Changes in East
Germany's former
EAST GERMANY build up the right-wing of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) against the revolutionary socialist currents in the party.
Nonetheless, it would not be right to define the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS — the new name of the SED) as merely the simple continuation of the SED, and thus as a "Stalinist" party that has made a purely pragmatic change of name and profile to adapt to new conditions. Many things have changed: it is
THE EAST GERMAN Socialist Unity Party (SED — the
Communist Party), was an Instrument of domination representing the privileged and parasitic bureaucracy of non-capitalist East Germany. It has done a tremendous job in discrediting Marxist and socialist ideas in both parts of
Germany, and the rest of the world. It was a Stalinist party, according to anyone's definition, even if it dropped positive references to Stalin a long time ago and even if it was the result of a fusion of the former Communist Party and the
Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), which was purged of its
"social democratic elements".
MANUEL KELLNER
S
TRUCTURED according to a finely tuned hierarchy of privileges, this system corrupted millions of people. Its relation to the working class and the population in general was based, firstly on repression, and secondly on providing a feeling of existential security sufficient at least to ensure that no generalized revolt took place.
Maintaining the standard of living in the midst of generalized incompetence required various acts of economic adventurism, the costs of which are now becoming apparent, particularly as regards the foreign debt. It is furthermore hard to imagine a grosser desecration of emancipatory ideals than the practice of selling political prisoners and malcontents to the
West - for 95,847 D-marks per head.
Working class confidence shattered
The bureaucracy destroyed the working class' confidence that it could run the firms and the economy itself, and prepared it for the Western bourgeoisie - by inculcating a spirit of submission, encouraging ideals of passive consumerism on the
Western model, ever-present via the TV, and establishing a complete separation between private and public life, where outward support for official lies was demanded.
The SED was de facto, if not formally, the only party. The other parties of the
National Bloc, the CDU, LDPD, NDPD and Peasant Party played the role of an alibi. Elections were farces offering no alternatives, but at which it was more or less mandatory to vote for the prefabricated lists. The SED was linked to a vast apparatus of repression: the political police, the Stasi, maintained surveillance over the whole population with its 80,000 professional officers and innumerable informal collaborators.
It is, in any case, now becoming increasingly clear that the face of Stalinism in East Germany was no more human than in the Soviet Union - many people died in concentration camps and were murdered for their opinions in a completely arbitrary fashion.
Consistent supporters of peaceful coexistence
All this is true, and is widely spoken about in the media. What is being discussed hardly at all is the reactionary role of the SED in the international policy of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist leaderships. The SED, which had a certain autonomy based on the country's relative economic strength within the Soviet Bloc, exerted a rightward pressure on the workers movement in many countries in the world. Despite its rejection of Gorbachev's glasnost, the SED was one of the most consistent supporters of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism. Its latest ideological contraption was the discovery of "imperialism capable of pursuing a peace policy".
This corresponded to the extensive economic deals between the East German bureaucracy and West German imperialism, an entente concealed by the routine of public polemics. It was quite in character, for example, for the SED to try to necessary to go beyond scholastic dogmatism and give a serious account of the profound changes in the party.
The SED had 2.7 million members. The PDS has today some 650,000. The SED was a dictatorial ruling party; the PDS is an opposition party that got 17% of the vote in elections largely influenced by the West German bourgeoisie. Without being in a position to give precise figures on this subject, it is clear that the party has many new members who joined after the election of the new leadership under Gregor Gysi (who was not tied to the old regime and who, as a lawyer, had defended oppositionists such as New Forum's Barbel Böhley). It is also clear that a lot of people who were party members purely for reasons of personal advantage have now left, and the number of those remaining who have sincere socialist and progressive convictions must be much higher than before. The party has a new programme in which the following values are strongly present: solidarity; socialist democracy; the vision of a socially just society; emancipatory ends; and the social interests of the weaker sectors and wage-earners. PDS comes out for Germany unification
At the same time there are a series of adaptations to the ideology of the triumphant bourgeoisie such as the praising of the market and the proclamation of national unity as a positive end in itself. The PDS also has new statutes that significantly reinforce the democratic rights of members and imply the right of tendency (which in any case exists de facto in the platforms inside the party, which can organize themselves, submit their proposals to a vote and so on.
Some commentators on the far left have been quick to characterize the PDS as a post-Stalinist party in the process of a rapid social-democratization in the fashion of the Italian CP. There are elements of truth in this judgement and the PDS has requested admission to the Socialist International - as has the Nicaraguan FSLN for example. But we should be a bit cautious. Full-scale social democratization requires a certain material base in organic liaison with a state with a bourgeois parliamentary system. Even with its present electorate, at an all-German level, the PDS would get between 2% and 4% of the vote. In these conditions social democratization remains mainly an ideological May 7, 1990 • #184 International Viewpoint
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ruling party
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9
EAST GERMANY
POSSIBLY
EXCHANGE
DM : OST-MARK
ONLY
1:2
1:1?
V:2?
1:?
