied on both fronts, internally and externally.
All government-led offensives of the united dual monarchy, within the country or beyond its borders, have been driven back in an impotent retreat. It was the stronger, more active German imperialism that forced the government of Emperor Karl[1] to carry out military offensives; within the country the last planned offensive became a defensive operation. And both were already beyond its powers.
The government crisis in Austria and Hungary, the resignation of Czernin[2] and Wekerle[3] are above all the consequence of the disintegration of the state apparatus, unable even to fulfil its commitments to Germany, the strongest imperialism.
All changes within the government participate in the attempt to conserve the monarchy's apparatus, even in its helplessness - deregulated and ready to break down - in trying to reshape it at any cost.
Austro-Hungarian capitalism, in a state of decomposition even before the war, had no perspective, because it was already supported by foreign capital. Before the war, Germany had easily expanded its sphere of influence on the back of the dual monarchy. German capital alone had invested four billion marks in Austria and one and a half billion in Hungary before the war. In addition to these five and a half billion marks from Germany, France invested two billion francs; the Hungarian railways were financed by English capital; even American capital attracted by high profits had begun to invest more and more often in the Hungarian market notwithstanding the risks that were almost as high as in the Turkish market. Thus, the capital invested in Austria-Hungary by the Entente powers was comparable to German capital.
German hegemony in Austria was not determined by the volume of capital invested, but by Germany's favourable geographical location and imperialist superiority.
German capital has invested mainly in military companies and loans.
Its aggressive character became evident long before the war. With each new loan, the vice tightened around Austro-Hungarian imperialism, which once claimed autonomy and dominance through its customs policy. In compensation for every million marks invested in Austria, Germany demanded the signing of new military agreements, extended its influence into new territories and appropriated new sources of raw materials. This aggressive German policy towards Austria and its internal affairs can be illustrated by the classic example of Wilhelm's intervention, which caused a long parliamentary obstruction by the Hungarian petty bourgeoisie trying to achieve its "national aspirations", which then ended in the refusal to vote military credits.
This was also confirmed by the monopolisation of Transylvania's rich gas fields by the "Deutsche Bank" despite the more advantageous offers of British and American capitalists.
As for English capital, it mainly financed the local Hungarian railways owned by public limited companies. So therefore, it could not exert much influence on the internal affairs of the dual monarchy. French capital invested two billion francs in government bonds. It was easier to deal with French capital because it never asked for high profits or sought rewards in industry or agriculture.
Sympathies towards France in certain influential Hungarian circles led by Count Károlyi,[4] and even the propaganda of alliance between France, Russia and Hungary, can be explained mainly by the aggressive policy of Austro-German capital. However, from a military point of view, friendship with French capital came up against a serious obstacle that ultimately ensured the domination of German capital. It was over competition with French capital in the Balkans, mainly in Serbia.
This competition has forced Austrian entrepreneurs into an alliance with the Hungarian agrarians.[5] Although their interests were opposed in the Balkans, they tried to act in perfect harmony.
The memorable conflict of customs protectionism between Serbia and Austria-Hungary,[6] the first fruits of the bloody global tragedy, which lasted from 1906 to 1911 except for a 7-month respite, was very profitable for Hungarian landowners. The absence of Serbian agricultural products on the Austro-Hungarian market for five years increased the price of products from the latifundia of the Hungarian agrarians. On the other hand, Austro-Hungarian capitalists lost the Serbian arms market: 45 million crowns that France has taken over.
German capital also expanded its influence because, during the customs conflict between Austria and Serbia and the latter's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina,[7] the French stock exchange flooded the monarchies with Austrian bonds hitherto held towards it.
All in all, German capitalism bolstered its influence. Under such conditions, the idea of an alliance in Central Europe was dreaded by Austria-Hungary. The war and the colossal expenses involved only tightened the noose with which German imperialism dragged behind in its triumphal chariot, its young colleague - or rather, much smaller brigand.
The current war has revived all the issues that had long been buried in Austria and which Hungary had resolved in barbaric manner, through police coercion. All the discontent arising from the oppression of the masses, but hidden to an extent by the bourgeoisies of the different ethnic groups, oppressed and oppressive - Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Ukrainian - and which they have tried to disguise with nationalist ideology, explodes, dealing a hard blow to the ailing organ of the state, which was finding it increasingly difficult to solve its own insoluble problems.
In this country exhausted by the length of the war, capitalism can no longer satisfy all its demands or solve all the questions it raises. Even at the beginning of the Brest-Litovsk talks, famine and the lack of raw materials took on a cataclysmic form. The Austrian krone's price has been aligned with that of the Russian rouble. Even Germany, called upon to help, has driven down the Austrian krone to cheaply supply itself with Hungarian agricultural products.
Attacked from all sides (from without, within and below), the state apparatus of the monarchies was unable to carry out "prison socialism", the policy that Germany had so well conducted.
The Emperor's letter - shown to be a lie on the matter of the Alsace-Lorraine - and on the double-dealing of the "pacifist" Czernin are both the result of pressure from all sides on the Austro-Hungarian government.[8] They are beginning to rattle the weakest of the European powers whose capitalist apparatus is most incapable of any resistance.
The ministerial crisis is grasping at straws in its feverish attempt to keep capitalist Austria-Hungary, already condemned, alive.
