Here is a commentary from the author:
The SPD, a party of social democrats and democratic socialists, had a fruitful period of cooperation with the KPD, the Communist party…
… until the KPD received marching orders from their new boss in Moscow in 1928, the newly ascendant Stalin, to refuse to cooperate with the ‘social fascists’ of the SPD, under the bizarre notion that the Weimar Republic collapsing under the weight of the far-right would let the KPD smoothly assume power, as though the army and paramilitaries were already communist instead of, you know, conservative as fuck.
Time for another history lesson:
It is wrong […] to assume that the KPD devoted all of its resources to a fight against the SPD and neglected the [Fascist] threat. On the contrary, most of the political violence practiced by the KPD during 1928–1933 was directed against the [Fascists], not the [Social Democrats]. It is also incorrect to assume that the divide between the KPD and the SPD was entirely motivated by the orders of the Comintern.
Certainly, the Comintern heavily influenced the KPD’s course of action, but deep divisions had existed between the KPD and the SPD from the very day that the KPD became a political entity. Further, the differences between the two parties were not merely ideological. KPD and SPD membership came from different economic spheres, they lived in different neighborhoods, and they experienced the Weimar Republic in different ways.
The SPD, for much of the Republic’s existence, was one of the main parties of government. When the KPD accused the SPD of Social Fascism, they were not targeting another radical left party; they were focusing their criticisms on one of the most powerful political entities in the Republic.
Related to this, the SPD had in its position of power pursued repressive tactics against the KPD. Thus, the KPD’s view of the SPD as social fascists was not merely the result of ideological dogmatism but was in fact shaped by the actual experience of the KPD in the Weimar Republic.
(Emphasis added.)
Oh, and a funny thing: the liberal nationalist Gustav Stresemann once seriously proposed collaborating with the SPD:
[A]s Jonathan Wright has argued, the Kapp putsch made it clear to Stresemann that any attempt to restore the monarchy was bound to end in civil war.⁴⁵ It was Stresemann’s pragmatic approach to the Republic which brought the former implacable enemy of socialism to the conclusion that it was necessary to bridge the gulf between his own party and the SPD, the two parties representing the conflicting social and economic interests of industry and the working class.
At the [Deutsche Volkspartei’s] Stuttgart party conference in 1921, Stresemann suggested [that] the DVP should return to the government coalition. In reply to the reproach that in order to do so the DVP would have to make concessions to the Centre and the SPD, Stresemann again referred to Bismarck: ‘I ask you to go back in German history, to consider the greatest statesman the world had in the nineteenth century, Bismarck. Were his politics anything other than the politics of compromise? […] Was this policy of the achievable not a hundred times more national-minded and forward-looking than the policies of those who felt the necessity to attack it?’⁴⁶
Stresemann’s willingness to co-operate with the Weimar coalition parties after 1920 was never forgiven by the nationalist opposition.
The KPD faced tens of thousands of Nazis in open battle on the street, which might well be called “doing nothing” in comparison to the SPD’s strategy of trying to appeal to centre-right voters by assassinating Rosa Luxemburg
Great post! And this sounds like it originated with a certain pug, going by the social fascism in meme form.
The SPD, just wanting to stabilize the Republic while doing nothing to address the economic crisis, while punching left and not suppressing the far-right, when the far-right takes advantage of the economic crisis and infighting to seize power:
I remember hearing that the SPD used the Freikorps for the suppression of Communists during the Spartacist uprising. With the Freikorps leading to the Nazi party and some of its members directly having a past in it (Himmler). Have not looked deeper than a summary glance though.
Yes that’s correct. Libs will defend this with, “The communists were trying to overthrow the democratic government!” But the reality is, the German government had collapsed at the end of WWI and it was an open question what they’d end up with when the dust settled. The communists wanted to set up a state where the political power of the right and the bourgeoisie would have been subordinated, and the SPD sent in the freicorps to destroy them, in order to defend a fledgling system they created where they would have “no choice” but to form a coalition with the bourgeois parties and enact austerity policies to “maintain the coalition.” They set up the system where their hands would be tied, and did so while being violently hostile to the only other possible coalition partner, who could’ve allowed them to do something other than austerity.
This was, of course, after they spent WWI supporting the war effort and betraying the Basel manifesto and the second international, which before the war called for socialists to work against their own governments in the event of a great war. German entry into WWI was expedited by the SPD voting in favor of war credits and the declaration of war. They completely betrayed their principles and the proletariat because it would have been bad for their careers.
So I find it very appropriate that libs today project onto them and glamorize them.
The SPD, a party of social democrats and democratic socialists, had a fruitful period of cooperation with the KPD, the Communist party until the KPD received marching orders from their new boss in Moscow in 1928, the newly ascendant Stalin, to refuse to cooperate with the ‘social fascists’ of the SPD, under the bizarre notion that the Weimar Republic collapsing under the weight of the far-right would let the KPD smoothly assume power, as though the army and paramilitaries were already communist instead of, you know, conservative as fuck.
This ignores the fact the fucking SPD and their goverment signed multiple secret agreements with the Soviets, and both worked to restart their arms industry, that was literally the entire deal of the Treaty of Rapallo. The SPD was made up of idiots who fucked up the treaty though, the immediatly cracked down hard on any KPF activity. An interesting fact is that friedrich ebert’s son was a founding member of East Germany.
Incredible, sounds just like Democrats now
SPD for all its faults was much better. Democrats are more like Zentrum.
It’s easy to look better by default, compared to democrats.
The diseased, maggot-ridden corpse of a possum flattened by a semi looks better compared to the Democrats.
I mean most of Zentrum colaborated with the Nazis. And the ghoul Adenauer was a member.
