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mass organisation, but through the eyes of the rospectively, after he had become a member of Red is the colour of our flag Peter Taaffe reviews the recently published autobiography of Oskar Hippe, a fighter in the German workers' movement for over six years.
Spartacists on OSKAR HIPPE JOINED the pre-first world war the barricades, German Social Democratic Party (SPD) under the influence of his radical elder brother. He 1919.
swung over in support of Rosa Luxemburg anci Karl Liebknecht's Spartacists League in 1916 in protest against the support of the war by the SPD leaders. Following the German revolution of 1918, he joined the newly formed German Communist Party (KPD) and participated in all the major battles of the German working class from 1918 to 1923.
His revulsion at the increasingly bureaucratised KPD. under the pressure of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet U'nion. led him into of the "Trotskrists' and eventual the ranks expulsion for his consistent internationalism from the KPD. He fought against the rise of Rosa Nazism, was arrested and tortured after Hitler Luxembourg.
came to power. and when released worked in the underground against the fascists. Following the occupuation by the allied forces and Red Army of Germany: Hippe took an independent class position.
This led once more to his arrest. this time by regime. He was the East German Stalinist imprisoned for eight years, his jailers very often being the same Nazis who had supervised communists and socialists under the old Nazi regime. Following his release from an East German jail he travelled to the West. there to fight for his Marxist beliefs in the ranks of the newly re-constituted SPD.
Oskar Hippe tells his story in And Red is the Colour of Our Flag and it is a very interesting story, not just from a personal point of vien (although that is very inspiring) but in giving a picture of all the major struggles of the German working class over sixty years. This is done not from the standpoint of a 'general', a leader of a 280 MIR poor bloody infantry', a combatant, a militant, stubbornly and heroically defending his beliefs come what may.
He was first introduced to the ideas of socialism and Marxism by his radicalised elder brother. He secretly revelled in the verbal trouncing this brother gave to his conservative and rather tyrannical father. Although he had Social Democracy: he honestly joined the recounts succumbing to the pro-war mood that developed with the outbreak of the first world war. He writes, "the books and pamphlets which I read up to then were not enough to fortify me against the prevailing atomosphere. And so I too finally lasped into the jingoism which reigned supreme"
However. when he arrived in Berlin in April 1916 his pro-war tie was ripped from his neck by his sister who threw it under a train. Working in a metal factory he soon imbibed the radicalised atomosphere of the Berlin working class. He recounts the inspiring anti-war stand of Karl Liebknecht: "On the ere of 1 May 1916 my brotherin-law told me we would not go to work on the next day since the workforce would all be joining an anti-war demonstration at the Potsdamaplatz. We went there at the specified time. Ten thousand workers had gathered in the square, and Karl Liebknecht spoke to them from platform at the Potsdam local station."
He met Richard Muller. the leader of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, who "embodied for me the very image of a militant socialist". Learning rapidly, he joined the Spartacist League in October 1916. When the SPD split in 1917. with the formation of the Independent SPD (USD), the Spartacists sought to work within this newly created mass organisation. Ret-
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the newly formed Communist Party, he and his comrades were "in unanimous agreement that Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht did not split from social democratic policies early enough, as the left wing of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party had done in 1903. In the last years before the war at the latest, when reformism had shown itself more clearly, that was when the left wing in the SPD should have decided to split. Even if it had not been possible to prevent the war, at least the outcome of the November revolution would have been different."
This view of Hippe, which we believe to be mistaken, was common amongst the cadres of the young KPD at that time. It is also a widely held view amongst ultra-left sects on the outskirts of the labour movement. The mistake of Rosa Luxemburg was not that she did not split from the Social Democracy. Contrary to Hippe's assertion, Lenin did not split from the RSDLP in 1903 but remained as a faction, the Bolsheviks (Majority), of this party right up to 1912. Only when Lenin had the support of four-fifths of the organised workers did he carry through an organisational break with the Mensheviks.
Rosa Luxemburg's mistake was that while she politically combated the opportunist leaders of the SPD, including its 'left-wing' led by Kautsky, she did not, unlike Lenin, organise a tendency, or faction, which both politically and organisationally fought the opportunist leaders of the party. Part of her reluctance to do so flowed from her revulsion at the bureaucratically centralised character of the German SPD. She was therefore hesitant in drawing 'organisational' conclusions which smacked of the same methods as the leaders of the SPD.
HIPPE GIVES A glimpse of the colossal effect of the Russian revolution on the German proletariat. This resulted in a split in the USPD. with the left fusing with the Communist Party to form the Unified Communist Party (VKPD) with an initial membership of 500,000. This had more votes in the industrial belts than all the other parties put together, including the SPD. For instance, "in the Maansfeld district, as well as in the Harz foothills, the party had won considerable support amongst the small farmers and peasants. In many communities, the VKPD dominated. Any communal policies made there were always in the interests of the working population. But in the factories as well, working conditions and wages were improved with the aid of strikes".
The author shows in a quite gripping fashion the state of virtual civil war which raged throughout Germany: He deals with the Kapp putsch of 1921 which was met with a general strike and a complete paralysis of the forces of the bourgeois. 1923. an opportunity for the
working class of Germany to have taken power, is also recounted in some excellent detail.
The failure of the leadership of the VKPD to seize this opportunity resulted in huge upheavals within its ranks. Hippe participated in all the debates, eventually finding a road to the forces of the Left Opposition. At the same time he fulfilled all the necessary requirements of a good KPD member: "I had set up a stand to sell the Rote Fahne at the railway station. I started with three newspapers, and after a few months I built up sales of over 100 papers, some 30 Workers Illustrated and a few copies of The Evening World." The Left Opposition was quite substantial within the KPD, above all in Berlin. The inner-party conflict lasted for over three years and only in 1929 did the Stalinist fraction succeed in gaining general control of the party.
