It is wrong […] to assume that the KPD devoted all of its resources to a fight against the SPD and neglected the [Fascist] threat. On the contrary, most of the political violence practiced by the KPD during 1928–1933 was directed against the [Fascists], not the [Social Democrats]. It is also incorrect to assume that the divide between the KPD and the SPD was entirely motivated by the orders of the Comintern.

Certainly, the Comintern heavily influenced the KPD’s course of action, but deep divisions had existed between the KPD and the SPD from the very day that the KPD became a political entity. Further, the differences between the two parties were not merely ideological. KPD and SPD membership came from different economic spheres, they lived in different neighborhoods, and they experienced the Weimar Republic in different ways.

The SPD, for much of the Republic’s existence, was one of the main parties of government. When the KPD accused the SPD of Social Fascism, they were not targeting another radical left party; they were focusing their criticisms on one of the most powerful political entities in the Republic.

Related to this, the SPD had in its position of power pursued repressive tactics against the KPD. Thus, the KPD’s view of the SPD as social fascists was not merely the result of ideological dogmatism but was in fact shaped by the actual experience of the KPD in the Weimar Republic.

To fully understand the schism between the KPD and the SPD, one must turn to the fall of Imperial Germany [the Twoth Reich] at the end of the First World War in 1918, and the revolutionary period that followed, before turning to the formation of the Weimar Republic in 1919. Before the First World War, the Marxist left was united as the SPD. By the time the Great War began, the SPD was the most popular political party in [the Twoth Reich] and had gained more seats than any other political party in the Reichstag.

The unified SPD, however, was internally divided between those who wanted to achieve the party’s ideological goals through participation in the government and those who wanted to actively pursue Revolution. The tension between these two groups erupted after SPD delegates to the Reichstag, representing the more moderate wing of the party, voted unanimously in favor of [the Twoth Reich] entering the First World War. The more radical elements of the party that opposed this action, who were eventually cast out of the SPD in 1917, became the genesis for the KPD.

(I know that this is likely only tangentially related, as it is unlikely that the SPD foresaw it happening, but I would like to remind readers that the Second Reich had at least a little direct involvement in the Ottoman Empire’s extermination of Armenians.)

As can be seen, it was not simply the orders of the Communist International that spurred the KPD into opposing the SPD. The Party’s very birth came as a result of profound disagreements within the German left: disagreements that were not simply theoretical, but deeply political in the form of the more moderate elements of the SPD’s support for [the Twoth Reich’s] involvement in the First World War.

During the revolutionary period and the early Weimar Republic years, the KPD also experienced oppression and violence as a result of SPD actions. Historian Eve Rosenhaft notes that after the Weimar Republic was established, the radical left, including the KPD revolted, “demanding… socialist programmes… Freikorps and paramilitary police under Social Democratic administration put down the disturbances in two months of bloody fighting.”⁷

Historian Eric D. Weitz similarly notes that “the SPD’s alliance with the police, the army, and the employers undermined its popular support, which redounded in part to the benefit of the KPD.”⁸ Of equal importance is Rosenhaft’s assessment that “the political division between the Communists and the Social Democrats that had emerged between 1917 and 1919 was reinforced by increasing divergences between the interests of different sections of the working class.”⁹

The wealthier, more skilled proletariat joined the SPD while semi‐skilled laborers became the rank‐and‐file members of the KPD. Thus, when one examines the later actions of the KPD’s declaration of the SPD as Social Fascists, one must understand that the reasoning did not suddenly develop as a result of the Comintern’s policy directives, but that the KPD had actually experienced oppression from the SPD. The KPD had evidence of the SPD working with the right and conceding fundamental goals of socialism, whereas it had yet to experience the far more brutal repression of the [Fascists].

The 1929 Program of the Communist International, issued as the [Fascists] were beginning to gain significant national prominence, outlined the Social Fascism concept that would prevent the KPD from uniting with the SPD in opposition to the [Fascists]. The program detailed the attempts of the Proletariat to ferment revolution in the wake of the First World War, which led to the creation of the USSR but also the defeat of the Communist left in a number of other countries, such as Germany.

The program declared that “these defeats were primarily due to the treacherous tactics of the social democratic and reformist trade union leaders” as well as the fact that Communism was just starting to become a popular political ideology.¹⁰ The Comintern further argued that “Fascism strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most backward strata of workers to its ranks by playing upon their discontent, by taking advantage of the inaction of social democracy.”¹¹

The Comintern also asserted that “in the process of development social democracy reveals fascist tendencies which, however does not prevent it…[in other situations from operating as] an opposition party [to the bourgeois].”¹²

To further understand the position taken by the KPD against the SPD, Ernst Thälmann’s 1932 speech “The SPD and NSDAP are Twins” reveals how the KPD leadership envisioned its struggle against fascism in all forms. Thälmann’s incendiary speech declared that “joint negotiations between the KPD and the SPD… there are none! There will be none!”¹³

This was not to say that the KPD did not recognize the [Fascist] threat, as Thälmann articulated that “KPD strategy directs the main blow against social democracy, without thereby weakening the struggle against […] fascism; [KPD] strategy creates the very preconditions of an effective opposition to […] fascism precisely in its direction of the main blow against social democracy.”¹⁴

It is imperative to recognize, though, that the KPD only advocated the blow against the SPD leadership. As Thälmann argued, The KPD’s policy envisioned, the creation of a “revolutionary United Front policy… [that mobilized the masses from below through] the systematic, patient and comradely persuasion of the Social Democratic, Christian and even National Socialist workers to forsake their traitorous leaders.”¹⁵

Thus, KPD invective was not aimed at the average member of the SPD, but at its leaders. The KPD was also not devoting resources to fighting Social Democracy instead of fighting [Fascism]. Rather, it was pursuing a strategy in which it believed that the defeat of Fascism would only be possible through the unification of the proletariat into one Revolutionary mass. This helps explains the KPD leadership’s focus on attacking the SPD rather than completely focusing its energies on [Fascism].

(Emphasis added.)

The mythology is that the German social democrats simply got together one day to gently and politely request a little help preventing the institutionalization of Fascism, only for us to immediately lash out like rabid animals. The reality is that the social democratic élite suppressed us repeatedly, and slacked off suppressing Fascism. Thus, even if we did trust them enough to ally with them, we really have no good reason to believe that they would have helped us successfully prevent the bourgeoisie from institutionalising Fascism.

All of this history is crucial to understanding why we declined to ally with the SPD and why some of us proposed the concept of ‘social fascism’. I find that concept wrong, personally, but it is at least easy to understand once this context is in mind. It is not, as some seem to think, an excuse to focus on assaulting social democrats, but the inevitable reaction to the SPD’s repeated failures to suppress Fascism. The social democratic élite advocated class collaborationism, and treated us worse than the Fascists.

Despite what our official party line might have implied, in practice we assaulted social democrats only rarely. Much like how our antifascism continued in spite of the German–Soviet Pact, would‐be analysts frequently fall into the trap of assuming that prescriptions reflect descriptions. Class struggle does not bend so easily to prescriptions:

Historian Dirk Schumann largely concurs with Rosenhaft’s assessment of the KPD’s use of political violence, noting that “while Communists and Social Democrats hardly ever clashed in physical confrontations, both appeared on the scene as enemies of the right‐wing groups.”¹⁸ Thus, while the KPD leadership advocated opposition to the SPD and the [Fascists]. The reality on the streets, where political violence served as a potent form of expression for the proletariat, was that the left devoted its energies to fighting the right rather than each other.