UNION DES SYNDICATS OUVRIERS DE LA SEINE
LES
International Viewpoint #179 • February 26, 1990
COMMUNISM accumulating capital. This is why there will be a proletarian class struggle for as long as there is capitalism. And this is why this class struggle will always give rise to a political current that will look to go beyond immediate demands and combine these with an attempt to replace capitalism with a more humane form of society.* And because of this, the future of Communism is assured, for as long as capitalism exists. C.G. T.
Even better: capitalism lives under a curse. Not only do its internal contradictions tend to periodically get worse and give rise to explosive crises of all kinds. It is also also unable to grow and develop without the proletariat, that is to say it own grave-digger, growing and developing at the same time. The future of Communism is founded on this growth in the proletariat, resulting from the development of capitalism itself. There are many more wage workers today than at any time in the past.
Long-term tendency to stronger workers movement
The long term tendency is towards the strengthening and not the weakening of
HEURES the organization, cooperation and solidarity of the wage-earners. This can be shown by looking at the comparative numerical strength of trade unions in 1850, 1900, 1950 and 1990, at the breadth of their actions, including general strikes. Such a comparison will reveal that, with few exceptions, in every country, the rising tendency over a century or half-
CHEURES century neither fluctuates nor recedes.
Socialism means the reconstruction of society on the basis of freely accepted cooperation and solidarity, not imposed in any way, and these are qualities that the proletariat gains through its own organizations. Socialism is the same as the "rule of the freely associated producers", to recall another of Marx's formulas.
The proletariat brings together these qualities, inculcated by bourgeois society, with the economic and social strength to carry through the reconstruction. It is the produces society's wealth, Proletariat that proletariat, and only the
This capacity has not been weakened, but strengthened by the third industrial revolution. In fact, the wage-earners of the energy sector, telecommunications, electronics, banking, teaching and healthcare are today becoming one of the principal pillars of the trade union movement, something that is true also of the totality of workers in the public sector. They often have an even greater ability to paralyze the capitalist economy than the workers in the mines, iron and steel, cars or construction.
Nonetheless, as a consequence of the lying propaganda of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist bureaucracies, repeated by the Communist Parties in the capitalist • countries and by the international bourgeoisie for its own ends, the Communist project has become identified in the eyes of a part of the international proletariat and for a large part of world public opinion, with a supposed "really-existing socialism" in the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, North Korea and elsewhere. Now that the crises of all these societies is exploding, the bourgeois, social democratic, and neo-social democratic ideologues in the post-capitalist countries are able to proclaim that this real crisis also represents the bankruptcy of Communism and Marxism.
From a strictly objective point of view, it is easy enough to refute this idea. What 4. It is depressing to see the highly educated participants in the Hamburg round-table repeating the most threadbare banalities, that cannot stand up neither to an objective reading of Marx and Lenin's writings nor any study of the practical activity of the organized movement before the Stalinist dictatorship. Among the other platitudes Marxists — like all ideologues — are accused of envisaging the "end of history". Marxists, more modestly, in fact envisage simply the end of prehistory during which humanity remains in the grip of the miserable struggle for subsistence and the obligation to engage in compulsory labour. The real human drama, really human history, only begins when humanity is emancipated from these conditions. Those who is collapsing in the USSR and elsewhere is Stalinism rather than Communism, Leninism or Marxism. Stalinism is a product of the counter-revolution, not of the revolution. Stalinism, in order to triumph, had to physically exterminate the party of Lenin and trample 90% of his ideas underfoot — not to speak about the ideas of Marx. The fact that despots like Stalin and his successors have made formal reference to Lenin and Marx® does not justify identifying them with those heralds of emancipation. The fact that the despot Bonaparte made reference to the French Revolution does not at all justify making the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man or the consider such emancipation utopian, have to fall back on the myth of original sin. 5. A "post-industrial society", in the sense of a "postproletarian society" would imply that food, clothing, housing, domestic appliances, pharmaceutical products, telecommunications, schools, hospitals, transport without which no thinker or ideologue could survive, would be 100% produced by robots and not by human producers. 6. Before his death, our old comrade Zimin, one of the rare survivors of the Soviet Left Opposition, produced an excellent refutation of these supposed theoretical references in his book "Le Stalinisme et son prétendu 'socialisme réel'" (La Brèche, Paris, 1985).
