Arthur Rosenberg (1889-1943): History and Politics Between Berlin and New York
Throughout a rather short life, Arthur Rosenberg achieved fame in a remarkable variety of intellectual roles: Born and raised in imperial Berlin, he gained an early reputation as a prolific ancient historian. In the 1920s, after a radical break with his erstwhile social environment, he became a leading communist politician. He left the communist movement in 1927, and then became famous as a tireless writer. His books on the rise and decline of the Weimar Republic, on the history of Bolshevism, and on Democracy and Socialism were translated into several languages. The radical break in his life circumstances, when he had to leave Germany right after Hitler came into power, changed neither his political views nor his erudite, compassionate style of writing, which he managed to combine with the historian’s distance from the subjects he was writing about.
The following biographical sketch tries to give insight into various facets of Arthur Rosenberg’s life.1 Originally an admirer of imperial Germany, Rosenberg became one of the few historians who “focussed on the role of social and economic processes in molding the authoritarian character of German politics.”2
An intellectual life in imperial Berlin
Arthur Rosenberg was born on 19 December 1889 into a Jewish middle-class family. His father Henry, a salesman, and his mother Helene, both came from the German-Austrian border region of Silesia. Both were assimilated, and Arthur and his sister were baptized and raised as Lutherans.Rosenberg’s parents died when he was still young. A fellowship from the Gustav Levinstein Foundation enabled him to attend High School.3 In 1907, he graduated from the Askanisches Gymnasium, one of Berlin’s elite schools, with top marks. In the same year Rosenberg, who was stateless until then, became a German citizen. From 1907 to 1911, he studied ancient history, philology, and archaeology at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm University, then the most prestigious institution of higher learning in Germany and Central Europe.4
Rosenberg became a close associate of his teacher Eduard Meyer, an internationally respected authority on the social history of the ancient world.5 Under Meyer and Otto Hirschfeld he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Untersuchungen zur römischen Zenturienverfassung (Investigations into the Roman Centuriate Constitution). The thesis, published in an expanded version, was awarded the prize of the Gustav Droysen Foundation and enabled Rosenberg to continue his academic career.6
He wrote for the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers, and helped to edit the multi-volume Ullsteins Weltgeschichte. At the same time he traveled to Italy, where he collected numerous primary sources for his Habilitation work. In 1914, at the age of only 25, he submitted his Habilitation Thesis on Der Staat der alten Italiker: Verfassung der Latiner, Osker und Etrusker (The State of the Old Italici: Constitution of the Latini, Osci, and Etrusci), in which he investigated the forms of government, that prevailed in pre-Roman times in the different Italian communities.
Rosenberg had just been appointed Privatdozent (permitted to give lectures at the university) when the First World War broke out. An unrestrained German patriot, he volunteered for the imperial army in 1915 and served most of the time in the War Press Department in France, where he had contacts with General Erich Ludendorff, but he also fought on the Western front.7 He found time for publishing a new edition of Droysen’s History of Alexander the Great, for which he wrote an introduction.8 Like many Germans of his generation, Rosenberg became disillusioned with the old social order, which had culminated in four years of mutual killing on the European battlefields and in the trenches. Like a minority among these men, he turned from German nationalism to socialist internationalism.
Rosenberg’s years in communist politics
In November 1918, Rosenberg joined the cause of, as he wrote later, those “workmen and workmen’s sons who had become revolutionary Socialists, [who were] not satisfied with a democratic republic and wished to proceed immediately to the abolition of private property.”9 Consequently, Rosenberg became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Two years later, the party split. Its left wing, including Rosenberg, joined the German Communist Party (KPD). His speech at the conference, which marked the unification of the left wing of the USPD with the KPD, was full of revolutionary enthusiasm. He exclaimed: “Comrades! The world-revolutionary situation today is such that the wave is reaching Central Europe. Italy and Germany are becoming ripe for the decisive battle, a decisive battle that will have to be waged by us with similar tactics in both countries.”10 He stated that the Italian government had not dared to attack the factories occupied by the workers because they were well armed. He considered that similar methods should be adopted in Germany.
Rosenberg, who also worked at the City School for Extramural Studies and wrote on problems of workers’ education, became as early as 1921 one of the elected communist city councilors of Berlin.11 He gained prominence through his speeches at communist party conferences. In August 1922, he envisaged “great periods of fierce class struggles” which would lead to “heavy clashes with the state authorities.”12 He ignored the fact that these policies had just been tried in the ill-fated March Action of 1921 and had led to a catastrophe for the German communists, who were largely isolated from the majority of the working people in Germany. Even the new defeat of the German communists in the fall of 1923 could not shake his opinion that Germany was ready for a communist revolution. Thus, he was among those who constituted the left opposition around Ruth Fischer and Arkadij Maslow against the more realistic policy of Heinrich Brandler, the party leader, and August Thalheimer, the main theoretician of the KPD.
After the takeover of the party by the left opposition, Rosenberg became one of the leading figures within the KPD. In 1924, he was elected to the party directorate of the district of Berlin-Brandenburg, where one of the largest sections of the party was based. In the same year, he became a member of the Central Committee at the party conference held in Frankfurt (Main). In May 1924, he became a deputy of the Reichstag, the German parliament, which he remained until the election of 1928. In July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Rosenberg was elected a deputy member of its Executive Committee (ECCI) and of its presidium. He published extensively in the communist press on problems of international relations.13
Within the party, Rosenberg was, together with Ruth Fischer and Werner Scholem, one of the main speakers of the ultra-left faction. In secret sessions at Rosenberg’s home in Berlin-Zehlendorf the ultra-leftists reported on the workers’ situation in Russia. They asked the Berlin organization to continue to fight with all its energy against state regimentation, the state party, and the degeneration of Communism, and to build up its left wing as independently as possible. Ruth Fischer reported much later that “the underground organization had certainly delivered ample reports to the Russian Politburo.”14
In a speech to the Chemnitz branch of the KPD, Rosenberg declared that it was of no importance whether the party lost one or two votes in the “parliamentary monkey game” (“im parlamentarischen Affentheater”). The only task was the preservation of the revolutionary spirit and the revolutionary organization.15 In May 1925, Rosenberg, Iwan Katz and Werner Scholem even criticized Fischer and Maslow who saw, in line with the Comintern leadership, a “relative stabilization” of the capitalist world order.16
Rosenberg held his ultra-left position until the fall of 1925. From that point, he became gradually more moderate. In the climate of stabilization during the mid-1920s, he realized that there was no room for revolutionary adventures. Some years later, Rosenberg stated that the rank-and-file of the KPD embodied in these relatively calm years a “curious mixture of pacifism and enthusiasm for the Soviet ideal,”17 but by no means a Bolshevik revolution in present-day Germany.
