German left faces
International Viewpoint #192 • October 15, 1990
GULF CRISIS / GERMANY thus supported the international arms industry and the general economic situation in these countries.
An additional stimulus to demand, above all for arms, came in the wake of the war; for example, Saudi Arabia made the "biggest arms deal of the century" (The Guardian) in 1987 — 50 tornado jets from West Germany and Britain.
• The two warring states, and to some extent other OPEC countries, were forced to sell as much oil as possible to cover the costs of the war.
The oil cartel, which had already been weakened by North Sea oil production and efforts at energy saving, was thereby undermined. There was a massive fall in the price of oil providing an additional present for the imperialist centres.
### Petrodollars recycled through Gulf War
The Iran/Iraq war therefore recycled the petrodollars in a way which left the OPEC countries holding no property rights. The income from increased oil production went straight out again. Indeed as the oil price fell the extra income itself melted away.
The volume of demand that Iran and Iraq alone generated during their war in the West - almost exclusively, in Japan, the USA, Western Europe and Brazil -was around $200b. And this is without the expenditure occasioned by the war in the other countries in the region.
The savings made in the imperialist countries owing to the fall in the oil price by around 40% came to an even higher sum. Thus the war was effectively a counter-cyclical programme for the imperialist economies, and had a lot to do with the eight-year long boom in the industrialized countries.
What this adds up to: Capital is power. This simple lesson, drawn from the analysis of capitalism and its 200 year history also implies: the bigger the capital, the greater the power and the stronger the desire of other powerful owners of capital to increase their capital through robbery of other capitals which are themselves the product of similar robberies — even when this is done through the extraction of surplus value in production.
It is also the case that the capitals amassed by the individual OPEC contries are worth almost any action. The "thief of Baghdad" has stolen from the bulging coffers of Kuwait. The thief of Washington (or Wall Street) understands this kind of business well.
Finally, the history of capitalism shows that this kind of trigger happy covetousness always arises when a powerful imperialist country finds itself in economic 18 difficulties and on the strategic slide. And this is true today of the USA. * elections
THE mainstream political parties have accepted the logic of the new Anschluss; thus the Western parties have swallowed their junior partners in the East. The conservative parties - the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Christian Socials (CSU) and the Liberals (FDP) -have annexed former satellite parties of the Stalinist regime (now "reformed"). In what way have they been reformed? In the old system they served the regime, in the new, larger Federal Republic, they will do the same. The East German Social Democrats, the SPD, at least had the merit of being formed In opposition to Honecker. MANUEL KELLNER T HE UNITED SPD, however, is having trouble finding a coherent oppositional line; it was the first to launch the slogan "Germany, one country", leading to the ideological hegemony of the right; secondly, it has participated in the capitulation government of De Maizière; thirdly, it has no alternative to rapid authorities have furthermore adopted an electoral law favouring the conservative groupuscule the DSU and discriminating against the PDS and other party poopers [on September 29 the West German constitutional court ruled that this law contravened the principle of equal chances for the parties].
Greens ally with civic movements
The Greens have made an electoral alliance with a large proportion of the groups coming out of the ex-GDR's "civic movements". This alliance has developed a far more serious critique of the Anschluss and of present German reality, espousing principles that could be described as radical democratic. The Greens have, even so, become the dominant force in this alliance, which is not altogether to the liking of the civic movement groups. The left wing of this latter movement has been marginalized - the United Left, for example, is no longer supporting this alli-
On September 15 and 16 in Berlin the formed and adopted a platform for the elections. In the east, the United Left and some other socialist groups are supporting the PDS. In the West personalities from different small currents - left Social Democrats, parties and groups from the far left such as the Communist League (KB, ex-Maoist, non-Stalinist), the VSP, the reformist socialist wing of the Greens, the "renewers" from the (West) German Communist Party (DKP) and what is left of the DKP itself have formed a list to make an alliance with the PDS. Problems in forging alliance
There were many problems in forging the alliance, above all owing to the different weight of the small Western left and the PDS. But the Berlin congress reflected the alliance's pluralism and allowed real debates.
The Left List/PDS alliance's platform is to the left of the profile established by the PDS in the East. The programme contains a lot of progressive demands, but with an overall reformist logic. The question of principled opposition to the system and the expanded German state is left in the shadows in the interests of the unity of the alliance. Even so, the Left List/PDS slate will be public enemy number one and is the only participant in the election to put forward anti-capitalist ideas, or to propose a democratic socialism. *
Germany
- still a
divided
country
WE publish below a speech by Jakob Moneta, formerly editor of the IG Metall journal, a member of the VSP (United Socialist Party) and a candidate on the Left List/PDS slate.
