As The 100th
Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Approaches ... Some Remembrances
- Rosa Luxemburg, The Rose Of The Revolution- Mass Action (1911)
One will answer: The party executive has showed an unfortunate lack of initiative. Its call for action was not published until the 9th of August and therefore the meetings could first begin in the second half of August. To be sure, but must the party wait for the official call of the party executive? If today everyone in the party without exception sees the necessity for action against the world politics, cannot the local party organisations do something on their own initiative, like the Stuttgart comrades have done?[1] It is extraordinarily easy to put the blame on the party executive, who for their part may really have acted with a lack of determination and energy. However, a no smaller part of the blame is to be put on those who always expect all salvation from above and even in such clear and indubitable cases shy away from a little self-activity and personal initiative. Of course campaigns of the party on this scale re quire uniformity and unity in order to be most effective, which can be best brought about from a centre. In this respect, especially the example of several old centres of the party movement, who would rouse all the remaining local organisations, would certainly not miss their mark. To be sure, also the party executive, as leading centre, would soon see itself forced to generalise every massive initiative and good beginning by making itself the mouthpiece and tool of the will of the party, instead of, as now, the other way round, the party executive viewing the great and powerful party organisations as being just an instrument for carrying out the instructions of the party executive.
It must also be said openly: only when there is a reversal of the present abnormal relations would life within the party first stand on a normal footing. It is stated in the Communist Manifesto that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself and it understands by the working class not a party executive of seven or twelve but the enlightened mass of the proletariat in person. Every step forward in the struggle for emancipation of the working class must at the same time mean a growing intellectual independence of its mass, its growing self-activity, self-determination and initiative. How should the capability of action and political quickwittedness of the broad popular masses develop if the vanguard of these masses, the best and most enlightened sections united in the Social-Democratic Party organisations, exhibit for their part no initiative and independence as masses, on the contrary, always be at the ready until a command is issued from above? Discipline and unity of action is a vital matter for mass movements like ours.
However, discipline in the Social-Democratic sense differs fundamentally from the discipline of the bourgeois armed forces. There it is based on the unthinking and submissive subordination of the bulk of the soldiers to the command of authority expressing an outside will. Social-Democratic discipline can only mean the subordination of every individual to the will and the thought of the great majority. Therefore Social-Democratic discipline can never mean that eight hundred thousand organised party members have to bow to the will and regulations of a central authority of a party executive but the opposite, all central organs of the party having to carry out the will of the eight hundred thousand organised social democrats. Important for the normal development of the political life in the party, a vital matter for the Social-Democracy, is therefore based on always keeping the political thought and the will of the mass of the party awake and active, and thus enabling them in increasing measure to be active. We have, of course, the yearly party conference as highest instance which regularly fixes the will of the whole party. However, it is obvious that the party conferences can only give general outlines of the tactics for the Social-Democratic struggle. The application of these guidelines in practice requires a constant, untiring thought, quick-wittedness and initiative. The decisions of the party conferences obviously do not in the slightest exhaust the regular tasks of the political struggle, for life does not stand still, and from one party conference to the other many things take place in heaven and earth to which the party must react. To want to make a party executive responsible for the whole enormous task of daily political vigilance and initiative on whose command a party organisation of almost a million passively waits, is the most in correct thing there is from the standpoint of the proletarian class struggle. That is without doubt that reprehensible “blind obedience” which our opportunists definitely want to see in the self-evident subordination of all to the decisions of the whole party.
One can often hear in our ranks complaints about the bureaucratism of our highest party authorities that is said to be killing the living political energy. These complaints are also totally justified. Just those who express them surely take little account of the fact that to a large extent the lamented state has its roots in the nature of things. Every body with daily official office work tends to fall into bureaucratism and routine. Besides, such high-ranking bodies naturally have a strongly developed feeling of responsibility that unquestionably has a strongly paralysing effect on initiative and determination. A real remedy against this bad state of affairs is only the living political activity of the entire party. The most ideal party executive of a party like the social democracy would be the one that would function as the most obedient, most prompt and most precise tool of the will of the entire party. However, the most ideal party executive would be able to achieve nothing, would involuntarily sink into bureaucratic inefficiency if the natural source of its energy, the will of the party, does not make itself felt, if critical thought, the mass of the party’s own initiative is sleeping. In fact it is more than this. If its own energy, the independent intellectual life of the mass of the party, is not active enough, then the central authorities have the quite natural tendency to not only bureaucratically rust but also to get a totally wrong idea of their own official authority and position of power with respect to the party. The most recent so-called “secret decree” of our party executive to the party editorial staffs[2] can serve as fresh proof, an attempt to make decisions for the party press, which cannot be sharply enough rejected. However, also here it is necessary to make clear: Against both inefficiency and excessive illusions of power of the central authorities of the labour movement there is no other way except one’s own initiative, one’s own thought, and the own fresh pulsating political life of the broad mass of the party.
