Franz Mehring explains and denounces the role of Karl Kautsky and the Independent Social Democrats, declaring the solidarity of the Spartacans with the Bolsheviks in this open letter first printed in Pravda in June 13, 1918.

‘An Open Letter to the Bolshevik Government’ by Franz Mehring from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 2 No. 38. September 27, 1918.

Dear Comrades: It may seem very conceited of me, one of your German comrades, to presume to send you, Russian comrades, fraternal greetings and heartiest good wishes. In reality, l am not writing to you as a private individual, but as the senior member of the Group Internationale and the Spartakus group and for all those in the German Social Democratic movement, who have during the last four years, under the most trying conditions, fought with the same means and tactics which you yourselves employed until your efforts were crowned with victory.

We greet the news of the Bolshevik victories with the same feeling of pride, without the least jealousy, as if they were our own victories, and we all would gladly have allied ourselves with you if our ranks had not been so thinned.

Many of us—and, indeed, not the least among us—suffer behind prison walls and in penitentiaries, as, for instance Comrades Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. I would that it was possible to give you more comforting news of the inner life of the German labor world. Like a grease-spot, the government Socialism spreads over and soaks up everything that surrounds it, despite the fact that it s morally and positively played out. The fact that it has succeeded by every makeshift, under cover of martial law, in possessing itself of almost all the labor papers and thus spread poison and smut among the masses through hundreds of channels, is even the least of its evils.

Far more serious thought is demanded by the fact that the masses still rally round this government Socialism and thus give it power to defeat destructively the Independent Social Democratic movement in three elections.

One of these elections, which occurred quite some time ago, could possibly be explained.

The district in question was Potsdam-Spaudau-Osthaveland. In 1912 Karl Liebknecht carried the district for the first time, owing to an accidental majority. It is quite easy to understand that in the special elections every party offered to help the government Socialists to protect Potsdam, the Prussian residence from a follower of Liebknecht. For the Scheidemanns this was more of a disgrace than a triumph.

However, it was different in the districts of Niederbarbarnim and Zwickaa-Crimmitschau, where recent elections were held to replace thedeceased representative, Stadhogen and Stroble of the Independent Socialist Party. Both districts had been strongholds of the party. They were always represented by radicals and the other parties had no candidates in either case, so the question resolved itself into a struggle between the Dependent and Independent Socialists.

Nevertheless, the Dependent Socialists carried both districts. This naturally had a very depressing effect upon all our friends.

Of course, one must not forget that the contests were not fought with equal weapons. The Independents had not the press, freedom of assemblage, or any other legal means of carrying on their campaigns, while the government Socialists had everything in abundance.

Still, whatever weight we may put upon these inequalities falls far short of explaining the magnitude of both defeats. During the period of the anti-Socialist laws the partly was often victorious under similar or even more unfavorable conditions.

The root of the evil lies deeper. It has only come to light through these elections, though the earlier symptoms indicated as much. The Independent Socialists lack the necessary magnetism to rouse the proletarian masses and lead them on to victory.

Concerning the individual members of the party, there is nothing bad to say. There are able workers among them, who strive to do their utmost, but the party as a whole was not born under a lucky star.

They severed their connection with the government Socialists too late and only after much hesitation, sharing their sins for better or for worse for a long time. Furthermore, the party was not founded upon a common and clear philosophy. On many questions, even important ones, their opinions differ. The binding thought among them does not spell “forward,” but “backward.”

They would like to resurrect the old German Social Democracy which was in existence before August 4, 1914. They want to go back to their “old and tried tactics,” with their “glorious victories” from election to election, from their victorious struggle against “revisionism” from one convention to another, etc. But this aim is nothing but a Utopia, and a reactionary one at that. They wish to unearth a corpse and redecorate him for a new life. The former German Social Democracy, with its “old and tried” tactics, has been beaten to pieces and ground under the triumphal chariot of imperialism.

It no longer exists. There is but one German Social Democracy now, and that was founded in August, 1914.

