ON THE OTHER hand, Comrade Kautsky's protest in the name of the 'strategy of attrition', which places all its hopes on the coming Reichstag elections, comes very late. He should not only have directed his warning cry against the present discussion of the mass strike, but also against the street demonstrations, indeed against the whole style of the suffrage movement in Prussia as it was introduced by the Prussian Party Congress in January. At that Party Congress the basic standpoint from which the whole suffrage campaign proceeded was emphatically formulated, namely that the Prussian electoral reform could not be achieved by parliamentary means - neither by activity within parliament, nor by parliamentary elections, however outstanding the results might be - but only and solely by a sharp mass action outside of parliament. "It is a matter of creating a popular movement in the best style", the speaker explained to enthusiastic applause, "otherwise those deprived of rights will be lamentably duped and deceived. And, even worse, we ourselves would have to bear the guilt for the people being thus deceived".
At the Party Congress there were five motions - from Breslau, Berlin, Spandau-Osthavelland, Frankfurt a.M. and Magdeburg - which demand the application of more decisive methods, of street demonstrations and the mass strike. The resolution that was unanimously accepted held out the prospect of the use of "every means at our disposal" in the fight for the right to vote, and its proposer commented: "My motion has expressly distanced itself from mentioning street demonstrations or the political mass strike. But this resolution is to mean - and I want the Party Congress to interpret it as meaning - that we are resolved to use all means at our disposal". When these means should be use always depends on "the degree of fervour which has arisen in the masses as a result of our educational and agitational work. We must place the main emphasis on the fact that we must above all work to arouse the enthusiasm of the masses in the suffrage struggle".
The demonstrations which developed after the Prussian Party Congress were thus from the outset conceived in connection with the slogan of an eventual mass strike, as a means of achieving that level of "mass enthusiasm" at which the sharpest means would come to be used. These demonstrations therefore already went considerably beyond the framework of the 'strategy of attrition' into the territory of the 'strategy of overthrow', and led directly to the latter.
This is the case for another reason too. If it is a part of the 'strategy of attrition' to avoid any possibility of a clash with the military, in the sense of Engels' Testament of 1895, then street demonstrations in themselves, even more so than the mass strike, are already a break with that 'strategy'. Now it appears all the more strange that Comrade Kautsky for his part approves of demonstrations, indeed he admits that it is necessary "above all to continue with the street demonstrations, not to slacken in this, but on the contrary to organise it more and more energetically". But he wants demonstrations without any escalation and without them coming to a head. The demonstrations are to be "more and more energetic", however they are not to "go forward at any price". They are "not to slacken", but they are not to move towards a climax. In a word: the demonstrations are to go neither forwards nor backwards.
Now this is a purely theoretical conception of the demonstrations, of mass action in general, which does not take into account very much the real practical conditions, the living reality. When we call great proletarian masses onto the streets for a demonstration, when we explain to them that the situation is such that the goal can only be achieved by their own mass action, not by parliamentary actions; when we are successful in enthusing the masses to an ever greater extent; when the street demonstrations become more and more powerful, and the elan and readiness to fight ever greater, then there arises in the masses of its own accord the question: what next? The demonstrations do not provide the solution. They are the beginning, not the end, of mass action. In themselves they create at the same time a further aggravation of the situation. And when the mass movement that has been built up by us calls for further directives, for further perspectives, then we must show it such perspectives - or if for this or that reason we are not in a position to do that - then sooner or later the demonstration movement will collapse. It must collapse.
Comrade Kautsky takes issue with this. He refers to Austria. "The struggle for suffrage lasted over a dozen years there. As long ago as 1894 the use of the mass strike was considered by the Austrian comrades, and yet they were able to keep their outstanding mass movement going until 1905 without any intensification and sharpening of the situation. In their struggle for suffrage the Austrian comrades never went beyond street demonstrations, and yet their elan did not disappear, their action did not collapse".
Comrade Kautsky is mistaken with regard to the facts in Austria, as he was mistaken with regard to the facts of the Belgian suffrage struggle.
