a leading and distinct role, so much more should the German proletariat have played such a role. But it did not conduct itself as it should have done, and up to now this is the real cause of the tragedy of the German revolution.
The Class Collaboration
A few days before the revolution a conference started between the representatives of the German trade unions and the employers which ended November 15th with an agreement known in history by the name of Arbeitsgemeinschaft. This is very difficult to translate from the German, but in a general way it means "class collaboration." Under such a name was created an organization of employers and workers for the regulation of all social questions. It was a commission which in the moment of the dissolution of the German empire had to save the basis of this empire.
The reformists themselves considered this agreement of unusual importance and, as it is natural in the German manner, tried to give it a philosophical interpretation. A philosophy was created of collaboration in all the economic and political life of the country, philosophy of equal participation by the workers and employers in the administration of things. But philosophy is one thing and life is quite another: To run industry in collaboration is impossible. As long as these collaborative commissions have been the political expressions of the shifting powers within the labor masses, as happened the moment the revolution began, so much did they play, from the start, a conservative role.
They were conservative because they selected one moment out of the revolutionary process and made it permanent, without giving the revolution opportunity to develop. And what were the essentials of the revolution. Let us take the Russian revolution. The course of the Russian revolution was the swift changes of the relation of class forces, the sharpening of struggle, the growth of class consciousness going forward in forced tempo, like a falling stone, which, the closer it comes to earth the faster it falls. It was what we may call a rapid movement in the sense of growing class unity. The growth of these class forces created a shifting between the struggling classes, and if we would take as a culminating point the relation of forces in the first period of the revolution and will stop at that it will only mean to mark time.
That is why this program of marking time by the reformists was executed by them in such a brilliant way that the working class of Germany up to now cannot get out of that "brilliant" situation.
These collaborative commissions received the approval of the employers and one of the leading employers of Rhenish Westphalian province in the coal and iron syndicate, Dr. Reichardt, explaining at a meeting of the employers the reason why that collaborative agreement was signed said, literally, the following: "If we would not sign this
