Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg was a leading figure of the KPD and the Comintern in the early 1920s. Elected to both the Reichstag and the KPD Political Committee in 1924, Rosenberg was part of the Fischer-Maslow leadership of the Party that emerged after the ‘German October’ debacle and also close to Karl Korsch. Not be expelled with Maslow and Fischer as an ‘ultra-left’, Rosenberg would soon identify with the German and International ‘Right’, leaving the Party in 1927, eventually rejoining the SPD. In exile after 1933, he taught history at Brooklyn College.

‘The Position and the Tasks of the German Communist Party’ by Arthur Rosenberg from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 4 No. 73. October 16, 1924.

The Experts’ Report has been accepted, the bourgeois block is on the march. The reconstruction of Germany is characterised in the first instance by a steady rise in the price of food and a gradual increase in the closing down of factories. Nevertheless the interference of foreign capital in Germany has had the result that the crisis in the German economic situation is only slowly becoming acute. Dramatic crises, as in the past years of inflation are not to be expected in Germany. The possibility is not excluded, however, that even in the course of this winter or next spring, the uncertainty of political and economical conditions may cause great struggles for power to flare up at any time. But it would be foolish to count with certainty on such an event. It is precisely in Germany that the absolute correctness is shown of the analyses and outlook which the V. World Congress set forth. The C.P. of Germany must prepare for both possibilities. It must be ready to intervene at any time in struggles for power at the head of the proletarian masses, as well as to hold the class conscious proletariat together in a long period of transition and prepare it for the decisive struggle.

A transition period of the character which we have at present in Germany has, of course, certain dangers for a Communist Party. There is the danger of an opportunist move towards the right, but there is also the danger of getting lost in a phrase-making and seeming radicalism, which is at bottom just as opportunist. It is just in the present difficult period for the C.P. of Germany there is shown what tremendous progress the Frankfurt Party Congress brought. The decision of the great majority of the Party for the left, and the rebuilding of the centre in this sense, has resulted in the practical cessation of the faction struggles in the G.C.P. Six months have gone since the Frankfurt Party Congress, and it is possible to pronounce a reasoned judgement in the new situation within the Party. We have succeeded so far that the Party has only one policy, that is the policy which has been made with the agreement of the districts and the central committee. There is no other policy in the G.C.P. In no district and from no organisation have there been any actual objections made against the policy of the Central Committee in the last few months. Not only the so-called right, but also the centre group is entirely liquidated for the organisation and Party life. In this respect the German Communist Party is today quite different from what it was in 1921 to 1923.

The dying off factions does not, of course, mean that there do not sometimes appear opportunist moves in the Party. Here and there individual and not quite sound functionaries have been carried away by the democratic-pacifist wave. In Berlin and the Ruhr district, single communist Factory Councils have declared themselves for the Experts’ Report. They were of course immediately expelled from the Party and the struggle of the G.C.P. against the Morgan policy has not been decreased thereby. The present policy of the G.C.P. has avoided and will avoid letting the Party adapt in any way to the Socialist Party of Germany or being carried in the wake of the G.S.P. Just such periods in which great revolutionary mass movements are lacking, and which are accompanied by democratic-pacifist deception, have led, as the past of the G.C.P. shows, only too often to such experiments. But the G.C.P. has done with that for good and all.

Just as decisively as the Party refuses to go with the S.P. leadership, so is it endeavouring to unite the masses of the whole proletariat for the class war. The realisation of this unity from below presupposes intensified work of the Party within the factory councils, factory nuclei and before all in the trade unions. Our campaign for Trade union unity met with some opposition among honest revolutionary workers, who felt that by re-entering into the “yellow” Amsterdam International they were yielding themselves up. Already at the V. World Congress, the German delegation pointed out the difficulties, which in this respect arise from among the masses of the German proletariat themselves and hinder the resumption of trade union work. A certain degree of caution and of patient work of explanation among the revolutionary workers as well as among the members of the G.C.P. was necessary in order to explain the rightness and necessity of the trade Union tactics of the Comintern.

The new Party leaders have from the time of the Frankfurt Party Conference taken on the education of members for trade union work, and we can say at present that all important obstacles have been overcome. Certainly the Party has come up against the clique of disguised syndicalists, who under the leadership of Schumacher and Weyer thought they could make use of the German C.P.for their own petty organisation. The left Berlin district leaders have for some time been directing a struggle against the tactics of Weyer and his Berlin Union. The left wing of the German Party has always very sharply opposed the syndicalist adventure. It was the Brandler Central Committee which at the time prevented the Berlin district leaders from making an end with Weyer and the Berlin Union. This delay must be made up for now. When the Weyer-Schumacher group announced open rebellion against the Party resolutions in the Trade Union question, the central committee replied by expelling Weyer and Schumacher.

The influence of the Weyer group on the workers of Berlin is quite insignificant. It is characteristic that the only one of the independent Berlin Unions which possesses authority among the masses, the Free Railway Union, is entirely with the Party in the campaign for trade union unity. Behind Weyer and Schumacher stand single groups of miners, tailors and a few metal workers. The most important big industrial district of Berlin, Wedding, at its meeting of members, expressly approved by 1000 against 20 votes the expulsion of Schumacher and Weyer. The figures in the other districts of Berlin correspond. Outside Berlin Schumachery does not exist to any serious extent. The worst that can develop in Berlin from the expulsion of the Schumacher group, is the splitting off of perhaps 100 to 200 members. A loss which is slight against the freeing of the Party from all syndicalist mischief. Schumacher and Weyer are characteristically carrying on an anti-bolshevist hunt and are joining up with certain “left radical” theoreticians who reject Leninism in its conception of the peasant question, the question of nationalities and of imperialism. But this combination only shows the more clearly that we have here to deal with an openly anti-revolutionary group whose expulsion from the Party can only be welcomed.

The class-conscious workers know from long years of experience that he who raises the cry: free from Moscow! is only an agent of counter-revolution. The German C.P. is firmly and steadily following the way indicated by the V. World Congress and the Frankfurt Party Conference: no concession however small to the democratic-pacifist wave, to Social Democracy or parliamentary swindly. At the same time indefatigable work for the organisation of the masses for the revolution and the refusal of all tendencies which would annul this work among the masses. Neither the Brandler policy, nor the Schumacher policy but the Lenin policy. That is the task of the German Communist Party.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1924/v04n73-oct-16-1924-Inprecor-loc.pdf