The aim of Ebert, Scheidemann, and the other social democratic leaders, was to re-establish law and order as quickly as possible, so that effective control and power could be handed back to the ruling class. Whereas the Spartacists looked to the calling of a national congress of workers’ and soldiers’ councils as the basis for a genuine socialist workers’ republic, the SPD leaders looked to the establishment of a Constituent Assembly.
As the immediate threat of revolution began to subside, the German bourgeois, who yesterday had supported the autocracy, now came forward as ardent democrats. The bourgeois parties were reorganized and renamed, and in turn put their full weight behind the call for a constituent assembly as a means of undermining the position of the workers’ councils.
The question of calling a constituent assembly gave rise to a great deal of controversy. In its struggle with the autocracy, the demand for such an assembly had long been part of the democratic demands of the SPD. Amongst the broad masses, as a reaction to the anti-democratic governments of the Kaiser, there was widespread support for this democratic demand. But the November Revolution had thrown up another power in the form of workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which in Russia had become the basis of workers’ rule. The Spartacists, who were a tiny minority of the German working class at this stage, took an ultraleft attitude towards the convening of a national assembly.
In Russia, in the struggle with Tsarism, the Bolsheviks had put forward the slogan of a revolutionary constituent assembly as part of their programme. They took account of the profound democratic aspirations of the workers, peasants and other exploited layers after years of autocratic rule. Depending on the relationship of class forces in a revolutionary situation, a constituent assembly can provide a forum for the representatives of the working class to win the widest mass support for a programme of revolutionary change.
Even with the establishment of soviets in February 1917, the Bolsheviks still put forward the demand for a constituent assembly, which at this stage had been resisted by the provisional government. This did not prevent the Bolsheviks from April onwards putting forward the central demand of “All power to the Soviets”. It did not in any way inhibit them from explaining the advantages of soviet democracy over a constituent assembly.
On the contrary, Lenin took up very forcefully the criticisms of Karl Kautsky against soviet power in his book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Lenin argued against Kautsky’s distortions of Marx in relation to the state. Kautsky failed to recognize the importance of soviets as the organs for workers’ democracy. In relation to Germany he argued for the need to combine workers’ councils with the bourgeois state. He ignored the opposing irreconcilable class interests represented by the workers’ councils on the one hand, and the Ebert government on the other. He was unable to grasp the significance of the “dual power” situation that had arisen after the November revolution. Either the workers’ and soldiers’ councils would consolidate their position in society and lay the basis for workers’ democracy, or the German bourgeois would re-establish its position and rebuild its state apparatus. There could be no middle way, as Kautsky argued.
Recognizing the vital importance of the workers’ councils in the revolution, the Spartacists baldly denounced all those who attempted to promote the idea of a constituent assembly. They failed to understand that while layers of workers still had illusions in parliamentary forms and in their reformist leaders, the most advanced, revolutionary wing of the proletariat would have to campaign to destroy those illusions and undermine the influence of reformism. While wide sections of the workers still looked to the constituent assembly as a way forward, and as the Spartacists had not yet gained overwhelming support, it was incorrect for the revolutionaries to reject on principle any idea of a struggle around the calling of a constituent assembly.
They denounced the leaders of the SPD and the USPD as “disguised agents of the bourgeoisie” for their support of an assembly. Rosa Luxemburg called the national assembly a “cowardly detour” and “an empty shell”. For the Spartacists the question was posed starkly and simplistically in terms of bourgeois democracy versus socialist democracy. The Spartacists had a completely ultraleft attitude, as did the Bremen Left – who even walked out of the Dresden Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council as they could not mix with SPD “counter-revolutionary elements”! Although they were courageous revolutionary fighters, they lacked an understanding of strategy and tactics. They were swept along by the workers’ struggles and intoxicated by the revolution.
One of their demands read: “Abolish all parliaments and transfer all power to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils!” This simply played into the hands of the reformist leaders who rested on the democratic sympathies of the masses, and they were able to denounce the Spartacists as “terrorists”, “anti-democratic”, etc.
On 16 December, the National Congress of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils strongly supported the National Assembly and brought forward its opening to 19 January. A month earlier, the executive committee of the Berlin Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council had taken the same position. Karl Radek recalled when he first arrived in Germany in mid-December:
I looked the paper (Rote Fahne) over. I was seized with alarm. The tone of the paper sounded as if the final conflict were upon us. It could not be more shrill. If only they can avoid overdoing it!…
It was the question of how to relate to the Constituent Assembly that sparked controversy…It was a very tempting idea to counterpose the slogan of the councils to that of a constituent assembly. But the congress of councils itself was in favour of the constituent assembly. You could hardly skip over that stage. Rosa and Liebknecht recognized that…But the Party youth were decidedly against it, ‘we will break it up with machine guns’.