In November 1925, Rosenberg published an article in which he clearly stated that the KPD could exercise influence upon only a minority of proletarians; the majority would follow the social democrats, the Catholics, and even the nationalists. In a non-revolutionary situation, the SPD would represent the workers’ interests better and more effectively than the KPD. For this situation, Rosenberg wrote, the KPD had not developed an appropriate political strategy. The majority of the working people would consider the party “a herd… of rowdies and putschists.”18
This kind of criticism and self-criticism brought Rosenberg in contact with the faction led by Ernst Thälmann, a transport worker from Hamburg and one-time supporter of the ultra-left, who now seemed to represent the more realistic current of the KPD membership. Rosenberg, who became critical of internal Soviet developments, also hoped that a party leadership under Thälmann would pursue an independent line toward the Soviet party leadership, which increasingly dominated the Comintern with very negative results.
In the meantime, Rosenberg was very active in Reichstag politics. He spoke on a variety of subjects. On some occasions, he could make use of his historical knowledge. In an attack on the German tax system he defended the Roman system of taxes, because it had distributed bread free to the poorest. He offered his adversaries in the debate a tutorial on ancient history, when one of them pointed out that the Emperor Augustus had introduced the turnover tax.19
Rosenberg’s most significant parliamentary activity was his participation in the work of the committee appointed by the Reichstag to investigate the causes of Germany’s 1918 defeat. Membership in the Committee of Investigation, the fourth committee charged with this task, gave Rosenberg access to a wealth of primary documentation and sparked his interest in contemporary history.
As an expert reporter to that committee, Rosenberg spoke on 2 December 1925 on the causes for the collapse of the German army. He refuted the allegations, which were put forward by naval officers, that the Independent Social Democrats had undermined the navy by their anti-war agitation in 1917-18 and had instigated the outbreak of the naval mutinity which led to the revolution and thereby to the collapse of the German front. Rosenberg demonstrated that the USPD was far from being the revolutionary party depicted in the conservative press, but was rather a mixture of radical and moderate elements. The Spartakus Group, the radical wing, had no influence on the outbreak of the revolution and was even unknown to the mutinous sailors. 95 per cent of the soldiers’ councils supported the SPD. In sharp contrast to the stab-in-the-back theory of the political right, national resistance was no longer possible in November 1918, for the people were exhausted and the front lacked reserves. No government could have changed this state of affairs.20 Some time later, the conservative archivist Erich Otto Volkmann, Rosenberg’s counterpart on the committee, claimed that in Berlin a revolutionary committee had been formed in October 1918. Rosenberg countered that this committee had been unable to act due to its internal differences and had been overtaken by events, on which it had not been able to exercise any influence. He again pointed out that it was not the revolutionary upheaval that had caused Germany’s breakdown, because the war had already been lost at that time.21
On 26 April 1927, Rosenberg left the KPD. In a formal letter, addressed to the party leadership and published in the SPD press one day later, he made the Communist defeat in China and the subordination of the various communist parties under the tutelage of Moscow responsible for his break.22 He remained an independent deputy of the Reichstag. Rosenberg now criticized German communists for their “romantic phraseology, which does not constitute the slightest real threat to the existing political order… Through this romanticism millions of workers are prevented from pursuing their interests in a realistic and factual way. The fight against romanticism causes the other tendencies and groups of the working class movement to squander their energies to an extraordinary extent.”23
Rosenberg’s critique of communist politics was a part of his general attitude until the very end of his life. Only a year after his retreat from the KPD, he wrote in the preface to his Entstehung der deutschen Republik: “The peculiar nature of the political development in Germany has caused empty political claptrap, illusions, and improvisations to play a much greater part here than with other nations. If I am able to help my readers in their battle with these fantasies I shall have achieved all that I set out to accomplish in this book.”24
Historical and political writing at the end of the Weimar Republic
After the Reichstag elections of 1928, Rosenberg lost his mandate. To take care of his family, his wife Ella and the children Liselott and Wolfgang, he became a high school teacher at the Kölnisches Gymnasium. This school was influenced by the progressive school reforms undertaken by the SPD government of the State of Prussia and by the city council of Berlin.25 At the same time he also continued to teach as Privatdozent at Berlin University. Among his students were Walter Markov, Arkadij Gurland, and Arthur Lehnig.26
Besides his teaching, Rosenberg established himself as a writer of contemporary historical works. Up to this time, he was known as an expert in ancient Roman history. After the war and before he became engaged in politics, he wrote a popular history of the Roman republic and a Marxist-influenced pamphlet on democracy and class struggle in ancient times. He also edited a textbook on Roman history.27 However, he gained international recognition with his books on the birth of the German republic and on the history of Bolshevism, which he published in 1928 and in 1932.
Rosenberg’s book on the origins of the Weimar Republic was very largely an outcome of his work in the Committee of Investigation of Germany’s 1918 defeat. He rejected the conventional wisdom of both the right and the left and attempted to develop his own understanding of historical phenomena. For example, he developed a unique theory of two “revolutions” that took place during the war. He argued that the first was the establishment of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff de facto military dictatorship in 1916. This rule left both the Kaiser and the Reichstag as mere symbols. The second was in October 1918 when the Supreme Military Command collapsed, leaving power to the non-revolutionary German middle-class which sought to abolish the monarchy. But it was the actions of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils that opened the way for the birth of the German republic. A majority within these councils wanted to combine parliamentary democracy with socialism.
