Lucifer: Spinoza, a precursor of dialectical materialism

“On November 24, 1932, the 300th anniversary of Spinoza’s birth was celebrated. Spinoza was one of the greatest thinkers and boldest pioneers in liberating humanity from religious and clerical superstition. If the rising proletariat is capable of raising and appropriating the deepest cultural treasures of the past and assimilating and developing all the great achievements of humanity into a unified worldview of dialectical materialism, then this applies to no philosophy more than to Spinozism. However, Spinozism’s historical fate shows the same process as almost every ideology that fights ruthlessly against existing tradition, drawing its strength from its radical, revolutionary core. First, it is hated to death by the prevailing opinion of the ruling class. Then, it is gradually robbed of its true core, smoothed over by compromises, made palatable by additions, and swallowed with a sweet or sour expression. This was also the fate of the core component of Spinozist doctrine: materialism. It was “transformed” into idealistic monism, whereby the outer shell of Spinoza’s ideas was retained—the eggshells of traditional opinions he had not yet discarded. This feat was reserved for the established, reactionary bourgeois philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries, though some social democratic “critics” were involved as well. Consequently, Spinoza is now praised by bourgeois philosophers who condemn materialism as hell’s worst creation. Even the obscurantists, Jesuits, and rabbis who once hired assassins to kill the philosopher are joining this chorus. (…)

Source

Lucifer, Spinoza, ein Vorläufer des dialektischen Materialismus in Proletarier, 1933.
English: Lucifer, Spinoza, a precursor of dialectical materialism.

GCF: The national and colonial problem (1946)

“(…) In any case, mainly in the colonial countries, when a colonial bourgeoisie tends to emancipate itself from the metropolis, even through revolutionary means and even if it really believes it can achieve its autonomy, [it] can only fall back, in the present period, before the fact of the dependence of this or that imperialist block. Even if the initial objective is an emancipatory and autonomous struggle, it can in no way remain so and must fall under the control of a great imperialism.

Position on this problem for the future Revolution

On the contrary, the proletarian revolution emerges as a phenomenon tending to destroy the bourgeois state and with it the very idea of Nationalism. The proletarian revolution is, every time it occurs in history, a profound international earthquake that puts the bourgeois world in danger only to the extent that it becomes aware of its strength as an international revolutionary power; and that finds itself defeated and regressed as the state and nation, either by force or ideologically, regain control of their proletariat. Looking at the problem from this perspective, every struggle with a national character is not progressive, even and especially in a period of revolutionary upsurge.

The Communist International (CI), in considering the problem, argued that any movement with a separatist tendency would inevitably tend to weaken the metropolis and create social unrest. But this is to look at the problem from the backside, and that is what the CI did when it saw revolutions or insurrections in colonial or semi-colonial countries. (…)”

Source

‘Internationalisme’ (GCF) The National and Colonial Problem (1946)

Introduction of the working time account: act or process?

In 1932, the GIC wrote, as Jan Appel did in 1927, about the starting point of this process: “As soon as the rule of the working class has become a fact in an industrialized country, the proletariat is confronted with the task of carrying through the transformation of economic life on new foundations, those of communal labor.” ^[1] And in 1930, the GIC was clear about the moment of introduction of the working time account: “The victorious working class, through its Council Congress, calls on all its class comrades in the cities and countryside to take all companies under their own management and control, based on the following principles: 1. Money will be declared worthless from a certain date, and the working hour will be introduced as the new unit of account. 2. All companies determine the production time of their products. 3. Similar companies immediately join forces to determine the socially average production time of their product.With this, the entire economy has transitioned to communist production, and all means of production have been socialized: they have been transferred to the community. (For a more detailed consideration of the working time account, we refer to the essay ‘Aantekeningen over communistische economie’ …).” 

Source

G.I.C. De ontwikkeling van het boerenbedrijf – ontwikkelingslijnen in de landbouw (1930), will be published soon in English translation.