The Viennese newspaper Arbeiter Zeitung, a supporter of the idea of the "great Austrian power" and Austro-Hungarian capitalism, paints dark prospects for the sinister future of the monarchies: the official organ of Austrian and German social democracy offers the proletariat only the rescue of the monarchy as an alternative means of salvation against all the incredible evils and barbarity resulting from the war. We hope that the Austrian proletariat will disapprove of the policies of the party's leaders and will not struggle to save capitalism.[9]
The Austro-Hungarian army, already having its doubts, is tired of war. This was already revealed in 1915 when Brusilov[10] managed to push it back to the Carpathians where German troops had stopped it.[11] But the army could still maintain order inside the country as long as the proletariat did not spontaneously rebel in all regions. Hungarian troops barbarically repressed demonstrations by the Czech proletariat demanding peace and bread, while in Budapest, Czech troops got back at the Hungarians; in Croatia the insurrection of the poor was repressed by the Austrian troops in Linz and Vienna.
With the deepening of capitalism's decomposition, all these seemingly isolated demonstrations are becoming increasingly widespread. At the same time, the army is breaking down. Now, of the entire army, only four Tyrolean regiments remain reliable. The others are afflicted by the revolutionary contagion which has taken on the character of a real epidemic.
We cannot free ourselves from the evils and barbarism enflamed through war by following recommendations of the official journal of Austrian social democracy. This would be to avoid Charybdis in order to fall into Scylla, to replace one imperialism with another. The proletariat understands this despite all the efforts of its great leaders. That is why, at a time when the edifice of capitalism is threatening to collapse, it will try to preserve itself rather than the bourgeois state. It will leave the salvation of the "homeland" to those who wish to perpetuate the misfortune of the masses.
Naive were those who represented the international revolution as a solidarity strike in the early days of the Russian revolution, during the days of the "honeymoon" of the bourgeois and proletarian leaders of the time. The Russian revolution and a foreign policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat based on international revolution: that is the reality.
Austro-Hungarian capitalism, in breaking down, is no longer able to subdue the masses; it is unable to put up any real resistance. It is too weak to compete with the forces driving the proletariat to insurrection. This weakness is further aggravated by the fact that the bourgeoisie of all the dissatisfied ethnic groups which promote the disintegration of monarchies, aids the proletariat.
The bourgeoisies of the dominant and oppressed ethnic groups still have enough time to agree on how to prevent proletarian insurrection. But the crisis is brewing within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This is the first sign of the reality of the international revolution ripening within the Austro-Hungarian proletariat. The revolution cannot be triggered by external pressure, but once it has matured, it can no longer be suppressed. In no way do we share the fear that the Prussian soldier will crush the revolution.
Béla Kun
Notes
[1] Karl Franz-Josef of Habsburg-Lorraine (1887-1922): last emperor of Austria (22 Nov. 1916 - 12 Nov. 1918).
[2] Count von Czernin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary since December 22, 1916, resigned on April 14, 1918 as a result of the "Sixtus Affair": In March 1917 Emperor Charles had more or less considered the possibility of a negotiated peace with the French government through negotiations with the Belgian Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, arguing that he considered the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine legitimate. These secret approaches did not succeed, particularly because of Czernin's policy. On April 2, 1918, the latter gave a speech to the Vienna town council where he welcomed the alliance with Germany, then in the midst of an offensive, and where he was reckless enough to suggest that Clemenceau had made him peace offers. The latter retaliated by arguing that it was Austria, on the contrary, which since 1917 had been trying approaches in this direction and then made public a handwritten statement of 24 March 1917 in which Emperor Charles suggested that "if Germany refused to go down the path of reason, he would be forced to abandon his alliance to make a separate peace with the Entente". Faced with the crisis caused by Czernin's "fault" which made public the Emperor's duplicity towards Germany, Charles I had to publish a refutation that ended up placing Austria under the Reich's dependence.
[3] Sándor Wekerle (1848-1921): Hungarian politician, Hungarian Prime Minister on three occasions (1892-1895, 1906-1910 and 1917-1918), moderately reformist but largely manipulated by the Conservatives, resigned on 17 April 1918, he trained a new coalition government with István Tisza (1861-1918), opposing any extension of the electorate.
[4] Count Mihály Károlyi de Nagykároly (1875-1955): Hungarian aristocrat and politician, supporter of national autonomy for Hungary, he was President of the Hungarian Democratic Republic in 1918-1919.
[5] Social movement for the defence of rural interests, which originated in the first half of the 19th century.
[6] This customs dispute (known as "the Pig War") had used the ban on the import of pigs from Serbia as a pretext to protect the interests of Hungarian landowners.
[7] This annexation was formalized on October 5, 1908.
[8] On this "crisis" see note 2 above.
[9] The Austrian Social Democratic Party, under the leadership of Victor Adler (1852-1918), had joined in August 1914 under the banner of German militarism and the impotent Austro-Hungarian monarchy of Franz Joseph in the name of... defending the achievements of the working class! Victor Adler's own son, Friedrich Adler (1879-1960), in opposition to party policy, assassinated, the Prime Minister Count Stürgkh on 21 October 1916, who he believed was responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffocation of the parliament. The Social Democratic Party had the lowliness to condemn this act of "individual terrorism". Victor Adler went so far as to plead before the Psychiatric Disorders Court to excuse his son's action, even though he was proclaiming its political significance. Sentenced to death, then to 18 years of fortress, Friedrich Adler was finally pardoned by the revolution in 1918.
[10] Alexei Alexevich Brusilov (1853-1926): Russian general, famous commander during the First World War, joined the Soviet power during the civil war.
[11] Brusilov was then commander of the 8th Russian army on the southwest front in Galicia. He pushed the Austrians over 150 kilometres before having to turn back from the summer of 1915, partly in view of the defeats suffered elsewhere by the Russian army. Ironically, Brusilov commanded some of the most important future white generals in his army: Denikin, Kaledin and Kornilov!