It could hardly have surprised Rosenberg that his book was fiercely condemned by a majority of his colleagues. His former supporter Eduard Meyer, who had turned into an ardent enemy since Rosenberg’s turn to the left, was primarily responsible for blocking Rosenberg’s promotion to a full professorship at Berlin University. With the notable exceptions of Friedrich Meinecke, Fritz Hartung, and Hans Delbrück, the historical faculty was outspokenly hostile to the unconventional outsider. Delbrück and Rosenberg had established quite a good relationship since their cooperation in the parliamentary Committee of Investigation, and in 1929 Rosenberg wrote a remarkable obituary for Delbrück, whose books on military history he considered “an important treasure for socialist proletarian research.”28 After several vain attempts, the social democratic Prussian minister of education succeeded in 1930 in promoting Arthur Rosenberg to an extraordinary professorship at the university, against the opposition of the vast majority of the historians.29
Rosenberg’s History of Bolshevism, the first serious academic treatment of the subject, was based on his political experience as a leading German communist. Nevertheless, he made it clear that he had “not written this book to please any Party or group,” and that he was “not conscious of any desire to make ‘revelations’ or to ‘settle accounts’. Those who hope to find in this book anecdotes about Stalin and the ‘torture chambers’ of the GPU will be bitterly disappointed.”30
Rosenberg saw the socialism of Marx and Engels as essentially the attempt to achieve the values of liberalism -- guaranteed freedom for each member of the society -- through the political action of the masses. The masses wanted to share the fruits of freedom and equality, which had been promised by the Liberals. “They wanted democracy; the self-government of the masses; and the abolition of all the privileges of the newly aggrandized middle class no less than that of the old feudal nobles.”31 Democratic ideas were at first purely political, but socialism added the demand for economic reform, created a theory, and prompted the organization of mass parties.
Under the social conditions of Russia, however, the masses would be unable to take revolutionary action without a party of professional revolutionaries. Rosenberg considered the Bolsheviks’ doctrine and actions to be progressive for Czarist Russia. But what was progressive for Russia was reactionary for the West, where the bourgeois revolution had been completed, and where a well-trained industrial proletariat and an educated middle class constituted the majority of the population. “The heroic deeds of the Russian workmen from 1917 to 1920 temporarily threw a veil over Bolshevik backwardness and awoke the feeling that Bolshevism was the predestined form of the universal proletarian revolution. Important sections of the European proletariat were at that time anxious to ally themselves with the Bolsheviks in an attempt to seize the reins of government. In the course of time, however, the impossibility of entrusting the leadership of the world proletariat to the Government of the agrarian Russian State became more and more evident. The Russian State and the international working class once more parted company, and Stalin’s theory of ‘Socialism in a single land’ is only the verbal expression of an accomplished fact.”32 While the KPD press denounced Rosenberg as a would-be “objective historian,” armed with “counterrevolutionary” arrows, a Russian émigré historian saw the book as a propaganda work filled with “positive judgements of the Bolsheviks about themselves.”33
Rosenberg was aware that the Soviet leadership, despite its revolutionary rhetoric, was sacrificing the cause of the European proletariat for the state interest of the USSR. He nonetheless regarded Stalin as a “well-educated Marxist,” as the American visitor Sidney Hook wrote in his memoirs.34
The rising tide of anti-Semitism in the early 1930s, not least at German universities, led Rosenberg to explain the historical roots of judaeophobia in Germany. “The enmity toward the Jews, which was already characteristic of a large section of German academics before the war, was part of the aristocratic ideal of life which these men were searching for. The nobility by birth felt at heart much more secure. It did not need such an ideological buttress.”35 Rosenberg ignored the fact that many of the German Junkers had favored and sponsored the Nazi party since the 1920s, before it became a politically decisive factor in German politics.
Heinrich von Treitschke, the most influential historian in imperial Germany, attacked the Jews because he saw in them the embodiment of materialism and liberalism. Rosenberg contended that significant elements of the German bourgeoisie, and especially the academic elite, became Nazis in order to combat such “Jewish inventions” as materialism, socialism, and democracy out of a romantic longing to regain an innocent world.36
But he was well aware of the fact that anti-Semitism and anti-socialism would come together to intoxicate German society, making it ripe to fall into the hands of the Nazis. On the eve of the Nazis’ seizure of power Rosenberg wrote concerning the demand by a Jewish professor at the University of Breslau that Leon Trotsky be granted asylum. Rosenberg supported this case, writing that “the same forces that want to liquidate academic freedom in Germany today, demonstrated last year in all clarity [by introducing emergency laws] what they intend to do with all the other rights of the German people, especially of German working people.”37 Just before these lines were published, Hitler became German chancellor. Rosenberg was among the first who was forced to escape from the country of his birth.
“The History of the German Republic”: Rosenberg’s main work in exile
As a Jew and a well-known Marxist, Rosenberg had to leave Hitler’s Germany very soon. In March 1933 he left Berlin with his family. Traveling via Konstanz, where his wife’s relatives lived, he went to Zurich. During his short stay there, Rosenberg wrote a pamphlet on Fascism as a Mass Movement which came out in the social democratic “Graphia” publishing house in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.
Rosenberg distinguished three kinds of German fascists: the Nazis, the old German nationalists and, surprisingly, the Volkskonservativen or Bruening group around the former chancellor. He even regarded the 1923 government of chancellor Cuno as “the victory of legal fascism.” In Rosenberg’s words, fascism represented the “counter-revolutionary capitalist, the born foe of the class-conscious working class. Fascism is nothing but a modern, popularly masked form of bourgeois capitalist counter-revolution.”38
Only a little later, Rosenberg corrected many of his judgments. In his History of the German Republic he classified the cabinet led by chancellor Wilhelm Cuno “ as a capitalist government… It could not in fairness be expected of Cuno that he should pursue a Socialist policy.”39
Rosenberg’s History of the German Republic was probably the best book of any German historian in exile. He emphasized the lack of a democratic tradition as the main reason why the 1918 revolution did not succeed:
Hitherto Germany had not known the meaning of a living democracy, a real self-government of the masses. The State controlled public life. Even the so-called local autonomy offered no counterbalance. The great plan devised by Baron von Stein for setting up a middle-class state in Prussia had been curtailed and altered after his retirement. Not merely were the local authorities restricted in all they did by the state government, but, worst of all, the important posts in the local administrations were occupied by long-term officials. The men who filled honorary and unpaid posts in the German communal administration up to 1918 played a very small part in comparison with the professional civil servants.