Henriette Roland Holst, Proletarian Revolution and Violence (1918)

“(…) As long as the bourgeoisie is in power, the proletariat naturally has no opportunity for general arming and training of its supporters, that is, for the creation of a powerful military organization. The main means of violence are always in the hands of the rulers and the highest that an underlying class can achieve is the creation of smaller or larger volunteer corps, as has been done in Ireland, for example. These corps will, of course, always be far behind the regular armies in technical, military strength. So long as they remain a tool in the hands of their owners, there can be no question of victory. It is otherwise when a large part of the army is won over to the revolutionary idea. Under certain circumstances, the actions of such corps can then cause the psychological shock which leads the soldiers to refuse service en mass and to defect to the revolutionaries, just as we saw happening every time in the bourgeois revolution.15 In that case, the violence of arms is comparable to a gust of wind that knocks down a building which is outwardly still intact but internally already moldy and decayed. What is decisive for the probability of inflicting such a blow is not the strength of the revolutionary-military organization, but the entire situation and especially the mood of the popular masses. Even without, or almost without, arms, a mass will be able to throw the punch if only the dissolution of the old regime has progressed far enough and the spirit of resistance in the army is widespread enough. Thus, the revolt of the unarmed working masses in Petrograd in February 1917 dealt the autocratic regime the final blow because part of the army refused to shoot at the people at the very beginning of the disturbances and took sides with the people against the tsarist police. Soon example aroused several regiments to defect to the provisional government; after a struggle of several days with the few parts of the army that remained loyal to the old rulers, all of Petrograd was in the hands of the revolutionaries.

Similarly, we believe that in the proletarian revolution, violence will continue to be the touchstone by which the rotting of the institutions and the entire apparatus of power of the old ruling class will be exposed. But it is then never more than a brief episode in the general flow of revolutionary events, made inevitable by the military organization of the old rulers, rather than planned and prepared by the organs of the revolutionary class. And this makes a tremendous difference. It is quite another thing to recognize that violence in certain situations when a revolutionary climax is reached can become the spark that ignites moral forces like bundles of straw, than to regard it as the main factor to victory and prepare systematically for it. Even in the transitional period, usually referred to as proletarian dictatorship, the organization and use of armed force after the initial16 victory of the proletarian masses will not, in our opinion, be the strong, but rather the weak, side of the new class government. We want to illustrate this again by the struggle against foreign imperialism, that is, a war in the ordinary sense of the word, because this example is the most telling. In the struggle against domestic imperialism, civil war, the situation is essentially the same, only the technical-organizational factors are of even less weight, while the psychic ones are of even greater weight. The sacrifices which the preparation for war and the war itself require of nations in our day are so immoderately great and so unbearably heavy that they deprive life of much of its value. A nation that prepares for war or wages war with all its might cannot be a prosperous nation. It is compelled to reduce its material and spiritual needs to the utmost, to neglect all institutions of civilization and hygiene, in short, all the works of life, to waste its material resources and its spiritual powers on the organization of the works of death. A free people cannot want all this; it CANNOT give up everything it imagined it would achieve by the conquest of freedom to defend freedom or bring it to others. The masses fighting for socialism sacrifice themselves in this struggle animated by the hope that when they have defeated the ruling class, they will live happily in a socialist society, free from worries and afflictions, free from distress, pressure, and excessive labor. To fatten with the fruits of their labor the insatiable monster called militarism – to impose on themselves the oppressive yoke of military service – to renounce their political rights, the democracy finally achieved, to transfer the authority they themselves exercise to a few so that the latter will as of old arbitrarily decide the lives and destinies of the many – the masses will not be in favor of all this. The present military machinery can only be built, and function based on the power of the imperialist class; with this it collapses, and all attempts made on the revolutionary proletarian side to reestablish it in its former strength will end in relative failure. (17)

____

(17) While the Soviet government has achieved admirable results in the political and economic reconstruction of Russia, despite overwhelming difficulties it has so far failed to raise a “red army” of real significance (that is, in proportion to the vastness and resources of the republic). The enemies of the Soviet government accuse it of self-power; that may be true in numerous minor matters; in the great vital interests of the people, it faithfully carries out the popular will and this is the reason why the people remain loyal to it. Thus, despite the worst provocations of the German robbers, the Soviet government persists in her attitude of “no war with Germany,” while all the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties insist on the resumption of the war. The masses want to preserve peace at all costs.”