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A 8 U E LEs A R
Jacobins responsible for the corruption, the White Terror, the suppression of civil liberties and the hundreds of thousands of victims of Napoleon's wars. Furthermore, no person could in good faith suggest, on the basis of texts and actions, that the practice of Stalin, Stalinism and postStalinism and the ideologies that have sought to support them, flow in any way whatever from the teachings of Marx.
But the thinking of the working masses arises from their experiences of life and struggle, refracted through ideologicalpolitical influences and organizationa. loyalties. There are no big social layers untouched by such influences. And that is why the image that the masses used to have of a Soviet Union on the way to realizing the socialist project now rebounds against Communism.
The idea that the disenchantment of the masses with the Soviet reality is a product of imperialist propaganda — or Khrushchev's revelations and glasnost — has no real basis. Anti-communist propaganda was far more virulent in the years immediately after the October revolution, but at the time it did not have a big impact on the advanced workers.
The rejection of the "Soviet model" by these same workers is the product not of propaganda but of an understanding of a depressing reality. This understanding is then modified by the drawing of a false identity, which reverses the previous uncritical attitude to the Soviet Union,
China and so on.
False Identification of
Stalinism and Communism
Yesterday, people said "yes" to Stalinism because it was falsely identified with
Communism. Now, these same people say
"no" to Communism because it is identified - no less falsely - with Stalinism.
This false identification will not put a stop to the tendencies towards Socialism inherent in massive workers struggles any more than Stalinist indoctrination and bureaucratic gangrene could suppress such struggles before.
But the ideological factor will certainly be a brake for the moment. The scepticism aroused by the bankruptcy of Stalinism goes together with the scepticism resulting from the integration of Social democratic and neo-social democratic reformists into bourgeois society. This integration has become manifest in the eyes of the majority of wage-earners, including those who vote for the Social
Democrats. These are votes for the lesser evil, not the expression of an illusion that the SPs is aiming to abolish capitalism through reforms.
But life itself, the real movement of history, inspires tendencies that will allow this scepticism to be overcome. First of all, in a number of countries, a new workers movement has already arisen in recent years, born from the awakening of a relatively young working class that is burdened by neither Stalinism nor traditional
This new workers movement is not marked by the sense of historical failure and scepticism that characterizes so much of the old workers movement. It tends towards a challenge to bourgeois society in its totality. This is the case in Brazil, in South Africa and in South Korea. It is at least possible that the same phenomenon can take place in Mexico, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt and the United States.
Development of anti-bureaucratic currents
In a series of countries where the workers movement is still in the grip of the trabureaucratic apparaluses, growing fraction of the trade union movement is progressively freeing itself from that grip. It is beginning to adopt broader aims under the pressure of objective conditions. If the influence of the revolutionary socialist currents grows in these movements, the socialist project will progressively regain its mass credibility. This would have a major effect in stimulating the debate in the traditional mass workers parties, above all if the vanguard forces are able to correctly apply the united front policy, in different forms and in different combinations with the development of a mass movement already partly emancipated from the grip of the traditional
Finally, the development of impetuous mass movements in East Germany and
Czechoslovakia, and the real if slow growth of the mass movement in the
USSR and several other Eastern European countries shows the contradictory nature of this crisis of credibility. In all three sectors of the world revolution the rejection of Stalinism and bureaucratic manipulation is freeing and will free colossal forces, that can be reorientated in the direction of emancipatory actions, challenging bourgeois society in its totali-
This whole contradictory project is an expression of the self-critical and selfcorrecting capacity of proletarian revolutions that Marx already underlined in "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte".
This too is a guarantee of the future of
Communism.? More, it implies the possibility, even probability of victory.
But on one condition; that the Communists/Revolutionary Socialists free themselves once and for all from every theory and practise that involves a substitutionist, paternalist or authoritarithe emancipation movement of the workers.
