The Kapp Putsch1

In March 1920 the German right attempted to seize power and install a military dictatorship.
The preparations for this putsch had been financed by leading banks and credit institutions, including the ostpreußische Generallandschaft, whose boss was Gustav Kapp of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party), who was also a landowner and on the board of the Deutsche Bank. Kapp was the leader of the Nationale Vereinigung (the National Union), the body behind the putsch, which also included the generals Ludendorff and Lüttwitz. Lüttwitz, who had been appointed one of the highest officers by the republic, had already issued in September 1919 the "preparatory order for the suppression of large-scale unrest" which demanded the "most unreserved use of force".

On 13th March the putsch was unleashed on Berlin. Kapp named himself Reichkanzler, and the government fled to Stuttgart. The SPD issued a call to "citizens, workers, party comrades" for a general strike. Although the signatories to this appeal, Ebert, Bauer, Noske, Schlicke, Schmidt, David, Müller and Wels all had workers’ blood on their hands, the correct response to it was without doubt to answer it and then go beyond it. The reaction of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Spartakusbund) (Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus League) — KPD(S)) was, to say the least, ambiguous. Its Central Committee issued a leaflet against the general strike and calling on workers to lay down arms. The German working class ignored this, especially in the Ruhr. Here they formed a Red Army of 10,000 armed men. The KPD(S), under pressure from the Comintern reversed its position.

The existence of the Ruhr and other Red Armies, and an effective general strike, led to the collapse of the putsch. The SPD then demanded the disbanding of the Ruhr Red Army, which refused to hand over its arms, demanded that a council republic be declared and that the counterrevolutionaries be smashed. However, in the "Bielefeld Agreement", in return for a promise not to use the Freikorps against revolutionaries, the workers eventually handed over their arms. Two delegates from the KPD(S) were involved in the discussions for the "Bielefeld Agreement", and approved it. The KPD (Opposition) (KPD(O)) opposed the disarming of the class, issuing warnings which were soon to be shown to be well-founded. The SPD held to its promise: first it absorbed the Freikorps into the regular army and then used that against the revolutionaries. The army marched into the Ruhr and unleashed white terror against the mostly unarmed workers. In the words of an ex-member of the Freikorps, a new member of the army:

Yesterday morning... I joined my company, and at 1 p.m. we made our first attack. If I described everything that happened, you would say I was lying. There was no quarter given. We even shot the wounded. The excitement is magnificent, almost unbelievable. Our battalion lost two. The Reds lost 200 or 300. Everyone we captured was smashed by our rifle butts and then shot. ... we shot two Red Cross nurses because they were carrying pistols. We shot these scandalous creatures with joy, and how they cried and pleaded to be spared. To no avail! Who was caught with a weapon was our enemy and must believe it. We were much more humane when we fought the French.2

The working class are the class enemies of the SPD. Compare this treatment with the fact that, of the 705 putschists accused of crimes, 1(!) served his full sentence.

The Founding Congress of the KAPD3

The rôle of the KPD(S) in the Kapp putsch provided a great impetus towards the Berlin KPD(O)’s call for the founding Congress of a new party. This Congress was held in Berlin on 4th and 5th April 1920. The delegates present, from Hamburg, Perleberg, Wittenberge, Zwickau, Laubegast, Dresden, Tangermünde, Wilhelmshaven, Hanover, Gotha, Essen, Elberfeld-Barmen, Stendal, Spandau and Berlin represented 38,0004 former members of the KPD(S). The strongest areas of the KPD(O) were Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden, and these areas had members on the presidium.

This Congress dealt with four main areas: the contemporary political situation, the Third International, parliamentarism and the trades’ unions. The delegates unanimously declared themselves to be on the terrain of the International and demanded the expulsion of the KPD(S) on the grounds that its reformism put it outside of the International’s political area. They also chose Jan Appel from Hamburg and Franz Jung from Berlin to report to the International in Moscow, in response to the invitation of the Executive Committee of the International.

The Congress unanimously called for the trades’ unions to be abandoned and called for the construction of the Party to be carried out in the closest possible contact with the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union5 (AAU), whose founding Congress was being held at the same time as the founding Congress of the KAPD. However, as we shall see, the KAPD found unanimity difficult to come by with regard to the nature of this contact.