Source

Henriette Roland Holst – Van der Schalk, The means of struggle of social revolution (1918), Ch. 6 Proletarian Revolution and Violence.

Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils (1948)

“When we say that, (…) war is inseparable from capitalism, that war can only disappear with capitalism itself, this does not mean that war against war is of no use and that we have to wait till capitalism has been destroyed. It means that the fight against war is inseparable from fight against capitalism. War against war can be effective only as part of the workers’ class war against capitalism.

If the question is raised whether it is possible to forestall a threatening war, it is pre-supposed that there is a conflict between government, invested with power and authority on war and peace, and the masses of the population, especially the working class. Their voting power is without effect since it works only on election day; parliaments and Congresses are part of the ruling Power. So the question comes down to this: Have the workers, and in a wider sense the people’s masses, at the moment of danger the possibility, by other than parliamentary means, to enforce their peace-will upon the war-preparing rulers? They have. If such a will actually lives within them, if they are prepared to stand with resolute conviction for their aim. Their form of fight then consists in direct mass-actions.”

Source

Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils, Part V. The Peace (1947), Toward a New War.

Paul Mattick, Notes on the war question (1936)

“… The war – whether the one in Africa or the coming world war – has no other immediate significance for the workers than that a part of them will be killed off in the most revolting manner and that as a class, insofar as they are not slaughtered, they will be immeasurably impoverished. War, bringing death and misery to the workers, cannot from the working-class standpoint be bade welcome. But the preponderant working masses have today no class standpoint of their own; they are under the way of the bourgeois ideology and follow the movements of their masters, willingly or unwillingly ready to suffer and die for them.

Our standpoint is not that of the working masses but of a small part of their more or less class-conscious elements. We don’t, however, damn the working class because of the circumstance that it is again making ready on an international scale to go under in millions for Capital. We realize that the ideas of a time are always those of the ruling class, and we know the objective as well as the subjective grounds which, for the moment, repress the revolutionary nature of the proletariat and which cause it to continue waging war for Capital, just as it also works for Capital.

The causes of the revolutionary unripeness of the proletariat shall not concern us at this place; we make these statements merely in order to draw the conclusion that the international working class will not, in the near future, through revolutionary overturns, put an end to capitalism and its wars. In this case, there remains to the proletariat nothing other than to go along with capitalist policy; it has to decide for this or that capitalist group of interests and to fight for it.

What the proletariat would have to do in its own interests – that is, prevent the war – is possible only through the revolutionary setting aside of capitalism. Still, the improbability of a revolution prior to the coming war makes the war certain already, and if the proletariat takes part in the war, it will do so not with a special ideology but that of its bourgeoisie. In such circumstances, the great mass of the workers will no doubt, just like the bourgeoisie, line up against revolutionists, and for these latter there will be for a time no other working possibility than such as exists under the present-day german fascism (…)”

Source

Paul Mattick, Notes on the War Question (1936).

Anton Pannekoek against imperialist war as an economic necessity and the automatic collapse of capitalism 

“… the battle of the tendencies revolves around the question of whether imperialism is necessary. We say with Rosa Luxemburg: it is necessary. Likewise, the bourgeois imperialists and their supporters among the social democrats say: it is necessary. What do we mean and what do they mean? The latter say: It is a necessary stage in the development towards socialism; therefore we must not oppose it; it increases the productivity of labor and leads to a higher development of productive forces; therefore it is necessary. On the other hand, the Kautsky direction says: it is not necessary.”

“They [the Kautsky direction] emphasize that imperialism is the policy of “heavy” industry, which produces means of production, the policy of the gentlemen of the cartels and syndicates, as opposed  to all other industry, which produces consumables, needs peaceful markets and is jeopardized by the imperialist policy of violence. Imperialism is therefore, in the opinion of the party center, not necessary for capitalism as a whole, but a one-sided policy of interests of a part, a group, at the expense of the others and therefore unnatural. It must therefore be possible to prevent this policy and to replace it with a “natural” capitalist policy which is in the interests of the other groups, and much more in the interests of the workers. Thus, joining forces with anti-imperialist groups from the bourgeoisie in order to achieve peace and disarmament.”

