Weltanschauung And Party

ON FEBRUARY 24, 1920, our new movement had its first great meeting in the Banquet Hall of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich.

• There, the 25 theses which constituted the programme of our new party were expounded to nearly 2,000 people.
• Each thesis was enthusiastically received.

Our new force was to make its appearance among the timid and feckless bourgeoisie.

This new movement:

• would impede the advance of the Marxists

• could gain the public significance and support
  • These are necessary prerequisites in such a gigantic struggle only if it succeeded from the very outset in awakening a sacrosanct conviction in the hearts of its followers, that here it was not a case of introducing a new electoral slogan into the political field but that an entirely new WELTANSCHAUUNG, which was of a radical significance, had to be promoted.

The usual Party Programme is made up of a miserable jumble of opinions.

• These opinions used to be brushed up or dressed in a new form from time to time.

The motive of the average bourgeois ‘programme committee’ is to win the next election.

They begin to paint the shafts with new colours whenever they suspect the people are ready to leave the old party wagon.

The so-called ’experienced men’ and ’experts’ are:

• the party astrologists and horoscope readers
• experienced, old parliamentary hands with political schooling

These then come forward.

• They remember the past when the masses showed signs of losing patience

So they resort to their old prescription by forming a ‘committee’.

They go around among the people and listen and read the newspapers to smell the broad masses are wishing for.

They carefully study the groups that belong to each trade or business, and even office employees.

They now look into the ‘malicious slogans’ of the opposition which threaten them.

The committees meet to revise the old programme and draw up a new one.

The opposition slogans then become:

• harmless
• part of the dogmas of the old parties.

These people change their convictions just as the soldier changes his shirt in war–when the old one is bug-eaten.

In the new programme everyone gets everything he wants.

• The farmer is assured that agriculture will be safeguarded.
• The industrialist is assured of protection for his products.
• The consumer is assured that his interests will be protected in the market prices.
• Teachers are given higher salaries
• Civil servants will have better pensions.
• Widows and orphans will receive generous assistance from the State.
• Trade will be promoted.
• The tariff will be lowered
• The taxes will be almost abolished.

Sometimes:

• one section of the public is forgotten
• one of the demands is mooted.

When the election day is over and the parliamentarians have held their last public meeting for the next five years, when they can leave their job of getting the populace to toe the line and can now devote themselves to higher and more pleasing tasks–then the programme committee is dissolved and the struggle for the progressive reorganization of public affairs becomes once again a business of earning one’s daily bread, which for the parliamentarians means merely the attendance that is required in order to be able to draw their daily remunerations.

Morning after morning the honourable deputy wends his way to the House, and though he may not enter the Chamber itself he gets at least as far as the front hall, where he will find the register on which the names of the deputies in attendance have to be inscribed.

As a part of his onerous service to his constituents, he enters his name, and in return receives a small indemnity as a well-earned reward for his unceasing and exhausting labours.

When four years have passed, or in the meantime if there should be some critical weeks during which the parliamentary corporations have to face the danger of being dissolved, these honourable gentlemen become suddenly seized by an irresistible desire to act.

Just as the grub-worm cannot help growing into a cock-chafer, these parliamentarian worms leave the great House of Puppets and flutter on new wings out among the beloved public.

They address the electors once again, give an account of the enormous labours they have accomplished and emphasize the malicious obstinacy of their opponents.

They do not always meet with grateful applause; for occasionally the unintelligent masses throw rude and unfriendly remarks in their faces. When this spirit of public ingratitude reaches a certain pitch there is only one way of saving the situation.

The prestige of the party must be burnished up again.

• The programme has to be amended.
• The committee is called into existence again.
• The swindle begins anew.

Once we understand the impenetrable stupidity of our public we cannot be surprised that such tactics turn out successful.

Led by the Press and blinded once again by the alluring appearance of the new programme, the bourgeois as well as the proletarian herds of voters faithfully return to the common stall and re-elect their old deceivers.

The ‘people’s man’ and labour candidate now change back again into the parliamentarian grub and become fat and rotund as they batten on the leaves that grow on the tree of public life–to be retransformed into the glittering butterfly after another 4 years have passed.

Scarcely anything else can be so depressing as to watch this process in sober reality and to be the eyewitness of this repeatedly recurring fraud.

On a spiritual training ground of that kind it is not possible for the bourgeois forces to develop the strength which is necessary to carry on the fight against the organized might of Marxism.