MIA > Archive > Wilhelm Pieck
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. I No. 7, 11 November 1921, p. 59.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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The Deutsche Werke, which up to the end of the war was the great arsenal and State munition factory for the Prussian army, was after the armistice reorganized on a peace footing. The process of reorganization has been going on for the last two years and is not completed yet. But it has nevertheless proceeded far enough to make it possible to employ some 30,000 workmen in Spandau, Erfurt and Hanau on the repair of locomotives and the manufacture of automobile parts and sporting guns. The Prussian State thus possesses a nationalized industry working for peaceful purposes in competition with the trusts and syndicates of the great capitalists. In addition to this the Workers’ Council at the Deutsche Werke has the full powers, which are conferred upon workers council by virtue of the Betriebsratsgesetz. It exercises control over the management of the works. Moreover the employees are not reckoned as State officials (Staatsbeamten) but as employees of a firm, in which the State possesses the whole of the share capital. Thus the Deutsche Werke represents an industry, which is half-nationalized.
But the industry has suffered for sometime past from difficulties resulting from the fact that the management is dependent upon the great Stinnes Trusts for the supply of such important raw materials as coal and iron ore. As long as these “key” materials, which form the basis of all industry, are in the hands of these Trusts, it is clear that a nationalized or semi-nationalized industry like the Deutsche Werke cannot possibly flourish. Incidentally also this fact throws much light upon the reason why the industrial capitalists fight so stubbornly against any idea of the socialisation of the coal and iron industries. For as long as these are in private hands they know they have a strangle hold upon the metal and other “finished” industries of any country. It is thus not surprising to hear that Stinnes has made several attempts in the course of the last year to buy up the Deutsche Werke, for he knows quite well that, if once a State-owned industry in which the workers’ Council has considerable power, establishes itself firmly in North Germany, the germ will have sprouted, which will sooner or later undermine his industrial monopolies.
But now a new factor comes on tne scene. Last year the Interallied Control Commission in Berlin inspected the Deutsche Werke and ordered certain alterations in the machinery to be made. In the main these alterations did not seriously interfere with the transference of the works from a war to a peace footing and did not go beyond the demands of the Versailles Treaty, requiring the German government to cease the manufacture of war materials. Suddenly about two months ago, however, the Interallied Control Commission sent in a note to the Direction of the Deutsche Werke, ordering them to destroy in part and in part to hand over to the French government a whole number of valuable machines, which are employed purely on peaceful work. The execution of this order means nothing less than the complete ruin of the Deutsche Werke and in Spandau alone in the immediate future over 6,000 workmen are threatened with dismissal.
The demands of the Allied Commission would be explicable, if they confined themselves solely to the forbidding of the use of machines for the purpose of making war materials. But this is not the case, except in so far as the demands on the branch of the Deutsche Werke in Hanau are concerned, where the Commission has ordered the destruction of a portion of the plant for the manufacture of nitroglycerine. But the rest of the demands are purely vindictive and are obviously aimed at the ruin of the industry for peace purposes. Thus at Spandau the Allied officers have ordered the destruction of nearly half the lathes and boring machines in the locomotive repairing shops and in the the shops for the manufacture of automobile parts. They have further forbidden the construction of a new steel rolling-mill, which alone will make the industry independent of the extortions of the German metal trusts for the supply of finished iron products. Yet they permit the old machines, which were there during the war for the manufacture of shells, to remain!!!
It is obvious that there is foul play here. And it cannot be altogether an accident that the tactics of the Stinnes Trusts, attempting first to starve out and then to buy at a cheap price the only nationalized industry in Prussia should coincide with this particularly cynical attack of the agents of Allied capitalism and militarism in Germany. However great may be the rivalry and jealousy of the competing groups of world capital, they are united in one thing – in realising the necessity of making a united front against the attempt of the proletariat to secure control over production.
Last updated on 10 January 2019