Thus the masses of the German people were totally lacking in practical experience of managing their own affairs in a responsible manner. Bureaucratic control of public affairs rested upon a tradition of centuries. It appeared hardly conceivable that it should be vanquished by a revolutionary storm. True democracy, however, does not consist in casting votes on any particular question, but in the active self-government of the masses. The abolition of the bureaucracy was thus a question of life and death for German democracy.40
The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils which spread spontaneously all over Germany in November 1918, hoped to introduce a true democracy to the masses along with important economic reforms. Rosenberg wrote, “the enthusiasm for Socialism was not the cause but a result of the November Revolution…. It is true that there was considerable difference of opinion as to what was to be understood by socialization. On one point, however, every one was agreed: that any form of planned or communal economy could only be successful if it mobilized the productive masses for active co-operation. And the organizations by which planned or communal economy was to be put into force were the Councils.”41 But the Majority Socialist officials did not realize that Councils and Bolshevism were in no sense identical. They felt threatened and disturbed by the activity of the Councils among the workers. The Independent Socialists recognized the significance of the Councils. They wished to establish some form of connection between the Councils and the National Assembly. They would have been content to move carefully towards socialization, beginning with the nationalization of the mines. Rosenberg paid particular attention to Kurt Eisner, Independent Socialist and head of the short-lived Bavarian Republic. “He would have preferred to abolish the old style parliament, but at the same time did not desire speedy nationalization, and refused absolutely to have anything to do with any methods of dictatorship on the Bolshevist model.”42
The militant wing of the German workers’ movement, the Spartakus Group, was largely isolated even within the movement. The Spartakus leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, had no illusions about the character of the revolution. Unlike most of their adherents they realized that the great majority of the German people was satisfied for the time being with a parliamentary republic. “The death of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg was a very heavy loss to the Socialist Labour movement. Both were upholders of a deliberately reasoned and scientific Socialism that took into account actual conditions. If they had lived longer they would certainly have brought about the separation of their own party from the Utopians, and they would have been the most suitable leaders of a truly Socialist mass movement of the German proletariat. Above all, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as leaders of the KPD would never have permitted themselves to be used as the tools of Russian state policy.”43
Confronted with the uprising by the Spartakists, who rejected Luxemburg’s warnings, Noske, Ebert, and Scheidemann suppressed them with the help of the Free Corps. This was their “fatal mistake,” as Rosenberg pointed out. They could have done so without the reactionary troops. The possibility of raising a democratic army was lost. “The officers of the old army were continually raising further Free Corps, the nuclei of the democratic forces were left to atrophy, and very soon the German Republic had a counter-revolutionary army led by former imperial officers.”44
For Rosenberg, there was not a shred of evidence to prove that the Majority Socialist Representatives of the People desired or agreed to the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. “On the contrary, it was a terrible blow to the Government of the Republic… Although the occurrence was too recent to have much effect upon the elections for the National Assembly on January 15, it was nevertheless a potent factor in causing millions of workers to turn their backs on the SPD.”45 With the assassination of Kurt Eisner on 21 February 1919 by a fanatic nationalist, “the German Revolution, and the German Socialist working class especially, lost the only constructive statesman who had appeared since November 1918,” Rosenberg wrote.46
“The political result of the civil war that was waged during the first half of 1919 in Noske’s name was the total destruction of the political power of the Councils. Any Workmen’s Councils that continued in existence were absolutely devoid of influence. Thus the attempt to found a democracy to succeed to the Revolution was an utter failure. As a result, the disarmament of the working class was carried out systematically and with the greatest thoroughness by the officers. On the other hand, the volunteer army under the command of former professional officers grew more and more extensive. By the middle of the year the real power in Germany lay with the Free Corps and not with the National Assembly.”47 The Assembly’s standing was, in Rosenberg’s words, “that of the German Reichstag of pre-revolutionary days – that is to say, it was composed of decent, honest, hard-working men altogether lacking in revolutionary fervour. True revolutionaries would, above all, have faced the danger that threatened from the army. The National Assembly might have called all Socialists and Republicans to arms to save their country. A general armament of the people would have nipped in the bud any danger of individual coups, would have secured the eastern frontier against the Poles, and might even possibly have strengthened the position of Germany in face of the Entente at the peace negotiations. No such armament of the people took place, for it would have accorded ill with the ideal of ‘Law and Order’, which the men in power revered above all else.”48
Like imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic was deathly ill from the very beginning and doomed to fail. This judgment was, of course, contested by a variety of contemporary writers and is still disputed.49
Rosenberg started writing this book when he was still in Switzerland. He finished it in 1935 in Liverpool, whose university appointed him as a lecturer in ancient history, possibly through the mediation of Karl-Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt, at that time Professor of Ancient History in Liverpool.50 “In these chaotic days,” as Rosenberg wrote thankfully, the University of Liverpool showed ”that it is determined to remain faithful to the fundamental truths of Science and Knowledge without regard for ‘race’ or political opinion.”51 But the university could not give him a tenured position. After his three-year contract had ended, Rosenberg left Britain for the United States, the last stop of his itinerary.
