Socialist Germany

[AnarchoSkeez]

I was recently reading something about Germany being very close to a socialist state during pre-nazi germany right before hitler took power. does anyone know anything about this?

[marx_was_right]

Theres a brilliant and short book called Germany, from revolution to counter-revolution which explains everything  :D

[AnarchoSkeez]

thank you thank you

[Vespucci]

Didn't Lenin say "the German revolutionaries would not even storm a railway station unless they had first bought platform tickets"?

[marx_was_right]

He was talking about a handull of sectarian leaders, not the communists themselves

[styrken]

Germany, from revolution to counter-revolution, is a great book!

There is a lot of importans lessons to learn from the period in Germany up to the fascists took power. First of all it is about the bourgeois interests in fascism and supression in a critical situation. Another important point, is to understand why the Stalinist KPD acted as they did and what role the Russian bureaucrazy in played -> This do Trotsky show in a brilliant article, from a few years before the Nazis took power. The article is called "For a Workers united front against fascism" and you can read it at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-ger/311208.htm

Comradely

[marx_was_right]

Found a great quote from Trotsky in his pamphlet Fascism, what it is and how to fight it where he makes an animal farm type example of the stalinist policy of 'social fascism' which lead to the rise of Hitler and the nazi's.

A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to the slaughterhouse. And the butcher came night with his sharp knife.

"Let us close ranks and jack up this executioner on our horns," suggested one of the bulls.

"If you please, in what way is the butcher any worse than the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?" replied the bulls, who had received their political education in Manuilsky's institute. [The Comintern.]

"But we shall be able to attend to the dealer as well afterwards!"

"Nothing doing," replied the bulls firm in their principles, to the counselor. "You are trying, from the left, to shield our enemies -- you are a social-butcher yourself."

And they refused to close ranks.