Revolution is a Choice You Make, Part 3: A Decision
Editor’s Note: this article is the final piece of the 3-part article: Revolution is a Choice You Make.
Part 1: Capitalism and the Coming War
Ghosts of the Past: The German Tragedy
The progressive movement of today is not a new phenomenon. We have been here before.
Germany, 1918. The First World War comes to a bloody end. Workers flood the streets as the economy collapses under its own weight. Soldiers mutiny. Workers councils are formed and seize factories. The House of Hohenzollern monarchy collapses. State power hung in the balance, and the Social Democratic Party that had led the German workers for decades stood poised to capture the state itself. Only a year prior, the Bolsheviks had brought about the world-historic miracle of the October Revolution. This was the moment to bring the workers’ revolution to Western Europe, to continue the miracle.
And yet, the revolution was cut short by the Social Democratic Party itself.
Proclamation of the Weimar Republic in Berlin, November 1918
The SPD, once the largest and most respected workers’ party in the world, revealed itself to be the sharpest weapon of the bourgeoisie. It had already betrayed the workers of the world by voting for war credits in 1914, co-signing the German war effort. The collapse of the German Empire’s authority in October 1918 was precipitated by a sailor’s mutiny and numerous workers’ councils set up throughout the empire. Right-wing leaders of the SPD formed a provisional government and marginalized the left wing of the SPD that called for a full-blown socialist revolution with an establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist economy. The right wing, headed by Friedrich Ebert, Gustav Noske, and Philipp Scheidemann organized the Freikorp paramilitary forces to violently crush the now disorganized left-wing. This was a total betrayal at the precise moment for the revolution to advance.
The leaders of the left wing, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht were killed by the freikorp. Deprived of a leading center, the workers’ councils throughout Germany were violently crushed one-by-one. The revolution was finished, the workers suppressed.
Executed revolutionaries, Germany 1919
The SPD carried into this critical historical moment decades of reformist decay and opportunistic illusions. It had become an apparatus serving German capital. At the decisive moment, the forces of social democracy in the SPD consolidated to squash the workers’ revolution.
The German Communist Party (KPD) was formed too late, in the thick of the battle for power instead of years prior. When power was up for grabs, the vanguard was absent. The revolutionary elements were fragmented, disoriented, and at the final moment unprepared for the scale and stakes of the battle. The ideological degeneration of the SPD and the delayed action of the revolutionaries resulted in catastrophe for the workers. Indeed, the betrayal of the right wing of the SPD (if it can even be characterized as a betrayal as opposed to an unveiling) and the failure of the communists left the political space open for the forces of reaction to gather.
Counter-revolution, reaction, triumphed in Germany. The bourgeois republic endured on shaky ground and within the decade, the very same social forces the SPD had unleashed consolidated into the Nazi Party that plunged the world into a Second World War and carried out the Holocaust. Ideological mistakes were paid for in the blood of millions. The Holocaust was not inevitable, the destruction of WWII would not have come about had the German Revolution of 1919 ended with the victory of the workers.
Freikorps unit during the Spartacist Uprising
The ghosts of Germany continue to haunt the workers’ movement today. Mamdani, the DSA, and other social democrats inherit the legacy of the German Tragedy, forgetting everything and learning nothing.
Capitalism reigned then as it does now, intensified in form today. Once again, the old world totters on the edge of war. And once again, “left” parties—DSA, CPUSA, PSL—refuse to break with the state and the capitalist parties, impeding the growth of a genuine revolutionary center for the working class.
They replay the script of betrayal with new faces and old ideas. If we do not learn, we will replay the consequences: war, repression, even genocide.
The lesson is clear: the working class cannot afford to substitute “progressive” reforms for revolutionary organization. It cannot entrust its future to careerists and opportunists in red masks. It must build a party that will have the ideological fortitude to meet the revolutionary situation rushing to meet us.
Woodcut of Karl Liebknecht’s Funeral, 1919
The price of delay is not abstract, it is measured in the lives and daily suffering of our class across the world. We cannot afford to forget the lessons of Germany: a communist vanguard party and the fight for the workers’ state to construct the new society.
The capitalist class is preparing for the coming crisis, so must the working class.
Revolution is a Choice We Make
The world is changing rapidly, the contradictions of capitalism are erupting in every direction: genocidal war, climate collapse, economic stagnation, and political instability. The moment to act was yesterday. We cannot let the Mamdani moment or any of the “progressives” who have already shown their true class allegiances in the German Tragedy slow down the growth of the revolutionary moment that is racing against the clock. The risk of the greater war breaking out brings the revolutionary situation closer to us by the day.
Revolutionary situations do not come frequently or randomly. When the moment, the revolutionary situation, arrives we must be prepared. We must build leadership in preparation. We must build the communist party. Not another NGO. Not a podcast. Not a “mass party”. Not a protest coalition.
A communist party, firmly rooted in the working class itself, disciplined in the science of revolution: Marxism Leninism. Trained in struggle and ready to lead the class struggle against the capitalists and win.
That party is being built. The Communist Workers Platform of the United States (CWPUSA) is organizing cadres across the country. It is building cells in workplaces, campuses, neighborhoods. It is studying history, confronting ideological questions, and preparing for the offensive. We are here to destroy capitalism and build the new world of socialism-communism.
But the party cannot remain small numerically. The movement demands that we grow in number. The work requires a decision—a commitment—from each of us. History develops by definite laws, yes. But still, the choice to intervene and participate in the struggle is one made at an individual level. The victory of socialism is not automatic. It has to be carried out, consciously and scientifically. It must be fought for.
We understand that the very system we live in—capitalism—is the engine of its own undoing: crisis, war, and genocide. We know that elections, courts, and “progressives” will not save us or even bring our movement closer to victory. We know only the working class revolution can end this destructive cycle.
The question is no longer what is to be done, but who will do it.
You.
Connect with your coworkers. Start a reading group. Post flyers. Join the picket line. Study Marxism-Leninism. Carry the red flag and the call for revolution into every factory, hospital, warehouse, prison, school. Build the cells of the party. Build the fighting strength of the working class. Build the CWPUSA.
If we do not act, if we allow the “progressive” charlatans to mislead our class, we are condemning hundreds of millions of workers in the US and beyond to horrors we cannot begin to imagine.
Regardless of what we choose now, history proves there is no refuge in retreat. We will either meet the crisis on our feet mounting the offensive, or the crisis will find us on our knees, isolated and weak.
The old world is dying. There is one way forward: the working class revolution, the fight for socialism-communism. We must choose to do the seemingly impossible because it is necessary. History is on the side of the working class. The struggle has already begun.
There is a world to win. The fight is ours, the decision to join is yours.
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