The New Germany

by George Young

But one obvious result of this new alliance between Majoritarians and Independents in the Council system would have been the jettisoning of Majoritarian Ministers, such as Noske, Landsberg and Scheidemann, compromised by their complicity with reaction and the brutalities of the Frei-Corps. It was therefore not surprising that the full force of party pressure and of administrative authority was brought to bear on the Majoritarian parties to the agreement. Under this pressure, like good citizens and genuine Germans, they buckled up and broke down, repudiating the principle of parity. They offered instead a proportion of fourteen Majoritarians to ten Independents in the Central Council or a representation corresponding to the numerical proportion of parties in the gerrymandered Congress. These offers were refused, the Congress came to an end, and the pusillanimity and place-hunting of parliamentary politicians had ruined the revolution a second time. The first was when the Independents, under pressure from the Left, withdrew from the Coalition with the Majoritarians in December. The second was when the Majoritarians, under pressure from the Right, now in their turn withdrew from the reconstituted Coalition in May.

The Council was reconstituted with Majoritarians, and the Independents were thrown back upon the Communists and "direct action." The only course then left to the adherents of the Council movement was to perfect their organisations and wait until parliamentary government was overthrown, either by reaction or revolution. The first essential for such organisation was a general electoral system which would put the Councils on a regular basis and prevent such interference and intrigues as had preceded the previous Congress. The last meeting that I attended of the Plenary Assembly of Berlin Councils, the driving body of the movement, was occupied with discussing the crucial question as to who should be considered a workman and qualified to vote and stand for a Council. It was there tentatively agreed that a workman might have a few assistants without becoming an employer, and that scientists, experts, and such like connected with an industry, other than managers, directors and such, might count as workmen. On the other hand the Assembly had to adjourn for a time in disorder owing to protests against the presence of a police official as a delegate of the Democrats. It was clearly going to be difficult to express in terms of an electoral law a disability obvious enough in each individual case. The German workmen were ready to admit to equality anyone with any industrial productive status, who was not in the service of declared enemies of the Councils—such as the captains of industry or the Coalition Government. And so important is this suffrage question as a gauge of the liberality of the Council movement in Germany and of its distinction from Bolshevism, that I append as a footnote the regulation of the Berlin Executive Council, published previous to the Convention of the second Congress of Councils.[7]

This work of making the Council system really representative has been much hampered of late by the growing reaction which is still trying to break the neck of the movement by arresting its leaders, and impeding its development in every way. At the same time, schemes are being continually put forward by the less reactionary elements for drawing the teeth of the movement by "diddling" concessions. Among such may be counted the clauses "anchoring" the Councils in the Constitution. The word itself shows how rapidly the German politicians are picking up the devices of parliamentary democracy. Again and again, on the platform and in the Press, the workmen are assured that all is well with the Councils because they are "anchored" in the Constitution. What the workmen want is not to see them "anchored" so much as under way; but it is creditable diddling is that catchword, "anchored in the Constitution." And another diddling device is the electoral law advocated by the Majoritarians that the Government are trying to impose on the Councils, which would penetrate the movement with propertied interests and partition it up into regional areas.

Of late, indeed, the Council movement proper—the revolutionary movement—has been almost driven underground. The Central office of the Berlin Executive Council has been repeatedly raided, its leaders are continually being arrested, and its meetings broken up. At a conference of the Industrial Councils of Germany recently held (August 26th, 1919) at Halle from which all Majoritarians were excluded, the general tone was pessimistic. It was recognised that the German workman was not as a whole revolutionary in sentiment, that the mass movement to the Left that had marked the first months of reaction had to some extent been checked and that the Government policy of compromising with the Council movement had had some measure of success. No agreement could be reached at this conference, even on such primary questions of policy as to whether the Government proposals should be considered or whether the Trades Unions should be co-operated with. Finally, centres of the revolutionary movement were established at Halle and Leipzig.

From this it would seem that the revolutionary Council movement is just at present passing through a phase of depression due to the Government's diplomatic policy.

It will be seen that so far the German Councils are no political system, but only a surge of spontaneous self-government. If they can be really co-ordinated with the new political machinery, and if they can be concentrated on the economic reconstruction of Germany, it may be the salvation, not only of Germany but of Europe. For, though the years of war have accustomed us to looking on Germans as barbarians and better dead than alive, as a matter of fact this unattractive people is still, as it always has been, the sturdiest and steadiest of the workers of the world; and Germany is still the centre of gravity of the European social system. There can be no stability in Europe if the Germans are on strike. The consequences of driving the Russians into extremes are before us now in the worst menace to the existing social order since the peasants' rising of the Middle Ages. It will take much pressure to drive the German revolution into extremes, but if Germany once develops a real Bolshevism of its own, it will not be long before the rest of the Continent follows its example.

It is a national characteristic of us English to fight new ideas and institutions in principle abroad, while, in practice, we introduce them at home under different names. This has worked well on the whole. While reaction is occupied with damning and downing the novelty as an absurdity and atrocity introduced by the brutal and barbarous foreigner, real-politik finds that the same novelty, under some new name, helps production at home. Thus, while we fight the Soviets with military expeditions and poison gas, and the milder Räte-Republics of Germany with military missions and diplomatic notes, we work away at our Guild Socialism and our Shop Stewards' Committees, extend Whitley Councils to the Civil Service and Welfare Committees to the Navy, and even admit employés to joint control of our railways.

There is an English revolution not only impending, but in progress, and those to whom revolution means barricades and "Bolshevism" will be relieved to hear that the course of events, both in Germany and Russia, suggests that our British revolution is so well advanced that these stimulants of a revolution, that has stiffened and stagnated, will not be required. England, not being wholly, at all events for long, run by London clubs and political cliques, manages to achieve its political revolution by way of economic reconstruction, and it is doing this on the same principles as Germany, though by a different procedure. That is why it was as foolish for the British to try to upset the Council movement of the Berliners as it was for the Berliners to upset it among the Brunswickers and Bavarians.

Moreover, if the Councils can still be killed, the Germans themselves will eventually kill them by diddling concessions or by diplomatic compromises. For such compromises as those already put forward in Germany show a fatal ignorance of, or indifference to, the fundamental facts of this revolutionary movement. I much doubt whether the German revolutionary workmen and their political leaders, whether Independent or Communist, can ever be got to accept the Labour Chamber (Arbeitskammer) with its parity of representation between employers and employed; at all events, until the employer is represented by the State. And such "nationalisation "is only valued by the German workman as a preliminary to "socialisation." The workers are attached to the Council idea largely because it attacks the capitalist, and gives the workmen protection against him in a way the Union cannot. If the Councils are to be widened into a democracy including all classes, the power of private capital must first be broken or brought in bounds.

So desperate is the economic condition of the country that even the Employers' Associations of Berlin have declared in favour of a large measure of Council government. But this is an exception. The German ruling class, and their middle-class supporters, recognise that their class supremacy is challenged. They retort by attacking Council government as class government and, consequently, as undemocratic. The issue is represented as being between a Parliamentary democracy, as in England, and a Soviet despotism, as in Russia. It seems worth while, therefore, to the German ruling class to fight the revolution with its own weapon of violence, rather than face the risks of Council government; and this same view would doubtless be taken in England if the question of principle were raised. In the recent railway strike our Government, by appealing for national support against a leading section of Labour, did, in fact, go far to create a class war.