Big Kladderadatsch
The great Kladderadatsch was a much-used catchphrase of the German social democracy in the time of the empire . It was meant to describe the collapse of civil society that was repeatedly predicted for the near future.
Meaning and use
The great Kladderadatsch expressed in its initial use above all a deterministic view of history. It envisaged a doomed scenario that was to come about at a predetermined point in time due to the development of capitalism . The SPD chairman August Bebel in particular used this catchphrase again and again. The party's job should be to prepare workers for this moment. For a long time the majority of the SPD did not see a need to actively combat the negative sides of capitalism such as poverty and exploitation , as this would stop this collapse. For Bebel, the war played a prominent role in predicting this collapse: the war would result in a revolution . Since the governments were aware of this, they would try to prevent a war. Here Bebel was in contradiction to Friedrich Engels , who predicted regressive developments as a result of war that would postpone the revolution.
As early as 1891, Eugen Richter mocked the belief in the “great Kladderadatsch” in his social democratic images of the future . Right at the beginning of the dystopian diary novel from the point of view of a staunch Social Democrat who is recording his experiences after the socialist revolution, it says:
“The red flag of international social democracy is waving from the royal palace and all public buildings in Berlin. If our eternal Bebel had experienced such a thing! He always predicted that the 'catastrophe was just around the corner.' I still remember, as if it had been yesterday, when Bebel proclaimed in a prophetic tone in a meeting in Rixdorf on September 13, 1891, that 'one day the great Kladderadatsch will come faster than one can imagine.' Shortly before that, Friedrich Engels had described 1898 as the year of the triumph of social democracy. Well, it still took a little longer. "
Since the book achieved a high circulation and even leading social democrats like August Bebel and Franz Mehring provoked counter-writings, it threw the spotlight on parts of the social democratic worldview that might need revision for the supporters of the SPD and its representatives.
A prominent opposition to the wait-and-see understanding of politics later came from Eduard Bernstein . Bernstein was strongly influenced by the political conditions there through his long exile in the United Kingdom and had also recognized that the labor movement can be able to achieve improvements for the workers through active politics. Bernstein questioned the principle of collapse, believed he recognized progressive tendencies in the development of civil society and wanted to urge the SPD to pursue an active policy of reform. These theories included a rejection of the necessity of a certain historical development and thus a rejection of the "great Kladderadatsch". In Bernstein's most controversial work, The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy , he emphasized that although he assumed a certain predetermination of the course of history, i.e. the overcoming of capitalism, it was uncertain and unpredictable when certain events would occur. With Karl Marx , Bernstein argues that the materialistic conception of history depends primarily on the balance of forces that would bring about changes. In addition to the development of the productive forces, Bernstein also emphasized non-economic factors and referred to Engels' late writings.
Bebel's catchphrase was criticized and sometimes ridiculed by other revisionists . In 1899 the revisionist Socialist Monthly Bulletins published a survey among the comrades at the party congress in Hanover. Heinrich Pëus replied as follows:
“Do you remember Bebel's speeches in popular assemblies and in parliament, did the word Kladderadatsch, collapse, not appear? Certainly. Didn't he, in private conversations with us and with me, incredulous Thomas , set the exact date when the story happened? He doesn't deny it, and he can't deny it, and here in and out of the hall classic witnesses are the crowd. The scenes have been there so and so often: I didn't believe it was all over in 1889, and when 1889 was prolonged into the mid-1990s, I didn't believe it either; and when Engels and Bebel set the deadline for 1898, I remained the doubter and said: wait and see! "
At the turn of the century, the theory of the collapse of the capitalist class state found a broad following among German workers. In Germany in particular, workers were not only economically exploited, but above all politically oppressed. The prognosis of the collapse of the system on which the repressive empire was based gave the German workers a particularly intense feeling of common solidarity and showed alternatives and ways out. With his regularly repeated theory of collapse, Bebel was able to rely on the majority of the party base, which derived its self-confidence precisely from this apparently scientifically proven determinism.
In the mass strike debate, Rosa Luxemburg took up the concept of the great Kladderadatsch again in polemical form. In the dispute with Karl Kautsky , Luxemburg accused him of getting very close with his theory of the idea of the great Kladderadatsch:
“[…] And we suddenly get an image that bears a strong resemblance to the 'last, big day', the general strike according to an anarchist recipe. The idea of the mass strike is transformed from a historical process of the modern proletarian class struggles in its decade-long final period into a joke in which the 'whole proletariat of the Reich' suddenly puts an end to the bourgeois social order with one jolt. "
With the end of the First World War certain parts of the collapse theory seemed to be confirmed, especially that that after the war the revolution would follow. The “great Kladderadatsch” no longer played a role in the theoretical disputes of the SPD.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ After Dieter Groh , Peter Brandt : Vaterlandslose Gesellen , Munich 1992. P. 32.
- ↑ See Helga Grebing : Der Revisionismus , Munich 1977. p. 39.
- ↑ Eduard Bernstein, The requirements of socialism and the tasks of social democracy , Berlin, Bonn 1984, p. 31 ff.
- ↑ The results of the Hanover Party Congress , in: Sozialistische Monatshefte , 12/1899, pp. 597–623. P. 604 online.
- ↑ See Helga Grebing, History of the German Workers' Movement , Munich 1973. p. 111.
- ↑ Hans-Josef Steinberg , August Bebel . in: Walter Euchner (ed.): Klassiker des Sozialismus , Vol. 1, Munich 1991, pp. 183–189, p. 188.
- ^ Rosa Luxemburg, Theory and Practice, Part V , in: Rosa Luxemburg: Gesammelte Werke , Vol. 2, p. 410.