harman, the lost revolution

(12): explanation for Stalinism and Nazism lies in the lost German revolution

(14): State machine still run by the Junkers

(15): liberals after 1848 backed the monarchy (only bourgeois opposition was the Catholic party)--the regime became more illiberal as time passed. this didn't prevent it making economic concessions to the lower classes, though.

(16): SDP had its origins in two different movements

1. Marx and revolutionary current
2. Lasalle and reformist current

(16): Erfurt Congress 1891 adopted 'maximum' demand--well on their way to erecting a 'state within a 'state'

(17): however, the minimum demands of Erfurt became the real concern of party activists--revolution had shifted to indefinite future

(18): the Erfurt synthesis--working-class in pariah status, but also extracting concessions from vigorously expanding capitalism.

(19-21): key--Rosa Luxemburg saw the problems with the SDP, but refused to break for fear of isolating herself. this failure to be independently organized is at the heart of Harman's argument re: early failures of the revolution.

(24): Liebknecht didn't break party discipline over war vote until November

(25): effect of the war on popular mood was to wear off very quickly, as Luxemburg noted in early 1915.

(26): gov't had calculated for a 9-month war. so economic crisis soon began: "forty years of slow improvement gave way to a nightmare deterioration" [this bears on the nature of crisis that makes people revolutionary]

(27): women enter workforce

(27): backbone of SDP had been skilled workers--now they were under threat from new forms of industrial discipline, etc.

(28): in sum--short-term effect of war was to destabilize the organizations of the working class, the long-term effect was to create a uniformity of conditions that was propitious for revolutionary organizing.

(30): the class question was opening up in the Army, too, as officers enjoyed better conditions, and whatnot

(32): strike against the war in Jan 1918

(33): treachery of the SDP--Ebert joins the strike committee to help bring it to an end

(35-36): the founding of the USP in early 1917--the centrist current within the SDP (Kautsky, Bernstein)

(37-38): a weak Left, split into three groupings (Spartakus leaders, 'left radicals', working-classmilitants within the Berlin MWU)

(38-39): a failed offensive in the summer of 1918 leads to the collspe of the gov't--a new liberal coalition gov't formed under Prince Baden in September 1918 (aim was to preserve the monarchy)

(41): German Revolution starts in Kiel

(44): treachery of the SDP--Ebert says to the Kaiser that he hates revolution like sin. Therefore he must abdicate.

(46): twin declarations of the republic--Schiedemann and Liebknecht (former just in time, in other words, despite advice of Ebert)

(48-51, 56-57): key--you see a situation of "dual power" being handed away, in effect, precisely because of the weakness of the Left. the SDP can compel the delegates to the Congress of workers' and soldiers' to vote away their power to the Reichstag. ("the masses do not overnight abandon their prejudices"). Ebert retains General Groener, the Imperial High Command, who phones him to express his support--maintains the old Army apparatus intact (USP goes along with this)

(55): in the aftermath of the Revolution, the Councils still ruled Germany, with varying degrees of alleigance to the Ebert gov't ("dual power")

(62): treachery of the SDP--Ebert agrees to led Maercher organize the Frei Korps in order to maintain order

(63, 65, 95): key--there is radicalization and ferment in these months without there being an organized Left hold on the German proletariat. this will prove fatal in January. (attempt to organize themselves as the KPD in December 1918, but they are very weak)

(68-72): key--Luxemburg understood their weakness and the need for long-term work amongst the working-class, but others were leaning too Left and were too immature--this was seen as regards the question of participation in elections for the National Assembly, as regards union work ("out of the unions," said Frolich)

(75-79, 84, 88): key--"Spartakist Days"--in Berlin, January 1919. They were much weaker than they knew. A call for uprising which Liebknecht follows, against wishes of the leadership of the KDP. Nonetheless, they have to go through, with tragic consequences. Failed, in sum, b/c poorly organized.

(80, 82): Revolutionary Committee fails miserably (USP participation)--masses come, wait in fog for the whole day, and go home (hadn't made any preparations, didn't know how to lead--masses were prepared to strike, but not prepared to fight, Harman's arguing) [were they not just waiting for the word?]

