Prometeo (II) 108

“It’s not possible to exchange a fraternal handshake with social-traitors. We mustn’t unite with them, but rather fight them!” (Karl Liebknecht, 1919)

We reproduce below an article by Karl Liebknecht where he deals in a precise and concise manner with the problem of workers’ unity which even then was the topic of the most outrageous speculation of every sort by all opportunists. Even then, while the masses were waking up from the stupor into which the last carnage had plunged them, the social-patriots and the social-pacifists tended under the mask of unity to prevent the development of the revolutionary movement in order to impose by corruption and violence the maintenance of order and social peace.

Even then Liebknecht and the small group of Spartacists were already raising the cry of alarm against such maneuvering and in one lapidary sentence symbolized the independent nature of the class party of the proletariat.

“Unity with traitors means defeat”, Liebknecht asserted even then. And this statement had no contingent value, but it expressed the imperious need for the proletariat to forge its class party on the basis of the principles of Marxism, the only condition that can lead the working masses to victory.

Today, after 15 years of struggle, after the formation of communist parties and the Communist International, after the revolutionary movements victorious as in Russia, or defeated, as in countless other countries, after the political current which had openly gone into the camp of traitors in 1914 by making a bloc with the respective imperialisms has revealed itself during the workers’ insurrections as the accredited executioner of capitalism, today the uniform of this unity waved then by the Dittmanns and Noskes is taken up by Stalinism and all the currents gravitating around it, and presented as the only lifeline in the face of the dangers of the coming war.

In fact, the motives behind the failure and liquidation of the communist parties cannot be sought in the alleged unitary instinct of the exploited masses but rather in the repeated defeats of the world proletariat in this last decade. It is precisely these defeats that have brought about a kind of panic in the masses logically leading to a progressive shrinking of political visibility, thus making them believe that the reasons for these defeats could only derive from a split in the workers’ ranks, and that, consequently, as a first stage it was urgent to move on to the reconstitution of the united party of the proletariat. It is inevitable that in the stages of decomposition of the workers’ movement the most regressive instincts will take over, as this also occurred moreover in 1914, but the task of the communists does not consist in going along with these retrograde parts of the masses, but rightly in marching against the current, in order to safeguard the ideological heritage of the communist vanguard, thus raising to the height of this historical task the most advanced strata of the proletariat.

It is in Lenin’s footsteps that even today the working masses can find their way again, and these footsteps indicate precisely that it is not in confusing revolutionaries with traitors that weapons for the proletarian revolution (the only means that can prevent the coming war) can be forged, but in the fiercest struggle against them and against all those conciliatory currents that stifle the current environment by advocating their “contingent” adaptation.

The centrism which had taken its strength and body from the proletarian defeats and had developed at the same rate that the proletariat regressed, today as this process approaches its end, openly assumes the character inherent in its nature by openly proclaiming the liquidation of the parties and thus abandoning the ideological heritage which is the fruit of so many years of struggle and experience of the proletarian class.

Against these liquidatory and openly counter-revolutionary forces rise up the scattered groups of the Left Fraction to whom falls the task of preserving the banner of the revolution intact, marching even against the prevailing moods of the masses, but which allows, in spite of everything, to defend the historical interests of the whole class and thus to establish the indispensable premises of the inevitable victory of tomorrow.

This was the way of Lenin and Liebknecht, this was the way of the scattered Bolshevik groups during the war and of the Spartacists, we will follow it because only it and it alone can lead toward victory.

To the priests of unity, to the promoters of the pogroms against the heretics of the new “Sacred Union” that is being reconstituted in view of the inter-imperialist war, the revolutionaries, the communists, hereby declare the most implacable war to unmask them once and for all from the hypocritical and demagogic phraseology that still covers their faces.

To the unity of demagoguery, phraseology and betrayal, let us oppose the regrouping, the strengthening of the Left Fractions, to which comes the task as of today of keeping the banner of communism intact.

* * *

Karl Liebknecht, 1919

“I do not know any more parties, I only know Germans”. This false word marks the beginning of the world war.

The confusing watchword of the sacred union of all classes had darkened the brains in all peoples, immersing even broad strata of the proletariat in patriotic intoxication, full of enthusiastic rage, full of bellicose fury and deadly madness.

