I feel like saying it was “rioting” that defeated the working class is a bit reductive. If the spartacists had been less naive in their uprising (not trusting the SPD, not giving money back to banks, so much other stuff) then “rioting” would have put the working class in a different situation. In the following decades what did them in was the systematic attack on them + their continued faith in their fellow person (despite ideological differences) that seems, very broadly, to have been the big issue.
The only naivete I can muster is that they should have been more prepared for how the Kaiser wasn’t going to allow Prussian Germany to lose Bavaria AND the monarchy. The SPD was a party that existed within the monarchy, and german states being independent of that was a far greater sin to the military aristocracy.
I mean fair – just to say, you can riot and still lose, even when the conditions are ripe. The actual condition is organization and revolutionary program in practice, not just “riots.” Like sometimes you gotta take over the streets. To the point of the meme, you can organize people to vote which won’t get you there either. But it isn’t really riots or voting, both are subordinate to the revolutionary program. To me, the crisis of the working class is 1. Crisis of organization 2. Crisis of education/consciousness 3. Crisis of leadership.
We don’t really need a working class that riots or a working class that votes. We need a working class that knows when to vote, when/where/how to “riot”, but the need doesn’t really have to do with rioting or voting. Both are tactics, but tactics in the absence of strategy is a loser
I feel like saying it was “rioting” that defeated the working class is a bit reductive. If the spartacists had been less naive in their uprising (not trusting the SPD, not giving money back to banks, so much other stuff) then “rioting” would have put the working class in a different situation. In the following decades what did them in was the systematic attack on them + their continued faith in their fellow person (despite ideological differences) that seems, very broadly, to have been the big issue.
The only naivete I can muster is that they should have been more prepared for how the Kaiser wasn’t going to allow Prussian Germany to lose Bavaria AND the monarchy. The SPD was a party that existed within the monarchy, and german states being independent of that was a far greater sin to the military aristocracy.
I mean fair – just to say, you can riot and still lose, even when the conditions are ripe. The actual condition is organization and revolutionary program in practice, not just “riots.” Like sometimes you gotta take over the streets. To the point of the meme, you can organize people to vote which won’t get you there either. But it isn’t really riots or voting, both are subordinate to the revolutionary program. To me, the crisis of the working class is 1. Crisis of organization 2. Crisis of education/consciousness 3. Crisis of leadership.
We don’t really need a working class that riots or a working class that votes. We need a working class that knows when to vote, when/where/how to “riot”, but the need doesn’t really have to do with rioting or voting. Both are tactics, but tactics in the absence of strategy is a loser