Witness to the German Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page B

industry (Badische Anilin) , plotted in Bavaria with Poincaré’s agents and squandered the Reich’s gold reserves… Since the world war the internationalist proletariat is the only true representative of the vital interests of the nations.

In early August the Cuno government was clearly on its last legs. It was unable to deal with the inflation which was reaching catastrophic proportions and there was growing working-class discontent. The SPD leadership, however, was more interested in a return to governmental office than sticking the knife in.
    Phynances, 84 the gold loan, etc.
    Correspondance internationale , August 15, 1923
    Morally bankrupt, resigned, driven out—take your pick how you describe it—the Cuno cabinet is still in power because nobody has been found to take over. It’s not a happy inheritance to pick up—and bourgeois democracies have a horror of taking responsibilities. So, while it is in process of being buried, the Cuno government is concerning itself with phynances. Through what alchemy can it transmute into gold the worthless paper money of the Reichsbank? It has just invented a gold loan, payable in paper money on the basis of the value of the dollar on the day of the subscription, guaranteed with all the assets of the nation: banks, industry, commerce, agriculture, in short everything which can be taxed. To pay the interest,
the government will have the right to deduct 500 million in gold marks from income tax, which will be increased if necessary. The notes will be for one, two, five, ten dollars, etc. The loan will be exempted from the taxes on stock exchange dealings and on inheritances, and therefore will be a profitable investment: it will pay 6 percent. The small denomination notes will have to be reimbursed in 1935 at 50 percent above their face value. Until then, they will pay nothing. The aim of the loan is to provide the German public with a stable German value 85 : an official admission that the mark is dead. But…1935 is a long way away! I should be very surprised if the possessing classes in this country, who are very skillful at thwarting all measures of taxation—which in fact are only instituted for demagogic reasons—will subscribe enthusiastically. They will certainly find it less risky to continue purchasing real dollars…
    As for the Reichsbank, it has just decided (August 3) to give credit only on stable values. Don’t ask it for credit on the basis of the marks which it itself issues! At the same time it has raised the bank rate to 30 per cent, a completely derisory measure. In wholesale trade, transactions are now only carried out in foreign currency. The mark is used only for paying wages; it is the counterfeit coin which every Saturday is slipped into the workers’ hands, and which, for them alone, is the obligatory currency.
    But let’s come back to the bizarre “finances” of the Reich. All the measures taken by the Cuno government against speculation have had the sole consequence of scandalously encouraging speculation. The regulation of currency dealing—which in fact cannot be verified by a bourgeois government that is both weak and indulgent towards the big banks of which it is in fact the tool—led on July 19 to a complete and irreversible fiasco. The Reichsbank, claiming that
it was checking the receipt of foreign currency by German exporters, took on the job of providing currency for importers. That day, on the Berlin stock exchange, they asked it for 20 billion marks in foreign currency. The Reichsbank could provide only 14 percent of that sum. The demand was massively increased by those true patriots which we know all businessmen to be. There was a huge conflict between the banks and the Reichsbank. The regulation collapsed.
    The establishment of an official exchange rate for the dollar on the Berlin stock exchange had a no less colorful outcome. At Gdansk, 86 Cologne and London, a dollar