When Workers’ Councils Defeated the Far-Right Coup in Germany
- Loren Balhorn
On March 13, 1920, twelve million workers struck across Germany to block an attempted military coup. The successful resistance was organized by the workers’ councils — a form of grassroots democracy that allowed the masses to assert their own power.
Photograph of a demonstration in Berlin, Germany against the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch 1920.Photograph uncredited / Wikimedia
“Not the half, but the whole revolution!” This and similar slogans echoed across Berlin and large parts of Germany in the eventful years of 1919 and 1920. Following the uprising dubbed the “November Revolution” in fall 1918, the country saw several years of pitched battles between Right and Left, concluding in the consolidation of the fragile Weimar Republic.
One key feature of these years was the emergence of workers’ and soldiers’ councils — largely self-organized bodies that united supporters of the revolution, exerting pressure on the political establishment as well as the left-wing parties. In Berlin alone, the councils succeeded in organizing hundreds of thousands of people to fight for their own interests.
Today, the councils — and the “second phase” of the revolution that followed the November 1918 uprising — are largely overlooked, in public commemoration as in mainstream scholarship. Yet this experience contains many lessons for today.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.