Antagonism and contradiction are not at all one and the same. Under socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain.
~ Vladimir Lenin, Remarks on N. I. Bukharin's
Economics of the Transitional Period
The German Workers’ Republic was reliant on the constitutional convention which hailed the state’s inception. It was, concisely, to be a republic composed of the German worker.
The constitutional convention was gathered in the Autumn of 1934 for a broader purpose of ironing out the problems that had prevented the old republican constitution from truly serving the people of Germany and in investigating the best means for Germany to go forward into the future as a socialist state. This was on the basis of such a settlement being the people’s demand following the civil war, one which had apparently been threatened over the Summer by internal reactionary violence and external threats of invasion.
By the Autumn these joint threats appeared to have been temporarily dealt with. The rallying of the German people to defend themselves had quelled the reactionary coup far more quickly than had been the case in 1930 and this had seemed to give the fascist powers surrounding Germany pause, alongside the performance of the People’s Guard and the declared support of the Soviet people for their German fellow workers. The proposal already drawn up for an upending of the constitution was thus put to a referendum of the German people alongside a list of potential delegates.
Compared to the close elections of 1931 and the surprisingly bitter referendum campaigns of 1932 the application of this referendum was largely functionary. The impetus of the German state, now Communist dominated, was on securing an affirmative vote whilst little opposition campaigning was tolerated. The delegates selected were all technically independent although it can be estimated that a large majority were either of communist or trade union origin with smaller but still significant numbers coming from the Rural People’s Movement and the proto-revolutionary Social Democrat working group.
The delegates worked over the winter in crafting their proposals as outlined by their remit and much of the German public debated with them as news of the convention’s progress remained closed within the Reichstag. By early 1935 however an emphatic new vision for Germany had been produced, one which would allow it to become the world’s first truly socialist state.
The new state had its executive in the form of the Central Committee. The Planning Council was to be the overall body representative of the German worker as a whole and would deliver the state plan for whatever length of time either it or the Central Committee would propose. This was except in times of emergency wherein a People’s Leader delegated by the Planning Council and vetted by the Central Committee could introduce the plan with the Council subsequently taking on an advisory role. This state of emergency was the first order of business when the Council was convened for its introductory session.
Legislative control beyond the Central Committee and Planning Council was represented in the People’s Council in which the German nation as a whole belonged, regardless of whether or not they were workers. Matters below the national level were to be determined by the 40 new states outlined by the convention. These arose out of the looser Weimar set-up in an attempt to resolve the arbitrary nature of state power within the old republic. It was not lost on the non-Communist delegates of the Communist-dominated convention that the new states were based on the existing regional divisions the Communist party used internally. This included a state chamber in-exile for the people of East Prussia, which sat with little real power over the state they were supposed to represent at the time of the formation of the Workers’ Republic.
Throughout Germany the most significant of the entities created was the Works Council. These harkened back to the councils which emerged during the German revolution of 1918/19 and in the spirit of that period they were to be the crux of German life and society going forward. There were three broad tiers tied to membership. Councils of between 100-1000 workers would be semi-autonomous in nature but in return were the most subject to state planning measures. Those between 1000-10000 would have the opportunity to elect their own delegates to the People’s and Planning Councils wherein they could affect the outcome of the plans. Those between 10000-100000 would usually have direct representation on at least the planning council.
Those above 100000 departed from the Works Council model. They would directly comprise part of the Kombinat system, the dominant economic model within Germany throughout the Hitler period whose whims the planning council was ultimately subject to. These industries were strategic; heavy industry, coal, steel, chemicals, shipping and other sectors considered essential to the national livelihood. They were state controlled and thus collective bargaining remained more present than existed in the autonomous Works Councils. Similarly they were subject to greater constraints than what those councils would endure with regards to economic planning, though workers could usually rely on high wages and more indirect forms of influence on their states and the republic itself. The design, at least in theory, stipulated that an increase in direct influence would mean reduced overall independence within every level. At the other end were the Guilds; small businesses of less than 100 people which could be run almost entirely as private enterprises if the owner was content with being a small fish in a big pond. Capitalism had been largely unchecked amidst Weimar’s so-called Golden Age and whilst a mixed market had dominated the period of the United Front, the Guild structures were the last bastions of capitalism with the Workers’ Republic. As such they were often treated with suspicion and it was made clear that they were subordinate in stature to the Works Councils and the Kombinat. Any exponential growth in a Guild would lead to it becoming part of this larger system, officially to limit monopolies but also to attempt to offset the tendency of German industry towards bespoke and specialised craftsmanship in the pre-civil war era.