“Democracy and Socialism”: Rosenberg in the United States
Rosenberg visited the United States first in 1935, when he participated in the Annual Conference of the American Historical Association in Philadelphia. His colleague Hajo Holborn, like Rosenberg a refugee from Germany and meanwhile teaching at Yale, introduced him to Jesse Clarkson and Madeleine Robinton, both teachers at Brooklyn College. They offered Rosenberg a teaching position.52 The position was low-paid. Rosenberg would, however, be supported by the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars as well as by the Carl Schurz Foundation.53 In November 1937, Rosenberg arrived with his family, including two-year-old son Peter, in New York.54 Some weeks later he started to teach at Brooklyn College. He brought with him the manuscript for a new book: Democracy and Socialism.
As in his previous works, Rosenberg emphasized the significance of social conflicts and class struggles in the course of modern history. Asking the causes of the defeat of liberal-democratic states in the interwar period, he offered a typology of modern democracies. He distinguished between “socialist” and “bourgeois” democracy. While the first was still nothing but a program, the latter had gone through different stages. France under Robespierre and the United States under Jefferson were, in Rosenberg’s words, formed as “social democracies,” which understood themselves as alternatives to the feudal and capitalist oligarchy. The other three forms of bourgeois democracy, however, rejected the idea of class struggle and, therefore, sought a social compromise between the upper class and the people, in the form of either an imperialist or a liberal democracy. Britain under Disraeli stood for the first, the Scandinavian states and Switzerland for the second variant. Rosenberg considered the United States until 1890 and the British Dominions as examples of a third form, that of colonial democracy. Liberal democracy would successfully reconcile class antagonisms and would prefer peaceful agreements between the social forces to violent conflicts.
In France, Rosenberg pointed out,
an unbroken revolutionary tradition existed only from 1793 to 1871. The fall of the Commune was also the end of revolutionary democracy. As soon as this political movement ceased to lead a concrete existence, the political and historical writers found it difficult to comprehend it. The politicians of the French bourgeoisie regarded the Commune as an atrocity. The workers, to be sure, honoured the memory of the Communards as their class comrades, but when the French labour movement again revived around 1880, it no longer carried on the tradition of the past…
During the same period the Chartist tradition had been completely forgotten in England. Similarly after 1871 the history of the revolution of 1848 appeared like news from a strange world to citizens of the German empire. The German bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, and the middle class had long since abandoned their revolutionary feelings. At best the national aspect of the movement of 1848 was still recognized; with inadequate means and without success the men of 1848 had aimed at the same goal, which Bismarck had subsequently attained in such a glorious manner… In Italy and Hungary the tradition of 1848 remained alive even after 1871, but it was only the national side of the revolution which continued to exist in the cults of Garibaldi or Kossuth, and not the democratic aspect.55
Especially in France, as Rosenberg stated, the radical workers could not forget that the June struggles of 1848 as well as the suppression of the Commune of 1871 had taken place with the approval of an assembly elected by general suffrage:
Napoleon III had employed general suffrage in order to bestow a semblance of popular approval on his shady empire… Now general suffrage no longer appeared to be such a menace to the monarchies and the wealthy upper classes. On the other hand, the radical labour groups doubted that it would ever be possible to defend the true interests of the working people with the help of general suffrage. In so far as democracy and general suffrage were considered as necessarily associated factors, this period marks the beginning of a shallow, vapid interpretation of the concept of democracy, accompanied by its decline, which has continued up to the present. Democracy was no longer regarded as active self-government by the labouring masses for the purpose of effecting their political and social emancipation, but only as a form of political organization, which is characterized by the existence of a parliament elected by general suffrage, but which otherwise has no positive value for the masses.56
As a consequence, democracy lost its implementation in the masses, which was, however, necessary for its existence. The growing antagonism between Socialism and democracy led to an isolation of the workers from the peasants and the middle-class, which was one reason for the political immobility of the German Social Democracy in August 1914.57
Marx and Engels were conscious of the growing divergence between Socialism and democracy.“ Marx had demanded a definitive espousal of republicanism from the labour movement in Germany as an expression of revolutionary opposition to the ruling system of the Hohenzollerns. Nevertheless during the period of the Second International this serious problem degenerated to petty questions of tact: whether it was permissible for a social democrat to converse with an archduke, to accept his invitation, or even to attend his funeral.” While Marx and Engels carried on a “realistic revolutionary policy,” the “radicals of the Second International abandoned a popular revolutionary policy for a policy more directly concerned with the economic interests and protests of the industrial workers.”58
Rosenberg emphasized that “Marx and Engels always regarded war as a political instrument, capable of being employed for the revolutionary cause as well as for any other. The Second International, on the other hand, unconditionally advocated peace under any circumstances. Marx and Engels always affirmed the right of national self-determination and the right of major [sic! – M. K.] nations to exist. In contrast with this the radicals of the Second International by their polemics against the national policies of their own governments and their general avowal of the brotherhood of man produced the most serious misunderstandings, to say the least, in the mind of both friend and foe.”59 But even Marx and Engels “failed to recognize that… they were not dealing with individual mistakes within the socialist parties but rather with a new type, and that the average European labour party was basically different from revolutionary Marxism.”60
Rosenberg’s minor writings of this last period of his life are also worth mentioning. He advocated a dialog of Marxist and non-Marxist German historians in exile. After the expected end of the Nazi regime, Rosenberg envisaged “common efforts” of émigré historians of all kinds “in order to display the new, positive principle of German future.”61 After the outbreak of the Second World War, Rosenberg wrote an essay on “The Soviet-German Pact and the Jews,” He pointed out that “the German-Soviet treaty has done an extraordinary service to all the friends of Labour and Democracy as well as to the Jews in that it has broken the united front of their enemies,” by which Rosenberg meant Nazism, but also British imperialism which favored the Arab leadership in Palestine. “That is a consequence of the treaty which was certainly not wanted by Hitler.” The conference at Munich “had been the natural expression of a united front between reactionary capitalism and fascism,” between Hitler and “the conservative Lords and the bankers of the City of London.” Chamberlain and Daladier would now regard Hitler “as the traitor to their class and as the accomplice of Stalin.”62 Rosenberg tragically underestimated Stalin’s assistance to Hitler’s war efforts, which enabled the Nazi regime to conquer large territories where they persecuted and murdered masses of Jews.
