Historical Materialism 25.

1 (2017) 175–183

brill.com/hima

Two Documents by Paul Levi

(16 March 1920–8 January 1921)

Paul Levi

Abstract

This is a translation and critical edition of two documents on the Kapp Putsch and
the origins of the united-front policy in the German Communist Party (KPD). The
documents were written by the KPD leader Paul Levi and their titles and dates are,
respectively: ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’
(16 March 1920) and ‘Open Letter of the Zentrale of the United Communist Party of
Germany’ (8 January 1921). They are a documentary appendix to our essay ‘Paul Levi
and the Origins of the United-Front Policy in the Communist International’, published
in this issue of Historical Materialism.

Keywords

German Revolution – Paul Levi – Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) –

Communist International – Kapp Putsch – united-front tactic

The following two documents, originally drafted by Paul Levi and rendered
for the first time in English (Paul Levi’s ‘Letter to the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of Germany’ on the Kapp Putsch, of 16 March 1920, and
his ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921), are a documentary appendix to our arti-
cle ‘Paul Levi and the Origins of the United-Front Policy in the Communist
International’, published in the current issue of Historical Materialism.
The first document was published in the German-language organ of the
Executive Committee of the Communist International, Die Kommunistische
Internationale, while the significance of the second for the development of the
united-front tactics, not only in Germany but in the Communist International
as a whole, was highlighted by Lenin.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/1569206X-12341516

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1 Paul Levi’s ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist

Party of Germany’ (16 March 1920)

Introduction
Paul Levi’s ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Germany’ was published in the official organ of the Executive Committee of
the Communist International, Die Kommunistische Internationale, together
with an article by Ernst Meyer, ‘On the “Loyalty Declaration” of the Communist
Party’, another by Clara Zetkin on ‘The Situation in Germany’, and a final one
by Karl Radek on ‘The Communist Party of Germany during the Kapp Putsch:
A Critical Examination’. The ‘Editor’s note’ reads:

For full and all-round illumination of the tactics of the Communists dur-
ing the Kapp Putsch we bring in this issue three very important letters by
influential members of the Zentrale of the Communist Party – comrade
Levi (who was sitting at that time in prison), comrade Clara Zetkin and
comrade Ernst Meyer.
The passionate tone of the letters – particularly the letter of comrade
Levi, who wrote from a prison cell – is only too understandable.
Our enemies will naturally try to exult over the disagreements inside the
KPD. Then let them! We Communists have never feared self-criticism.
The editors of Kommunistische Internationale concur with the main
thrust of the critics in the three letters and in the article of comrade
Radek printed immediately following them.
An open criticism of the errors of the Zentrale of the KPD will only
contribute to allowing the merger of the revolutionary workers belonging
to the KAPD with our comrades in the ranks of a single Communist Party.
Die Kommunistische Internationale, 2. Jg. 1920, Nr. 12, S. 147

Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany

Source: Paul Levi, ‘Der Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch und die Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands. Brief an das Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei
Deutschlands’, Die Kommunistische Internationale. Organ des Executivkomitees
der Kommunistischen Internationale, 2. Jg. 1920, Nr. 12, S. 147–50.

I have just read the leaflets. My verdict: the KPD is threatened by moral and
political bankruptcy. I cannot understand how people can write in this situ-
ation sentences like the following one: ‘The working class is unable to act at
this moment. It is necessary to say so clearly.’ ‘The mere fact that Lüttwitz
and Kapp have taken the place of Bauer and Noske . . . changed nothing

