Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/76

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local negotiations and agreements with the German S.D.P. worker wherever we are faced with honest proletarians who are prepared to prove their devotion to the revolution.

The organs of the United Front, the factory councils, control commissions and committees of action, must be so closely interwoven that they finally become the centrally directed apparatus of the proletarian fight for power.

6. Immediate Tasks of the Party

The main estimate of the situation in Germany, which was made in September by the Executive of the Communist International, remains essentially unchanged. The character of the fighting phase which has begun and the main tasks of the Communist Party remain the same. The German Communist Party must not strike from the agenda the question of uprising and the seizure of power. This question must stand before us as urgent and portentous as ever. However great the partial victories of the German counter-revolution, may be they cannot solve any of the crisis problems of capitalist Germany.

Therefore, in view of its experiences gathered during the last few months, the German Communist Party is faced with a number of immediate tasks.

The Party must organise the fights of the proletariat against the abolition of the eight-hour day and of the workers' rights. The Party must unite the unemployed movement organisationally and politically with the movement of the employed workers and thus avoid the danger of the working class being split into starving unemployed and employed workers who still have a crust of bread. The Party will be best able to fulfil this task if it prepares the impending economic struggles in advance, in such a manner that they will not only be directed against reduction of wages, but will also have a political aim as expressed in the slogan: "Work for the unemployed!"

The Party propaganda must be directed towards making the broadest masses conscious that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can save them. This task must be bound up with the aim of politically annihilating the Social Democratic Party. This demands the organisation of the United Front bodies and that every partial struggle should be given a definite aim.

The Party must seek to win over in addition to the industrial proletariat, the rural proletariat, the clerks and officials, the small peasants, and the proletarianised middle classes, and make them the allies of the working class under the hegemony of the revolutionary workers. This can be done by clear and definite agitation, by propaganda on behalf of the economic programme of the German Communist Party, by fighting against still existing remnants of pacifist orientation in the West, by pointing out the national role of the German revolution and the significance of an

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