Socialist League (1923)
The Socialist Bund (SB) was a left-wing socialist splinter party in the German Reich during the Weimar Republic . At the initiative of Georg Ledebour , the former chairman and member of the Reichstag of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), it was initially set up informally as an intra-party opposition group of the USPD from the end of 1923 , and finally in March 1924 as an independent party for the upcoming Reichstag elections .
The SB existed until October 1931 and finally merged with the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD), which was newly founded at the time and also had no significant influence in parliament .
Historical context
The Socialist Bund was a split from the already weakened USPD . With the founding of the SB, Ledebour and his supporters, including the Reichstag member Paul Wegmann , drew the consequences of an intra-party conflict about the attitude of the left-wing Social Democratic party to the occupation of the Ruhr and to German resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr area by French and Belgian troops between January and January October 1923, the war against the Ruhr in the so-called " crisis year " of the Weimar Republic.
While the group around Ledebour supported the KPD's slogan "Beat Poincaré on the Ruhr and Cuno on the Spree", this programmatic motto was rejected as nationalistic by the majority of the USPD, which represented revolutionary defeatism on the relevant issue . As a result, Ledebour tried to establish another socialist party, the SB, between the Poles SPD and KPD, which were politically “ left ” .
The USPD, which was founded during the First World War as a result of opposition to the truce policy of the majority SPD and was still represented in the Reichstag until 1924, had already seen a considerable decline in membership due to disintegration processes since the beginning of the 1920s. In December 1920, her large left wing switched to the KPD (cf. VKPD ); in October 1922 most of the "right wing" had returned to the SPD.
After the SB split off, the USPD, which was further weakened as a result, was continued under the chairmanship of Theodor Liebknecht and Elsa Wiegmann . With the separation from the USPD, Ledebour's Reichstag mandate passed to the status of a non-attached MP for the months until the next Reichstag election . The USPD had thus lost its most prominent politician in Germany at the time, who was known to be eloquent and experienced in the Reichstag .
The founding of the Socialist League, chaired by Ledebour, continued the fragmentation of the political left in the Weimar Republic between the reform-oriented SPD and the KPD, which was oriented towards the revolutionary aspirations of the Soviet Union and the Comintern .
The SB was not granted a parliamentary success despite its stance against the occupation of the Ruhr, which was in principle supported by a majority of the population. In the Reichstag election in May 1924 , he received only 26,418 votes (0.09%) and was therefore unable to win a mandate. The USPD (with a result of 0.8%) also lost all of its Reichstag mandates that had remained after 1922 in this election. Not only for the SB, but also for the rest of the USPD, which was still relatively influential until 1920/21, this electoral defeat meant the final parliamentary insignificance.
Apart from the state elections in the Free State of Oldenburg in May 1925 (with a result of 403 votes or 0.23% also unsuccessful), the SB did not stand as an independent organization in further supraregional elections. For the 1928 Reichstag election , Ledebour called on his supporters to vote for the KPD.
As part of the Young Plan , a new regulation of Germany's reparations obligations after the First World War , and the global economic crisis that began shortly afterwards as a result of the stock market crash on “ Black Thursday ”, the economic and social situation in Germany deteriorated dramatically in a short time at the end of the 1920s. As a result of the rapid increase in the unemployment rate , among other things, the political majority situation in the Weimar Republic changed rapidly from 1929 onwards, in the sense of a polarization of broad sections of the German population in favor of radical solutions on the opposing political fringes.
In October 1931, with the founding of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany , an attempt to split off from the SPD, initially a result of opposition to the SPD's policy of tolerance towards the economic and social policy cuts of the conservatively dominated Heinrich Brüning's presidential cabinet ( Brüning I cabinet ), the attempt was made to to establish a party of the united front against the increasing influence of the NSDAP and other right-wing parties. In addition to individual KPD renegades and parts of the small parties, the Communist Party opposition and the Lenin League , who rejected the social fascism thesis given by the Soviet Union , both the SB and the remaining so-called “rest of the USPD” joined or left this new party in it. But even the SAPD was unable to establish itself in parliament in the last few years of the crisis-ridden Weimar Republic. A uniform approach by the left political forces against the National Socialism , which had grown stronger since the beginning of the global economic crisis from 1929, was not achieved.
literature
- Dieter Engelmann : The successor organizations of the USPD. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. (BzG). Vol. 33, No. 1, 1991, ISSN 0942-3060 , pp. 37-45, (on the USPD and the Socialist Bund 1922-1931).
- Minna Ledebour (ed.): Georg Ledebour. Man and fighter. Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1954.
- Ursula Ratz: Georg Ledebour. 1850-1947. Path and work of a socialist politician (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin. Vol. 31, ISSN 0440-9663 = publications on the history of the workers' movement. Vol. 2). de Gruyter, Berlin 1969, (at the same time: Frankfurt am Main, University, dissertation, 1968).
Individual evidence
- ↑ StatDR 1928, III, p. 96ff. ( online www.gonschior.de )
- ↑ StatJBDR 1926, p. 454f .; StHbOl 1925, p. 114f. ( online www.gonschior.de )