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immediately . . . in the state of the great class struggle.’ We have become sup-
pliers of the saddest news in the labour movement, always screaming: ‘It really
has no purpose!’ They now have it in writing from the KPD. After having on the
first day denied the ability [of the working class] to act, the next day the party
puts out a leaflet [which reads]: ‘Now the German proletariat must finally take
up the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship and the communist Soviet
Republic.’ The leaflet then talks about . . . the general strike (the working class
had been deemed incapable of action). At the same time (when the general
strike had brought the masses out of the factories) [the flyer calls for the] elec-
tions of soviets (Räte), [and the convocation of a] central soviet congress. In
short, our ‘big shots’ break the neck of the general strike organisationally and
politically. They also do it morally. I consider it a crime, to now break up the
[strike] action by stating: ‘The proletariat will not lift a finger for the demo-
cratic republic.’ Do you know what that means? This is a stab in the back of the
biggest action of the German proletariat! I had always thought that we were
clear and in agreement about the following: If an action breaks out – even for
the most stupid goal! (the November Revolution had no reasonable goal, or
rather no goal at all) – we must support that action, and raise it above its stupid
goal by means of our slogans, [so as to] bring the masses closer to the real goal
through the intensification of the action! And not cry at the beginning ‘we will
not lift a finger’ if we do not like the goal. In between, concrete slogans must be
found. Say to the masses what needs to happen in the nick of time! The slogans
must, of course, be stepped up, [but] gradually stepped up. The soviet republic
comes last, not first. It seems to me that no-one thinks now about the elec-
tion of soviets. The slogan at the present moment can only be: the arming of
the proletariat.
Compare this to the article that appeared in Die Rote Fahne on Sunday
[under the title]: ‘What Is to Be Done?’ There should be no doubt that if, after
the suppression of the military coup, a Bauer-Ebert-Noske government comes
into being again, it would no longer be the old one, because it would have
lost its support from the right, just as it was no longer the old one in January
1919, after losing its support from the left. Therefore, it is imperative now to
do everything to intensify the action, in order to crush the putsch without
compromise! If we are successful, any future ‘democratic republic’ will slide to
the left, because it will lose its right footing. Only then comes the time where
we can develop ourselves! Now we must [undertake] the action jointly – also
with the SPD – [while keeping] the slogans separately also from the USPD (if
only we had slogans [which originated] in the streets and not to be sought
in books!!). The coup in any case [must be] crushed, because everything else
must follow almost by necessity [from its defeat]. Immediate slogan: Against

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any compromise! I am deeply saddened [to hear that there have been] negotia-
tions with the gang [of Kapp-Lüttwitz].
Now we had the opportunity for the consolidated party to play a leading
role as it did in 1918, by means of a few leaflets. Instead [we had] this childish
laughing stock! I cannot enumerate all the details, about which every one of us
should cry. I do not see how the party can recover from this blow. How many
times have we discussed this earlier: if the counter-revolutionary coup comes,
then – action also with the SPD, because the SPD will be broken in the action.
And now? ‘We will not lift a finger.’ A communist slogan!
I did not sleep yesterday – the first time since I’ve been here – over this story,
and now I want to add something to what I wrote. What yesterday evening was
deep disappointment, today is sheer anger! But I will refrain from anything
personal. So, now to the point.
A. I assume that also the Zentrale of the Communist Party has noted that the
German and especially the Berlin proletariat is striking. Although the head-
quarters of the KPD had diagnosed the ‘inability to act’ [of the proletariat],
it cannot help but discern now that indeed there is a [strike] action. Strikes
require demands! One must know what is to be achieved directly by the strike
(and besides what our opponents want). The demands have to be raised by the
KPD, because the Vorwärts has (wisely) failed to do that. These demands are:
(1.) The arming of the proletariat to secure the republic, i.e. the distribution of
weapons to the politically organised [workers], because the Vorwärts (wisely)
failed to do that. This demand is of the greatest importance. Apparently it has
already been cheated! (3.) Immediate arrest of the leaders of the coup and
their sentencing by a proletarian court, because a military court [would be] a
joke. And nothing else!
What the Zentrale of the Communist Party writes in its pamphlet of 16 March
[1920] is useless. ‘Soviet Republic’ and ‘Congress of Soviets’ are not demands,
as long as people do not work for their fulfilment; the more so since those are
not demands [directed] against our opponents. ‘Down with the military dicta-
torship!’, ‘Down with bourgeois democracy!’, are likewise not strike demands,
but phrases. What was included as positive demands in the flyer, then (why?)
has been deleted again, was also useless. Not the ‘resignation’ of the Kapp gov-
ernment, but its ‘arrest’! High traitors do not ‘resign’! The ‘disarmament of the
army’! At the moment this is nonsense, because that demand drives over those
parts of the army which are against the coup to the other camp. That demand
is directed against a part of the forces on which the proletariat must count at
present. Immediate confiscation of the weapons of the bourgeoisie, formation
of a working-class military, are both demands which cannot be met overnight,
their implementation needs weeks – therefore [they are] not strike demands.
I know of no demand that one can reasonably oppose to the above-mentioned