(82, 182): the unique difficulties of the "masses" as an army -- will only fight if they're sure of victory.

(84-86): treachery of the SDP--Vorwarts celebrates murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg

(93-94): important--comparison of July 1917 and January 1919 -- the main difference was that the Sparatkists were much, much weaker than the Bolsheviks had been.

(97): even after the January days, a weak sort of "dual power" still prevailed (SDP still had to talk a radical talk)

(99, 118): in short--Frei Korps would be sent on a march around Germany to clean up a still radical, though uncoordinated Left

(99-103): "Red Bremen"--invaded by Frei Korps in late January

(103-107): The Ruhr--strikes in Februrary

(107-110): Central Germany--strikes in February

(110-116): Berlin again--strikes in late February/March (some 1,500 killed!)

(116-118): The Ruhr again--strikes in late March/April

(118-119): treachery of the SDP, in sum--alas, the Old Order was returned, no small thanks to the SDP. power of the councils was replaced by the old state structure (bureaucrats, judges, police, officers). SDP was necessary to put a lid on the massive upheavals.

(123): in Hamburg, too (factory owner tossed into river!)--but here, too, the Frei Korps arrive by June and run a military occupation until December.

(123): contrast between Hamburg and Chemnitz, where in the latter the revolutionary Left was able to organize independently (and this stood it in good stead for the Spring of 1920)

(126): the war 'shook' the whole social structure in Bavaria, which had always been conservative/reactionary (though separatist)

(128): Max Weber makes an appearance

(131, 138, 141): key--things erupt in Bavaria in April 1919--first Soviet republic, and then a second Soviet republic. didn't understand, Harman's arguing, the limitations placed by (1) objective material conditions (that Bavaria was rural hinterland, in effect) and by (2)the rollback of revolution in the rest of the country (on decline by mid-April). Frei Korps destroy the republic in short time.

(146): stability by the summer of 1919--SDP support shoots up (though here we see the beginnings of the middle-class-ization of its backing). certainly by June 1920, the USP is the majority party.

(147-150): central and key--excellent critique of Barrington Moore, that 'revolutionary consciousness' cannot be adduced on the basis of fixed expectation. it's contradictory ('ideological turmoil'), and therefore in flux. Germany in 1918-1919 is testimony to this fact.

(154): Versailles not French obstinacy, but expected outcome of capitalist competition (the war by other means)

(159-160, 170, 171): important--Kapp Putsch triggers general strikes (analogy made to Franco's military uprising in 1936)--"in three parts of Germany--Ruhr, Central Germany, and the northern region--the armed working class effectively took power into its own hands." Kapp is forced to back out.

(165): lack, though, of centralized coordination

(172): key--treachery of the SDP (Ebert and Noske), once more. they had an opportunity to smash the apparatus of the Right, which had been wholly discredited. Instead they proceeded to bail out most of the figures involved. (here Harman gives the figure of 20,000 as the number of those that the Frei Korps had killed in the past 14 months).

(175-179): the leadership of the Left, though, dithers in the aftermath, Harman is arguing. didn't agree to 'compromise' until it was too late (it seems like a 'united front' argument is being advanced, here)

(184-185): key--why did the Kapp putsch not have the same effect that the Kornilov coup had in Russia? for Harman, the critical difference is the level of organizatoin and leadership that could have measured up to the consciousness engendered by the putsch. (p. 187--in Berlin it had actually intially opposed a general strike called by the SDP, explaining that the w-class was too weak)

(189): the failure, then, was in overcompensating for past errors. it lies in the 'ultra-leftism' and immaturity of the leadership, which allowed them to abstain from the struggle.

(191): thus, a 'might have been'/'missed opportunity'

(192): important--now the history of the German Revolution becomes a history of the KPD, rather than a history of spontaneous struggles that the Left was too weak to intervene in.

(197): Zinoviev's big moment--wins over the left of the USP to form the new VKPD in Dec 1920

(201-210): key--Party completely misjudged what was happening in March 1921. Lost about 200,000 members. Why? Party being urged, by Kun, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, to take action to prevent a drift to the Right (under Levi's 'conservative' influence). the "Theory of the Offensive." forgot that it wasn't revolutionaries who make the revolution, but the masses.

