The Majority Socialist trio, realizing the impracticability of tearing down old institutions before there was something better to take their place, moved slowly in instituting reforms. This was little to the liking of the radicals within and without the cabinet. Haase, politician before all else, and Dittmann, class-conscious fanatic, insisted on speedier reforms along orthodox Socialist lines, and particularly on a far-reaching socialization of big industries. Nearly a year earlier Haase, Cohn and Ledebour, attending the notorious Joffe banquet, had approved Bolshevik attacks on the Majority Socialists and excused the slow progress of the revolutionary propaganda by saying that "those--Eberts and Scheidemanns" could not be brought to see reason. It was hardly to be expected that the Independents would be milder now. The work of the cabinet was hampered already, although the Independent members kept up a pretense of working with the old party's representatives.
Haase, Dittmann and Barth were supported by the _Vollzugsrat_. This body, which had started out by ordering the restoration to their owners of the newspapers seized during the revolution, had so far faced about two days later that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were able to exhibit to the publishers of the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ an order from the _Vollzugsrat_ directing them to place their plant at the disposal of the Spartacans for the printing of _Die rote Fahne_, whose editor the Luxemburg woman was to be. The order did not even hint at any compensation for the publishers. Naturally they refused flatly to obey it, and the Greater Berlin Soldiers' Council, still dominated by men of the better sort, meeting two days later, indignantly denounced the action of the _Vollzugsrat_ and compelled the withdrawal of the order.
Despite the fact that the Majority and Independent Socialists were evenly represented on this council, the latter dominated it. Brutus Molkenbuhr, the Majority Socialist co-chairman with Richard Müller was no match for his fanatic colleague, and most of the other members were nobodies of at most not more than average intelligence. A more poorly equipped body of men never ruled any great state, and whatever of good was accomplished by the cabinet in the first month of its existence was accomplished against the opposition of a majority of these men. Müller's radicalism grew daily greater. "The way to a national assembly must lead over my dead body" he declared in a speech filled with braggadocio, and his hearers applauded.