Chapter Twelve the Uprising of January 1919
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Chapter Twelve The Uprising of January 1919 In his biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Frölich says that she did not permit herself to share the apprehensions and the pessimism of Leo Jogiches following the Founding Congress: ‘Rosa simply declared that a new-born child always squalled at first....[S]he expressed her firm conviction that the new party would eventually find the right path despite all its errors, because it embraced the best core of the German proletariat.’1 In reality, the pessimism of Jogiches was no less justified than the optimism of his comrade. The situation presented contradictory aspects. Despite the weaknesses of the new party, and despite the defeat of the revolutionaries in the councils, a very deep current, the same as what the leftists in the Spartacus League were expressing in their own way, was radicalising the militant Berlin workers and dispelling the illusions of November. Above all, the situation of the Ebert government seemed to have become more precarious day by day since the Congress of the Councils. The army was decomposing and falling out of the grasp of the officers, whose openly counter-revolutionary undertakings were increasingly raising the masses against them, and forcing even the Independents to break up the 1 Frölich, op. cit., pp. 281–2. 228 • Chapter Twelve coalition which, as good conciliators, they had hitherto done their best to preserve. Time was working for the Revolution. December: a month of unrest At the beginning of December, Luxemburg had commented on the strike movement in her celebrated article ‘Acheron has Begun to Flow’.2 The economic movement of the workers tore away the democratic and, up to that point, purely political mask of the November Revolution, and raised the problems of the day in class terms before the least enlightened masses. Many saw a clear sign when on 8 December, the workers’ and soldiers’ council in Mülheim arrested Fritz Thyssen, the younger Stinnes and several other leading capitalists.3 Another indication of radicalisation was the break-up of the army, the divorce between the government and the General Staff on the one hand and the soldiers’ councils on the other, which called into question the authority of the Council of People’s Commissars, and deprived the traditional state apparatus and the ruling classes of their best-tempered weapon. The High Command met its first political defeat in the army at Ems on 1 December. The GHQ had convened a congress of the councils of the front- line soldiers, which it hoped to induce to agree to the programme of the high command: rapid calling of the Constituent Assembly; the power of the councils to be abolished; the authority of officers to be re-established; and civilians to be disarmed under the control of officers. However, Barth was unexpectedly present at the congress, and to some extent he turned the situation around. The delegates decided to send representatives to the Executive in Berlin, and adopted subversive resolutions calling for external marks of respect – saluting – to be abolished when off-duty, and for the soldiers’ councils to be re-elected.4 The High Command became anxious because the decision of the congress at Ems showed that the soldiers’ councils were slipping out of its control. The growing anxiety in the camp of the counter-revolution led to the initiatives of 6 December, which themselves were a powerful factor in radicalising the 2 Die Rote Fahne, 27 November 1918. 3 Dokumente und Materialen, Volume 2/2, op. cit., p. 563. 4 Vorwärts, 2 December 1918; Barth, op. cit., pp. 80–1; Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Revolution, op. cit., p. 228..