(214-216): Lenin sides with Levi and Zetkin against Thalheimer and Bela Kun (despite this, Levi remains expelled). Trotsky also. They take this to the Third Congress in June 1921 (this is where the 'United Front' is hammered out)

(220, 258): key--here, again, we have an explanation that focuses on the lack of a shared history of struggle within the Party (a 'weakness of organization' explanation, once more). had there been a party with months of common struggle, the German leaders wouldn't have caved as they did to Bela's advice. and they wouldn't, he's saying, have then felt the need to overcompensate (which led to the grave errors of 1923).

(223-224): grave inflation, pushed by industrialists [where is finance? why doesn't it care?]

(231-234): rise of the Far Right (Bavaria in particular--with an extremely right-wing gov't)

(234): 1922 had seen the working-class grow, once more. its traditional representatives were satisifed (merger of right USP with SDP in the autumn)

(235-237, 239, 254-256): success of the United Front in these months

(247, 248-249): by early summer 1923, with hyperinflation, the SPD was collapsing; a "massive movement of alleigance"

(256-257, 258): key--by April and May of 1923, a revolutionary will was appearing (and the party, trapped in the UF, was slow to recognize this fact). Party was taken by surprise by the strike wave in May and June. Why? The experience of the March Action still haunted them.

(260-263): key--the events of the Anti-Fasicst Day (late July 1923)--Brandler opposed by his right and his Left, no coherent advice forthcoming from Russia (Radek said no, Stalin said no, Trotsky didn't know, Zinoviev/Bukharin said yes).

(266): Communist leaders belatedly start to understand the scale of what's unfolding. Begin to agitate for the overthrow of the gov't.

(270): new gov't formed in August 1923.

(272): key--the counterfactual, re: 1923--should have moved to the offensive before the strike broke, should not have retreated, should have raised a clearer slogan. if it had done all this--maybe? [but this feels a tad weak?]

(289-290): Brandler, finding himself in gov't, expecting the Left SD's to rise with him. completely mistaken. decision, then, to abandon rather than push through [and so we're saying, had he pushed through, history might have been different]

(291): rising succeeded, for 24 hours, in Hamburg

(294-300): four possible explanations for the failures of 1923--Harman sides with Trotksy, who attributes it to a failure of the KPD to test the waters (can't address this in hindsight--can't look at this after the event and say the workers wouldn't have risen) [but this might be a bit weak, too?]

(302): in sum--a lack of organization in November 1918 (a kind of tragic path-dependency)

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(1): all else aside, what is the nature of a crisis that is propitious for revolution? it is precisely what you see here -- the vigorous expansion of capitalism, which allows the construction of large working-class organization, culminating in a sharp crisis. added to this are the the points about de-skilling and uniformity of conditions. (p. 26; p. 28)

(2): the serious failures of the early years had to do with the lack of a independently-organized Left--contrast Luxemburg with Lenin (the Spartakus Rising--p.88, p. 95; p. 302 for summary argument). There is a larger question here, though, about whether we're willing to admit any objective antecedents to 'organization'--i.e., is there anything in the nature of German captialim that we would allow to 'explain' the weakness of the independent Left (or, what is the same thing, the strength of the SDP--something about relationship between vigorous captialism, the concessions it can given, and the corresponding strength of reformist politics). Because the reason that Luxemburg didn't feel compelled to have an independent organization was precisely this--she didn't want to abandon the workers' movement.

in other words, we might not have any problem with Harman's argument as a set of political claims. but we're entitled to ask some analytical questions.

(3): the 'shaking' of the social structure--how to make sense of this, sociologically? (so you have Bavaria oscillating wildly (p. 126--but also p. 138), it seems; and students also, maybe, in flux (p. 155--maybe he wouldn't want to make too much of this point, but important nonetheless--p. 180)

(4): similar to the point above, Harman makes an excellent point about the nature of revolutionary consciounsess in the critique of Barrington Moore (pp. 147-149)

mike, nothing to lose but their chains

(3): thesis--"Instead, I consider the inverse question: historically, how did welfare policies condition a working-class party’s success or failure in winning votes? In doing so, this project hypothesizes that private social provisions pushed industrial working-class political history in a radically different direction in the US than in Europe and Australasia."