The Congress also unanimously came out against participation in parliamentary elections.

The name of the central organ of the KAPD was chosen to be the Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung (Communist Workers’ Paper), which was to appear at least twice a week.

Despite the clear guidelines the founding Congress laid down for the activity and principles of the KAPD, its validity was questioned over the coming months. Major local party organisations, such as that of the Rhineland-Westphalia, had not been represented in the April Congress, and it was described as being formed by a "completely accidental collection of delegates". As a result of this diminution of the importance of the first Congress of the KAPD, the second Congress came to be described as the real founding Congress, the first regular Congress.

The August Congress6

This Congress was held in the Berlin Weißensee restaurant, Zum Prälaten, from 1st to 4th August 1920. Seventy people participated, of whom 43 were full, voting, delegates, 13 delegates with speaking rights and the remainder guests. The full delegates represented about 40,000 members7.

The first topic to be debated was nation and class struggle, which dealt with the national bolshevism of the leading members of the Hamburg organisation, Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim. Arthur Goldstein made the introductory speech and Laufenberg replied.

Goldstein’s presentation revealed quite clearly that the national bolshevist tendency was a bourgeois tendency, a refuse product of the bourgeois world, as he put it.

He began by saying that the Berliners had defended the Laufenberg/Wolffheim group in the struggle with the KPD(S) when Laufenberg and Wolffstein had been slandered (although the KPD(S) must have had to put a lot of effort into finding unpleasant untruths), and had even gone too far in this defence.

But the Hamburg tendency’s position with regard to the Treaty of Versailles had made their politics obvious. Goldstein praised them for immediately rejecting this Treaty, but pointed out that the most important thing to say about it was how it was to be overthrown. The national bolshevists’ solution was contained in the title of one of their texts: Revolutionary people’s war or counter-revolutionary civil war? and not surprisingly they opted for the former. They posited a "revolutionary" people’s war, with the German proletariat and bourgeoisie fighting against the Entente bourgeoisie. In doing this, they often quoted the example of Russia. But Goldstein stressed:

But one should not forget that Russia, while it was carrying out its war against the Entente, was also carrying out an internal civil war, and there was no thought of engaging Brussiloff [an old Tsarist general] before the bourgeoisie was finished as a class by that civil war.

Goldstein returned to this point later, refuting the thinking behind it:

Just imagine the situation clearly. The proletariat has arrived in power in Germany, and the German proletariat is faced by the necessity to defend its achievements against Entente capital. In this situation the German bourgeoisie is supposed to be ready to struggle for the proletarian dictatorship against Entente capital. What would be the political significance of such a war by the German proletariat against Entente capital? What would be the political goal of such a war, which the Hamburg comrades do, after all, describe as class struggle? It could not, if it was interpreted as class struggle, be satisfied with defending communism in Germany. Rather, it would have to pursue the great aim of overthrowing capitalism in the Entente countries. Otherwise, it would indeed be a war with only purely negative aims. If this revolutionary war is given this meaning, it must also have a positive goal, and this goal must be to carry communism into the Entente countries as well. If the Hamburg section proceeded from this framework, one would have to expect the German bourgeoisie to allow itself to be recruited for the complete annihilation of world capital after it itself had been overthrown and German capitalism extinguished. To expect that it would allow itself to be used to complete the establishment of world communism? Wishing for something like that from the German bourgeoisie is not on. One should not consider one’s enemy to be so stupid that it works for its own suicide.

But the Hamburg tendency went further:

I said that this so-called revolutionary people’s war has emerged as the central point of the Hamburg section’s politics, this people’s war which might be considered after the seizure of proletarian power. Anyone who is inclined to make any concessions to the Hamburg section on this point might well be taught a lesson by their last article, in which they are no longer satisfied with propagandising the so-called revolutionary people’s war after the seizure of power, but go onto propaganda for a national uprising even in the present situation, openly making the party of the counterrevolution their own.