In 1940 Rosenberg’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. He suffered from cancer. He planned to write a social history of the ancient Near East and he even started to learn old oriental languages.63 Rosenberg remained engaged on the left. Through his friend Felix Boenheim, a doctor of medicine and committed communist, Rosenberg again came in touch with KPD exile activities, although he remained critical of German Communism. In 1940 Rosenberg, Boenheim and Alice Rosenfeld, the wife of the Socialist politician, founded an Independent Group of German Emigrants (Unabhängige Gruppe deutscher Emigranten).64 Rosenberg cooperated with the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, one of the refugee organizations.65 Besides that, he established contacts with the left-wing Zionist students’ federation Avukah (the Torch), and taught history at its summer camp in New York State.66
On 22 June 1941, Rosenberg gave a lecture in which he articulated his changed view of Soviet Russia. “The totalitarian system is essentially the same as the Russian system today,” he said, “and whether or not dictators like each other is beside the point. The totalitarian idea is the idea of a strong state economy without personal freedom. The mass of people must obey the state bureaucracy which in return gives them a certain amount of security.” This did not mean that he had abandoned class analysis. “The position of the capitalists within the state differs from state to state. In Russia individual capitalism was annihilated, while in Germany and Italy most of the private capitalists have an important position in the state machine. Totalitarian state economy has a dictator on the top.” From this he argued that the task and duty of the Jew today is “to engage in politics. First, national politics in Palestine, and secondly, world politics, to fight fascism – because fascism and totalitarianism are the worst enemies of human principles, especially Jewish principles.” In Palestine, the “democratic front is represented by labor, the Histadrut, the Kibbutz. On the other side we have a nucleus of fascism, the Revisionists… The Revisionists are an enemy among us who would undermine the democratic forces among the Jews and open the gate to the enemy whenever possible.”67
The next day Rosenberg lectured again. In the meantime, he had been informed about the German attack on the Soviet Union. He did not underestimate the Soviet side. “Certainly, the German economy is very good. On the other hand, the Russian army is not so bad.” Rosenberg said that Hitler could not attack the symbol of workers’ power and at the same time make grandiose promises to the German workers. “Russia had to be attacked as a state, not as a philosophy. So in his war proclamation, Hitler does not proclaim against Bolshevism. If he did, there would have been difficulties with the army.”68 Rosenberg was not aware of the war aims that bound Hitler and the German generals together. Obviously, he did not repeat his remarks on totalitarianism, which he had made on the previous day.
Rosenberg continued to teach at Brooklyn College, where he had been given tenure in 1941. But in the fall of 1942, his fellowships, on which he still was depending, had not been renewed. In a moving letter to Betty Drury, the secretary of the Emergency Committee, he explained that his “situation had turned worse. During the last months, I began to have pains in my hips and to limp on my right leg. As the pains continually increased, I went to a specialist, and was told that one of my bones had a serious disease, which is affecting the surrounding organs of the body. I must undergo a long treatment with X-rays. I will try, in spite of my illness to go on with my academic duties as much as possible. You know how expensive such a treatment with X-rays is; and I do not see how I will be able to afford it at the present. Without this treatment, I will be forced to give up my academic activities in a short time. Please inform the committee of this new development, which makes a grant more urgent than ever.”69
On 2 February 1943, Rosenberg was sent to the hospital. Five days later he died. His friend and colleague (but not relative) Hans Rosenberg managed to get a death benefit of $2000 for the family from Brooklyn College. It was stated in a short note that “in case of delay, (it) will not get (to you) until May.”70 The college’s obituary said that the students “always loved” Arthur Rosenberg “and flocked to his classes and lectures. He was always a friend and a scholar. He made history a living subject.”71
In his last published essay, “What remains of Karl Marx?,” Rosenberg emphasized in 1940:
Marx was never a rigid inflexible thinker. In a great revolutionary crisis, he favored ruthless action of the proletariat. In other times, however, he supported peaceful reforms within capitalism, if this improved the situation of the working class. He acknowledged the historical mission of the proletariat in advanced industrial societies, but he made no cult of the workers. Marx devoted a great part of his life’s work to the study of the agrarian question and peasants’ movements… The present generation cannot find remedies and fulfilling prophesies in Marx’s writings. However, he remains an example of how to reconsider critically and to draw conclusions from the changes in society… The political bankruptcy of the Second and Third International parties seems often the proof of the worthlessness of Marxism, but the basis of this criticism is false. When parties, which have nothing to do with Marxism but superficial appearances, are defeated, an objective criticism will not take it as a proof of the failure of Marxism.72
On another occasion, he wrote: “The future of socialism thus rests with the democratic and intellectually independent parties of the west.”73
MARIO KESSLER is Research Fellow at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Center for Contemporary Historical Research), Potsdam, Germany. He is the author of: Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismus (1993), Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewegung 1894-1933 (1994), Die SED und die Juden – zwischen Repression und Toleranz (1995), Heroische Illusion und Stalin-Terror (1999), and Exilerfahrung in Wissenschaft und Politik: Remigrierte Historiker in der frühen DDR (2001). His book editions include: Ketzer im Kommunismus (with Theodor Bergmann, 2000). He is currently writing a biography of Arthur Rosenberg.
Notes
1. There are several works on Rosenberg, see Helmut Schachenmeyer, Arthur Rosenberg als Vertreter des Historischen Materialismus (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz 1964) (a pioneering study); Helmut Berding, “Arthur Rosenberg,” Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, Vol. IV (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht 1971), pp. 81-96; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Einleitung,” Arthur Rosenberg, Demokratie und Klassenkampf: Ausgewählte Studien, ed. by H.-U. Wehler (Frankfurt-Main: Ullstein 1974), pp. 5-16 (a selection of Rosenberg’s essays); Rudolf Wolfgang Müller and Gert Schäfer (eds.), Arthur Rosenberg zwischen alter Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte, Politik und politischer Bildung (Göttingen: Musterschmidt 1986); Gert Schaefer, “Arthur Rosenberg: Verfechter revolutionärer Realpolitik,” Theodor Bergmann and Mario Kessler (eds.), Ketzer im Kommunismus: 23 biographische Essays (2nd ed., Hamburg: VSA 2000), pp. 101-122; Lorenzo Riberi, Arthur Rosenberg: Democrazia e socialismo tra storia e politica (Milano: Franco Angeli 2000).
2. Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press 1983), p. 273.
3. The materials of the Gustav Levinstein Foundation are located in the Askanische Oberschule Archives.
4. Cf. Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Universitaetsarchiv, Akten der Johann-Gustav-Droysen-Stiftung, and Personalakte des nichtbeamteten a. o. Universitaetsprofessors Dr. Arthur Rosenberg, ibid.
5. Rosenberg’s letters to Eduard Meyer are located in Meyer’s papers at the Archives of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
6. For Rosenberg’s work on ancient history see Volker Losemann, Nationalsozialismus und Antike: Studien zur Entwicklung des Faches Alte Geschichte 1933-1945 (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe 1977), Carl Christ, Römische Geschichte und deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Munich: C. H. Beck 1982), and Luciano Canfora, Politische Philologie: Altertumswissenschaften und moderne Staatsideologien (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1995). See also idem, Il comunista senza partito. Seguito da Democrazia e lotta di classe nell’ antichità (Palermo: Sellerio 1984).
7. Some biographers stated that Rosenberg joined the extreme right-wing Vaterlandspartei in 1917, to remain a member until the end of the war. See e. g. Francis L. Carsten, “Arthur Rosenberg: Ancient Historian into Leading Communist,” quoted from idem, Essays in German History (London: Secker & Warburg 1985), p. 296. Rosenberg, however, emphasized, that “up to November 10, 1918, I belonged to no political party or organization.” Arthur Rosenberg, Imperial Germany: The Birth of the German Republic, 1871-1918 (Boston: Beacon Press 1964), p. VII.
8. Johann Gustav Droysen, Geschichte Alexanders des Großen, introduction by Dr Arthur Rosenberg, with a preface by Sven Hedin (Berlin: R. v. Decker’s Verlag 1917).
9. Arthur Rosenberg, The History of the German Republic (New York: Russell & Russell 1965), pp. 4-5.
10. Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Vereinigungsparteitages der USPD (Linke) und der KPD (Spartakusbund) (Leipzig and Berlin: Frankes 1921), pp. 143-44.
11. For this part of his activities see his “Die Reform des Geschichtsunterrichts,” Die neue Erziehung, Vol. 2 (1920) No. 17, pp. 405-410.
12. Bericht über die Verhandlungen des 2. Parteitages der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands, 22-26 August 1921 (Berlin: VIVA 1922), p. 346.
13. See e. g. “Der Schacher um den Orient,” Inprekorr, Vol. 2 (1922) No. 34, pp. 272-73; “Die neuen weltpolitischen Konflikte in Ostasien,” Ibid., No. 80, p. 606; “Der Sinn der Haager Konferenz,” ibid., No. 145, pp. 927-928, and many more articles in the following years.
14. Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party (Cambridge: Harvard University Press Mass., 1948), p. 182.
15. Rosa Meyer-Levine, Inside German Communism: Memoirs of Party Life in the Weimar Republic (London: Pluto Press1977), p. 74.
16. The critique of Rosenberg, Katz and Scholem of 3 May 1925 can be found in the Foundation for the Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the German Democratic Republic under the Federal Archives of Germany, Berlin (SAPMO-BArch), RY 1/I 2/3/65, pp. 5-8. For the context see Siegfried Bahne, “Zwischen ‘Luxemburgismus’ und ‘Stalinismus’: Die ‘ultralinke’ Opposition in der KPD,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 9 (1961), No. 4, p. 362, Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt-Main: EVA 1969), p. 107, and Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1984), pp. 129-131.
17. Rosenberg, The History of the German Republic, p. 260.
18. Arthur Rosenberg, “Einige Bemerkungen zur Parteidiskussion,” Die Internationale, Vol. 8, No. 11, 1 November 1925, pp. 693-96. See his circular to the Politburo of 29 December 1925 in SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/170, pp. 181-186.
19. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, Stenographische Berichte, Vol. 387, 3 August 1925, p. 3906.
20. See Die Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruchs im Jahre 1918, Zweite Abteilung, Vol. IV (Berlin: 1928), pp. 91 ff.
21. Ibid., Vol. V, pp. 215 ff.
22. See his “Austrittserklärung,” Vorwärts, 27 April 1927, the note “Rosenbergs Abgang,” Die Rote Fahne, 28 April 1927, and the commentary “Der ‘parteilose Sozialist’ Rosenberg,” ibid., 29 April 1927.
23. Verhandlungen des Reichstags. Stenographische Berichte, Vol. 393, p. 1181.
24. Rosenberg, Imperial Germany, p. VII-VIII.
25. The school and Rosenberg’s teaching are vividly described in Theodor Bergmann, Im Jahrhundert der Katastrophen: Autobiographie eines kritischen Kommunisten (Hamburg: VSA 2000), pp. 11-12.
26. See Walter Markov, Zwiesprache mit dem Jahrhundert. Dokumentiert von Thomas Grimm (Berlin and Weimar: Böhlau 1989), pp. 35-37; Rüdiger Zimmermann, “Arkadij Gurland (1904-1979): Marxistischer Theoretiker und Publizist,” Jürgen Schlimper (ed.), “Natürlich – die Tauchaer Straße!” Beiträge zur Geschichte der “Leipziger Volkszeitung” (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung 1997), p. 300; Bert Alena, “Nachruf: Arthur Lehnig (1899-2000), 1999, No. 1 (2000), pp. 220-224.
27. Arthur Rosenberg, Geschichte der römischen Republik (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner 1921); idem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf im Altertum (Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing 1921; reprint Freiburg: Ahriman 1997); idem, Einleitung und Quellenkunde zur römischen Geschichte (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung 1921).
