“Ours is not to laugh or cry, but to learn,” said the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. It is necessary for the new generation to understand what happened in Germany and learn its lessons for today. “Achieving a greater awareness of the past,” wrote Alexander Herzen, “we clarify the present; digging deeper into the meaning of what has gone before, we discover the meaning of the future; looking backward, we move forward.” (R. Medvedev, Let History Judge.)
Today we are at the crossroads of two epochs. The old post-war stability has finally come to an end. In the face of the biggest crisis of capitalism in its history, there is chronic instability and a sharp polarisation everywhere. The scene is being set once more for revolutionary convulsions worldwide.
Titanic events will transform the consciousness of millions, as society enters an intense period of class struggle. The working class will need to prepare itself for this, and the lessons of 1918-1923 can play an indispensable role. A period of profound upheaval is opening up in front of us. There are, of course, significant differences between today and the 1930s, most notably the greatly increased strength of the working class. This change in the class balance of forces is of decisive importance.
We reject the view of the petty-bourgeois moralists and liberals who frown upon revolutions, as if against the laws of nature. In fact, revolutions are the motive force of history, and history is about to give such people some sharp lessons in dialectics.
As with the 1917 October Russian Revolution, the 1918 German Revolution marked an opening of a convulsive chapter in European and world history. We are entering a similar stormy period today on a global scale, and it is one of the main reasons we are publishing this book. Moreover, this is not simply a historical work, but a political one. The ebb and flow of history, governed by its own laws, has great relevance for today. This has nothing to do with fate, as it is people who make history. Furthermore, the book’s publication marks a celebration: the centenary of the German revolution of November 1918, when the workers, sailors and soldiers, “stormed heaven,” to borrow the phrase of Marx. They came so close to changing the world, but they were robbed of this victory. This tragedy eventually led to fascist barbarism and all the horrors associated with it. It is therefore the responsibility of the new generation of socialists and communists, educated and enriched by the past, to complete this long overdue goal begun by those past heroes who dared storm heaven.
Rob Sewell
October 2018