Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/37

 underlined ten quotations from Brandler's article. There you find the revisionist meaning of the theses on the victory of the Fascists over the November Republic. Comrades, the point of view there expressed serves as a theoretical explanation of the policy of our Party in October: it is the consequence of Radek's analysis.

As to the prospects of future struggles in Germany. When I opposed the three months' perspective, it was because the Party to-day is not in a position to lead great decisive Struggles, unless it consolidates itself internally. There will be fights, but they will be of a different nature from those which preceded October. The characteristic feature of the latter were that they were struggles that started over economic questions, but immediately assumed a political form; they became struggles for power. In the Cuno strike we said to Schlecht, one of our factory leaders: you must tell the people that we are in favour of economic assistance. He, however, stormily declared to the people: we want no economic assistance, we want to overthrow the government. This call to the masses was symbolic of the change which had overtaken the mass movement. We shall again have fights, conradescomrades [sic], but they will be fights in defence of economic interests and for economic demands. We shall have to make the centre of our activity the eight-hour day, which is now smashed, and every penny of wages. We shall have to take care that the breach between the unemployed and the employed does not become too great. We shall have to fight for the Factory Councils—not that they should become Soviets, but they should not be driven out of the factories because the employers are beginning to liquidate them.

Such will be the different nature of the coming conflicts. These conflicts may and will lead to a great union of the Party with the masses, although we must return to old positions. We have won ground, and thanks to the vagueness of our policy, lost it again. It will now be a question of again gaining ground among the masses; not of conducting a policy among the Social-Democrats which is tearing us to pieces, but of a policy which will consolidate us and will win the masses away from Social-Democracy. Then, perhaps, the conflicts will be transformed into struggles for power sooner than we expected. But without other political lines of policy, we shall conduct also these conflicts only with partial success and shall not be able to become a real revolutionary party. We demand that the Communist International should give a clear decision and that a Party congress should be held at which shall be discussed the question of how the Party is to be conducted. And we shall be on our guard against the oratory of certain comrades. Let us forget the past, a glad and glorious future lies before us. The past has not been in vain.