Revolutionary Stewards
During the First World War, the Revolutionary Stewards were shop stewards who were independent of the official unions and freely chosen by workers in various German industries. They rejected the war policies of the German Empire and the support which parliamentary representatives of the Social Democratic Party gave to the policies. They also played a role during the German Revolution of 1918–19.
Their leader, Richard Müller, stated that their goal was a "council republic in the Russian style”.
Background
The SPD, at the time the largest workers' party in Europe, voted for war bonds for the imperial government in 1914. Karl Liebknecht was initially the only SPD member of the Reichstag who publicly rejected the measure. After having followed party discipline and voting for the bonds in August, he voted against the measure in December 1914. With the split between the USPD and the Majority SPD, there was a party in the Reichstag opposing the policy of "party truce" between the various political parties. The Stewards supported the USPD's outright opposition to the war.January 1918: anti-war strike
Since most of the union functionaries supported the political truce, the Stewards created an opposition of industrial workers against the First World War in Germany. This was in part a reaction to the growing number of deaths on the front and the growing social need at home. Their most important speakers were Richard Müller and Emil Barth. The Revolutionary Stewards were especially strongly represented in the Berlin armament industry. They had already had experience with strikes, including the protest strike against the trial of Karl Liebknecht in summer 1916 and the wave of strikes centered on Braunschweig and Leipzig in January 1917.The Stewards were a crucial force in organising the January Strike of 1918, which was centred on Berlin, the Ruhr, Saxony, Hamburg, and Kiel and in which strikers demanded the end of the war through a negotiated peace and a democratisation of the empire. They were in part inspired by the success achieved by the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky in the Russian October Revolution only a few months earlier. For this reason, the strikes were also directed against plans of annexation, which Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary were pursuing in ongoing peace negotiations with Soviet Russia in Brest-Litovsk. The strikers demanded fundamental political changes within Germany as well as a just peace agreement with Russia that did not include territorial claims by the German Empire against the "New Russia". The demands were not met by the Supreme Army Command and the imperial government of Chancellor Georg von Hertling.
The strike was ended when the Oberste Heeresleitung declared an aggravated state of siege, put some factories under military protection, and conscripted many of the striking workers for military service.
November Revolution and council movement
November 1918: revolution
In the early days of November 1918, the Revolutionary Stewards were one of the few political groups demanding an end to the monarchy. In addition, unlike the Majority SPD led by Friedrich Ebert, they were also in favour of "socialisation" of industries and government by workers' and soldiers' councils rather than a parliamentary system. On 2 November 1918 there was a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Stewards, also attended by Liebknecht, which voted 21 to 19 against initiating revolutionary action on 4 November as the workers were not yet disposed to act. They settled on 11 November. In Berlin, the Stewards numbered around 80 to 100. The core group numbered only about a dozen.On 8 November, driven by events to accelerate their plan, the Stewards called for a general strike in Berlin on the next day. The Spartacists, the SPD and the unions supported the call. On 9 November, workers' and soldiers' councils were formed, the headquarters of police was occupied and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converged on the city centre. Imperial Chancellor Max of Baden announced prematurely that Emperor Wilhelm II had abdicated and handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert. In the afternoon Ebert grudgingly asked the USPD to nominate three ministers for the future government. That evening a group of several hundred followers of the Stewards occupied the Reichstag and held an impromptu debate. They called for the election of soldiers' and workers' councils the next day. They were to assemble at "Zirkus Busch" and elect a provisional revolutionary government, the Council of the People's Deputies.
In order to keep control of events and against his own anti-revolutionary convictions, Ebert decided that he needed to preempt the workers' councils and thus—whilst the formal head of government—also become the leader of the revolution. On 10 November, the SPD managed to ensure that a majority of the newly elected workers' and soldiers' councils came from among their own supporters. Meanwhile, the USPD agreed to work with him and share power in the new revolutionary government. Ebert announced the pact between the two socialist parties to the assembled councils who were eager for a unified socialist front and approved the parity of three members each coming from SPD and USPD. However, the Stewards had anticipated that they would fail to prevent the SPD from dominating the Council of the People's Deputies. They therefore called for an Executive Committee of the workers' and soldiers' councils to be set up in parallel to the Council of the People's Deputies and that would be under the control of the Stewards. Its powers were to be left deliberately vague. Emil Barth, who was presiding over the assembly, then made a tactical error by giving a long-winded speech rather than moving directly to the vote. Listeners, including Ebert, were able to deduce the Stewards' intentions from what Barth said. Ebert made another speech, declaring that the committee was superfluous, but if it was to be set up, it must be made up equally of SPD and USPD just like the Council of the People's Deputies. When Barth said that no SPD delegate must sit on the committee, the assembly exploded with protest, in particular from the soldiers' councils. After an interruption, the session continued and Barth announced an Executive Committee of 20 members: ten soldiers and ten workers. Half of the latter would be supporters of the SPD, half supporters of the Stewards. The soldiers's delegates were to be elected on 11 November. The Stewards had lost.
December 1918: congress of councils and Christmas crisis
From 16 to 21 December 1918, the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils met in Berlin inside the Prussian Landtag building. There was one delegate for every 200,000 citizens and 100,000 soldiers. Out of 514 delegates, around 300 came from the SPD, about 100 from the USPD and the rest were liberals, not associated with any party or members of independent revolutionary groups. The Congress took some important decisions :- It rejected a proposal by the USPD to retain the council system as the basis for a socialist republic and to give the councils the supreme legislative and executive power.
- It approved a proposal by the SPD to vest legislative and executive power with the Council of the People's Deputies until a National Assembly could make more permanent arrangements. Moreover, the Executive Committee created on 10 November was replaced with a Central Council. The latter was made up of SPD members only as the USPD boycotted its election because the new institution would have no legislative powers.
- Elections for a National Assembly were set for 19 January 1919, the earliest possible date.
The last two decisions of the Congress underscored a division regarding short-term changes to the economy, the bureaucracy and the military between a broad-based consensus across party lines of the democratic-socialist movement on the one hand and the leadership of the SPD and the military on the other. The SPD members of the Council of the People's Deputies consequently dragged their feet over the implementation of the last two points, causing increasing resentment and anger among the labour movement and its more radical representatives like the Spartacists and the Stewards.
On 29 December, the only representative of the Revolutionary Stewards, Emil Barth, and two further representatives of the USPD left the Council of the People's Deputies in protest against the events of the Christmas crisis, in which government troops were deployed against the Volksmarinedivision, a unit of leftist revolutionary soldiers established on 11 November 1918. The fighting caused many on the left to accuse the leadership of the SPD of having betrayed the revolution.
Although the Revolutionary Stewards supported the idea of a council republic rather than a parliamentary democracy, they rejected the Communist Party of Germany, founded on 30/31 December 1918, which pursued the same goal. This was because the KPD was not ready to accept the five conditions set by Richard Müller on behalf of the Revolutionary Stewards: withdrawal of the anti-voting decision, a program committee with equal representation, condemnation of "putschism", taking part in party publicity and abandonment of the additional name "Spartacus League".