(6): "The relationship between business and the government in the US, however, was unlike that found in other countries, whose states played a more directive role in providing welfare. The response to the upsurge in labor militancy in the US moved in a sharply different direction. While reformers in the American Association for Labor Legislation sought to establish workingmen’s insurance along the lines of the European model, few of their policies were taken up by the state. Unlike the legislative profiles of nascent welfare states in Europe and Australasia, the US was exemplified by its lack of nationwide public protections for male workers and the elderly."

(7): "But, while European workers found legislative pursuits increasingly rewarding between the 1870s and the 1910s, American workers encountered effective retrenchment. During the 1880s and the early 1890s, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor and other trade unions won some legislative victories in areas such as legal hour’s limits, prohibitions on sweated labor, prohibitions on company stores, and union protections. But these gains were not sustained, often paltry and too often unenforced. By 1920, the courts struck down roughly three hundred labor laws (Skocpol 1992:227)." [if i read this with skeptical eyes, though, i want more -- i need convincing that this wasn't the same in other countries--proving that there was a serious, qualitative difference, rather than a difference in degree]

(7): key--"Major industrialists, eager to check and repel labor militancy and a short-lived tide of government regulation, proffered welfare capitalism as an alternative to the welfare statism they saw taking form abroad."

(9-10): "Ultimately, the US developed a welfare regime with three main features: a network of minimal direct social spending programs, a constellation of indirect or “hidden” state interventions through tax breaks and regulations, and, most importantly for this project, the domination of private social protections in large firms (Hacker 2002:11)."

(11): I hypothesize:

1. Firm intervention into social policy in the US was sufficient to obstruct the consolidation and expansion of industrial working-class votes for the Socialist Party in national elections.
2. State intervention into social policy in non-American industrializing countries did not inhibit the political mobilization of workers support for working-class parties.
3. Private welfare measures were abandoned at different rates across firms (Moriguchi 2005), and it was precisely their disparate rate of adoption in the US that helps explain the uneven development of industrial working-class based politics at the municipal level.
   

(12): three ways in which private social insurance obstructs w-class party formation:

1. "Wider income disparity generated by private social benefits act to disincentivize the formation of class-based politics by widening inequality and exposure to risk between working people."
2. "serves to secure employee allegiance to particular firms. In more extreme cases, it disincentivizes unionization and independent political action by allowing the firm to only award those employees willing to reject such strategies for maximizing their income and benefits."
3. "they isolate employee grievances at the level of the firm or plant. If an employee wants to negotiate the conditions of their benefits, the individual firm is the natural object of contestation. On the other hand, public social benefits constitute the state as the key arena for employee voice over the conditions of their benefits."

(14-15): "The potential for industrial working-class support for working-class parties across all industrializing contexts was driven by two interconnected economic and social factors:

1. Industrialization of key economic sectors that were previously under the control of skilled artisans and craftsmen resulted in intense deskilling and restructuring after 1870; the workers in these firms became the main supporters of working-class parties in all advanced capitalist countries.
2. Economic dislocation, a series of crises in the late 1800s, drove people to seek alternative strategies for securing their economic livelihood in labor militancy and political action."

(16-?): introducing five positions in the literature that try and explain this

1. "Institutionalists are dominant in the American exceptionalism debate. They view state structures and state policies as independent and determinative forces on party formation and success." [electoral system, early suffrage stopped party formation] (16-17)
   
2. "Repressionists argue that in America, there was much more repression of working-class movements than elsewhere, which made potential working-class political activists skeptical about the effectiveness of building parties." (17)
3. "Culturalists, on the other hand, argue from a large range of different vantage points. But, what unites their claims is the notion that unique systems of self-understanding in the US, either by the entire population or critical sections of it, precluded the support of working-class parties. A dominant position here is that since the US lacked a feudal past, the liberal tradition that emerged undermined the class-based grievances found elsewhere that gave working people a reason to support working-class parties." [feudal shackles...] (17-18)
4. "Another set of explanations suggest that the tactical decisions of both influential labor leaders and the leaders of the Socialist Party can explain the failure of working-class politics." (18-19)
5. "Finally, economic arguments share a common failing with the rest of the literature in that they make broad claims that cannot account for internal variation. A frequently cited explanation rests on the claim that American workers simply had fewer economic grievances than their counterparts." (20) ["Others demonstrate that a surge in Socialist Party votes in both Europe and America corresponded with an increase in working-class income and living standards (Sturmthal 1973; Fetscher 1973). And critically, from my perspective, it is unable to account for internal variation within the US context."]