Not “… because capitalism brought about greater productivity: the benefits of this were almost entirely for capital. Nor because of the concentration and education of the workers – no class knowingly imposes on itself heavier burdens, more inhumane conditions, just to become ‘better’, i.e. more suitable for its future task”

“The question is whether capitalism would become economically impossible by its own forces, thus forcing the people to switch to another mode of production. This line of thought played an important role at the beginning of the parliamentary Marxist period. Thus, in the ‘catechism’ of social democracy, in Kautsky’s work ‘Das Erfurter Programm’ we find a paragraph entitled ‘Chronic overproduction’ …”

“… socialism will not be imposed by the fantastic big final crisis, in which capitalist production gets hopelessly stuck forever; it is nevertheless prepared for and built up a bit at a time by the real temporary crises, in which this production gets stuck every time. Each crisis gives the workers a jolt, makes them feel the unsustainability more strongly, forces them into stronger resistance and arouses a stronger will to fight. These crises are no accidental disturbances, but are part of the very mechanism of capitalist production. If they grow into a long hopeless depression, a revolutionary era with fierce class struggle will begin, which will continue to have an effect on the political transformations of later years.”

“… the real modern development in which all these different capitalists – in spite of mutual strife – are increasingly becoming one all-embracing and all-dependent class. It is only by taking this into account that it becomes clear why the will of the concentrated big capital of banking and steel is also the will of the bourgeois masses”

Source

A. Pannekoek, The economic necessity of imperialism (1916).

Hempel (Jan Appel), Machine Slavery or Technology? (1927)

“Only when it is shown that the earth is so rich that it can provide every human being with (…) 3 Horse Power (HP) will the great human question of the just distribution of goods have a chance of a favorable solution.”

Here we have before us a blatant formulation of the course of development of mankind, which confronts the revolutionary proletariat in all social-democratic “scientists” of Marxism. The Moscow Social Democrats are no exception. On the one hand, it is the view that industry must be developed to such an extent that it can bless all members of society with goods before it is possible to loosen the reins of the industrial regime. On the other hand, it is said here that the enslaving influence of the machine on the worker is justified until, for example, the (….) power of 3 HP is reached. This point of view is expressed in the fact that the workers are preached obedience to the leader and discipline in the party and trade union as well as in the leader state of today’s Russia. Obedience, subordination and discipline in the trade union and party, that is the school of labor discipline — today in capitalist production, tomorrow in trust socialism. This is consistent with the fact that the overcoming of those capitalist private interests that stand in the way of the development of productivity cannot be conceived of in any other way than through the unification of the fragmented private power of disposal in the commanding heights of the trust and the state. In reality, this is nothing more than a change of command, while nothing is changed in the essence of industrial organization. The way to socialism here is to adopt all the methods of increasing production, such as Taylorism, the Ford system, concentration and trust power, from capitalism, only to let them work with increased force, because the slogan is: “Increasing production is socialism!” The enslavement of the worker by the machinery must necessarily continue under such conditions and his liberation only beckons from the distant time when (…) he rises from worker to leader of the machine. As long as technology and the machine apparatus created by it function as a means of coercive power over the worker, it becomes the shackle that binds him into ever tighter bonds of slavery. Only when the workers take control of the production apparatus themselves and manage the economy themselves through their collective body, the factory organization, will they free themselves from machine slavery. It is not technology and the mass product created with its help by the proletarian in slave labor that liberates the worker, but the workers as a whole liberate themselves and subject the mechanical apparatus to their will.

Source

Hempel (Jan Appel), Machine Slavery or Technology? (1927).

Anton Pannekoek on the passivity of the masses

“Those who now pay attention only to the mood, to the passivity of the masses, despair of victory in the foreseeable future. Even if the exact facts of the coming development cannot be predicted, because they depend on too many unknown random details, it is still possible to foresee the general line of development and to determine the conditions and circumstances on which what can be won and achieved depends.
It is not a struggle between two equally powerful forces, each with full resources and equipment. The power of the workers must grow through the struggle and in the struggle. Their power is a hidden, latent power; what they will be able to do is only an uncertain possibility in advance, and only becomes a reality in action. They are comparable to an army that only forms and gathers in battle. The forces that society awakens in it only come to life in the battle itself, and therefore cannot be estimated beforehand. That is why this struggle can never really be compared to an ordinary war; that is why it arises spontaneously and cannot be summoned and led by a leader, a general staff or a party. That is why the often-asked question of whether the working class is ripe for victory, whether society is ripe for change, cannot be decided in advance.
Looking back, it is always easy to see that society was not ripe in the past. It was not enough for a few clever minds with a deep insight into the emerging capitalism to discover the seeds of the next, more advanced society. (…)

