Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/18

 the agreement to help him enforce it. Then both contracting parties, the exploiters and the Majority Socialist trade union leaders acting unitedly, mowed down the rebellious workers with machine guns.

In view of all these circumstances, it is futile for the Majority Socialists to blame the paltry results of the revolution upon the quarrels between the various groups in the labor movement. These, we repeat emphatically, had next to nothing to do with the outcome. What happened was that the program of the Majority Socialists prevailed. The limits of the upheaval were definitely set by the Stinnes-Legien trade union agreement. And when it was signed the revolution was only six days old and still in the "hurrah stage." In spite of their wartime quarrels the two great Socialist parties were still co-operating together. They did not finally break until much later. And their subsequent political struggles were but so much froth boiling around the central, decisive fact of the great trade union agreement, even though few German writers seem yet to have realized this cardinal proposition. The doom of the German revolution was sealed by the Majority Socialist leaders when they drafted the Stinnes-Legien agreement. Knowingly, intentionally, in signed contract with the exploiters, they sold out the already-accomplished revolution for a mess of pottage—a handful of reforms—and re-established the rule of the capitalist class.

This great treachery, besides ruining the German revolution, seriously if not fatally, compromised the cause of the world revolution itself. If Germany had gone into real revolution—and it surely would have done so had it not been for the attitude of the Majority Socialists—all the countries in Eastern Europe must have followed suit. In all likelihood the great movement would have swept across the Continent and put an end to the capitalist system generally.

In any event, even if no other countries had joined Germany and Russia in revolution, these two would have