The comrades in Austria were so little able to keep "their outstanding mass movement" going for over a dozen years that this mass movement, on the contrary, completely stagnated from 1897 to 1905, i.e. for some eight years. For this we have a reliable witness - in the form of all the Party Congresses of the Austrian comrades for this period.
From 1898 to 1905 complaints about the collapse of the mass action and about the stagnation of the suffrage struggle do in fact form a constant and predominant element in all the Party Congresses. As early as the Party Congress in Linz in 1898, Comrade Winarsky complained that in the speech about party tactics, "hardly a word was said about universal suffrage", and declared "a storming of this bastion must once more be undertaken". The same demands and complaints were to be heard at the Party Congress in Brünn in 1899. At the Party Congress in Graz in 1900 Emmerling confirmed that "since 1897 we have completely given up the struggle for universal suffrage". Skaret was of the opinion that "today it is up to us to create a movement for the right to vote, as from the Party Congress". Pölzer also stated: "The comrades say: since we have the fifth Curia[1] it as if the generals were hypnotised, everything has become silent. I believe therefore that demonstrations and meetings for universal suffrage must be held everywhere". Bartel declared: "In the manifesto of the Party and of the federation there was a timid appeal to fight for the franchise. In the provinces we breathed a sigh of relief because we thought that at last something would happen. However, nothing happened and we are just where we were before the manifesto".
All the speakers spoke in the same fashion. The same complaints were repeated at the Party Congress in Vienna (1901), in Aussig (1902), and again in Vienna (1903). At the Party Congress in Salzburg (1904) there was, finally, a whole storm of indignation at the standstill in the suffrage movement. Pölzer cried: "Yes, what will actually happen, then? Comrades, this cannot continue. If we make threats then we must carry them out. It is a matter of intervening with all our power, for we have been merely threatening for long enough". Schuhmeier confirmed: "It cannot be denied that in our ranks the mood has ebbed away, that the fire of fighting enthusiasm has died away". The general depression was so great, the elan so negligible, that Schuhmeier - just a year before the successful struggle of November 1905 - could declare in Salzburg: "I am today convinced that we are further away than ever from universal suffrage". Freundlich pointed out that "among the masses, such despair and indifference towards political life prevails as has never been seen before". Pernerstorfer believed that not even street demonstrations could still be organised: we are called on "to go onto the streets, and call on the party comrades to begin the same type of demonstration as before. But now we believe, quite seriously, that we would only suffer a fiasco with such an action". Winarsky stated explicitly: "We have now waited seven years, and I believe it is necessary at last that this period of waiting should come to a close in the interests of the party".
Things seemed rather low, therefore, with this "outstanding mass movement" which was kept going in Austria for twelve years without its elan abating. The party leadership was not responsible for this, of course. Adler had shown the real cause exhaustively in Linz when he said: "You demand that a movement for the right to vote should be put in motion - obviously, a movement which comes forward with the same determination as the one we had several years ago. On this point I say to you: today we cannot do it. Tomorrow perhaps we will have to do it, I do not know. Such movements are not put into motion because one wants to create them, such movements must result as an inner necessity out of the actual situation". And after that the same reply was of necessity repeated at every Party Congress, for the 'tomorrow' when a mass movement for suffrage again became possible in Austria did not occur until 1905, when, under the direct impact of the victorious mass strike in Russia, which had won the constitutional manifesto of the 30th October[2], the comrades gathered at the Party Congress broke off the discussions in order to take to the streets, resolved "to speak Russian" as they had been resolved ten years earlier to speak "Belgian".
While therefore the proletariat in Austria in fact gained the franchise reform only in the two strong spurts of the mass movement which took place at the beginning of the 'nineties under the impetus of the Belgian mass strike and in 1905 under the impetus of the Russian mass strike, Comrade Kautsky rejects both the Belgian and the Russian example for Prussia in order to refer for an example to that eight-year period in Austria which lay between the two spurts and in which the movement for the right to vote was in reality completely stagnant as a mass action. And in both cases, both in the gaining of the Taafe universal suffrage Curia and in the achievement of the most recent franchise reform, the mass movement in Austria was firmly linked with a resolute will for the mass strike. In 1905, as Comrade Kautsky knows very well, the preparations for the mass strike were made in the most serious fashion. It did not come to the mass strike only because in both cases the government, which was inclined towards the franchise reform, very soon made concessions.