Even when expelled, the forces of the Lett Opposition orientated towards the party, "conducting house-to-house propaganda, the Opposition comrades and those expelled from the party were always there". He points out that "house-to-house and 'courtyard' propaganda was primarily conducted in workers' districts... It began with a song of struggle, and then a comrade made a short speech highlighting the social distress of the working population. Then the comrades split up and called at the appartments to discuss current problems with the tenants. It was rare that we were denied entry. On the contrary, we were often invited in for a cup of coffee as it was easier to talk like that."
Nevertheless the juggernaut' of expulsions rolled on. Hippe himself was expelled from the KPD in January 1929. The Trotskyists still fought against the ultra-left madness of 'Third Period Stalinism. They faced attacks not only from the Nazi SA Stormtroopers but also from the thugs of the KPD itself.
One consequence of the Stalinists 'Third Periodism' was that the influence of the KPD had sunk to virtually zero within the factories, with more than 75 per cent of factory workers following the advice of the SPD and trade unions not to participate in demonstrations of the Communists. Nevertheless, the collapse in the German economy, with a colossal increase in unemployment, led to a huge radicalisation of the proletariat, resulting in a 500,000 loss of votes for the SPD and a KPD gain of 1.25 million in the elections of 1930. Hippe met Trotsky's son, Leon Sedor, at this time and at the end of 1932 participated in discussions with Trotsky in Copenhagan.
THE MAIN AGITATIONAL slogan of the Trotskyists was for a united front of the mass workers' organisations to repel fascism. This activity led Hippe to paint outside the big factories in Berlin. "in capital letters two feet
MIR Summer
Ger:
029 1991 nany
KPD leader Thalmann.
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300 MIR Summer Germany
The Nazis to power.
high... the slogan Trotsky demands: A Workers' United Front between the SPD and KPD'."
The small forces of the Left Opposition were not able to prevent the coming to power of Hitler. Like tens of thousands of others, Hippe was arrested after a period of underground work against the Nazis. He behaved heroically in the face of intimidation and torture, eventually facing a period of imprisonment. He points out that in the building where he was first tortured, 'in the six days that I was there, six people were carried out dead. The people in the neighbouring buildings could hear the continual cries of pain from those tortured."
The Nazis could not break them despite the fact that "our comrades, in contrast to the members of the KPD, openly admitted their actions." He was incarcerated in Plotzensee prison. His cell was right next door to 'death row, "where those condemned to death waited, including a good friend of mine, Richard Hutig, who was arrested for murder after a fight between some workers and the SA in January 1933." Hippe points out that "when he was beheaded, so friends who later came... told me, he died as an upstanding fighter."
Eventually finding work as a fitter, he points out that the mood in Germany amongst the proletariat was not at all enthusiastic for the war: "the troops in Berlin marched through the Kampfstrasse on the way to board the trains at Charlottonburg station. In contrast to the first world war, when the soldiers were enthusias. tically cheered on by the crowds, people stood detachedly on the pavements.
"Only after the campaign against France in 1940, when the German army succeeded in less than five weeks in defeating the combined armies of the Western powers, was there a change in the mood of the populace. A tidal wave of chauvinism swept through Germany, sweeping with it large sections of the working population."
During the war, the forces of Trotskyism were scattered, caught up in the Nazi war machine.
Hippe points out "very few of our younger
comrades remained in Berlin — all of them had
been called up to the military, and the 35 to +5
year olds had been sent to fight the partisans in
the Balkans. Not one of them returned. We
learned that one of them had been court-
martialled and shot for collaborating with the
partisans."
For those who were not called up, "it was
becoming increasingly difficult to do any pro-
paganda work, but all of us were convinced of
the necessity of keeping up all possible contacts
and of establishing new ones." The main task of
the Trotskyists at this stage was to assemble and
train cadres for the future upheavals which
would follow the war.
Following the defeat
participated in the painful
ing the scattered forces of Trotskyism: "our organisation had lost more to the military campaigns than to the Gestapo and their arrests." He courageously fought for an independent class position, criticising those who collaborated either with the imperialist occupiers or with the Stalinists.
His stubborn opposition to the Stalinists lead to his arrest with the establishment of the East German Stalinist regime in 1948. Hippe points out that in one prison "my superintending officer was always the same one. He had been with the Nazis in the concentration camps." Another, "a new chief warder, was a one-time Hitler youth leader." In a masterly understatement Hippe comments, "in the eight years of imprisonment I never had the feeling that I was in a prison of a socialist state."
With his release in 1956 he travelled to West Germany and recommenced his political activity by work within the left wing of the German SPD. It is not possible to recount here the lessons of that intervention of Hippe and others who shared his political standpoint. He did have an influence on a layer of the youth in the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) which developed in the 1960s. Some of these youth subsequently moved in the direction of terrorism and the Bader-Meinhot organisation. He was eventually forced out of the SPD but retained his unswerving support for Marxism.
Undoubtedly in this period Hippe ended in a sectarian cul-de-sac. Nevertheless, taken in total, this book is an invaluable record of the struggles of the German working class during this century. At the same time, it shows the
unvanquishable spirit of the proletariat which,
despite savage defeats and inadequate leader-
ship, nevertheless throws up magnificent fight-
ers like those such as Oskar Hippe. I
of the Nazis, Hippe process of reassembl-
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