Communism is the aspiration for a more humane and more just society for the great majority of the human race. It is the aspiration for a society qualitatively superior to capitalist society. Insofar as the contradictions that tear capitalism
COMMUNISM apart are at work, and lead to crises, socialist classless society appears also as a more rational form of society. The balance-sheet of capitalism in the 20th century cannot only be drawn with reference to the average standard of living of the American population or Swedish and West Germany social security - in any case to a large extent conquests of the workers movement.
There is also the terrible miseries of 80% of the inhabitants of the "Third World". There is also the two world wars that have cost nearly 100 million lives. There are also the "local" wars since 1945. The "local" war unleashed by the pro-imperialist forces in Mozambique has cost 900,000 dead. There are also grave economic depressions. There is also the Fascism and semi-Fascism of numerous military dictatorships. There is also torture, which is institutionalized in more than 50 countries.
Marxists, starting with Rosa Luxemburg, were right to sum up the future of humanity at the start of this century in the phrase: "Socialism or barbarism". Before finding its most hideous expression in the Nazi crimes, the rise of barbarism had already been shown in the crimes of colonialism, including those of Japanese militarism and in the racist doctrines that support these crimes by dehumanizing their victims.
Since the start industrial capitalism has developed as a combination of progress and regression, of productive forces and destructive tendencies. At first the former carried more weight than the latter.
But with the coming of the imperialist epoch, the latter began to overwhelm the former.
Exorbitant price of continued development
This does not mean that the productive forces, whether mechanical or human, stop developing. In fact, they can experience extraordinary growth, as was the case during the period from the end of the
1940s to the start of the 1970s (in some semi-industrialized countries, the 1970s and the start of the 1980s). But the price of this development has become increasingly exorbitant.
The clearest expression of the reversal of the tendency has been the appearance of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons during the Second World War. Their massive use would mean and has meant since the end of the war - the physical destruction of the human species. The multiplication of nuclear power sta-
7. Victor Korotich correctly underlined at the Hamburg round-table: "If perestroika succeeds, it [socialism] must triumph! It would give socialist theory an even greater authority." (We would say: if glasnost is generalized by a victorious political revolution from below -EM). She det natures of them Achine 1 of Marx Capital on 15 the dual nature of the machine.
Stalinism in the bankruptcy court
International Viewpoint #179 • February 26, 1990
COMMUNISM / EAST GERMANY tions holds out the same risk in the case of large-scale "conventional" warfare. Thus the prevention of world or continental wars, whether nuclear or conventional, becomes the primary strategic objective for the workers movement, including its communist component.
The strategic conclusion that it is necessary to draw from the danger of extermination implicit in the danger of war in the presence of nuclear power stations, is that the only real and definitive guarantee of
AT THE END of January 1990, GDR prime minister Hans the survival of the human race is that all
Modrow made a spectacular speech to East Germany's factories and laboratories capable of prounelected parliament, the "Volkskammer". He explained why ducing heavy armaments should be taken elections had to take place much sooner than May 6, as over by the producers themselves. It is for an agreement by these producers to cease previously envisaged. The new date is March 18. In the same the production of these arms and to speech he proposed the formation of a "government of immediately destroy the existing stocks.
national unity" together with the parties and opposition
Yesterday the dilemma was "socialism or barbarism". Today it has changed into:
groups represented at the "round table" (see IV 175,
"socialism or death". This is the most pro-
December 11 1989).
found imaginable motivation for Communism.
MANUEL KELLNER
The same conclusion flows from the other mortal threats weighing on humanity, above all the threat of destruction of the environment and the danger of a disastrous extension of hunger and epidemics in the "Third World" (and not only in the Third World).
Control must pass into the hands of the wage-earners cannot be
These dangers finally removed if the control of production and distribution of wealth continues to be in the hands of social forces and governments that pursue the goal of private power and enrichment and which are thus compelled to pursue uncontrolled and uncontrollable forms of growth. Control must pass into the hands of the wage- earners and their allies, the working peasantry, who have the will and the ability to subordinate all partial interests and all growth to cooperation in the interests of the whole of humanity.
For the first time since the coming of
Stalinism the flag of liberty, the broadest democracy, both direct and representative, anti-militarism, indeed the categorical imperative, is starting to pass into our camp, the camp of Revolutionary Socialism.