Such demands would affect every level of the new workers’ state as the necessities of the immediate plan with its demands for a crash rearmament program unprecedented in human history would stretch every aspect of German life, as the economic and social spheres were moulded together into one proletarian vision of international liberation. Every privation of means and power the German worker would be expected to suffer in these intervening years was emphasised as a temporary but necessary evil, so that they might never be suffered again.
It was thus that this epoch of a workers’ utopia remained a promise. One to be delivered by that greatest revolutionary of all, Comrade Hitler, on whom all responsibility now lay.
~ Annett Gerhardt,
Kriegsphilosophie: Totalitarismus und Demokratie in der Deutschen Arbeiterrepublik
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The Reichstag, Berlin; May Day 1935
The newly elected representatives of the Peoples and Planning Councils rose as the Volksführer entered to speak
The assembled audience were hushed before he turned to the large posters hung behind the podium and raised his fist. Behind him Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; two of many founders, were displayed looking towards the future. To either side were Paul Levi and Erich Zeigner; two of the many revolutionary martyrs, smiling down benevolently on the occupants of the Reichstag and the Volksführer in front of them all.
“In 1933 I entered this building as Chancellor, filled with deep concern for the future of my class and of my nation. Today, two years later, I can speak to the first Reichstag in the German Workers’ Republic!”
Adolf Hitler could hear his words echo out in triumph and as the chamber erupted in applause. He was inclined to applaud himself but in the moment he could only gaze into the smiling faces of those he had brought to this point of victory and bask in the glory.
“Truly, perhaps more than any other generation, we may be able to gauge Marx's meaning when he said “History is the judge - its executioner, the proletarian.” He went on triumphantly,
“We today are fulfilling the promise of a millennia of struggle. How much blood flowed around this destination in vain! How many revolutionary martyrs, consciously or unconsciously in the service of this purpose, have gone down the bitter road of rapid or painful death for more than a thousand years! How many others were condemned to end life behind fortress and dungeon walls, for the freedom that they wanted to give to the German worker! And now the realisation of this dream has succeeded. We have fought for the future and slain our oppressors!”
Looking out into the crowd Hitler felt he could see the dead gazing upon him, the shocked faces of those who he had seen die in the great imperialist slaughter, those whose bodies had been left to decay by their betters, the first revolutionaries he had fought alongside in Munich and those he had had led in the Ruhr. He felt their power within himself.
“Countless blood-covered dead and injured in all German districts are the witnesses of the fight. It has ended, as Comrade Lenin predicted it would inevitably end, in the transfer of political power to the German proletariat. We have done away with the empty rhetoric and faced the cold reality of international capitalism. We asked the German worker “is that the way you want things to remain?” The German proletariat responded in unison:
“No! Freedom and prosperity!”
The German people stood up and demanded a Germany that belongs to them, one that is free of the chains of the oppressor. One in which the fruits of their labour belong to them. This is the historic mission of the German working class. One the German Workers’ Republic, thanks to your tireless efforts, now exists to accomplish!”
Hitler bathed in more applause lapping over him, even from within his own head. The revolutionary martyrs were gone, in their place the imperialists of the old guard. Those who had tortured him for dissent at the front, those who had sent him off to be cannon fodder at Verdun along with so many others. Those who had locked him up in Munich and forced him to come to terms with his reality.
Now they bowed before him in his imagination but he knew this was idle fantasy. They would never be brought to their knees until the entire world was under his direction. His message towards them was simple.
Now, let’s find more of your kind.
“We are the war cry against the rotting world of capitalism!” Hitler declared to those who were really in front of him.
“Hold out your hand, international proletariat! The day of freedom is coming, you only need to want it!”
For the moment the German revolution was secure, the international revolution beckoned.
“Germany is showing you the way!”
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The painting is
Composition by Nikolai Suetin