The consciousness of the proletarian class found itself swept away like a weak dam by the storm tide. Now, only the class struggle of the proletariat against imperialism could have spared the world that horrible massacre. Surrendering the popular masses to the clutches of the blood drinkers, the sacred union was nothing but mass murder, the misery of millions of beings, the devastation of culture, madness and hell. The chauvinist politicians and the social peace apostles of social-democracy were the most fiery and the most cynical propagandists of mutual slaughter among peoples.

As for those who raised voices of warning and accusation against the bad shepherds of the proletariat, they were treated as party-wreckers, bad citizens and persecuted as traitors to the fatherland.

“We no longer know of parties in socialism, we only know socialists”, such is the word that resounds everywhere now that the power of the World War is shattered. The banner of a new social peace is hoisted; a new fanatical hatred is sown against all who oppose this new fury of unity. And this time again, it is the Scheidemanns and co who shout the loudest.

They find a docile echo particularly among the soldiers. This is not surprising. A large portion of these are not proletarians, and the state of siege, censorship, and the beating into their skulls have limited their outlook.

The mass of soldiers takes a revolutionary attitude in the face of militarism, war and the openly declared representatives of imperialism; but in the face of socialism, this mass is still indecisive, due to the ambiguity of an as-of-speaking unclear position. A large part of the proletarian soldiers, as well as the workers, believe the revolution is over; now, it would only be a question for these to realize peace and demobilization. They wish for rest after so much toil and suffering.

They do not perceive that the “revolution” that has been made, one may say, under government tolerance, is nothing but the collapse of the autocratic forms, left on behalf of the “Mad Year” (1914), that this is nothing but the completion of the bourgeois revolution. They forget that political power will only remain in the hands of the proletariat to the extent that the proletariat knows how to use it to bring its historical task to a successful conclusion: the abolition of all class economic privilege. They must equally understand that all other problems posed by the war, mobilization and economic reconstruction can no longer be solved unless the proletariat continues toward its final goal with a determined and firm march. The problem of social revolution contains and summarizes all this.

The problem of unity likewise is but a secondary aspect.

Unity? Who’d favor and work for it more than us!

The sort unity that makes the proletariat strong because it accompanies its historical mission! But not all unity strengthens our ranks. The unity between fire and water only extinguishes one and vaporizes the other. Unity between the lamb and the wolf abandons the lamb to the wolf’s mercy. Unity between the working class and the bourgeoisie sacrifices the working class. Unity with traitors means defeat.

Only forces oriented in the same direction find themselves strengthened by unity. Forces acting in the opposite direction are shackled and paralyzed with unity.

To unite kindred forces, such is our task. To unite antagonistic forces together in such a way as to prevent and divert the explosion of subversive forces in society, such is the task of the present apostles of unity, as was the task of the preachers of sacred union during the war.

Our criterion is action. Acting together supposes a commonality of path and destination. Anyone who agrees with us in the goal and method of immediate action is welcome among us as a comrade in arms. Solidarity, union in spirit, feeling, will and action – that is the only real unity.

Unity in words is but an illusion, self‑deception and disillusionment.

They, the priests of unity, aim only to end the revolution before it even begins. They only aim at pushing the movement into the channels of conciliation in order to preserve capitalist society. They only aim to deprive the workers of all power by strengthening the State, the product and arbiter of class contradictions. They want to maintain the economic domination of one class, while we remain as if in a drugged stupor by phrases about unity. They attacked us because we obstruct their design, because their interests are opposed to ours, as to any honest and true emancipation of the working class, which is only achievable by universal social revolution.

Can we be united with those who are nothing but the armored defenders of the crumbling regime’s “socialism”?

Can we unite with those without associating and sacrificing ourselves to their plans? Can we unite with them? Must we do so?

Such a union would be a crime against the proletariat. To unite with them would mean abandoning socialism and the Workers’ International.

It’s not possible to exchange a fraternal handshake with social-raitors. We mustn’t unite with them, but rather fight them.

The working masses alone are the executors of the social revolution. A clear class consciousness, a clear understanding of their historical mission, a clear will to go through with decisive action inspired by these concepts: such are the qualities without which the workers can never complete their mission. Destruction of all mystifications of unity in words, unmasking of all half‑truths and all self‑interested apostles, unmasking of all false friends of the working class: such is the first commandment of the workers’ struggle today more than ever. Only with intrepid criticism can a clear view develop, only with a clear view is the unity of thought and purpose, of designs and understanding realized; and it is from this unity alone that workers can draw the strength to create a new social order.