It is also characteristic that in Austria, when a search was under way in the gloomy intervening period for methods of invigorating the mass movement, there emerged on every occasion the slogan of the mass strike. In Graz as in Salzburg the debate about the franchise movement turned into a debate about the mass strike. In fact the comrades all felt what had been expressed by Resel in Graz: "a movement for the right to vote can only be launched if one is determined to carry it through to its conclusion". Determination alone is certainly inadequate, for neither mass strikes nor mass demonstrations can be artificially produced out of nothing, if the political situation on the one hand and the mood of the masses on the other have not undergone a corresponding escalation. However, one should not fall victim to any illusions that, conversely, a mass movement or demonstrations can be continued for year after year without being stepped up and without a determined will to engage in the most acute struggle.
How impossible this is, is proven by the course which our own movement for the right to vote in Prussia has followed. That the first demonstration movement was stopped two years ago after only a short time, although the elan of the proletarian masses was not at all ebbing, is indeed a well- known fact. But this year too the movement shows the same characteristics in one respect. In every large demonstration held in Berlin, one had the clear feeling that it had been undertaken with the thought: "But now an end to this!" After the magnificent demonstration in the Zoological Gardens on the 6th March[3], which was a great step forwards the demonstration of 12th February, the mood of the masses in Berlin was so elevated that it was the duty of the party, if it was really concerned with holding the demonstrations "more and more energetically", to use the next appropriate opportunity to hold a new, even more effective demonstration. Such an opportunity, an outstanding opportunity, offered itself however on the 18th March, or at least on the first Sunday after 18th March. Instead of this, and in order to avoid this demonstration, those three dozen meetings were arranged in Berlin on 15th March, which meant a lamentable retreat, in view of the mood of the masses and after the 6th March. The 18th March, however - a date which this year had achieved an importance and relevance for the mass movement as never before in any previous year, and the anniversary of the German revolution and of the Paris Commune, exceptionally well suited for agitating among the masses, for retrospective political and historical analysis, and for merciless criticism of the bourgeois parties - the 18th March was not celebrated at all in Berlin. Neither demonstration, nor even mass meetings, nor a commemorative article. A dry leading article in 'Vorwärts' and not a line in 'Die Neue Zeit' - that was the way in which the excellent opportunity and the excellent mood of the masses in favour of "more and more energetic demonstrations" was used. And this is quite natural: if one does not approach the demonstrations with the clear determination to develop the movement further and further and not to draw back before the consequences, then that timidity develops which prefers to avoid the possibility of any tumultuous demonstration.
The Berlin meetings of 15th March, which killed off the 18th March, were a direct step backwards, measured by the mood of the masses in Berlin and of the party comrades in the provinces. If the militant mood and the determination had not been so great here, where the comrades used the 18th March where possible, and where the slogan of the mass strike was becoming louder and louder, then we could certainly not have got the demonstration of 10th April. A further fact shows how true this is. As soon as we had our great victory over reaction in Berlin on 10th April, by forcing through the right to hold street demonstrations - which meant a step forward beyond the 6th March, and was also without doubt the result of the 6th March - there arose for the Party the clear duty to make the maximum possible use of the newly acquired right to the streets, if it actually wanted to carry on with the demonstrations and to make them "more and more energetic". The next opportunity for this was 1st May. Here however, we had a remarkable experience. While across the whole country, even in the smallest places, there were street demonstrations on 1st May in one form or another, and while in the larger centres - in Dortmund, Cologne, Magdeburg, Frankfurt a.M., Solingen, Kiel, Stettin, Hamburg, Lübeck - the street demonstrations on the 1st May surpassed all preceding ones in numbers and mood and were a real step forward, no street demonstration at all took place in Berlin for the right to vote and for the May Day celebrations, neither a permitted one nor a banned one, nor even an attempt at one.
