Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/71

 when the decisive moment came our authoritative centre around which the vacillating workers who were drawn away from the influence of the Social Democratic Party could rally, was lacking.

Since other united front bodies also (councils of action, control commissions, fighting committees) were not systematically used in order politically to prepare the fight, the fight was almost entirely interpreted as a party affair and not as a united fight of the whole proletariat.

The Party showed very little ability to consolidate organisationally its growing influence in the mass organisations of the proletariat. It displayed still less ability to concentrate its forces for a protracted period on one fighting aim.

The amount of technical preparation of readjustment of the organisation for the fight for power, of the arming and internal consolidation of the centuries, was at a minimum. The much too brief and feverish technical preparations, practically produced no results; it is true, they technically prepared the Party members for action, but they did not embrace the wide proletarian masses.

The feverishness of the technical preparation during thedecisive week, the view that the struggle was only a Party struggle, and the concentration of the "final blow" without preliminary and accumulative partial struggles and mass movements, made it impossible to examine the true relation of forces and to fix proper dates. Therefore the statement as to whether the majority of the working class at the decisive points would follow the lead of the German Communist Party was rendered an absolutely unreal and unsafe calculation. In fact, the only thing that could be asserted was that the Party was on the way to winning over the majority without yet possessing the leadership of them.

The under-estimation of the forces of the counter-revolution, consisted of the fact that the Party under-estimated the power of the Social-Democrats as a hampering force within the proletariat.

The Party also misunderstood the nature and the rôle of the left Social Democratic leaders, and allowed the illusion to be cherished in its own ranks that by exerting the necessary mass pressure, we could compel these leaders to join with us in calling for the fight.

The rigid one-sided policy of passing to the decisive struggle only from the defence of the Central German positions was a mistaken one. It resulted in the neglect of other industrial and fighting provinces, and in severe disorientation after the Saxon position was surrendered without a fight. It was a fatal error of the Party to stake all its cards on Saxony, and thereby fail to