The questions touched upon here are of more than academic interest in the current situation. It has been recognised from different sides in the party that the current state of the party executive needs to be improved, an extension and renewal of our highest party authorities is seen to be necessary. Recently our Elberfeld organ also wrote like that on the occasion of the Morocco debate:
The events leading up to World War I from the massive
military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in
Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of
the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges by the Social-Democrats
and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the
international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the
approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. The ability
to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first
portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial
might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th
century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow
exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.
The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon
fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for
the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried
out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the
race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany
tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried
to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare
wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other
such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred
years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers
and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched
fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or
nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt
before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss
in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything
concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included
the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was
committed to stopping the madness. A few voices were raised and one hundred
years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Over the next period as we lead up to the 100th
anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline
post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in
order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle
against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive
struggles in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
********
Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of
his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, had been
the first machine-tenders in Manchester and had been workers like him and his
father in the London shipbuilding trade. He knew deep in his blood there was an
“us” and “them” in the world without his party, the Labor Party, having to tell
him word one on the subject. He had even read Karl Marx in his early teens when
he was trying to figure out why his family was stuck in the faraway outer
tenements with their squalor and their human closeness (he never could get over
being in close quarters ever since then). So yes he was ready to listen to what
some left members of the party had to say if the war clouds on the horizon
turned any darker. But, and hear him true, his was like his forbears and his
father before him as loyal a man as to be found in the country. Loyal to his
king (queen too if it came to that) and his country. So he would have to think,
think carefully, about what to do if those nasty Huns and their craven allies
making loud noises of late threatened his way of life. Most of his mates to the
extent that they had any opinion were beginning to be swept up in the idea that
a little war might not be such a bad thing to settle some long smoldering
disputes. Still he, Teddy Martin, was not a man to be rushed and so he would
think, think hard, about what to do if there was a mass mobilization.
No question, thought Teddy Martin, his majesty’s government had
gotten itself into a hard situation ever since that mangy Archduke somebody had
got himself shot by a guy, a damn anarchist working with who knows who, maybe
freemasons, over in Sarajevo, over in someplace he was not quite sure he knew
where it was if somebody had asked him to point it out in a map. That seemingly
silly little act (except of course to the Archduke and his wife also killed) apparently
has exposed Britain, damn the whole British Empire that they claim the sun
never sets on, to some pretty serious entanglements because if France were to go
to war with Austria or someplace like that then the king is duty bound to come to
France’s rescue. And Teddy Martin as thinking man, as a working man, as a member
in good standing of the Labor Party ever since its inception was still not sure
what he would do. Not sure that he would follow the war cries being shouted out
by the likes of Arthur Henderson from his own party. All he knew was that the usual
talk of football or the prizefights that filled the air at his pub, The Cock and
Bull, was being supplanted by war talk, by talk of taking a nip out of the
Germans and those who spoke in that way were gaining a hearing. All Teddy knew
was that it was getting harder and harder for him to openly express thoughts
that he needed to think about the issues more. That was not a good sign, not a
good omen.
********
The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein
everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one
hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for
unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and
against the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state
as well as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days)
and brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this
number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the
votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the
Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him
a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member
of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two
lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him.
Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom
he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational
attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he
worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were
deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped
that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at
Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely.
He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all.
********
Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the
revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of
the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate
cutthroats Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist
delegation in his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with
the damn city bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans
had, and not done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed
Commune. Also Jacques had long memories of his long past forbears who had come
from Alsace-Lorraine now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that
there were war clouds gathering daily over his head, over his district and over
his beloved Paris.