Three score meetings was all there was, and the superbly militant mood of the Berlin workers was dissipated.
While the handling in parliament of the suffrage bill - the to-ing and fro-ing between the upper and lower houses - still offers an opportunity over a period of months for demonstrations, and while the mood of the masses does not show the least sign of ebbing, it does seem to be the case that we are moving towards a pleasant 'summer break' in which we are beset by other worries - Comrade Kautsky points to the coming elections for the Reichstag - and in which the demonstration movement can quietly and safely be put to sleep. That is the unavoidable logic of the matter. The party is confronted by a dilemma, not as a result of my culpable agitation as Comrade Kautsky believes, but by the objective state of affairs. Either one wants to create "a popular movement in the best style", put into practice the slogan "no peace in Prussia", and hold mightier and mightier demonstrations, in which case one must go to work with determination, ready to go as far as is necessary, without shying away from the escalation of the situation which might take place, and use all the great economic struggles for the political movement. For this one must place the slogan of the mass strike on the agenda, make it widespread in the masses, for only thus will the confidence, the combativity and the courage of the masses be maintained over a period of time. Or, alternatively, one only wants to hold a few demonstrations, as a short parade functioning like clockwork and in accordance with commands from above, in order then to retreat in the face of an escalation of the struggle and in the end fall back on the old and tested preparations for the Reichstag elections.
In this case it would be preferable if one did not talk in terms of a "popular movement in the best style", announce at the Party Congress the use of "all means at our disposal", indulge in deafening sabre-rattling in 'Vorwärts' in January, and threaten the mass strike in Parliament. And one should not fall victim to any illusion that we will keep the demonstrations going over a period of time, and hold ever more immense ones. Otherwise we fall into the danger of again being somewhat reminiscent of the French democracy as portrayed in the 'Eighteenth Brumaire'. Marx says: "But the revolutionary threats of the petty bourgeois and their democratic representatives are mere attempts to intimidate the antagonist. And when they have run into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently compromised themselves to make it necessary to give effect to their threats, then this is done in an ambiguous fashion that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end and tries to find excuses for succumbing. The blaring overture that announced the contest dies away in a pusillanimous snarl as soon as the struggle has to begin, the actors cease to take themselves au sérieux, and the action collapses completely, like a pricked bubble".
Notes
1. In 1895 a new electoral law was passed in Austria. Previously there had been four different classes of voters: the new law simply added a fifth - the 'fifth Curia'. The vote was thus given to all male adults (except for personal servants), but although they by far numbered the largest section of the electorate, the fifth Curia only controlled 78 out of 425 seats in the Parliament. Luxemburg also refers to this as the Taafe Curia, though by the time the 1895 law was passed Taafe had been replaced as Austrian Chief Minister by Count Badeni.
2. In October 1905 the Tsar issued a constitutional manifesto which aimed to head off the mass movement by granting a constitution and establishing a legislative Duma. Though this satisfied most of the middle-class liberals, the working class movement continued the revolution.
3. On 12th February there were mass demonstrations against the minimal changes proposed to the restricted three-class suffrage. Despite the statement of the Berlin police chief that, "Streets only serve the traffic. Resistance to the forces of the state will result in shooting", over 200,000 people took part in Berlin, and there were demonstrations throughout Prussia.
On 6th March, the SPD called a mass demonstration in the Treptower Park in Berlin. This was banned by the police, who blocked all roads to the park. Instead the demonstration was led to the Zoological Gardens, where the 150,000 demonstrators held a rally outside the Reichstag. There were also large demonstrations in all the major towns in Prussia.
The 18th March was the anniversary of the start of the German Revolution of 1848 and of the establishment of the Paris Commune.
On 10th April there were again mass demonstrations throughout Prussia and other parts of Germany, which re-established the right to hold outdoor meetings and demonstrations.
Last updated on: 14.10.2026