From the very outset, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this work, the Spartacans were determined to impose the soviet form of government upon Germany. Later on the Independent Socialists also threw off their parliamentary mask and joined in the demand for the Räterepublik on the Bolshevist model. There were some leaders of the Majority Socialist Party who were willing to consider a combination of parliamentarism and sovietism, but most of the older leaders, including Ebert, had no sympathy with the idea. They were Socialists, but also democrats. When it began to become apparent to the advocates of the soviet system that they were in the minority, they raised a demand that the workmen's council should be "anchored" in the constitution. The framers of that document did not take the demand seriously, and the draft prepared for presentation to the National Assembly after the adoption of the provisional constitution made no reference to the councils.
The extremer Socialists, however, renewed their original demand, and even the more conservative leaders of the parent party, much against their will, saw themselves compelled for partisan political reasons to support the demand. The result was article 165, inserted in the draft in June.
This article begins by declaring that workmen and other wage-earners have equal rights with their employers in determining wage and working conditions and in coöperating "in the entire economic development of productive powers." It provides that they shall, for the protection of their social and economic interests, have the right to be represented through workmen's shop councils (Betriebsarbeiterräte), as well as in district workmen's councils (Bezirksarbeiterräte), and in a national workmen's council (Reichsarbeiterrat). The district and national councils combine with the representatives of the employers "and other interested circles of the people" to form district economic councils (Bezirkswirtschaftsräte), and a national economic council (Reichswirtschaftsrat). "The district economic councils and the national economic council are to be so constituted that all important groups of interests are represented in proportion to their economic and social importance."
"Politico-social and politico-economic bills of fundamental importance shall, before their introduction, be laid by the government of the Reich before the national economic council for its consideration and report. The national economic council has the right to propose such bills itself. If the government does not approve of them, it must nevertheless lay them before the Reichstag, together with a statement of its attitude. The national economic council is empowered to have the bill advocated before the Reichstag by one of its members.
"Powers of control and administration can be conferred upon the workmen's and economic councils over matters lying in their sphere of action."
Thus the "anchor" of the workmen's councils in the German constitution. It is difficult to find in it the importance assigned to it by the Socialists. The national council has, in the last analysis, only such power as the Reichstag may choose to confer upon it. There was no sharp opposition to the article from the bourgeois parties, doubtless due in large part to the fact that, even long before the revolution, the right of workmen to combine and negotiate as organizations with their employers was recognized by everybody, and that Germany, with less than two-thirds of the population of the United States, has roundly three times as many organized workmen. In the circumstance, article 165 did not bring any really revolutionary change.
The foregoing is a brief outline of the more important features of the constitution of the German Republic. Considering all the attendant circumstances of its birth—the apathy of the people, the weakness of the government, the disruption of the Germans into factions which bitterly hated and opposed each other, the savage conditions of the peace, following the crushing conditions of the armistice, the disappearance from the political field of most of the trained minds of the old empire, the strength of the elements inspired by purely materialistic and egoistic aims or by a naive trust in the internationalists of other lands, the constant pressure from the enemy—the framers and proponents of the constitution accomplished a national deed of dignity and worth. They might easily have done much worse; it is impossible for one who watched the developments of those trying days to assert that they could have done much better.
(The author's acknowledgments are due as to this chapter to Dr. Hugo Preuss, for valuable information as to the course of the deliberations of the various constitutional commissions and for interpretations of the constitution, and to Dr. Fremont A. Higgins, A.M., LL.B. (Columbia), J.U.D. (University of Kiel), who generously gave the benefit of his wide knowledge of German law and bibliography.)