Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/7

 throw of the Kaiser. It consisted of 442 delegates from all over Germany. Its fundamental task was to decide what kind of government the new society should have. Immediately it assembled the sharpest differences of opinion manifested themselves among the three factions of the movement. The Communists stood flat-footed for soviets and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They demanded that the Congress, then actually practicing working-class dictatorship, should continue on as the sole Government of Germany. Their slogan was, "All power to the Soviets." The Independents accepted the soviet idea in principle, but were against trying to realize it through the dictatorship of the proletariat. In general they favored the plan of a two-department government, with a general democratic Assembly on one side with jurisdiction over political matters, and a national Soviet on the other side to have control of the industrial situation. They felt that the industrial Soviet, so established, would gradually oust the democratic Assembly and take over its function, thus avoiding the civil war that was to be expected if the dictatorship was constituted forthwith. The Majority Socialists, notwithstanding their wordy camouflage, were dead against the soviet plan. They took a bourgeois democratic position and stood for the immediate calling of a National Constituent Assembly, to be elected by all classes of the people and to serve as the future ruling body. They proposed, in effect, that the purely working-class soviets commit suicide to make room for an all-class government.

Between these widely divergent and irreconcilable conceptions no compromise was possible, and the three factions, realizing that the fate of the revolution depended upon the outcome of the issue, fought desperately to make their respective points of view prevail. On the radicals' side the struggle was greatly embittered by the Majority Socialists' shameful support of the old regime during the war and their constant blocking of every revolutionary move of the workers since the overthrow of the Kaiser. To impress the Congress with their strength, the Com-