But that was not what
was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his
bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small
pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid
off from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would
know what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to
which he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told
them enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they
decided to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered
Jacques was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of
that same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques
something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man
(he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told
one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that
he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble
was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such
rash actions by their sons just then.
*******
George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in
the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his
America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from
Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not
just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young
clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George
was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things
were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington
Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing
trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye
on the situation in Europe for the folks.
And with all of that information here is what George
Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended
to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct
interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on
Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European
affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding
their own business. See also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself, the
Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat skeptical
about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed that
Brother Debs would help keep us out of war.
********
Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few
times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass
kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his
crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if
the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but
overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval
war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution
of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer
had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face the fate
of his comrades on the Potemkin his
naval career was over.
Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able
to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think.
And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in
the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan
knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know
that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and
good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future
peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought
out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly
head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there
was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a
kid.
********Mass Action
(1911)
Written: August 1911 in Leipzig.
Source: Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Vol.3.
Publisher: Dietz, Berlin 1973, 4th edition.
First Published: Leipziger Volkszeitung, No.199, 29th August 1911.
Translated: Dave Hollis.
Online Version: mea 1994; marxists.org 1999.
Transcription: Dave Hollis/Brian Baggins.
Source: Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Vol.3.
Publisher: Dietz, Berlin 1973, 4th edition.
First Published: Leipziger Volkszeitung, No.199, 29th August 1911.
Translated: Dave Hollis.
Online Version: mea 1994; marxists.org 1999.
Transcription: Dave Hollis/Brian Baggins.
Introduction
This is one of many articles that Rosa Luxemburg wrote on and around the question of the ‘Agadir incident’.
This incident was sparked off by Germany’s attempt to spread her influence over the whole of Morocco. In view of the possibilities of a war breaking out on this issue, the French Socialists took this incident as grounds for wanting an international demonstration for Socialism. The French requested a meeting through the International Socialist Bureau of the Social-Democratic organisations of those countries involved in this incident, France, Spain, the UK and Germany. With the exception of Germany, all participants were in agreement. A full time secretary of the SPD party executive, Hermann Molkenbuhr, informed the International Socialist Bureau, however, that the Germans did not want a conference “for the time being”.
Molkenbuhr considered the Morocco incident to be of no danger. The interests of the various German Steel companies, Mannesmann on the one side, and Krupp and Thyssen in a French mining syndicate on the other, would lead the capitalists to putting on the brakes soon enough. Furthermore, he considered that taking up the issue would lead to a diversion from the internal issues and therefore damage the chances of the SPD in the coming general election.
As was often the case, the rank and file of the SPD was more radical than the leadership and saw things differently. They took up the question in the run up to the elections. In Berlin and in the large cities of Prussia the rank and file held protest meetings against the sending of the warships, Panther and Berlin, to Agadir.
Rosa Luxemburg, as a member of the International Secretariat, had received a copy of Molkenbuhr’s letter. Obviously very unhappy with its content, she published it on 24th July 1911 in the newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung, with a withering criticism from herself.
The publication of the letter caused an uproar in the party, published in the middle of an international crisis and before the party executive had done anything, it brought the dissatisfaction with the party executive to the boil. This revelation forced the executive on 9th August to begin the agitation on the Morocco question. It did not, however, pacify the membership.
At the Jena Conference, the party executive tried to make out of a ‘Morocco’ affair a ‘Luxemburg’ affair, accusing her of disloyalty and indiscretion. This attack backfired. The centrists sided with the ‘lefts’ around Rosa Luxemburg and the party reform went through. Two new secretary posts came into being, and the post of co-chairman went to a prominent left centrist, Hugo Haase, who replaced the deceased Paul Singer.
The article gives us a very interesting insight into Rosa Luxemburg’s views on the question of party organisation and her attitude to what has gone down in the literature as her views on ‘spontaneity’. These views are not only of historical interest but also for the current debates within the labour movement, both nationally and internationally.
The article also gives a small insight into the workings of the SPD. I suspect that it is generally unknown that the SPD was quite a centralised party. It was no accident, for instance, that the attempts by the Bolsheviks to export the Bolshevik methods of organisation, epitomised by the 21 Conditions for entry into the Third International, met with enormous resistance from those members of the CP who stemmed from the SPD. Their bad experiences with centralism led to the KPD, for a few years, being an extremely democratic party. But that is another story!