The mourning of the Independents for the unrecallable past is commensurate with their complete blindness to the propelling forces of the present. They wish to soothe the pain of their defeat in Niederbarnimen by a rigorous campaign against the Bolsheviki, led by the Menshevik, Stein, and with him, or better above him, the great theoretician, Karl Kautsky. Actually they are performing an heroic deed, and show an infinite well of political wisdom! Could Karl Marx hear of this, he would turn in his grave; In fact, it is significant to know that the partly still continues to adore Kautsky as a holy prophet, despite the fact that it ought to have known at least since August 4, 1914, that this learned schoolmaster does not possess the least vestige of Marx’s revolutionary spirit.

From all this it follows that the Independent Socialists have neither the propelling force or power of attraction among the German proletariat. The workers well know what the solidarity of their class means. If they must put up with the split in the party, they do not wish to pay this high price for nothing.

But the reactionary Utopia would not satisfy them even if the latter could be realized, and would be the beginning, and not the end, of the crisis. The cataclysm of August 4, 1914, was not a lightning stroke from a clear sky. It was the result of a disease which long had been undermining the organism of the party, despite its sound appearance.

The Independent Socialists can, of course, say that they did not want the split, and that they were almost forcibly put out of the party by the government Socialists.

But the result of their policy of going half way and hesitating was that the masses turned their backs upon them and blamed them for the split. In fact, what is gained when the government Socialists say:

“We to the war credits, but decidedly not on principle.”

And the Independent Socialists say:

“We oppose the war credits, but decidedly not on principle.”

The “yes” and “no” are born of the same desire; that is, “to wash the bear, but not to wet him.”

So far as we may judge from the special elections, the Independent Socialists can, at best, be absolutely sure only of two or three of the 28 districts which they now hold. This circumstance alone would not be disastrous, but that the Independent Social democratic party, with its “old and tried tactics,” is a particularly Parliamentary body, it portends to be a bad sign for the near future.

Their desire to survive as well as their consciousness of political duty compels them more and more, always with the same “old and tried tactics,” to continue the struggle.

Whoever believes them capable of moving a finger in this sphere, even though the greatest good of humanity may be at stake, is laboring under an illusion that becomes more disastrous in proportion to the size of the air castle he builds upon this supposition.

Contrasted with the attitude of the independent Social Democratic Party, the Group Internationale immediately at the beginning of the war discarded all their illusions and never forgot in their theses and programs that after the terrible downfall of August 4, 1914, the complete reconstruction of the International would not only be possible but vitally necessary. Though we, at first, suffered enmity and persecution on all sides, and not least from the Independents, we always had the luck to get a hearty hearing among the workers and, still more important, to find the same spirit of sacrifice that their fathers showed during the period of the anti-Socialist laws.

We made but one mistake, and that was to join the Independent Social Democratic Party after they had organized of course retaining our own viewpoint, in the hope that we might succeed in driving them forward.

But we have long since given up this hope. All our attempts to this end were wrecked by the fact that our best and most experienced members were placed under suspicion by the leaders of the Independent Social Democratic Party as agents provocateur. This distrust is also an inheritance of the “old and tried tactics.”

However, there are things which will try every kind of patience. Among these is the senseless warfare of Kautsky and Company against the Bolsheviki.

Naturally, we can understand the quivering excitement of this thinker. He is indignant because the Bolsheviki have gone far beyond the bounds of the “old and tried tactics.” But we always cherished a ray of hope that Kautsky had learned at least so much from Marx—whom he claims to know by heart so that he could reproduce him word by word—that it is absolutely ill-bred for people who are in peace and safety abroad to enhance the joy of the bourgeoisie by making the task of revolutionary fighters, working under the most difficult circumstances, and bringing the greatest personal sacrifices, even more difficult.

But even this hope deceived me, and I write this letter fulfilling a wish repeatedly expressed among the members of the Group Internationale to tell our Russian friends and comrades that we are all bound to them by common tie of passionate and heartfelt sympathy and that we see in them, and not in the “old and tried tactics”, the pioneers of the New International, that International of which our thesis says, “The fatherland of the proletarians, for whose defense everything else must be put aside, is the Socialist International.”

Greetings and handclasps,

Yours, Franz Mehring.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1918-09-27/ed-1/seq-1