A T A TIME when we are
threatened with a "historic date" — October 3 — we are embarking here on a risky enterprise, whose future is not completely clear. It would be catastrophic to sow illusions in this "beginning again from the beginning." It would be even more serious to denounce the hope, simply because we have lost it for a certain time.
My tradition is that of the current in the workers' movement known as the "left opposition". This current paid with tens of thousands of victims for its opposition to the bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR. Today, many years after their murder, these victims are being rehabili-
But their real rehabilitation, and that of the victims from the other socialist, communist and anarchist oppositions, will be when we begin again to get to know and discuss their ideas, their critiques and the alternatives they put forward. It is the eternal lie of all conservative historians that whatever happened had to happen. There have always been alternatives in history, on the condition that human beings have had the courage to defend them and find the strength to realize them.
It is this which the Left List/PDS is trying to do now. It aims to show another way out to those who see the collapse of the bureaucratic command economy as the opportunity for them to increase their markets, and reinforce their position on the world market. We have two important traditions to communicate to those who, above all in the GDR, are placing their hopes in "really existing" capitalism.
Firstly: the uncontrolled market mechanisms of an economy based on the search for private profit do not bring well-being to the mass of humanity, but increasing misery, including mass hunger death of millions of children — not to say the murder of millions of children.
Secondly: what is now being advertised as the social market economy only came about as the result of the social struggles of powerful trade unions, capable of organizing resistance to capital's insatiable hunger for enrichment and tendency towards concentration of power. If the Left List/PDS alliance, which is composed of diverse tendencies, wants to gain real credibility as an opposition both in parliament and in society, it must have nothing to do with parliamentary cretin-
Only links with extra-parliamentary forces can give it credibility. These links must begin with combative unions, the movement, anti-militarist, anti-fascist and anti-racist movements, and take in the initiatives of the unemployed and all those forces for which the Left List/PDS can be the parliamentary voice.
### Socialist democracy provides alternative
Only in this way can this opposition take the offensive - as Karl Marx said "it is necessary to overthrow all the relations in which man (sic) is humiliated, abandoned and despised." This is precisely the road which leads to an alternative for society - to socialist
To all those who are today singing the hymn of "Germany, one united country" and "we are one people", I would like to commend the words of Kurt Tucholsky, who said a long time before the "fascist community of the whole people" and the division of Germany by the Wall: "Germany is a divided country and we are one
• In 1525, when the German nobility massacred the German peasants who were in rebellion, was Germany "unit-
GERMANY
• Was it united in 1848 in Berlin, when the Royal Prussian army crushed the insurgent democrats?
• Or when Germans repressed the workers and soldiers councils in November 1918?
And what happened to those Germans, who in November 1989 demonstrated with the shout, "We are the people"? This meant, without any doubt, "it is us down here who are the people, you up there are not." They were pushed back by those shouting "We are one people".
But this is the beginning of the stigmatization of citizens from other countries, and of "foreign races." Does this not mean the exchange of the rights of man for the privileges of the "ethnically German", those supposedly tied together by blood?
When the Emperor does not know of parties, only of Germans (Kaiser Wilhelm Il in 1914], it is time to get worried.
Even before the big show begins and before the hosannas of Helmut Kohl for the "one country" — with or without the ringing of bells — we should note the participation of the new expanded Germany in the "military actions" in the Gulf. There is even an attempt to sell this as support "for international solidarity" that is, the action decided by the United Nations.
But when did the UN ever call for such support when small nations have been attacked by great powers? What happened in Grenada, Panama or Nicaragua? Nor was anything done when Saddam Hussein killed hundreds of Communists or killed thousands of Kurds with poison gas.
Has the UN become an intervention force" for the big powers, with which not only Helmut Kohl can feel solidarity, but, apparently, a lot of social democrats and even some Green deputies? War - key test for workers' movement
The question of war has always been the key test in the German workers' movement - and not only there. It shows who seriously defends the ideas of socialism and who does not. Perhaps there will be some people who consider that I have not marked myself off sufficiently from Stalinism. I think that, having fought Stalinism for half a century, this is not the time to do it, when Stalinism is disappearing from the historical stage.
But allow me to finish with a quote from an independent theoretician of the Uruguayan left, Eduardo Galleano, the author of a moving book, "The Open Veins of Latin America":