Dave Hollis
|
Again the Masses and Leaders
News is coming in from all sides about the meetings and demonstrations organised by our party against the foreign policy and the Morocco line. The popular masses are answering our appeal everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm, and this proves how much we have met the feelings and mood of the masses by giving them a political expression, solution and direction. Now only one opinion predominates in the whole of the party, that a mass action against the Morocco affair and an energetic agitation in the field of foreign policy was an irrefutable task of Social-Democracy and an urgent necessity.
And now the question immediately posed by this: Why was this campaign not begun one or two months ago? The dispatch of the German gunboat to Agadir, with which Germany officially intervened in the Morocco affair, took place on the 2nd of July. Already in the first week of July, the protest of the French and Spanish Socialists was in full swing. Instead of immediately initiating at that time the agitation with all one’s might, we are bringing up the rear and dragging ourselves along in the wake of events and are at least one to one and a half months too late. In this important case our political quick-wittedness has left a lot to be desired. Why?One will answer: The party executive has showed an unfortunate lack of initiative. Its call for action was not published until the 9th of August and therefore the meetings could first begin in the second half of August. To be sure, but must the party wait for the official call of the party executive? If today everyone in the party without exception sees the necessity for action against the world politics, cannot the local party organisations do something on their own initiative, like the Stuttgart comrades have done?[1] It is extraordinarily easy to put the blame on the party executive, who for their part may really have acted with a lack of determination and energy. However, a no smaller part of the blame is to be put on those who always expect all salvation from above and even in such clear and indubitable cases shy away from a little self-activity and personal initiative. Of course campaigns of the party on this scale re quire uniformity and unity in order to be most effective, which can be best brought about from a centre. In this respect, especially the example of several old centres of the party movement, who would rouse all the remaining local organisations, would certainly not miss their mark. To be sure, also the party executive, as leading centre, would soon see itself forced to generalise every massive initiative and good beginning by making itself the mouthpiece and tool of the will of the party, instead of, as now, the other way round, the party executive viewing the great and powerful party organisations as being just an instrument for carrying out the instructions of the party executive.
It must also be said openly: only when there is a reversal of the present abnormal relations would life within the party first stand on a normal footing. It is stated in the Communist Manifesto that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself and it understands by the working class not a party executive of seven or twelve but the enlightened mass of the proletariat in person. Every step forward in the struggle for emancipation of the working class must at the same time mean a growing intellectual independence of its mass, its growing self-activity, self-determination and initiative. How should the capability of action and political quickwittedness of the broad popular masses develop if the vanguard of these masses, the best and most enlightened sections united in the Social-Democratic Party organisations, exhibit for their part no initiative and independence as masses, on the contrary, always be at the ready until a command is issued from above? Discipline and unity of action is a vital matter for mass movements like ours.
However, discipline in the Social-Democratic sense differs fundamentally from the discipline of the bourgeois armed forces. There it is based on the unthinking and submissive subordination of the bulk of the soldiers to the command of authority expressing an outside will. Social-Democratic discipline can only mean the subordination of every individual to the will and the thought of the great majority. Therefore Social-Democratic discipline can never mean that eight hundred thousand organised party members have to bow to the will and regulations of a central authority of a party executive but the opposite, all central organs of the party having to carry out the will of the eight hundred thousand organised social democrats. Important for the normal development of the political life in the party, a vital matter for the Social-Democracy, is therefore based on always keeping the political thought and the will of the mass of the party awake and active, and thus enabling them in increasing measure to be active. We have, of course, the yearly party conference as highest instance which regularly fixes the will of the whole party. However, it is obvious that the party conferences can only give general outlines of the tactics for the Social-Democratic struggle. The application of these guidelines in practice requires a constant, untiring thought, quick-wittedness and initiative. The decisions of the party conferences obviously do not in the slightest exhaust the regular tasks of the political struggle, for life does not stand still, and from one party conference to the other many things take place in heaven and earth to which the party must react. To want to make a party executive responsible for the whole enormous task of daily political vigilance and initiative on whose command a party organisation of almost a million passively waits, is the most in correct thing there is from the standpoint of the proletarian class struggle. That is without doubt that reprehensible “blind obedience” which our opportunists definitely want to see in the self-evident subordination of all to the decisions of the whole party.
