NOTEBOOK “ο” (“OMICRON”)

DIE GLOCKE MAGAZINE

ERNST HEILMANN, “THE HEART OF THE DISPUTE”

Die Glocke , 1916, No. 20 (August 12, 1916).

Ernst Heilmann , “The Heart of the Dispute” (770-86).

Aim—to set out “the main ideas of the three contending groups” (770):...

“The majority, the Labour Commonwealth, and the Internationale (Liebknecht’s group)” (771)....

1—wants “a German victory”

2—“an undecisive end to the war”

3—“a German defeat” (771)....

| “The first two trends stand for defence of the fatherland, although the Labour Commonwealth stresses its great anxiety that the limits of pure defence should not be exceeded, whereas the adher- ents of the ‘Third International’ reject the principle of ‘fatherland defence’ as a misleading phrase” (771).... | | | | N.B. |
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“The Liebknecht group has remained quite true to itself.... This trend has now consolidated itself in a new party and adopted the Spartacus programme. Following its theoretical leader, the Russian Lenin, it wants to make it obligatory for all Social-Democratic parties, by virtue of their international duty, to employ every available means for the defeat of their own country: illegal leaflets, secret organisations, mass strikes and insurrections” (771).... “In Russia, the adherents of this trend honestly and without embarrassment call themselves defeatists” (722).

“The Spartacus propaganda, which maintains that an enemy invasion is by no means the worst of all horrors, but, on the contrary, might lead to the achievement of freedom, probably has its strongest support among the Russian emigre theoreticians in Switzerland; it can have practical importance only for Germany, and is therefore propaganda for a German defeat” (772)....

| “The Labour Commonwealth or Zimmerwald Right, whose theoretician is Kautsky and whose political leaders are Haase and Ledebour, not only deduces from the actual situation that this war is bound to end without victors or vanquished, but also desires such an outcome of the great struggle.” | |
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“Criticism of this half-way position is extremely easy and simple. The assertion that the task of Germany’s defence has been solved is so obviously contrary to the facts that it can only arouse laughter among intelligent people” (773)....

| N.B. | | | “It (the majority) is working for the speediest possible peace, which, however, can only be brought about by the present governments” (778). |

| | “The idea of a catastrophe or revolution as a means of building a socialist society should be discarded once and for all, and not from a particular day, but as a matter of principle. To be a socialist means being in principle an anti-revolutionary ” (author’s heavy type); “the opposite conception is merely a carry-over from the emancipatory struggle of the bourgeoisie, from which we have not yet completely freed our minds” (780).... |
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p. 782: examples (half a page of names) of the war sacrifices of dukes and generals (their officer sons, etc.): evidence “that in the face of the enemy we have all become equal” (783) (!!!!).

“In the final analysis, therefore, the crisis of the August 4 policy is but a renewal of the old struggle between the cataclysmal and evolution theories, which now, with the victory of evolutionary views, is drawing to a close. Hence, in spite of a dozen or so deserters from one side or the other, we again see the old battle lines of reformists and revolutionaries, or, if you like, revisionists and radicals, ranged against each other; and we hear the old slogans” (784)....

| | “Though denounced a hundred times, the evolu- tionary-historical point of view has been steadily gaining ground in the Party, and it will triumph, even if after the war the indignation of the peoples that have suffered from it leads here and there to revolutionary outbreaks. Stormy, even bloody upheavals may hamper or promote the development, but cannot alter its fundamental features” (785-86). |
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| “Socialism is being increasingly realised from day to day because of the growing number of people who do not make their living from private economic activity, or receive wages or salaries from private hands. The worker in a state, municipal or co-opera- tive enterprise is socialised just as is the health- insurance doctor or trade union official” (784). | |