A question that arises is: was the Hamburg tendency an originally healthy proletarian current in the process of degeneration? Although Goldstein does not put the question in these terms, his presentation answers it nevertheless:

...I’d like to examine the basis from which the Hamburg position vis-à-vis revolutionary people’s war and revolutionary civil war follows. Actually, here I must return to what was written in Hamburg during the war. It is unpleasant for me to do this, and I wouldn’t do it, if it were not for the Hamburg tendency itself referring to its wartime position. The Hamburg tendency call the Spartakusbund’s policy of inviting soldiers to leave the front "stabbing the front in the back". Here they criticise the Spartakusbund’s main virtue, that it at least attempted to break the neck of that counter-revolutionary instrument, the German army.... One should not give a Paul Levi8 the hero’s rôle. Levi was just Rosa’s apprentice. Although the attacks always mention Levi, he is not, I believe, the real target, but Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who made precisely this policy of the Spartakusbund, the necessary destruction of the imperialist army, their own.

And Goldstein’s conclusion with regard to the basis for the Hamburg position?

In the text "Communism against Spartacism", it is openly admitted that in Hamburg the nation is elevated to the starting point of politics, that therefore the concept of the nation is considered the most important, that it should be the measure for the politics of the German and international proletariat.

Goldstein finished by presenting Theses on Nation and Class Struggle, which we reproduce here as an appendix by way of underlining the contradiction between his strand of communist politics and the bourgeois Hamburg direction.

Much of Laufenberg’s reply was taken up by attempts to justify the Hamburg position by reference to the Russians. As well as confusing an alliance with the bourgeoisie with the use of specialists of bourgeois origin, he also pointed out that the Bolsheviks (especially Radek) were moving towards national bolshevism. He spoke as if this was a result of the principles of Bolshevism, rather than of the pressure of the desperate situation in Russia. Nevertheless, it is worth quoting part of what he said, as this will give a fuller picture of their politics.

The first quote reveals a connection with councilist ideas:

With the start of the proletarian revolution the party ceases to be a useful tool in proletarian class struggle. The party is a form of the bourgeois epoch. It is the basis of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliament. Parliament works by means of parties. The party is fitted to exercise power, to participate in the domination of the state. From the moment when the bourgeois period is surpassed, when the proletarian revolution is placed on the agenda, the party is no longer a useful tool for the working class. For as long as the bourgeois state stands unshaken, for as long as it is inconceivable to overrun it, then the working class has no choice but to use parties to exercise its political influence. When it is a question of the overthrow of this capitalist order, when the proletariat proceeds to set up the proletarian state, when the political situation is such that the proletariat nears its goals, then the party ceases to be a usable instrument for the proletariat in the class struggle. As soon as the proletariat enters a revolutionary situation, the party is finished.

As if the primary rôle of the class party, the organisation of class consciousness, finishes as soon as class consciousness becomes the most vital necessity!

But, alongside this councilism, there existed, in the same individuals, a desire to support the bourgeois state in times of war. Laufenberg, far from denying his tendency’s attack on the Spartakusbund from a bourgeois perspective, confirmed it:

We wrote in a text which appeared in 1915, in the pamphlet Democracy and Organisation: "Not in so far as the social economy serves for the exploitation by a minority, but, on the contrary, in so far as it serves to keep the whole of society alive, there grows up for the proletariat a natural interest in its preservation. The proletariat must therefore prevent unitary economic areas from being torn apart, and prevent more highly developed economies from being dominated by less developed ones. It must prevent the right of nations to self-determination, which it grants to all nations, from being injured in its own nation. A result of this is the military submission of the proletariat to the existing leadership of the Army, in case of wars which threaten the economy in its function of keeping society alive."

Not surprisingly, this propaganda for the capitulation of the proletariat to the interests of the bourgeoisie was interrupted by angry shouts of "Listen!". Laufenberg then went on to argue that this military submission did not involve a political submission, and, indeed, made the political independence of the proletariat more vital. This is like arguing that, if you cut off your right leg, your left leg becomes all the more important in running.

Delegate J. from Hamburg first denied that the whole of the Hamburg section agreed with Laufenberg and Wolffheim, and then shed light on the Hamburg leadership’s conduct during the Kapp putsch:

... While our comrades in the Ruhr were waiting for help, the slogan "lay down your guns" was issued. The whole of the Hamburg proletariat waited for instructions, and they were told: "lay down your guns" [Wolffheim interrupts here with the allegation that Berlin did the same, which is denied by Karl Schröder]. If, at that time, we had pointed to the necessity of having guns to throw down that would have been better.