One can often hear in our ranks complaints about the bureaucratism of our highest party authorities that is said to be killing the living political energy. These complaints are also totally justified. Just those who express them surely take little account of the fact that to a large extent the lamented state has its roots in the nature of things. Every body with daily official office work tends to fall into bureaucratism and routine. Besides, such high-ranking bodies naturally have a strongly developed feeling of responsibility that unquestionably has a strongly paralysing effect on initiative and determination. A real remedy against this bad state of affairs is only the living political activity of the entire party. The most ideal party executive of a party like the social democracy would be the one that would function as the most obedient, most prompt and most precise tool of the will of the entire party. However, the most ideal party executive would be able to achieve nothing, would involuntarily sink into bureaucratic inefficiency if the natural source of its energy, the will of the party, does not make itself felt, if critical thought, the mass of the party’s own initiative is sleeping. In fact it is more than this. If its own energy, the independent intellectual life of the mass of the party, is not active enough, then the central authorities have the quite natural tendency to not only bureaucratically rust but also to get a totally wrong idea of their own official authority and position of power with respect to the party. The most recent so-called “secret decree” of our party executive to the party editorial staffs[2] can serve as fresh proof, an attempt to make decisions for the party press, which cannot be sharply enough rejected. However, also here it is necessary to make clear: Against both inefficiency and excessive illusions of power of the central authorities of the labour movement there is no other way except one’s own initiative, one’s own thought, and the own fresh pulsating political life of the broad mass of the party.
The questions touched upon here are of more than academic interest in the current situation. It has been recognised from different sides in the party that the current state of the party executive needs to be improved, an extension and renewal of our highest party authorities is seen to be necessary. Recently our Elberfeld organ also wrote like that on the occasion of the Morocco debate:
“At least one must agree with the Leipziger Volkszeitung that the party executive should have taken the initiative for a campaign.
“Well, we are also quite convinced after a closer examination of the matter that the sin of the party executive of failing to do something must be judged more mildly. The administrative machinery of the party has become so extensive that the number of members of the party leadership is no longer enough to fulfil all the requirements that are to be made on it as seems necessary. The gap left by Comrade Singer has not been filled; if we add to this the case that a member of the party executive or even two may well be outside of Berlin for the carrying out of party business or for agitation, a further member were to be ill, a fourth and fifth were on holiday – certainly nobody would want to deny the very busy members of the party executive that – it cannot fail to happen that a small minority has to decide on sudden appearing, important questions and that these questions would have sometimes have been dealt with differently if the whole of the executive had got together. The contradiction is also certainly to be explained by this dilemma that the letter of the party executive[3] is described by the party office as being the private opinion of the letter writer while it was naturally received outside as a letter of the party executive. The Jena party conference will have to decide a strengthening of the party executive. A motion has already been put on this matter by two constituencies – Tetlow-Beeskow and Berlin I.”
The view expressed here of the necessity of strengthening the party executive is perfectly correct and the party conference must not be allowed to shirk from its important task in this field. If our party pacifies itself with the strengthening of the party executive and again passively expects all salvation from the “new men”, as for example it passively waited one and a half months for the conductor’s baton of the party executive for the unfolding of the protest action against the Morocco affair, it would merely mean wanting to come up with purely bureaucratic means against the evil of bureaucratism. No party executive in the world can replace the mass of the party’s own energy, and an organisation of a million which, at a great time and in the face of great tasks, would want to complain that it did not have the right leaders would prove its own shortcomings, because it would prove it has not understood the historical essence itself of the proletarian class struggle that consists in the proletarian masses not needing “leaders” in a bourgeois sense, that they are themselves leaders.
Footnotes
[1] On 15th July 1911, a protest gathering took place in Stuttgart at which Karl Liebknecht was the mover of a resolution against German imperialism’s Morocco policies, which was unanimously adopted.
[2] On 8th August 1911, the SPD party executive wrote a confidential circular to the editorial boards of the party press to try to stop them publishing criticisms of the leading trade union bodies and articles on differences in the book printers’ union that had been caused by anti-worker decisions of their executive. The party membership found out about the circular through a bourgeois paper in Saxony into whose hands the circular had fallen. The contents of the circular led to a considerable amount of displeasure in the party over the actions of the party executive.
3] The paper is refering to Molkenbuhr’s letter.