Every time capitalism flourishes with new industrial activity after a period of depression and turmoil, the revolutionary consciousness of the workers shrinks. In other words, as long as capitalism is able to spread worldwide and increase production by selling more and more goods, the working class will not feel the need to put an end to this system. As long as capitalism can sustain itself because it fulfils the first requirement of a mode of production, which is to provide a way of life for its members. As long as the bourgeoisie can continue to rule and dominate the workers in their self-confidence. [If capitalism could continue to flourish at its highest level of expansion, revolution would not only be impossible but unnecessary; then the only hope would be that a gradual development of general culture could improve its shortcomings]. A mode of production declines only when it has exhausted all the possibilities inherent in it.
In this statement by Marx lies both the endurance and the downfall of capitalism. Capitalism is not a normal, or at least stable, mode of production that can continue undisturbed at the level it has once reached. European capitalism was able to expand its industry, its production and its masses of workers so rapidly because there was a whole outside world around it from which it took its raw materials and to which it sent its products; it is therefore actually an artificial intermediate state. Its essence is development, action, expansion. For under capitalism, the surplus value produced is always thrown back into production to become a new source of new profit as new capital; capital grows incessantly, looking for a place to invest and producing ever greater masses of products that must find a market. And so capitalism draws ever more new millions from the silent, closed sphere of production for its own needs into the sphere of production for the market, spreading ever further across the world. Any standstill in this process leads to breakdown, to crisis, to collapse.
But the earth is round, the human world is finite. This realisation, which accompanied the rise of capitalism four centuries ago, is now sealing its imminent end. Because capitalism has reached the limits that prevent it from developing any further. More precisely, because it is not a sudden end, these limits are increasingly hindering this development”.

Source

Anton Pannekoek, ‘Die Arbeiterräte’, p. 123. Translated from German into English by F.C. with the help of DeepL.com Translate and Write. For English editions, see AK Press.

H. Roland Holst, The Mass Strike: The Great Means of Struggle and Violence of the Proletarian Revolution (1918)

From the unparalleled growth of the means of production, from the upheaval of technology and transport, from the enormous composition and extreme sensitivity of the social organism, from the accumulation of immense masses of people in the great cities and industrial districts, from the essence in short of highly developed capitalism, arise the socio-economic, that is, the passive conditions of the politico-revolutionary mass strike. Its active, socio-psychic conditions are:

• The collective self-consciousness of the workers and their sense of solidarity, cultivated by the cooperation of hundreds of thousands both in the centers of industry, mining and shipping and in the enterprises (railroads, post and telegraph) linked across a whole country.
• The awareness awakened in these masses of their social indispensability.
• The unity of will, instilled in them both by the production process and by propaganda and organization and finally the spirit of resistance to economic exploitation and political oppression, the will to fight for the realization of socialist ideals, awakened by half a century of socialist agitation.

In the hands of the proletariat the mass strike is a more powerful means of coercion against its social opponents as has ever before been at the service of an oppressed class in the struggle for its liberation. Never before had an oppressed class been so much more numerous than its oppressors, and by the nature of production it had acquired such close and intimate cohesion. Never before has there been a system of production in which the stagnation of labor in the main enterprises completely disrupted the power of the economic organs of the ruling classes (namely: stock exchange and bank) and paralyzed its main means of authority (namely: police, judiciary and army) to such a high degree.