Liberty; political and economic equality; solidarity and social justice; including on a world scale; radical anti-militarism;
radical defence of the environment;
respect for human rights — make up an unbeatable combination. These are the big propaganda themes on which we should hammer away, combined with immediate and transitional demands and political projects that translate these ideas into everyday life. Such a programme is the definitive guarantee of the future of
16
/ Communism.
*
M ODROW outlined some of
the elements of the structural crisis gripping the country: numerous strikes in support of pay and social demands which cannot be met because there is not enough money, which together with the lowering of productivity through "working too slowly" are leading the economy towards imminent disaster; general security which can no longer be guaranteed because of the activities of certain groups of citizens against others, including threats of assassination, and because of the paralysis of the authorities; the fact that 58,000 people have left the country to go to West Germany in the first four weeks of this year alone, a tendency that continues to become more pronounced, and is throwing the functioning of essential services into question.
In the first weekend of February, the same Modrow explained a change seen as equally spectacular, at least in the Western media: he pronounced himself in favour of the rapid realization of the unification of the two Germanies. Christa Luft, the Minister of the Economy, spoke of a reform which would lead, as early as this year, to the replacement of the GDR's Mark by the West German Deutschmark. The head of the GDR's state bank expressed his readiness to change the institution which he heads into an affiliate of the West German Federal Bank (Bundesbank).
So far as military alliances are concerned, Modrow proposed a reunified neutral Germany. But he changed the latter position only two days later, expressing his agreement to a reunified Germany of which at least the Western part could remain a member of NATO
The explanation of these changes is the combination of the internal crisis of a system in full decomposition with a systematic policy of destabilization, pressure, crude interference and blackmail on the part of West German capital, state and political parties.
At the beginning of November 1989, the SED had 2.7 million members. Now, less than a million remain. More and more members continue to leave the ranks of the party, with not just cells, but organizations covering neighbourhoods and entire towns dissolving themselves. In more than a quarter of districts, the local authorities have also ceased to exist. Berghofer, the most well known personality of the rightist and pro-western wing of the opposition within the party, has resigned from the party expressing his sympathy for Social Democracy, and even the part of the (ex) SED which constituted the grass PANCHO
February 26, 1990 • #179 International Viewpoint roots administrative cadre of the party-State has been seriously affected by the process of catastrophic decomposition. The ex-SED now calls itself the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) after being called the SED-PDS for some time. But that will do nothing to halt the party's accelerated decomposition.
Nearly 1.2 million people have signed the appeal of progressive intellectuals like Stefan Heym and Christa Wolf for a logic of economic and political development alternative to that of Western capitalism, reviving the values of antifascism, Socialism and solidarity. But the policy of the SED-PDS itself in no way encourages this line of thought. The policy of the government consists in defending step by step what remains of the powers and apparatus of the former regime, in covering up as best they can the manoeuvres of disinformation by those responsible for the repressions and frauds of that regime, and in reacting visibly only under the immediate pressure of popular anger, for example in the matter of the Stasi, the secret police who once kept the entire population under
Negative perspectives of government
At the same time, the government has set itself the perspective not of a democratically planned economy, not the perspective of the safeguarding of social gains and their development according to popular needs, not the perspective of a political system superior in real democracy to the bourgeois parliamentary regimes, but rather the perspective of a "social market economy", in strict liaison with Western capital, involving closer and closer collaboration with West Germany at the state level.
This will involve diverse forms of property or big industrial "mixed enterprises", where up to 49% and in some cases even more will be in the hands of the West German bosses, with the aim of achieving a competitivity on the world market comparable with that of the most advanced imperialist economies, through methods privileging all the individualist forms of 'motivation" to work - inequality of wages, fear of bankruptcy of unproductive factories etc.
It is clear that with such a policy there has been no chance of encouraging the confidence of the working class in itself, of organizing itself in an autonomous fashion, of beginning to take in hand the management of the enterprises in a spirit of collective solidarity, the taking of strategic decisions in the matter of priorities and methods of production, of beginning to take in hand from below the destiny of the country and establishing the basis for the construction of a better society.
