Paris CommuneSocialismWorking Class

580 THE CLASS STRUGGLE NEW GERMANY 581 country. On the 9th the Emperor fled from German soil and Prince Maximilian was proclaimed Regent. On Monday, the 11th, Scheidemann and Ebert demanded his resignation in the name of the German people, and Ebert was proclaimed Chancellor of the German Socialist Republic. The Council of Plenopotentiaries (People Commissariat. composed exclusively of Socialists, was formed in which all groups of the socialist movement were represented, Scheidemann, Ebert and Landsberg of the majority, Haase and Dittmann of the Independents, and Barth of the Spartacus group. This de facto government of Germany is still in control but its status has already undergone radical changes. On the 25th of November the Government officially announced that an agreement had been reached with the Workmen and Soldiers Council with the following provisions. All political power shall rest in the hands of the German Social Republic and the Workmen and Soldiers Council. Its aim shall be the defense and development of the achievements of the Revolution, and the suppression of all counter revolutionary activity. Until the election of an Executive Council of the Soldiers and Workmen Council of the German Republic, the Executive Council in Berlin shall carry out the functions of this body. The appointment and disinissal of members of all legislative bodies of the Republic, and of Prussia, until a Anal constitution has been adopted, shall be in the hands of the Central Executive Council, which shall also have the right to supervise their activity. The Cabinet shall not appoint assistant ministers without previously consulting the Executive Council. convention of representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers Councils shall be called as soon as possible.
To understand the events that are taking place in Germany to day and their significance for the course that the Revolution in Germany will take, one must be familiar with the various socialist divisions existing and the history of their origin. The differences that divide the Social Democratic Party, the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Spartacus Group, are not new. They were not even caused directly by the war, although the war first brought these differences to a crisis that made a split in the forces of the German socialist movement inevitable. The opposition of these three groups to one another has its foundation not in their attitude to the war alone. In fact the position that the members of the different groups took when he war broke out was the direct outcome of their fundamental conception of the aims and purposes of the socialist movement. The act of the party majority in voting for the first war credit on the 4th of August, 1914, though it came as a shock to the socialist movement all over the world, was, in the last analysis, the logical consequence of the attitude into which the working class had been allowed to drift. The Social Democratic Party of Germany was an example, par excellence, of that period in the international movement that saw the growth of the socialist movement as a political party. The fall of the Paris Commune and the death of the first International marked the end of the first stormy period of stress and struggle of a poorly organized and powerless proletariat. The second International was built upon a new conception of the duty of the socialist movement and, under the leadership of the German socialist movement, laid particular emphasis upon the winning of political power on the national field. When the antisocialist law had fallen and the Party entered once more stronger than ever upon the political field, it grew in leaps and bounds. It organized powerful labor unions which, after a comparatively short period of stormy battling against capital on the industrial field, became so powerful and so well organized that strikes and other forcible measures were the exception rather than the rule. On the political field the party progressed with stupendous rapidity. In a short time every Landtag had its Socialist delegation; large cities elected first