Witness to the German Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page A

compared to wages. I know a well paid skilled worker who last March was earning around 500,000 marks; at the time the dollar was “stabilized” at 20,000, which gave him around 25 dollars a month. In July his wage rose to around four million, or, if we accept an average rate per dollar of 300,000, between 13 and 14 dollars (in other words a net reduction of 11 out of 25). At the end of 1922, he tells me, he was earning 3,000 marks a month, which was worth over thirty dollars. In two years his real wages have fallen by half. He’s a social democrat, but he’s started reading Die Rote Fahne. When he sees there that wages are rising in Russia, he frowns and looks thoughtful.

The Bourgeoisie are afraid
    The Kreuz-Zeitung, the very moderate paper of the Catholic Center Party, recently wrote that “we see in the population the same mood as just before November 9, 1918,” that is, at the time of the
fall of the Kaiser. Agreed, but what could fall today? Herr Cuno? That wouldn’t be much. Why are the bourgeoisie so worried?
    In fact it is quite likely that Herr Cuno will fall, but that isn’t what matters. His brilliant operation to stabilize the mark cost the Reichsbank some 200 million gold marks; it brought fabulous wealth to certain financial sharks and swindlers. On July 25, shares in the Siemens-Rheinelbe-Schuckert Union (Stinnes) rose by 60 percent in a single day. Some bonds reached two million percent of their face value. But they can’t go on fleecing the poor like this indefinitely. The mayor of Berlin went, on the instructions of his municipal council, to make a bitter protest to Herr Cuno. “There is a storm cloud hanging over the capital. If the events in Frankfurt and Wroclaw were to be repeated in Berlin, they would take on the shape of a revolution. The fate of our country is being played out in our streets.” 79 These points were repeated at the municipal council on June 27. The councillors nonetheless decided to increase charges for water, gas and electricity…
    All this explains the alarm caused by the announcement of anti-fascist demonstrations on July 29. Herr Severing banned them. The KPD insisted they would go ahead, thus revealing the state of disarray of the enemy, and obliging minister Severing to show his hand. It worked. We are in possession of a secret circular addressed by the minister to all police units, both in the criminal police and the Reichswehr. They are instructed to be prepared for all eventualities, and not to permit any unlawful assemblies. They must act energetically, resort to armed force and, if the police cannot handle the situation, the troops must be sent
into action. In other words, the socialist minister for plutocrats, troublemakers, monopolists and speculators, realizing the enormous danger, and fearing the great popular demonstration which would have united on the streets the starving and the enemies of reaction—in short, the whole poverty-stricken population—took the desperate decision that he would unite the armed forces and the fascist gangs in order to drown the whole movement in blood immediately. The party has thwarted this provocation. It can congratulate itself on having made the rulers of the republic tremble. And it could not call off its demonstration; the open-air march in Potsdam has been replaced by 23 mass meetings in Berlin and the suburbs.
    The SPD—to which Severing belongs—is profoundly embarrassed. It has clumsily absolved itself of all responsibility for the Frankfurt events. Contrary to its normal practice, it has kept almost complete silence with regard to the preparations for the anti-fascist demonstration. Breitscheid has spoken up to demand an end to benevolent neutrality towards Herr Cuno and the adoption by the party of a policy of outright opposition. For the moment one thing stands out a mile, even to the most retarded social democrats: the KPD is the only party to speak out against