V O L U M E 8 , D O C U M E N T 6 5 9 a 1 1 3
this has been available here since conception. So we had the general
strike,[4]
which
in the land of universal voting rights and political equality was supposed to mean a
mini-revolution with the ultimate goal of moving political and economic power
into the hands of the working class. The affair was handled with extreme skill. The
posting of ca. 9 demands whose legitimacy, arising out of the Federal Council’s stu-
pid governmental measures during the war, the legitimacy of which was quite com-
monly acknowledged or at least could not seriously be denied: recall of the Federal
Council, replacement of the Federal Assembly, 8-hour workday, old-age pension
and disability insurance, voting rights for women, monopolization of imports and
exports (here an unsuspecting little disadvantage: this demand, to be sanctioned as
a wartime measure, means de facto nationalization of total production (work) and
consumption, as a permanent institution of peace, but it is presented as if only im-
ports and exports were at issue. Future development in this direction is possible,
though, and arguable.) These demands, regarded by all as good or worthy of dis-
cussion, were not introduced by referendum and the exercise of voting rights but
are being forcibly imposed by a general
strike.[5]
Upon the resignation of the Fed-
eral Council and the Federal Assembly, the Workers Committee would then simply
have taken their place, a committee that would not have been accountable to any-
one, nor would it have had to keep to any constitutional or legal regulations in car-
rying out the
demands.[6]
Thus absolutism of the first water, which would
nominally have used the suspicious demand “nationalization of imports and ex-
ports” as a tool for an unrestrained reorganization of the economic conditions (I am
not defending the present ones!), without any public opinion poll, while degrading
the voter to a subject. Here you will immediately recognize the parallel with
Bolshevism and Liebknechtism (Spartacist group?).[7] Otherwise as well: one of
the members of the Workers Committee is . . . . . Grimm of all people, minion of
the ex-Federal Council and pan-G[erman] time-server of Hoffmann, Grimm who
traveled to Russia on a quasi-German mission and bolshevized
there.[8]
The almost
universal impression here is that the general strike does not involve a suggestive
and contagious wave of European ideology, perhaps in the sense of the revolution-
ary ideas of 1789, but is a means of using Switzerland as a medium for the trans-
plantation of Bolshevism following the Entente, in order to obtain a more favorable
peace that way. Then, since G[ermany] evidently has nothing more to lose, follow-
ing the conclusion of a favorable peace, the extremists (a minority) in Germany
could be allowed to disqualify themselves through mismanagement in the mean-
time so that the field is all the more favorably prepared for political legitimacy.
Over the years, G[ermany] in particular has understood admirably well how to play
off foreign action and reaction against one another
(Russia!);[9]
the orthodox will
continue to deem this policy domestically advantageous. The extremes meet.