Hitler wasn’t voted in. His party got a small minority of votes. He was appointed chancellor by the liberals and conservatives.
He was fought in the streets by the KPD, but the SPD and the aforementioned groups worked against them, choosing to make Hitler Chancellor in order to give him the power he needed to crack down on the KPD.
The holocaust wouldnt have happened if the spartacists hadn’t been so naive.
Luxemburg and the Spartacists had criticized the SPD in 1914 for having become a bourgeois party. Its like, they knew what was happening, they just didn’t do anything about it until 1917. Naive in that they continued to trust the SPD despite identifying its actual class character, when they should have been organizing, educating, and building for the split, so that when the split happens the mass of workers are prepared.
Its a really interesting point to make in this thread, since “rioting” was ultimately part of what defeated the German working class. Police would infiltrate the movement, incite putschism or convince people to switch the target of an action. Over and over, defeat after defeat, still the power of the bourgeois in Germany was crushed by the revolutionary workers. Except, there was nobody on the left who could lead and organize a transitional government, they’d all been killed in riots or exiled.
I feel like saying it was “rioting” that defeated the working class is a bit reductive. If the spartacists had been less naive in their uprising (not trusting the SPD, not giving money back to banks, so much other stuff) then “rioting” would have put the working class in a different situation. In the following decades what did them in was the systematic attack on them + their continued faith in their fellow person (despite ideological differences) that seems, very broadly, to have been the big issue.
I mean fair – just to say, you can riot and still lose, even when the conditions are ripe. The actual condition is organization and revolutionary program in practice, not just “riots.” Like sometimes you gotta take over the streets. To the point of the meme, you can organize people to vote which won’t get you there either. But it isn’t really riots or voting, both are subordinate to the revolutionary program. To me, the crisis of the working class is 1. Crisis of organization 2. Crisis of education/consciousness 3. Crisis of leadership.
We don’t really need a working class that riots or a working class that votes. We need a working class that knows when to vote, when/where/how to “riot”, but the need doesn’t really have to do with rioting or voting. Both are tactics, but tactics in the absence of strategy is a loser
The only naivete I can muster is that they should have been more prepared for how the Kaiser wasn’t going to allow Prussian Germany to lose Bavaria AND the monarchy. The SPD was a party that existed within the monarchy, and german states being independent of that was a far greater sin to the military aristocracy.
Hitler wasn’t voted in. His party got a small minority of votes. He was appointed chancellor by the liberals and conservatives.
He was fought in the streets by the KPD, but the SPD and the aforementioned groups worked against them, choosing to make Hitler Chancellor in order to give him the power he needed to crack down on the KPD.
The holocaust wouldnt have happened if the spartacists hadn’t been so naive.
Luxemburg and the Spartacists had criticized the SPD in 1914 for having become a bourgeois party. Its like, they knew what was happening, they just didn’t do anything about it until 1917. Naive in that they continued to trust the SPD despite identifying its actual class character, when they should have been organizing, educating, and building for the split, so that when the split happens the mass of workers are prepared.
Its a really interesting point to make in this thread, since “rioting” was
ultimatelypart of what defeated the German working class. Police would infiltrate the movement, incite putschism or convince people to switch the target of an action. Over and over, defeat after defeat, still the power of the bourgeois in Germany was crushed by the revolutionary workers. Except, there was nobody on the left who could lead and organize a transitional government, they’d all been killed in riots or exiled.I feel like saying it was “rioting” that defeated the working class is a bit reductive. If the spartacists had been less naive in their uprising (not trusting the SPD, not giving money back to banks, so much other stuff) then “rioting” would have put the working class in a different situation. In the following decades what did them in was the systematic attack on them + their continued faith in their fellow person (despite ideological differences) that seems, very broadly, to have been the big issue.
I mean fair – just to say, you can riot and still lose, even when the conditions are ripe. The actual condition is organization and revolutionary program in practice, not just “riots.” Like sometimes you gotta take over the streets. To the point of the meme, you can organize people to vote which won’t get you there either. But it isn’t really riots or voting, both are subordinate to the revolutionary program. To me, the crisis of the working class is 1. Crisis of organization 2. Crisis of education/consciousness 3. Crisis of leadership.
We don’t really need a working class that riots or a working class that votes. We need a working class that knows when to vote, when/where/how to “riot”, but the need doesn’t really have to do with rioting or voting. Both are tactics, but tactics in the absence of strategy is a loser
The only naivete I can muster is that they should have been more prepared for how the Kaiser wasn’t going to allow Prussian Germany to lose Bavaria AND the monarchy. The SPD was a party that existed within the monarchy, and german states being independent of that was a far greater sin to the military aristocracy.