So, the Laufenberg/Wolffheim group was even on the wrong side of the divide which separated the Spartakusbund and Opposition wings of the KPD over their response to the Kapp putsch!

For Marxists, the most significant feature of the Laufenberg/Wolffheim tendency is the way it brought bourgeois politics into the heart of the proletariat. But, contributions from the floor also made it clear that this tendency espoused the most barbaric degeneration of bourgeois ideology.

Delegate D. from Kiel finished his intervention thus:

Laufenberg has said that, even in a classless society, the interest of the German proletariat lies in maintaining Germany as the industrial heart of Europe. He continued, we represent the interests of the German proletariat against the representatives of the Jewish proletariat. Once again, differences between proletarians. The working class applauds these two comrades because they are still making communist propaganda too, and that is the most dangerous thing about their work.

How did the KAPD go about separating this "dangerous" tendency from its party? It passed the following resolution, by 36 votes to 6:

If comrades Laufenberg and Wolffheim continue to propagate their nationalist tendency, they place themselves outside the ranks of the international socialists.

And it is here that the real absurdity begins. Laufenberg and Wolffheim demanded that the Congress explicitly expel them. But this demand was answered by delegate M. from Leipzig:

I am the author of the resolution. If today the Congress has expressed its desire to have nothing to do with nationalist tendencies, then it is the moral[!] duty of comrades Laufenberg and Wolffheim to cut loose from us. In this way we are distinguished from other parties[!!], where comrades are excluded: we say that we leave it to the comrades’ feelings of honour to cause them to depart. Then they say we haven’t the courage to declare them excluded. Now the comrades should declare that they have no more business with us.

It seems from elsewhere in the debate over the expulsion of the Laufenberg/Wolffheim tendency that the Congress did not have the formal right to expel the tendency, and that there would have been distaste over abrogating the Party constitution in a way similar to the KPD(S)’s expulsion of the Opposition in Heidelberg. These facts reinforced the moral arguments for not expelling the national bolshevists, but, if constitutional and moral arguments overrode the need to be free of bourgeois tendencies, this points to a fundamental misunderstanding of what a proletarian party is for. The primary reason for its existence is not to provide a forum for debate for dissidents of various political hues, but to act as an organising centre for proletarian class consciousness. Its internal debate must be seen as a valuable tool for fulfilling that rôle and bourgeois tendencies have no part in that debate.

The KAPD initially allowed the Heidelberg expulsion to define its political area, and to conceal the class differences within the former KPD(O). The tragedy is that, although the majority of the best elements of the KPD were expelled, so were some of the worst.

(to be continued)

Notes

8 Levi was the right-wing leader of the KPD(S) at the time of the Congress.

Appendix: Theses on Nation and Class Struggle

5. This is true in the highest degree for the present epoch, where, within the world revolutionary development, the existence of the Russian Soviet Republic brings about the common action of the whole of world capital against the victorious Russian proletariat. In this historical situation, there grows up the duty for the German proletariat, together with the proletariat of all countries, to exercise all of its powers in the struggle against world capital on the international level. The struggle against world capital will [only] truly be fought by the most unreserved class struggle against the German capitalist class, as the hand servants of Entente capital. The total overthrow of the German capitalist class is the precondition for a successful confrontation with Entente capital. For this reason, all attempts aimed engaging the German proletariat in a community of struggle with the bourgeoisie in the form of a national uprising against the Entente count as counter-revolutionary. All attempts aimed at renouncing the unavoidable civil war after the victory of the proletarian revolution in favour of a so-called revolutionary people’s war against the Entente must also be considered counter-revolutionary. The first task of the victorious proletariat is to hold down its own bourgeoisie. Any struggle against Entente capital that becomes necessary would mean a simultaneous struggle against the German bourgeoisie bound to the Entente by common interests. Every kind of national bolshevism must therefore be eradicated from a revolutionary party. Endeavours of a national bolshevist character have no place in the KAPD. The KAPD claims as its own the sharpest ideas of class struggle in the interests of the German and international proletariat’s revolution. The organisation of the International does not consist in a federation of nations but, on the contrary, in the international unity of the proletariat’s class organisations for the single purpose of the construction of a communist world.