(29): "However, it also lays a theoretical groundwork for subsequent explanations for the more general weakness of class-based politics throughout America’s history since the turn of the 20th century. So, while this project offers a historically conditional theory of the failures and successes of the American Socialist Party in industrial working-class communities, in the end it aims to provide theoretical concepts useful for the study of present controversies concerning working-class political behavior and business unionism." [how much will you focus on this?]

-----

questions:

1. possibility that you are pushing back the causal chain -- i.e., you have identified something that will itself need to be explained. in fact, it could be that the five explanations you identify might work through this mechanism, that you are identifying. this does not compromise the research, of course, but raises questions about the scope of the conclusions you will be able to make.
2. in other words, when you switch from asking how w-class activism forced welfare provision, to asking how the type of welfare provision influenced w-class activism, there is a way in which you're framing makes the whole thing too neat. how do we explain the difference in the type of welfare provision, systematically? otherwise it becomes a kind of exogenous variable.

the class struggle will no longer be offshored:
The victors on the right have not been the Keynesian, conservative wets (as Margaret Thatcher called them), but the hardliners. Until the left can come up with something better than moderately rightwing policies, it has no chance of winning. To change that, it must go back to the roots of the conflict between left and right. It must see beyond values, like feminism or antiracism, which the modern right is quite happy to adopt. It must address the fundamental question: who controls the economy?
(...) Once the means of production, and the means of information that emerged during the 20th century, are in private hands, specific individuals possess vast, almost feudal power over the rest of the population. Today the real successors of classic liberals are the proponents of socialism; while those who currently describe themselves as liberals are the supporters of a particular form of tyranny, that of the employers - and, often, of a violent form of state control through US military domination of the rest of the planet.
(...) Liberal thinkers deride Marx because the anticipated transition to socialism in developed capitalist countries failed to happen. One response should be that the system under which we live is not just capitalist, but imperialist as well. Europe owes its development to the existence of a vast hinterland. Imagine that Europe was the only landmass on the planet and that all the other continents had never risen from the oceans. There would have been no slave trade, no South American gold, no emigration to North America. What sort of societies would we have built without a constant supply of raw materials, cheap immigrant labour, imports from low-income economies, and a supply of educated people from the developing world to rescue our collapsing education systems? We would have had to save drastically on energy, the balance of power between workers and employers would be radically different, and the leisure society would not exist.
(...) Socialism failed in the 20th century largely because the countries where capitalism generated a degree of cultural and economic development, where the elements of democracy existed and where, consequently, it was possible and necessary to go beyond capitalism, were also the dominant countries in the imperial system. Imperialism has two consequences. Economically it allows dominant nations to delocalise problems to the periphery. Strategically it has a divide and rule effect: western workers have always enjoyed better living conditions than their equivalents in the developing world and acquire a feeling of superiority that helps stabilise the system.
(...) This is why decolonisation was the most significant transformation of the 20th century. It freed hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa from a racist form of domination. Its effects will continue into this century and bring a definitive end to the historical period that began with the discovery of America. Europeans will have to adjust to losing the benefits associated with our privileged position in the imperial system. At present the Chinese have to sell us millions of shirts to buy an Airbus; but once they can build their own Airbuses, who will make our shirts?
(...) Historically, change has often come from the periphery. The October 1917 revolution and the Soviet Union's role in the victory over the Axis powers had an enormous impact upon decolonisation and upon the possibility of creating a social-democratic Eden in Europe. The victory of the colonised nations led to a number of progressive changes in Europe during the 1960s. If we make the effort to understand and take account of it, the current revolts in Latin America and the Middle East may force radical changes upon the dominant powers. Which may mean a less depressing future for the rest of us.