It is necessary to add to this that the great majority of opposition groups which emerged from the November revolution, of which the initial nuclei existed before this formidable mass movement, have evolved clearly to the right and have shown themselves definitively incapable of elaborating an alternative perspective. All, except the United Left (Vereinigte Linke), which has quickly corrected its initial error, now have representatives in the government, eight ministers out of 27, and without portfolios. The function of this entry into government is clear; to safeguard a maximum of stability for a very short period of transition towards total capitulation before West German imperialism. For these people, it adds up to doing their best to keep the workers in a state of morale which can nourish the hope of West German capital of finding in the GDR docile and suitable objects of exploitation. It is very possible that this is an illusion! An illusion, however, well (un)consciousness created by the decades of bureaucratic dictatorship in the name of Socialism.
For the negative development of the majority of the opposition, the split in "New Forum", which was by far the most
EAST GERMANY important oppositional formation in November 1989, is an apt symbol. During its recent congress, a small minority left the meeting room, completely disappointed and frustrated. This minority was precisely the generation of first representatives of "New Forum" in November, including Barbel Böhley, those who expressed in the most authentic fashion the profound tions of the mass movement which shook the regime to its foundations. They left the conference because the political positions of the "New Forum" were transformed totally by the new (and overwhelming) majority; for a united Germany; for the acceptance of annexation by West Germany; for a market economy with some social elements, and even against the right of veto of workplace delegates against the decisions of management, which would evidently discourage potential investors. Moreover, before this congress the "New Forum" had organized a good number of meetings with entrepreneurs and representatives of West German bosses.
The new Social Democracy, for its part, was also initially composed by people with genuine links to the democratic aspirations of the insurgent masses. The apparatus of the West German SPD has done everything to transform this SPD into the SPD of East Germany, into a little brother remote controlled from the West. This is no exaggeration.
### SPD leads nationalist flag-waving
The East German SPD is at the same time the political force at the centre of the flag-waving euphoria and the nationalist cul-de-sac of December (excepting the Fascists and quasi-Fascists) and the opposition party which is most solidly for stability, public order etc. It already has important material resources, when the other opposition groups have not yet even the beginnings of means of proper publication or other means of political functioning.
Without consultation with the other oppositional groups involved in the Round Table, the Social Democrats negotiated with the government and the SEDPDS leadership to elaborate the new line — the earlier election date, the "government of national responsibility" etc. Why? Certainly, because the SPD feels itself the best preparted organie tonicy, and the 17 best supported by the political conjunc-
International Viewpoint #179 • February 26, 1990
EAST GERMANY ture, to face the test of elections. SPD leader Ibrahim Böhme explained the rest in an interview given to the alternative journal "Taz". When the journalist criticized the eclectic behaviour and maneuvering of the SPD and contrasted this with the initial ideal of the construction of a superior democracy, the new apprentice politician Böhme told him with the sincerity of those new to bourgeois parliamentary manipulation, "Now, we must take responsibility for the policy of the party and the state. This makes it more difficult to retain certain theorems, above all in the matter of democracy". The policy of the delivery of the GDR to West German imperialism will necessitate the sacrifice of a good many more "theorems".
Elements of socialist left
Without giving more details, it should be clear that, apart from the small United Left, grouping some 600 members, who are, moreover, quite heterogeneous and at the beginning of consolidating themselves; some other little socialist groups with Marxist convictions; the feminist groups organized in part in a federation; the ecologist movement divided into a party wing and a grass roots movement wing; the left minorities in certain opposition groups like "Demokratie jetzt" rank and file groups like the group "Für Frieden und Menschenrechte", the political scene in the GDR now, a month before the elections, is not very encouraging.
There are some ex-SED-PDS currents which are in the process of coming out of the PDS and which could play a positive role in a broader regroupment of the forces of the left. But their political and programmatic demarcations are not very clear and their evolution is not clear.
At the time of writing, it is not even certain if the most combative forces of the United Left, or the other forces which describe themselves as socialist, will succeed in forming a small alliance capable of presenting any sort of credible electoral slate. Through the massive intervention of the West German Christian Democrats, the conservative groups, "Demokratischer Aufbruch" have already formed a common alliance, the "Alliance for Germany", and all the established parties of the FRG now have counterparts in
When the round table, at the initiative of opposition groups without direct big brothers in the West, decided recently to forbid the direct intervention of West German politicians in the GDR's electoral campaign, the representatives of the West German parties immediately reacted by saying they would ignore this ban.
