Chapter Thirty-Two The ‘Mass Communist Party’

The impact of the capitalist crisis and the altitude of Social Democracy and the trade unions would not necessarily result in a process of proletarian radicalisation, but could instead lead to passivity and ultimately resignation amongst a substantial part of the working class. The recent example of Italy showed the opportunities that the situation offered to big capital to consolidate its rule by resorting to the armed bands of fascism. At the end of 1922, Brandler presented a political report to the KPD’s Central Committee. He had just returned from Moscow, where he had been a member of the Presidium of the Communist International for nearly a year. He acknowledged that the KPD had made progress during the past year, but he insisted on the necessity to banish firmly that so-called ‘intransigence’ which revealed itself in ‘an inability to draw direct inspiration from the workers’, in a party which, he said, did not yet know ‘how to adapt itself sufficiently to the thinking of the non- Communist working classes’.1

The composition of the KPD The KPD had made considerable progress by the end of 1922, not only compared with its position in

1 Extract from Brandler’s report to the Central Committee, 13–14 , Correspondance Internationale, no. 99, 23 December 1922, p. 753. 628 • Chapter Thirty-Two

1918–19, but also with its position in the months following the March Action in 1921. Its active membership had fallen dramatically by the summer of 1921, perhaps even lower than the figure, revealed only a year later, of 157,168 collected dues-payments,2 which itself was derisory when one considers that immediately before the Halle Congress in late 1920, the membership of the USPD and KPD(S) stood at 893,000 and 78,715 respectively.3 Even if we concede that the usually given figure of 450,000 members when the VKPD was founded was grossly optimistic,4 we must nonetheless accept that the March Action led to a sharp fall in active members. This is clear from the tables drawn up by Hermann Weber. According to reliable statistics, the membership of the Halle-Merseburg district declined from 66,000 at the beginning of 1921 to 23,000 in mid-1922. Membership in the Lower Rhineland, around Düsseldorf, fell from 52,000 to 16,000, in Thuringia from 23,000 to 10,000, and in the North- West, around Bremen, from 17,000 to 4,000.5 The situation was improving at the end of 1922. Böttcher bases his figures on dues actually paid, and gives a membership figure for of 218,195, of which 26,710 were women.6 Pieck gives a figure of 255,863 for October.7 Weber’s statistical study gives the figure of 224,689 for the third quarter of 1922.8 The numbers of contributions paid were less than the membership figures for October that were provided at the time by the local organisations, which totalled 328,017.9 That method of calculation led the Party in 1921 to announce a membership of 359,613, a figure which was manifestly exaggerated.10 We can draw the conclusion that after losing two- thirds of its effective membership immediately after , the KPD won – or won back – about 100,000 members during the rest of 1921 and 1922. The Party’s influence remained very unequal across the different regions of Germany. In Bavaria, for example, it had hardly more than 6,000 members, even though it claimed 8,000, and it had not recovered from the blows suffered in 1919.11 On the other hand, it claimed about 50,000 members in Rhineland-

2 Correspondance Internationale, no. 81, 25 October 1922, p. 624. 3 Jahrbuch für Politik-Wirtschaft Arbeiterbewegung 1922–23, op. cit., pp. 642–7. 4 Correspondance Internationale, no. 81, 25 October 1922, p. 624. 5 Weber, Die Wandlung des Deutschen Kommunismus, Volume 1, op. cit., pp. 368–94. 6 Correspondance Internationale, no. 11, 7 , p. 71. 7 Correspondance Internationale, no. 81, 25 October 1922, p. 624. 8 Weber, Die Wandlung des Deutschen Kommunismus, Volume 1, op. cit., p. 362. 9 Correspondance Internationale, no. 81, 25 October 1922, p. 623. 10 Ibid., p. 624. 11 Weber, Die Wandlung des Deutschen Kommunismus, Volume 1, op. cit., pp. 383, 390 gives figures of 4,500 for the North, and 2,369 for the South. See also Correspondance Internationale, no. 41, 23 , p. 401.