The revolutionary mass strike is undoubtedly a means of violence or coercion. Every strike, insofar as it is not merely a protest or demonstration of power (and even in that case the principle of coercion is latent) wants to act as a coercive tool. The limited, exclusively economic professional strike for improvement of working conditions wants this as much as the tumultuous millions strike for revolutionary purposes. But while the former directs its coercive force only against a particular entrepreneur or business organization, the latter attacks capitalist society itself. Both its aim and its extension and its methods (cessation of traffic and transportation, of post and telegraph, of mines and factories, of light and water supplies) give it the character of an attack on the state, that is, of actual violence. If it wants to exercise its full effects on social life, it must not hesitate to go beyond the limits of the law and take up the struggle against state power. The very fact that strikes in the enterprises whose progress is indispensable for the regular functioning of the social organism and the political power apparatus of the ruling classes are immediately responded to by the latter with coercive measures such as mobilization [labor coercion; F.C.] of the strikers, arrest of the leaders, takeover of labor by military forces, etc., this fact alone has the effect that every revolutionary mass strike worthy of the name has of leading to violations of the law, to sharp conflicts with state power, and often to acts of violence. In times of revolution its leaders will not be allowed to shy away from committing acts of sabotage (damaging or destroying property) nor from individually frightening those who oppose its expansion. Its aims – the subversion of the capitalist mode of production and the disruption of the capitalist state – are incompatible with obedience to the law and absolute respect for property and personal freedom.

Source

Fragment from Henriette Roland Holst – Van der Schalk, The means of struggle of social revolution 1918.

Anton Pannekoek on imperialism and the workers

“(…) Capitalism extends its dominion over foreign continents, seizing their natural treasures in order to make big profits. It conquers colonies, subjugates the primitive population and exploits them, often with horrible cruelties. The working class, driven by sympathy for these fellow victims of a mutual oppressor, denounces colonial exploitation and opposes it. Trade unionism often supports colonial politics as a way to capitalist prosperity. 

With the enormous increases of capital in modern times, colonies and foreign countries are being used to invest large masses of capital. They become valuable possessions as markets for big industry and as producers of raw materials. A race for getting colonies, a fierce conflict of interests over the dividing of the world arises between the great capitalist states. In these politics of imperialism the middle classes are whirled along in a common exaltation of national greatness. Then the trade unions side with the master class, because they consider the prosperity of their own national capitalism to be dependent on its success in the national struggle. For the working class, imperialism means increasing power and brutality of their exploiters, increasing taxes, increasing oppression, increasing danger of war. 

These conflicts of interests between the national capitalisms explode into wars. World war is the crowning of the policy of imperialism. For the workers war is not only the destroying of all their feelings of international brotherhood; it is also the most violent exploitation of their class for capitalist profit. The working class, as the most numerous and most oppressed class of society, has to bear all the horrors of war; they have to give not only their labor power, but also their health, their life, their little bit of safety and happiness; their bodies molder in the trenches, their limbs are torn by explosives, not only they themselves but also their wives and children at home are poisoned by gas. And when they die, it is not as heroes of a new happier world to die for which is happiness, but as worthless victims of the gold hunger of worthless masters. 

Trade unionism, however, in war must stand upon the side of the capitalist class. Its interests are bound up with national capitalism, on the victory of which it must wish with all its heart. Hence it assists in arousing strong national feelings and national hatred, it helps the capitalist class to drive the workers into war and to beat down all opposition. (…)”

Source 

A. Pannekoek, fragment from Trade Unionism (±1935), handwritten. Published in The Workers’ Way to Freedom & Other Council Communist Writings (1935-1954)  / Anton Pannekoek; Edited and Introduced by Robyn K. Winters. – Oakland CA (USA) : PM Press, [2024]. – 303 p. 

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Franz Jung, Get Ready! (1921)

You must have been in the war to understand the agony caused by the order: Get ready. You march in the column, which drags itself along only sluggishly. The straps cut into your shoulders, the belt burns like fire, and the sweat drips – then there is a short break – you lie in the wet dirt, breathing a sigh of relief; the ground is already frozen hard, only the upper layer gives way, on top of the wheel tracks, when you lean on them, and soon everything is icy and damp, your limbs as heavy as lead — — then you get this order; get ready. It’s like being sawed in half. It’s good to have your comrades around you. They roll up, and you with them, and on you go.