Certainly, significant and surprising changes could still take place, even before March 18. To interpret the different 18 aspects of the political feelings at the level of the masses, it is necessary to be prudent and precise, for there remains the potential for all kinds of changes which could transform the picture, including even perhaps a reinforcement of the attraction of the forces of the left, small as they might be, who have refused to play the card of "national responsibility".
Despite the nationalist demonstrations at Leipzig and the hegemony of the sentiment that only reunification represents a real perspective, it should be said that the number of demonstrators is declining. It should be absolutely clear on the other hand that revolutionaries can absolutely not support the demands for reunification in the sense of annexation by the FRG. In the mobilizations and in the euphoria of reunification a true pogrom atmosphere has been created against all left and socialist forces.
Cries of "Reds out!" are common, and this is one of the more moderate slogans.
agitation of fascist and reactionary groups is tolerated. Behind all this there is certainly confusion, and the illusion that annexation by West German capital will bring about a rapid amelioration of the standard of living! But on the other hand all the political forces in the East as in the West speak of the "sacrifices" necessary to build the basis of an efficient capitalist economy! Strike movement wins partial
The protest movements are a self-defence reflex which should be supported, even if they do not reflect an advanced consciousness in the matter of the political alternative for the type of society to construct. These strikes have already in part won their demands and obtained important pay gains. The congress of the federation of official trade unions, the FDGB, where for the first time the majority of delegates were genuinely elected, threatened to call a general strike if the government did not concede, amongst other things, the right to strike, the right of veto against enterprise managers and
Alongside the structures of the FDGB there is a beginning of a movement for workplace councils as organs of defence of the immediate interest of workers and of control over the negotiations enterprise managers are holding with West German capitalists. But it is a beginning, and little is clear as yet. The United Left has held its first discussions with the most combative trades unionists of the FRG, but undoubtedly this has only affected a minority until now. There have also been initiatives for independent trade unions, but it is unclear what chance they have of
The West German government, for its part, seems a little taken aback by the pressure for rapid unification, which naturally poses diplomatic, military, conceptual, but also economic and problems, including inside the FRG itself.
How to manage the enormous differential in wages and standard of living? How to make the masses pay the costs of reunification? How to counter the loss of legitimacy in the matter of armaments and the army? How to avoid the risks of destabilization? Including in the FRG?
The victory of Oskar Lafontaine of the SPD in the Saar was an important indication of the change in the sentiment of the masses in the West. The "Deutschland, Deutschland" euphoria has passed its zenith. People are starting to worry about
Lafontaine, who is certain to be the SPD's candidate for Chancellor in the federal elections at the end of this year (if they are not affected by the prospect of common elections in the two Germanies, which has already been discussed...) has cleverly played a double card; that of resentment against "those who come here from the East to take our houses, our standard of living etc." and that of a nationalism moderated by considerations of social justice, of responsibility, of consciousness of the danger that a destabilization and a huge exodus could create.
Mood against euphoria of reunification
With this line, the SPD spectacularly defeated the parties of the coalition govemment in Saar, and recent opinion polls published in Der Spiegel confirm that since the beginning of the year there has been a very marked tendency against privileges for refugees coming from the East, against the euphoria of reunification without regard for the financial consequences and so on. It is an ambiguous change of consciousness, but important nonetheless.
The radical and revolutionary left in West Germany is beginning slowly to reorientate itself and regain its capacity to respond, modest as it is. The rejection of the nationalist wave and any project of colonisation and of reinforcement of German imperialism begins to combine with projects of mobilization around concrete demands with allies in different areas, for example at the level of anti-militarist demands.
The first links have been made to contribute to workers' capacity for resistance by those who are going to pay the cost of unification, if this is not stopped by a great leap forward in the combativity and the self-organization of the workers of the GDR.
The idea of solidarity from below, from beyond all frontiers, against the dictatorship of the apparatuses and the laws of profit, against the birth of a new German imperialist super-monster and for a renewal of a socialist emancipatory project remains an idea against the current, but it bases itself on real contradictions in the current situation.*
Crisis of the "Swedish model"