The Experience: An Opposing View*

I believe that, before one begins a discussion, it is best to focus on the facts that one discusses with somewhat greater precision than Comrade Werner has done. The history of the Munich Republic1 may be concisely rendered in the following manner: Majority-Socialists, Independents and anarchists decide on a ‘Soviet ’ in the Café Stephani and environs, whose sovereign empire reaches from Schwabing to Pasing and from Laim to Freimaring. The Communists oppose this soviet-republic with the most trenchant criticism. This soviet-republic did not suffer from premature birth, as Comrade Werner2 claims, but was rather a prodigiosum aliquid,

* Published in Die Internationale, I, no. / ( August ). Translation from Gruber (ed.) . 1. [With the fall of the monarchy on  November , workers’ and soldiers’ councils were formed in Munich, and a socialist coalition-government under the Inde- pendent . Elections to a Bavarian state-assembly were held in January , with the Majority-Socialists the largest party, but, when Eisner was on his way to its first meeting on  February, intending to offer his resignation, he was assassinated by the monarchist Count Anton von Arco-Valley. Political chaos was combined with economic paralysis; on  April, a group of left intellectuals including the playwright proclaimed the Soviet Republic of , and the SPD government under Johannes Hoffmann retreated to . Four days later, an attempted coup by the exiled government’s defence-minister Ernst Schneppenhorst swept away this ‘first’ soviet-republic, and the direction of resistance under Eugen Leviné and Max Levien led to a ‘second’, Communist soviet-government. By the end of March, the revolutionary struggles in north had been crushed by the , whom Ebert now sent against Bavaria. The troops entered Munich on  May, killing some  people in a white terror. Leviné was executed for ‘high ’, though Levien managed to escape.] 2. [‘Comrade Werner’ was Paul Frölich, member of the KPD Zentrale and, at this time, a supporter of the left faction.]  • Part One: Leading the KPD that is, a freak; as a human child cannot issue from the womb of a female gorilla, so little can a soviet-republic issue from the womb of a Majority- Socialist/Independent/anarchist coffee-house clique. This soviet-republic was just in the process of passing over into the Elysian Fields – meaning into the memoirs and feuilletons of its generally poetically gifted leaders – when the Hoffmann government staged a putsch against it on  April. The purpose of this putsch was less concerned with giving the coup de grâce to the mortally sick patient than with its revival, in order to give Schneppenhorst and others a fine opportunity for a bloodbath. This was the second phase. The position of our Party during this second phase involved taking over and directing the defence against the putsch. Out of this defensive action grew without special restraint the third phase: the Communist Soviet Republic. How could the Party conduct itself in relation to these three phases?

I trust that we are all agreed on the first phase. This ‘soviet-republic’ was the result of a putsch, a very clumsy one at that, not staged by the working masses, but by a handful of literati who are now appealing for a full measure of mercy on the part of the tribunals. They deserve it in accordance with the proverb: Forgive them who know not what they do. Confronted with this situation, Comrade Werner believes that it was incumbent upon the Communists to ‘apply the brakes’. I do not share that opinion. A Communist never holds back. When he calls a spade a spade, a putschist a putschist, when he exposes illusions for what they are, when he reveals the impotence, incompetence, and the immaturity of political actions – he does not ‘retard’ but leads the revolution. Only people who believe that wherever there is noise there must also be a revolution will call this applying the brakes. Accordingly, our Party stood with its trenchant criticism in the forefront of the Revolution; so far, there existed everywhere complete agreement on the conduct of our Munich comrades, or rather it existed until Comrade Werner began to defend the Munich action. Until now, we had all been of the opinion that the Munich comrades had viewed the soviet-republic of Toller, Mühsam, etc. as one of those comedies whose rapid collapse was required in the interest of the progress of the revo- lution. The Munich comrades themselves clearly recognised that this Munich