This call reaches you again in prison. Even more bitter. The call echoes through the corridors. Cuts through every thought in an instant. Grabs you with a raw fist. Then you wait to step out, in a senseless monotony, ready to be tortured again. Because it is a terrible thing, beware of resisting. They are waiting for it, then you are entirely in their power. Step forward as if you hadn’t heard the mockery in it.
For this call holds even worse humiliation and blunt crimes. In a place in Germany, it is unnecessary to mention a name, because it could have been anywhere, the attempt of the workers to defend themselves with armed hands was crushed. There were about twenty workers in the last courtyard at the back of a factory premises. A machine gun was positioned in the passageway. The workers were crowded into a black heap at the far corner, surrounded by high walls. The green police troops filled the other side of the courtyard. What had happened? The workers had taken possession of the factory as a pledge that they would not be left to starve. There were the means of production, the machines, the tools of labor, with which they could work to feed themselves, and it was only natural that they should defend them. Then, the better-armed police force stormed the factory with great superiority. The workers soon gave up the fight as hopeless and were now trapped. And the Greens [cops]? They were all people with a dull hatred written on their faces, the sons of bourgeois. They didn’t need to think because their fathers, the money and the state machine they maintained, thought for them. They only had to fit in and balance out their little stomach and nervous upsets with their environment.

That is what is called bourgeois culture. They were not really people, and they also behaved inhumanely. A young officer, a student or already in his first academic honors, now stamped his foot. He thought it had been going on too long and crowed like only a German white [counterevolutionary troops] officer can crow in the whole world: Ready? He certainly didn’t think anything of it. He might just as well have shouted to a waitress: ”A glass of beer.” The workers stood there, graying men among them, heads bowed, not a word coming over their lips. The furrows on their faces from work, hard work, and hardship, from hopeless despair, did not move. The so-called heartbreaking scenes that the bourgeois press then tended to write about did not take place. Not a human sound. Only the shots drummed and tore the silence. Then the Greens withdrew, proud and confident of their victory.

This story would have no meaning if it were not for the events that followed. In March 1920, when the miners in the Ruhr area rose up spontaneously and took up arms, a squad of captured Reichswehr troops, including twelve officers, were brought to a local commandant’s office. They had been surprised while they were invading a workers’ colony, throwing women and children out into the streets and just about to begin their bestial work of destruction in the houses. They were now lined up in the courtyard of a school building, the officers separated from the enlisted men. They screamed wildly in confusion. It was all a mistake, most swore by all the saints, they wanted to fight with the workers. They were one people, after all. The red commander scanned the people with a glance. They were the same dull-witted faces, distorted by a disgusting, dog-like fear. He turned away in disgust. Then, an officer stepped out of the group and clasped his hand. A senior teacher or something like that, blond goatee, gold-rimmed glasses, and gentle blue eyes, as one says, a German disposition. “Comrade,” he stammered, “I have a wife and child at home” — the commander was a worker. He saw the picture before him in a flash. The cozy home in a small villa, the comfortable armchairs, the small table for smoking, the rows of books on the wall, the blonde woman with the baby in her arms anxiously listening to the street. “This riffraff,” she whispers in alarm, “but why must Arthur get involved? He can’t stand it and will catch a cold. How often have I told him to leave it to the others. He doesn’t listen; he has such terrible ambition” – she walks restlessly up and down, trembling. ‘But it’s the last time I’ll let him go’ – and she calms down a little at the thought. The laborer sees all this and shakes his head. He turns away briefly. The officers are shot, and the enlisted men are let go later. Did our comrade do the right thing?

In the depths of the human heart lives the law: thou shalt not kill. Along with many other laws of humanity, such as thou shalt be free and happy, and thou shalt not exploit others. The worker has fought a hard fight and forced himself down. It was like a sacrifice he made. He weighed the probabilities and felt that he would strengthen his comrades and bind them more closely together. Indeed, a law of humanity has been violated, but the others, the comrades, share the responsibility with him. The commitment to fight more resolutely than before, more intensely and purposefully in every minute and every situation, on the street and at work, for the liberation of humanity. And he has done right a hundredfold.

Source

Franz Jung, Joe Frank illustriert die Welt, Die Aktion 1921, Werke, Edition Nautilus (1984), Vol. 2, p.34.
Translation from German: F.C. 8-10-2024