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three.1 But perhaps still other demands follow from the action that I cannot
judge from here.
B. With those slogans the KPD must give the strike a character which until
now it has not had. With those slogans, after some time, the result will be
achieved that the Zentrale has placed at the basis of its political thinking: that
the SPD will not cooperate, or rather that it will not hold out! Then – but only
then – the moment will come to tell to the masses: they brought you into this
trouble, and now they betray you again.
Then, and only then, when the masses take up our demands and the ‘leaders’
refuse to carry them out or even betray them, will the demand for additional
demands – i.e. for soviets! – follow from the action. Soviets, soviet congress,
soviet republic, ‘Down with the democratic republic!’, etc. – all these demands
suggest themselves on their own when the strike demands are met. But now,
everything must be concentrated in these strike demands. If they are met, the
republic must slide to the left. And even if Noske remains, he couldn’t possibly
do anything. Because if the strike demands are met, the forces supporting the
republic will be in the proletariat, and the government, whatever it may be
called, will have to lean on this completely different [arrangement of] social
forces. From then until the soviet republic, a span of six months would be a
normal development!
Organisationally, we have to do [the following]: (1.) Once daily, or twice,
depending on the situation, a general leaflet – not a ‘Communist compendium’,
but four sentences on the situation, one sentence containing the conclusion,
and the strike demands. In particular, [the flyer should include] criticism of
the strike leadership, which will want to reach a deal [with the putsch leaders].
[We should also issue] a leaflet to the soldiers. A leaflet to the SPD. A leaflet to
the civil servants, written in an explanatory way. A leaflet to the railway, postal
and telegraph workers. (2.) Intensification of the action. Demonstration meet-
ings at Treptower Park [in Berlin]. No clashes. (3.) [Military] drilling of cadres,
albeit without weapons. When troops coming from outside clash with local
troops, the city should not remain quiet. At least there must be cadres present,
so that the mob does not rule the field in the back of the troops and we do not
have to bleed for it.

Paul Levi,
Prison cell, Lehrterstrasse,
Berlin, 16 March 1920

1  [There appears to be a mistake in the enumeration of the demands, since Levi mentions just
two.]

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2 The ‘Open Letter’ of the Zentrale of the United Communist Party of

Germany (8 January 1921)

Introduction
The ‘Open Letter [Offener Brief ]’, published on 8 January 1921 in the party organ
of the now United Communist Party of Germany (VKPD), Die Rote Fahne,
was the first public statement of what would later come to be known as the
Einheitsfrontpolitik or ‘United-Front Policy’. It calls on all the workers’ organ-
isations, parties and trade unions to undertake joint actions on the points on
which agreement is possible. As Broué points out, ‘the first important initiative
in the direction of the policy which Levi outlined came from the rank-and-
file of the VKPD’, more specifically from the metalworkers’ union in Stuttgart.2
Though the ‘Open Letter’ was rejected by the right-wing leadership of the organ-
isations to which it was addressed, Lenin called it ‘perfectly correct tactics’.3
The ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921 was later developed into the ‘Theses on the
Workers’ United Front’ adopted by the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (ECCI) in December 19224 and later by the Fourth Congress of
the Communist International.5

Open Letter of the Zentrale of the United Communist Party of

Germany (VKPD)
Source: ‘Offener Brief der Zentrale der Vereinigten Kommunistischen Partei
Deutschlands vom 8. Januar 1921’, in Hermann Weber (ed.), Der deutsche
Kommunismus: Dokumente 1915–1945, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1973,
pp. 168–70.

Open Letter to the Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund [General German

Trade-Union Federation], the Arbeitsgemeinschaft freier Angestelltenverbände
[Association of Free Employees’ Federations], the Allgemeine Arbeiterunion
[General Workers’ Union], the Freie Arbeiterunion (Syndikalisten) [Free
Workers’ Union (Syndicalists)], the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
[Social-Democratic Party], the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands [Independent Social-Democratic Party], and the Kommunistische
Arbeiterpartei Deutschland [Communist Workers’ Party of Germany].

2  Broué 2005, p. 468.

3  Lenin 1976, pp. 124–5.
4  Gruber (ed.) 1967, pp. 362–71.
5  Riddell (ed.) 2011, pp. 1164–73.

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Two Documents by Paul Levi 181

The United Communist Party of Germany (VKPD) considers it its duty, at this
important and difficult moment for the entire German proletariat, to appeal to
all the socialist parties and trade unions.
The progressive degradation of capitalism, the repercussions of the incipi-
ent world crisis on the effects of the specifically German crisis, the progressive
devaluation of money and the increase in the price of food and all consumer
goods, the growing unemployment and impoverishment of the masses, all of
which are still relentlessly advancing in Germany, make it necessary for the
proletarian class as a whole to defend itself, not only the industrial proletariat
but all the layers which, only now waking up [to political life], become con-
scious of their proletarian character. The proletariat is kept in this intolerable
situation by the advancing reaction, which in the Orgesch,6 in the treacherous
murders, in the judiciary which covers every assassination, invents always new
shackles for the proletariat and speculates on the disunity of the proletariat.
The VKPD therefore proposes that all socialist parties and trade unions
come together, beginning immediately, on the following basis, the individual
actions to be discussed in more detail in the near future:

I.

a) Introduction of uniform wage struggles in order to ensure the existence

of the workers, employees and civil servants. Combination of the indi-
vidual wage struggles of railway workers, civil servants and miners, and
other industrial and agricultural workers, into a united common action.
b) Increase of all benefits and pensions for war victims, retirees and pen-
sioners in proportion to the demanded wage rates.
c) Uniform regulation of unemployment benefits for the whole country,
based on the earnings of full-time employees. The whole cost of this
operation must be borne by the federal state (Reich), which must have
exclusive recourse to capital [taxation] for these purposes. It must be
controlled by the unemployed through special unemployed councils, in
conjunction with the trade unions.

6  The ‘Orgesch’ (from ‘Organisation Escherich’, after the right-wing politician Georg Escherich,
a leader of the Bayerische Volkspartei) was an anti-Communist and anti-Semitic paramilitary
group which operated in Bavaria in 1920–1.

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II. Measures to reduce the cost of living, namely:

a) Furnishing of subsidised food to all wage workers and to the lower ranks
of benefit recipients (pensioners, widows, orphans, etc.) under the guid-
ance of the consumer co-operatives and under the control of the trade
unions and works councils. The [financial] means for this purpose must
be provided by the federal state.
b) Immediate confiscation of all the available habitable rooms, with the
right not only of compulsory occupation, but also of forcible eviction of
small families from large apartments or even houses.

III. Measures to provide food and consumer goods:

a) Control of all the available raw materials, coal, and fertilisers by the works
councils. Resumption of the activity in all the idle production facilities
producing consumer goods, distribution of the goods thus produced
according to the principles detailed in II. a).
b) Control of the cultivation, harvest and sale of all agricultural products by
the small peasants’ councils and rural councils (Gutsräte), in conjunction
with the farm workers’ organisations.

IV.

a) Immediate disarmament and disbandment of all bourgeois vigilante

organisations and creation of proletarian self-defence organisations in all
the German states (Länder) and communities.
b) Amnesty for all offences committed for political motives or reasons of
existing general poverty. Release of all political prisoners.
c) Suppression of the existing strike prohibitions.
d) Immediate start of trade and diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.

By proposing this basis for action, we never hide for a moment, neither to our-
selves nor to the working masses, that these demands advanced by us cannot
eliminate their poverty. Without giving up for a moment our striving to instil
in the working masses the idea of the struggle for the dictatorship, the only
way to salvation, without refraining from asking the masses at every opportune
moment to fight for the dictatorship and to lead [that struggle], the Unified
Communist Party is ready to work with other parties based on the proletariat
to carry out joint actions in order to achieve the above-mentioned demands.

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Two Documents by Paul Levi 183

We do not hide the antagonisms that separate us from the other parties.
Rather, we explain: We want the organisations to which we appeal, not to
pay lip service to the proposed basis for action, but to undertake the actions
needed to achieve those demands.
We ask the parties to whom we turn: Do you consider these demands cor-
rect? We assume you do.
We ask: Are you ready to wage together with us the most ruthless struggle in
order to achieve those demands?
We look forward to a clear and unambiguous answer to this equally clear
and unambiguous question. The situation requires a rapid response. We there-
fore expect a reply by 13 January 1921.
If the parties and trade unions to which we turn are not willing to take up
the fight, the VKPD will deem itself bound to wage this struggle alone, and
it is convinced that the working masses will follow it. Today the VKPD turns
to all the proletarian organisations in the country, and to the working masses
rallying around them, with an invitation to express in assemblies their will for
joint defence against capitalism and reaction, for the common defence of their
interests.

– Zentrale [Politburo] of the United Communist Party of Germany.

Originally published in Die Rote Fahne (Berlin), 8 January 1921.

Translated by Daniel Gaido

References

Broué, Pierre 2005, The German Revolution 1917–1923, translated by John Archer,
Historical Materialism Book Series, Leiden: Brill.
Gruber, Helmut (ed.) 1967, International Communism in the Era of Lenin: A Documentary
History, Greenwich, CT.: Fawcett Publications.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 1976 [1921], ‘Letter to Clara Zetkin and Paul Levi’ (16 April 1921),
in Collected Works, Volume 45, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Levi, Paul 1920, ‘Der Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch und die Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands. Brief an das Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei
Deutschlands’, Kommunistische Internationale. Organ des Executivkomitees der
Kommunistischen Internationale, 2. Jg., Nr. 12, S. 147–50.
Riddell, John (ed.) 2011, Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of
the Communist International, 1922, Historical Materialism Book Series, Leiden: Brill.

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