Following on from Saturday’s session, this session will cover the second phase of the German Revolution. It will chart how the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) became a mass party of hundreds of thousands of working class militants. It will look at the debates within the Communist International about party strategy and tactics. These debates are rich with lessons for socialists today about how revolutionary parties can win hegemony within the working class, through combating the right-wing reformist parties. This phase of the revolution also saw repeated attempts at counter-revolution, and the emergence of the Nazi party as a serious force for the first time.
Finally, the session will explore how the revolutionary possibilities squandered by the KPD leadership, and the tragic consequences this had for the workers’ state in Russia.