[34] Dorrenbach was afterward indicted in Brunswick for bribery and looting.
The Majority Socialists' three delegates conferred again with Dittmann, Vogtherr and Ledebour, the Independents' representatives. They were unable to come to an agreement, and the Independents withdrew to confer with their party's executive committee. This committee debated the question for some hours with the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council.[35] Liebknecht, still nominally an Independent, for the _Spartacus Bund_ had not yet been formally organized as a separate party; Ledebour, Dittmann, and Barth, who was chairman of the council, took a leading part in the debate that ensued. It was finally decided to make the Independents' participation in the government conditional upon the granting of certain demands. First of all, the new government must be only a _provisorium_ for the conclusion of the armistice, and its existence was to be limited to three days. Before the expiration of that term the Soviet was to decide what course should then be taken. The republic must be a socialistic republic,[36] and all legislative, executive and judicial power must rest in the hands of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils, who were to be elected by "the laboring population _under the exclusion of all bourgeois elements_."[37]
[35] That the radical wing of the German Socialists conferred in a party matter with this council, which was supposed to represent Socialists of both parties, is significant. As a matter of fact, the real power in the council was from the beginning in the hands of the Independent and Spartacan members, and their ascendancy grew steadily.
[36] Here, as the demands show, "socialistic" in the most rigid and "class-conscious" partisan sense.
[37] The italics are those of the Independents themselves, as used in publishing their demands in their party organ.
These demands were communicated to the Majority Socialist delegates, who, after a conference with their party's executive committee, rejected them. They especially opposed the exclusion of all _bourgeois_ statesmen from the government, declaring that this would make the provisioning of the people impossible. They demanded coöperation of the two parties until the convening of a constituent assembly, and rejected the three-day limitation upon the existence of the government to be formed. Further negotiations between the two sets of delegates were agreed on for Sunday morning.