28. Arthur Rosenberg, “Hans Delbrueck, der Kritiker der Kriegsgeschichte,” Die Gesellschaft, Vol. 6/2 (September, 1929), p. 252, reprinted in idem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, pp. 193-201.
29. See the well-researched study of Andreas Wirsching, “Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Arthur Rosenberg und die Berliner Philosophische Fakultät 1914-1933,” Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 269 (1999), No. 3, pp. 561-602, esp. pp. 582 ff.
30. Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five-Years’ Plan (New York: Doubleday 1965), p. VIII.
31. Ibid., p. 8.
32. Ibid., p p. 267-68.
33. Kurt Sauerland, “Geschichtsfälscher am Werk,” Der Rote Aufbau, Vol. 5 (1932), pp. 829-35; I. Iljin, “Review of Arthur Rosenberg, Geschichte des Bolschewismus,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, Vol. 54 (1933), pp. 583-593.
34. Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century (New York: Harper & Row 1987), p. 110.
35. Arthur Rosenberg, “Treitschke und die Juden,” Die Gesellschaft, Vol. 7/2 (July, 1930), p. 82, reprinted in idem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, p. 191.
36. Ibid., p.83.
37. Arthur Rosenberg, “Trotzki, Cohn und Breslau,” Die Weltbühne, Vol. 29 (1933), No. 1, pp. 13-14.
38. Historikus (i. e. Rosenberg), Der Faschismus als Massenbewegung (Karlsbad: Graphia 1934), p. 75.
39. Rosenberg, The History of the Weimar Republic, p. 178.
40. Ibid., p. 22.
41. Ibid., p. 24.
42. Ibid., p. 28.
43. Ibid., pp. 85-86.
44. Ibid., p. 83.
45. Ibid., p. 86.
46. Ibid., p. 93.
47. Ibid., p. 89.
48. Ibid., p. 105.
49. For a supportive position cf. Francis L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe (Berkeley and London: University of California Press 1972), for a contrary position cf. Heinrich-August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918 bis 1924 (Berlin and Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf. 1984).
50. Cf. Alexander Demandt, “Alte Geschichte in Berlin 1810-1966,” Reimer Hansen and Wolfgang Ribbe (eds.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Berlin im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Persönlichkeiten und Institutionen (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1992), p. 175.
51. Rosenberg, The History of the German Republic, p. IX.
52. Telephone information from Professor Robinton to the author, 22 July 2000. In the late 1930s, several refugees from Germany were appointed at Brooklyn College, among them Hans Morgenthau, Hans Rosenberg, and Feliks Gross. See Murray M. Horowitz, Brooklyn College: The First Half-Century (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1981), p. 75.
53. The papers of the Emergency Committee are located in the New York Public Library, Manuscript and Archives Division (NYPL, MAD), those of the Carl Schurz Foundation at YIVO Institute, New York. See also Stephan Duggan and Betty Drury, The Rescue of Science and Learning: The Story of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars (New York: Macmillan 1978), p. 48.
54. When in 1935 the Nazi regime revoked German citizenship from Rosenberg and his family, he informed the German embassy in London that his youngest son should not be excluded from this measure. Cf. Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, Vol. II, p. 263.
55. Arthur Rosenberg, Democracy and Socialism: A Contribution to the Political History of the Past 150 Years (New York and London: A. A. Knopf 1939), pp. 218-219.
56. Ibid., p. 220.
57. On another occasion, Rosenberg wrote: “The contradiction between the practical activity of the Socialist parties and ultimate Marxist goal is the basis explanation of the vacillations, dissentions and difficulties with which the history of the parties down to 1914 is replate.” Arthur Rosenberg, “Socialist Parties,” Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. XIV (New York: Macmillan 1934), p. 215.
58. Ibid., pp. 294-295.
59. Ibid., p. 295.
60. Ibid., p. 297.
61. Arthur Rosenberg, “Die Aufgabe des Historikers in der Emigration,” Emil Julius Gumbel (ed.), Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigration (Strasbourg: Sebastian Brant 1938), p. 213.
62. Arthur Rosenberg,” The Soviet-German Pact and the Jews,” Jewish Frontier, Vol. VI, No. 9, September 1939, p. 14.
63. For these and the following information cf. the materials at NYPL, MAD, Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Box No. 30. As his colleague Samuel J. Hurwitz wrote that Rosenberg was “engaged in the study of Babylonian and Assyrian history. He had an excellent command of foreign languages and knew how to decipher cuneiform hieroglyphics.” Samuel J. Hurwitz in his “Introduction” to Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism, p. XIV.
64. See Rosenberg’s letters to Kurt R. Grossmann, 28 November 1939 and 2 January 1940, and the circular (February 1940) in Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, CA, Kurt R. Grossmann Collection, Box No. 7, Folder I D: Boenheim.
65. See Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt-Main, American Guild for German Cultural Freedom/Deutsche Akademie im Exil, Files Arthur Rosenberg and Hermann Borchardt (letter Rosenberg’s to the American Guild, 24 October 1938).
66. Cf. ”Arthur Rosenberg and Avukah,” Avukah Student Action, May, 1943.
67. Arthur Rosenberg, “Why Should Jews Have a Political Program,” Avukah Cooperative Summer School, Summary of lecture. Unpublished manuscript in NYPL Research Libraries.
68. Arthur Rosenberg, “The War Situation,” Ibid.
69. Arthur Rosenberg to Betty Drury, 4 November 1942, NYPL, MAD, Emergency Committee, Box No. 30.
70. Ibid.
71. Brooklyn College Vanguard, Vol. 22 (1943), No. 1, pp. 1 and 8. For other obituaries see Avukah Student Action, May 1943 (M. Shelubsky), and Aufbau, 19 February 1943 (Hans Rosenberg).
72. Arthur Rosenberg’ “Was bleibt von Karl Marx?,” Mass und Wert, Vol. III, No. 3, März/April 1940, p. 389, reprinted in ibid, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, p. 137.
73. Rosenberg, “Socialist Parties,” p. 220 (my emphasis).