Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/19

 fight. We issued ten rallying slogans, which were somewhat mixed and confused. Why? In order to orient ourselves as to on what grounds we could lead the proletariat into the fight and in order to get beyond mere propaganda. It was the period when the opposition was determined to have action at any price; when they issued the slogan for the occupation of the factories, which the French were also advocating, and which the Party had rejected. We brought the workers into action with the slogan for the Control Commissions and the formation of proletarian hundreds. We did not invent this slogan but arrived at it after testing the situation.

Such was the situation at the beginning of the Ruhr war. It ended very quickly, after the passive resistance of the German bourgeoisie had collapsed in May and all the costs and burdens not only of the first so-called fulfilment policy, but also so-called policy of sabotage, were placed upon the shoulders of the proletariat. There began for the first time that elemental struggle of the Ruhr population, which came without opposition under the leadership of the Communist Party. What the Social-Democrats before the war and during the war failed to obtain, and what we also failed to obtain after the war, namely, the determined leadership of a broad mass movement, we obtained for the first time after the collapse of the passive resistance of the German bourgeoisie.

Of course it is now easy to say that the characteristic of the Ruhr war was that it was the rising wave of the proletariat.

After the Ruhr strike came the strike in Upper Silesia, where we were again able, uncontested, to lead the proletariat into the fight. This proves that the influence of the united front, as we conducted it, was successful.

Comrades, I now come to the most important point of all. What was shown in these struggles in the Ruhr and in Upper Silesia was also shown in Saxony at the beginning of the Ruhr occupation. In Saxony, too, we succeeded in gaining the leadership not only of the non-party working-class masses, but also of the organised Social-Democratic masses; this was thanks to our whole Saxon policy, by which we prevented the coalition of the Social-Democrats with the bourgeoisie, and by which the Right opportunist leaders, under the pressure of the Social-Democratic workers, rejected compromise and a coalition Government with the bourgeoisie and, under the pressure of the Social-Democratic and other workers, declared themselves ready to co-operate with the Communists.

Thus at three points, in the Ruhr, in Upper Silesia and Saxony, and later in Central Germany, we held the leadership of the working class fairly securely in our hands.

But it is worth while examining why the workers entrusted themselves to our leadership in all the questions of their daily needs—in the Ruhr mainly on the question of wages; in Upper