TIS precisely democracy that is at stake and the democratic aspirations of the GDR's citizens will not be frustrated without a reaction. Nonetheless everything has been tried to this end since doubts were first cast on the legitimacy of the new parliament.
From every side, voices have been raised demanding an amnesty for former collaborators and members of the Stasi. This could have been expected from the former Stasi chief Engelhardt. Since the start of this year he has been proposing a straightforward dissolution of the Stasi, without any opening of the files.
But as soon as the issue of checking up on the 400 newly elected parliamentary deputies came up, the pro-amnesty tide surged forward with great force - in the West! The president of the Federal Office of the FRG for defence of the Constitux... до.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW? PACK? UNPACK? thing, limited by its electoral interest in appearing as a force more to the left of the SPD and more "red" than the Greens.
In the March 18 elections in the GDR, the PDS was the party which most consistently (and most effectively, given the small size of the independent socialist United Left) defended the sovereignty of the population of the GDR and their acquisitions in the face of the offensive of West German capital as well as the values of social solidarity. Of course, the Modrow government inclined to the perspective of a capitalist reunification and the "social market", but this was seen by the imposed by the "force of circumstances", which in their eyes leaves pride as the only remaining resistance to the humiliations of colonization and the policy of
The existence and profile of the PDS have stimulated a debate inside the United Left, which is likely to seek close collaboration with the PDS and the stepping up of
West German left assesses possibilities for unity
In West Germany there is a discussion inside the left. This involves the "renovators", who have split from the West German Communist Party to form the Socialist Forum, the Left Forum current in the Greens and the far left. It concerns an assessment of the PDS' evolution and even whether it might be possible to base a project for the building of a mass united socialist force on the strengths of the PDS. There are quite a number of people in the West German working class who are not in any of the parties and who find the far left too weak to be credible. A force like the PDS, connecting socialism and 10 the left of the SPD, having broken with democracy, representing a mass current to International Viewpoint #184 • May 7, 1990
Stalinism and forming a part of the workers movement — contrary to the Greens - would attract them. Thus the existence of the renovated PDS influences the debate for West German socialists and revolutionaries.
It seems clear to me that the PDS is in a phase of transition which may give rise to a political force whose material bases — defence of the interests of the bureaucracy — will have totally changed without any new organic link with the bourgeois state being formed.
### Bourgeoisie envisages repression of left
On the contrary, the West German bourgeoisie is conducting a campaign of stigmatization against the PDS with the aim of isolating it and oppressing it after capitalist reunification — which is also the intended fate for the rest of the left that still maintains references to Marxism. It is the duty of revolutionaries to defend the PDS against this campaign, without lessening the sharp criticisms that are neces-
These criticisms fall into three main categories: (a) the PDS' opportunist policies (b) the PDS' programme, which is reformist and (c) the lack of a serious balance sheet of the party's past. On this latter point, the superficial account of the past accepted so far by the PDS gives succor to liberal critics and bourgeois democratic ideology.
The revolutionary left must try to exercise caution in its analyses of the PDS and understand the nature of its transformation into a left party with a new character, that of a reformist tendency to the left of actually existing social democracy. The revolutionary left must seek action and political dialogue with this party. A Stalinophobic attitude in this regard would be anachronistic and would play tion, Gerhard Boeden, Bonn minister Wolfgang Schaüble and Chancellor Kohl himself sang the song of pardon. The first of these came out for "a generous amnesty, apart from those who have really committed injustices." The last backed up this idea, saying: "we must not only live with this reality [100,000 Stasi collaborators), but engage in dialogue with all these people in order to little by little change their way of thinking."
### Towards a well-policed democracy
The idea of a well-policed democracy - and the West German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) is hardly backward when it comes to intrusive policing — has quickly united both sides of the wall of shame! All the more in that the FRG has an interest in recuperating some of the
According to Werner Fischer, one of the three members of the commission named by the Modrow government to oversee the dissolution of the Stasi, 32 police forces from around the world are working in the GDR and "it must be said that many of the facts gathered together have been in the possession of the KGB, and probably other secret services, for a while." (Tageszeitung, April 4, 1990) From Bonn to Berlin, and further afield, a good number of governments fear the opening of the six million files -one for every third inhabitant — of Honecker's former police.
In the new parliament in Berlin, Christian Democrats and Communists, even supported by some former oppositionists, have begun to oppose or at least seek to limit the extent of the checks on the 400 deputies. While rejecting the interference of Bonn, Modrow has spoken out for "the parliament finding a solution that does not prolong the investigation indefinitely....the deputies must understand that pardon and amnesty can be as important as the rehabilitation of victims." On his side, Eberhard Engler, head of the East
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Hop 2.I
East and West unite
- to cover up for the
EAST GERMANY dant". He sets down criteria for their re-
"No employment of collective structures, employment of specialists to carry out tasks for the ministries, but never in a leadership role; control by the police trade union; provisional employment for
Stasi one year and after this period permanent employment if the work collective agrees." (report p.8)